You are looking for a home based business.
Maybe you have children at home and want to work out of the house.
Maybe you need extra income.
One option to consider is providing customer service surveys to your local businesses.
What exactly is a customer service survey? It's a report/survey given to the owner or manager of an establishment, letting them know what it's like to be a customer of theirs.
You, or someone you would hire, goes into that establishment anonymously, acts as a typical customer, then reports on their experience.
The owner would pay you for such a survey.
First question you might ask would be, "Is there a need for these surveys?" In other words, is there enough of a market for these surveys to justify going into this business? Have you recently been to a store or restaurant and received poor service? How did that affect your perception of the place? Having had bad service, how eager are you to go back to this place of business? I bet you wouldn't return.
How many other customers might also have had this same experience and drawn the same conclusion? On the other hand, how many poor meals have you had at restaurants when your server saved the day by quickly replacing a poor meal with something you liked better? It would probably benefit the owner or manager of that establishment to have a customer service survey so they could see their operation through the eyes of their customers, especially so when they are not around to supervise.
After all, the customer service provided by their staff affects their bottom line.
And, not just a little bit - it can make the difference between a business thriving or one just getting by.
What types of businesses would use these surveys? Any business that deals with the public.
That could be restaurants, retail, hotels, car dealerships, etc.
The list is endless.
Starting such a business costs very little.
What do you need? 1) a computer, and 2) the willingness to go out occasionally and get involved with your local business community.
However, most of your work can be done at home.
You can get others to do the surveys for you, and edit the reports at home.
Can this business be lucrative? Since most survey reports are ongoing (example, once or twice a month), this can be lucrative and steady.
In other words, you only have to "close the deal" once and you keep making money from that client going forward.
While continuing to make money from the first client, you can go find client #2.
Also, one client can have more than one location, therefore, they would need reports for each of their locations.
There are other terms for customer service surveys.
They are also called mystery shopper reports, or secret shopper reports.
Whatever these surveys/reports are called, they provide very valuable information for business owners.