How about printing up a flyer with some photos of work you've done/pieces you've made & leaflet-dropping round the more affluent parts... or 2nd home/weekender properties. They'd probably be the most likely to have the cash to have jobs done around the house.
Any colleges around? Fancy teaching some nightschool classes?
You could also consider teaching if you have a workshop at home, but I'd have a good dig around first - there's probably loads of implications covering health & safety, insurance & whatnot, so it might be cost-prohibitive!
What about offering your services for fitting people's kitchens? Not exactly what you really want to be doing, but there's definitely a call for it. e.g. numpties like me, who go out and buy the stuff, then realise it's way beyond our abilities... hire a friend of a friend, sack them 2 weeks (! Yes! WEEKS!) into the job & finish up on my own anyway!
Best of luck & hope 2011 finally sees an upturn in the economy!
I'm fitting a bespoke kitchen at the moment, 120 miles away, kitchens are easy money, but very few people have that money available to them, in this economic climate, so they are few & far between. After buying the necessary tooling, it took two kitchens just to break even.
I have teaching experience, I'm a qualified PADI IDC staff scuba instructor, but the "creative journalism" after the Asian tsunami, put a stop to my income & forced my return to this country. There's no way I'd want to teach anything over here, due to revenue based legislations. It's "game over" in this country, for the time being. You have to buy your life over here.
Mine wasn't exactly a bespoke kitchen! lol
But it cost me a bloody fortune at 80 quid a day for a completely clueless numpty to cock up for a fortnight. Of course I couldn't afford to pay anyone to put it right & cocked it up myself instead, but I did no worse than the idiot I'd employed to do the job
£80 per day is way too cheap for a competent joiner Wannabe, unless he only does 5 or 6 hrs per day ....lol. For example, just to form the worktop mitres, cost me almost £500 for the router, jig & cutters, on average I spend £30 on sharpening these cutters, every kitchen. Cheap tools are a false economy (you wouldn't put the cheapest available brake components & tyres on your bike) .... You get what you pay for I suppose .... I'm reassuringly expensive & often get given more work, from the same clients ..... that's important ;-)
Just to clarify... It was around 10 years ago... & worked out to about £40 an hour, given that I'd generally get a phone call at work (where I was earning a whopping great £35 a day! lol) by around 11am, bleating about some excuse or other as to why he/they couldn't continue that day.
I'll never ever pay day rates again. If I can ever afford to pay someone to do a job for me in the future, it'll be job rate only.
The day he argued against my assurance that 14 was half of 28, insisting that it was 17, was the final straw! Never mind his tools... if he couldn't do simple calculations, he wasn't spending another minute wrecking my kitchen!
As I said, you get what you pay for. A job rate is fair enough, providing you accept that there would be contingencies to cover the unforseen .... unless of course, you've completely stripped out the old kitchen beforehand and are able to communicate EXACTLY what you want, to the letter :)
i agree ...you do get what you pay for, i went out to a old couple yesterday who had been locked out the night before, simple job for me , key turned on the inside of a upvc door, customer has a key, would of took me about 2 mins to open the door and cost the customer £85.00 plus vat,(xmas out of hours callout) however they called out a maintenence company instead of a proper locksmith, and the guy wrecked the lock, handles , and smashed a hole the size of a tangerine in there nice honey oak effect door, there for leaving the door beyond repair !!!
When you don't know a thing about it though, you use who's recommended to you & you trust the alleged "professional's" advice. You ask around and other folk tell you that 80 quid a day's the going rate & it'll take him no longer than a week, so you figure you're safe & not being ripped off/not expecting too much for a small cost.
After a fortnight, you realise you should've sacked him on day 1 & saved your money.
Even when I did sack him, I was petrified to do so... especially when he turned up the day after with a bunch of geezers to pick up his tools that he'd left scattered all over my house.
I've also been berated for "allowing" the gas safety blokey to disconnect & condemn my cooker. What am I supposed to do though? Some geezer with all the right qualifications turns up and says he's legally not permitted to leave the property until he's disconnected the appliance... You just do what they tell you. How can you do any different?
I'm told I should have got said blokey to remove the lid, thus making the safety cut-off thingy redundant & he wouldn't have had to condemn the thing.
If it's that simple, surely he'd have suggested doing just that? It was Xmas Eve after all, so no hope of getting a replacement in for several days.
It's all very tedious & I'm sick of everything being "my fault". Why can't tradespeople just charge a fair price & do a fair job? Why do I get the piss taken out of me every time I take my car to a garage? Life could be so much simpler...
I'm with Yam on this one ..... nothing pisses me off more than the "guilty until proven innocent" attitude we often have to put up with. As I said before, I often get more work from the same clients. I am NOT cheap, I'm professional..... I never have to go back to put things right & I always see a job through to completion.
No offence meant Wannabe, but I don't think I would want to work for you, I think it would be problematic :)
6 of one & half a dozen of the other .... that's how these things always are.
It's the nature of the beast with tradesmen, so many people have been shafted they don't trust anyone. You can't blame people. I am an honest bloke, I won't even sell on something without pointing out anything wrong with it. It's against my nature, same with work I have always worked my ass of above and beyond for my job often for no reward but because I wanted the job I was doing done right and properly. I have been seen off before especially at garages where they Mark up part prices and make work up that doesn't need doing to keep the appearance of the time charged lower... It is shit and leaves all others tarnished with the same brush.
Unfortunately thenhonest fair tradesmen will be looked uponthe same.... Reputation brings thework in repeatedly not ripping people off. The good ones know that!
![BM Jobseekers Help For Fellow Bikers (3) - Forums [Biker Match]](/images/backgrounds/strips/8mobileLQ.jpg)
![BM Jobseekers Help For Fellow Bikers (3) - Forums [Biker Match]](/images/backgrounds/strips/8desktopLQ.jpg)
