Imagine how much quicker you could achieve your financial goals if you were making an extra $1000 per month.
Maybe you’d ramp up your savings. Maybe you’d pay down the mortgage faster. Or maybe you would do more travelling. But getting a promotion like that is difficult. So what can you do?
The answer, obviously, is to start a side business. You may think that you don’t have enough time, but you probably have more of it than you think.
I mean, come on, people with 3 kids and a full time job have started successful side businesses, and if they can do it, so can you. You just need to decide you want to do it and stick by your decision.
How to start a do-it-for-you resume business
A great resume can help you to advance in your career much faster than you would otherwise.
However, most people’s resumes are a mess, and often they don’t even know that it’s holding them back.
You can build a nice little side business by helping these people improve their resumes. How? It’s actually quite simple.
Step #1: Create a business website.
Okay, so first you’ll need a website, because without it your potential customers won’t be able to find you. It’s actually quite easy to do this with the right tools.
Before anything else, you’re going to need a logo and you can actually do it yourself pretty easily with online logo maker.
The easiest way to set up your own website is to get a domain name, get hosting, and install WordPress. Once that’s done, use Elementor WordPress Theme Builder to create a beautiful custom theme. Make sure that your website looks professional, otherwise your potential customers won’t trust you to handle their resumes!
Then, add a wordpress form so that your customers would have a way to contact you. This will save a lot of time with sending emails, asking clients about their exact requirements for the project.
One other way you can address some of their pre-sale questions is through a WordPress FAQ Plugin. Most of the visitors already know to search for FAQ section of any site, so it’s less work for you in support. Also don’t forget to add new items in FAQ as soon as you encounter some new popular questions. That way, when your potential customers have questions, they’ll first look for the answers themselves before reaching out to you, which will reduce the amount of time you’ll need to spend on answering emails.
Finally, even with all the privacy scandals around Facebook, hundreds of millions of people still use the Messenger app. It’s only natural to talk to them about their resume needs in Messenger, where the reply will be much faster than in email. And faster replies mean you can get to completing their order sooner. So don’t hesitate to use a chatbot as well, there are a lot of resources online on how to create a chatbot.
Step #2: Improve people’s resumes.
When people buy your services, ask them to provide their employment history and what their current professional goals are, and then adjust their resume based on that. For example, if someone did a lot of waitressing jobs in their early 20s, but now they are trying to get into coding, they probably don’t need to list all the cafes they worked in. Just look at it through the eyes of a potential employer. What matters and what doesn’t?
Also, make sure that the final product, that is the ressumes, actually look good, because you can’t just hand people back a text file or Word document. Design beautiful PDFs that will help your customers stand out from the other applicants. Don’t know how to do it yourself? Use these resume templates.
It’s possible to take this one step further by using combination of original high quality fonts. These can get quite expensive really fast, so your best bet is to take a look at some of the pay what you want design bundles out there.
One other tool that will come indispensable in your resume business is the placeholder text generator. Use Lorem Ipsum plugin to generate lorem ipsum placeholder text for sample resumes. You can check new template designs this way, check out how 1 page looks or how the same design works on 3-page long resume.
#3 Get paid!
Ideally, you should be getting paid for your work upfront, so direct all the potential customers that are interested in buying your services to your shopping cart. You will not need a complicated system for processing all the orders, a Simple Shopping Cart will work just fine.
Also, make sure that you track all your invoices, and manage your finances well. You can do that with Invoice Ninja, an open source platform that provides everything you need, from time tracking software to a variety of invoice templates.
Conclusion
The truth is, running a side business is a lot of work, and it requires sacrifices, but it’s definitely doable.
Take a good look at what you do in your spare time. Do you really need to watch TV or play computer games every evening after work? Do you really need to go out every Friday night? Do you really need to meet up with friends every weekend? It might sound harsh, but if you want to run a side business, some or all these things might have to go, at least for the time being.
However, if you work hard and persevere, it will all be worth it in the long run, especially if you manage to grow your side business to a point where you can quit your day job!
