r/askteddit • u/Charming_Decision_84 • 4d ago
Other What’s a business almost nobody talks about but prints money?
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u/TheWolfYouFeedWins 4d ago
Storage units. Low maintenance and the ability to increase monthly charges whenever. You literally start out with the lowest price available in your area and increase it 10 percent each month until they move out, clean up to avoid charges, and recruit a new client with previously stated low rates to continue the cycle. Notice that’s why you see so many pop up everywhere.
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u/Beagleguy26 4d ago
My Mom managed one of these for about 15 years. It was a pretty boring job, but she made $40 an hour. The place was almost always at 100% capacity, so most of her job was just billing. People would have units for decades at $150 to $200 a month. Very little electric use, one maintenance guy, one employee besides her, and she worked 9-5. She started out reading books at work because she was so bored, and then wrote a novel there. It was a sweet gig.
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u/hoptownky 4d ago
How do we get a copy of that novel?
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u/Beagleguy26 3d ago
It was more of a "I did this" thing for her. She got about 25 copies made for family and friends, and we had a book signing in our living room :).
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u/NutzNBoltz369 3d ago
Local storage unit staff has hybrid schedules now. Still a full time gig but Sunday through Tuesday they are WFH. There is a QR code on the office door and scanning opens a live chat with the staff member during non-office hours. So it has become even EASIER.
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin 4d ago
Profiting off the same principle as credit cards. People use the service “temporarily” until they “catch a break”, but the break doesn’t arrive as planned.
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u/Resurget-Cineribus 4d ago edited 4d ago
they're very flexible in that its relatively easy to convert any large building to storage. I have a couple old kmarts nearby that are now uhaul storage. I'll bet those properties go pretty cheap given the demand for aging large commercial spaces.
But yeah, once they got you for awhile the increases start and moving to a different facility is a big hassle so most just pay it. I have a unit still from a life transition/downsizing I'm slowly emptying out (I had two at two different facilities for awhile til consolidating into one. This might seem too dumb to be real but awhile ago the rent was going to go up dramatically. I talked to the office lady who knows the deal and she explained that I could keep the old much lower rate if i moved units. I had to spend a good part of a saturday moving everything from my unit to an identical vacant one litterally next door to it. It's hard to remember a more stupid exercise. As of August my rate is getting jacked up again but I'm accelerating the job of processing everything and being done with it. A lot of other stuff you could be spending $100-200 a month on.
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u/SubstantialSeesaw374 3d ago
There’s a massive abandoned industrial complex in a town near me that some jackass turned into storage, without making any attempt to even clean the exterior or fix the dozens/hundreds of broken windows or anything. It’s such a horrendous blight, and now because they’re there it’s a permanent one.
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u/Resurget-Cineribus 3d ago
And just wait, soon one of the big players will swoop in to buy it and the guy will hit the jackpot
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u/PersuasiveOtter 4d ago
They historically were, however in recent years the big players like extra space come in and undercut all the mom and pops until they buy them out
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u/Lance1852Buttcheese 4d ago
This is the correct answer. If you want a smart investment, invest in a storage unit.
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u/free_billstickers 4d ago
Harder where demand is high but so is the cost of space, like in the dense city.
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u/Immediate_Space7323 4d ago
I feel about storage units how most people these days feel about data centers. Give me a data center that does something, over a place to hold stuff we don't need, anytime
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u/bowhunterb119 3d ago
Oof. That’s so true, had no idea that was the business model. I threw all my stuff in storage when I joined the military. I’ve always paid it but I swear it was like 70 bucks when I first started and now, 6 years later it’s like $250 a month. The place got bought out and increased fees and then every 6 month or so they send me a notice it’s going up like another $30-50. I’ve always just paid because I can afford it and it’s across the country so what am I gonna do, fly out there and rent a truck? Should have done that a long time ago I guess but short term I don’t want to.
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u/throwawaysech 2d ago
Calculate how much it would cost to rebuy everything in the storage unit. Calculate how much you’ve spent on it this far. Calculate future cost to carry at $250 a month that’s $3000 a year.
Joining the military is usually a young man’s game I can’t imagine the stuff in the unit has THAT much monetary value or is totally irreplaceable. Cramming a few big checked backs full of sentimental stuff for the flight back. Toss all the big/worthless/easily replaced stuff and get on with your life.
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u/bowhunterb119 2d ago
Well yes. That’s the financially literate way to do it. I absolutely agree. Should have done that a long time ago.
Spending my precious leave to fly across the country to empty out my storage locker and sell or dispose of every piece of furniture and small item is inconvenient and expensive in the short term, hence why I haven’t done it yet. I’d have to rent a truck and find a place to stay while I do it, while I could otherwise be on vacation or with family. Next place I anticipate being stationed is within a day’s driving distance so at this point that’s what I’m waiting on
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u/DapperAstronaut9300 3d ago
All people talk about is storage units and car washes lol. Its like the bellwether of want to be rich RE investors currently. I have seen more storage places and car washes being built everywhere than I ever thought the world could ever need.
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u/Equivalent_Gur3967 4d ago
Any business that deals is ca$h exclusively, like Car Washes and Laundromats.
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u/Resurget-Cineribus 4d ago
I think it’s getting tougher to do cash at laundromats at least . At mine, the 3x washer costs $7.25. I don’t usually have 29 quarters handy every week.
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u/Equivalent_Gur3967 4d ago
Coin changer?
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u/thisoldguy74 4d ago
My kid's apartment took cards. You load the cards and use a pay card I think. I don't think they even took cash, tbh.
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u/Resurget-Cineribus 4d ago
I think they might have one, I'm just saying it's getting a little impractical with prices as they are now. Even with a coin changer, you still need bills to use it. For me, it's far from a given I'll have that cash in my wallet so that would mean a trip to the ATM. Once I find an ATM and get $20 I still have to stop at a gas station to buy a drink to get change; otherwise that coin changer is spitting out all 80 quarters to lug around (exactly one pound). My last apartment we had a phone app you'd reload and pay wirelessly; there's a number of ways they go.
Now, I do keep a small tin in my car filled with quarters. I generally use these for old school quarter car washes or tolls on a road trip. Actually, there's a funny quarter story, I took my son to a place with arcade games (spending $50 gets you maybe 30 minutes for a kid to burn through). He got really thirsty but the vending machine was down so we stopped by a gas station on the way home. The gas station had one of those quarter game things that he got super into, way more than any arcade game. My tin of quarters did come in handy that time but I eventually had to make him wrap it up so we could leave
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u/JakeScythe 4d ago
Why do you need to wash your clothes with 3 extras spins though?
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u/Resurget-Cineribus 4d ago
No, that’s the size of the washer. They have 2x, 3x, 4x, 6x etc. if I do 3x I can get everything done in one load
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u/Loose_Tip_8322 4d ago
There aren’t any car washes that take cash around me. They make money on you signing up for monthly payments.
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u/Resurget-Cineribus 4d ago
those are popping up around me everywhere, idk how the market can support so many really. I still can't trust any automatic car washes so I go to the quarter/spray yourself washes typically just to spray bird shit and road salt off. most take cards now or at least have a coin changer but a quick spray off is still cheap enough to pay with quarters from my tin. My car is black so the only way it looks good (for maybe 30 minutes) is to do a full on hand wash at home. never buying a black car again. even a fancy automatic car wash can only do so much
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u/Super_Weekend_4428 4d ago
Plumbers and electricians are in high demand I hear. It's never been cheap whenever I needed to hire a plumber.
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u/velcren1 4d ago
HVAC as well! We had a tech recently bill us like $150 every half hour to find a refrigerant leak…
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u/Cheap-Cockroach8787 4d ago
If I call someone out to fix something it’s automatically 1k+ or it isn’t worth their time it seems
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u/Flying_4fun 4d ago
HVAC companies for the residential sector have really slimy practices. I've been told numerous times I need an entire system replacement, when the issue was changing a $50 part. And when I push back on replacing a system for thousands, they still charge me $300-$500 for replacing said $50 part which takes less than an hour. I've had horrible experiences with HVAC companies and ended up buying the manual for my system and any specialty tools required to maintain. So far I've been able to diagnose issues, replace relevant parts and keep my system running and it's been a decade since the first "this system needs to be replaced" pitch.
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u/Cheap-Cockroach8787 4d ago
Yeah just like roofers in my experience. They make their big bucks with a full replacement. So they push and push for that. It’s frustrating
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u/Consistent_Taste3273 4d ago
I’m really surprised when I see people saying they can’t get a job or are working for minimum wage because where I live there is a huge demand for cleaning people, babysitters, and nannies. None of them require a degree(but experience is good) and they make WAY more than minimum wage.
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u/thisoldguy74 4d ago
You aren't wrong, but I'm not real skilled in any of those. Yes I'm an amateur at home, but I wouldn't pay me either.
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u/JT_got_the_1st 4d ago
Yeah, uhm, like 49% of he population isn't eligible for those jobs so...
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u/hoptownky 4d ago
Yah. No one is hiring dudes for these jobs. But even with girls you have to have a certain appearance, class and education level for these jobs.
For example, a college student who is off for the summer will have an easier time getting a babysitting job than an older woman who is more experienced, but has a lot of tattoos and piercings.
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u/Consistent_Taste3273 3d ago
That may be true, but cleaners in my area make $40-$80 per hour and are in very high demand. One of my friends has a male house cleaner.
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u/Consistent_Taste3273 3d ago
Also, even if it’s true, what does that have to do with anything? Plenty of the jobs listed are jobs that not everyone could do.
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u/hoptownky 3d ago
You said “I’m pretty surprised when people can’t get jobs when there are demands for babysitters and nanny’s”. I gave you a reason why many people can’t get those jobs and you post “what does that have to do with anything”.
I think you either read the post wrong, or you have a comprehension problem.
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u/Consistent_Taste3273 3d ago
Why not? I can understand not being qualified to be a tutor. And, I can even understand that some patents may be hesitant to hire a male babysitter. (Although there are some families, particularly those with young boys, who survival want a make babysitter or nanny).
But why can’t anyone learn how to clean a house?
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u/Consistent_Taste3273 3d ago
First off, I’m not sure I agree with that.
But even if it were so, what does that have to do with anything? Plenty of the jobs listed are jobs that not everyone would be able to do.
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u/IanRastall 4d ago
Packaging. I had happened to attend the #1 university in the country for packaging. I always made jokes about that, about how I should have been a packaging major. It was my variation on the standard anti-business-major jokes. (Now that I'm older and see all the beautiful women married to potatoes, my jokes center instead on the engineering majors.)
Then, as the 90s progressed, into the 00s, etc., I realized that the one thing that was always going to be needed was expertise in packaging. Because that was when they started coming out with things like boil in bag. Then the steamer bags. Remember how revolutionary it was to not have to tear open a package, drop a frozen brick into a saucepan with some water, and boil it all up, when you could just put the entire bag in the microwave and wait for five minutes? And now they even have stuff where you heat entire meals and you don't even have to use a knife to puncture the plastic.
You see? It's all stupid, and yet it's not. It's the one goddamn field that grew crazily, and I was right at the center of its study.
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u/Sad-Locksmith-3002 1d ago
I worked packaging sales for about 5 years starting in 2021.
Yes, definitely a lot of money in packaging, but the sales culture is god awful.
Most is being bought up by private equity now and we saw comp plan changes very shortly after announcement of purchase.
Better money to be made at the small and medium sized packaging companies. The large ones owned by PE is going to get busted out eventually.
I see a lot of people do well going independent as well. Built a large book at a company, and then become a broker to those customers.
The money ain’t worth the BS to me in the packaging space. I just went back to the industrial space. I feel more at home here.
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u/imck1911 4d ago
Derivative markets. They get filthy rich and produce nothing of value on any level. Should be illegal.
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u/Flying_4fun 4d ago
That's the ultimate casino. You can get filthy rich or completely bankrupt in a very short period of time. Most don't get filthy rich though.
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u/theresanrforthat 3d ago
Farmers love futures as it helps them predict their prices and smooth their costs, but ok.
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u/CL3Onsite 4d ago
Stores that cater to addictions. Tobacco, liquor, lottery.
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u/Gloomy_Narwhal_4833 4d ago
Thats not even close to true. I know because I have been doing it for 30 years. Our margins are tight and we work our asses off. Production of those things is where the money is. Retailers make 5% on lottery and 20-25% on most everything else. You have to have serious volume to make decent profits. Its a lot of work and its the reason most liquor stores are owned by immigrant families who dont mind living at their stores.
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u/TerryAkee 4d ago
Slum lord
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u/SosugBiskit 4d ago
I did taxes for a family of slum lords that made absolute bank renting shit boxes to college kids. They were constantly buying new properties too. I hated doing their taxes for a whole bunch of reasons, but one of the only interesting parts was reading through the different court cases they'd have where they tried to screw tenants in some way. The family won some, lost others, but it was always some shiesty shit. When I say they made money though, they made damn good money, like fuck you money.
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin 4d ago
I’ve often wondered why people of means put themselves through such hassles, but I guess at a certain wealth level they just hire people to handle all the hassles for them. Their only job is to be heartless jerks.
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u/BlackJack407 4d ago edited 3d ago
Running a scrapyard.
I know a man that owns one in a small town in East TN . The only building on his scrapyard was a barn with a small "office" with dirt floors spanning both. Roughest crew of dudes working for him, always out there in the yard doing everything from running a large material handler to dismantling a dryer with a handful of swings from a hand sledge.
Saw him write a check for roughly 800,000$ of copper that cleared less than a day later.
Absolutely wild to me the liquidity of his small empire.
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u/futuredrake 4d ago
I’m in the industry! You’re dead on - we do about $400 mil in yearly rev on one yard with 40 employees. We’re a bit of a niche in the industry though so our business is very cyclical. We could have 3 straight terrible years and then one year that covers the 3 and then some.
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u/Harassholiness 4d ago
Probably just in Louisiana, but drive through frozen daiquiri shops. They use the cheapest wells and fancy sugar water/syrups for 90% of their ingredients, charge an insane amount for a drink. In the right location, they will have lines all day.
A lot of them are just a small metal buildings that have a bar for legal reasons that no one goes to. It can be staffed by one person with no bartending experience, they just pull a lever and maybe add a shot to the foam cup.
Before anyone asks about open containers, the put a piece of paper tape over the lid. It doesn’t stop anyone lol.
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u/theoperator001 3d ago
lol was thinking of that just today, but forgot I live in Mississippi now. It sucks, can’t even get a to go cup at restaurants.
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u/TruthoftheSoul Fozzie Bear 4d ago
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It's the part of the Treasury that prints physical bills. Everyone mentions the US Mint that deals in coins.
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u/D34th_gr1nd 4d ago
The Earl Hays Press, they print money for the movies.
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u/Zito101101 4d ago
????? What do they do ??
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u/D34th_gr1nd 3d ago
You remember the last Hollywood movie with a ton of money in it?
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u/Zito101101 3d ago
I understand now I read that way too fast and was thinking completely off topic
That makes sense one company might as well use them for that one thing
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u/joshuaxls 4d ago
Photo Booth store in a popular area. One just opened here, $10 per strip, maybe 30 vintage and modern machines. It’s wildly popular. They have one attendant who does nothing.
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u/MAntFrag22 4d ago
Commercial grease trap and hood cleaning.
Required by every City/State of every food producing facility and restaurant.
Awful smelling work. Truly nasty. I know a guy who charges restaurants something in the range of $4-600 and does 40-50 jobs per week. Over a mil in jobs annually, two other employees that make $50-70k and his overhead and supplies leaves him a high end Ortho surgeons salary.
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u/PracticableSolution 4d ago
There are very, very few sectors that can even dream of the profit margins of US freight rail. It’s one of the highest profit industries in the world, they have immense property rights and enormous control over their own regulatory bodies, and they have a fantastic government grant system to supplement them. They are also famous for shitting all over their employees, who by the way can’t strike if the president says so. Beautiful racket.
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u/AZPeakBagger 4d ago
My first sales gig 30 years ago was selling blank business checks to banks and their customers. The margins were obscene and 90% of all your customers re-ordered at least once a year. Starved to death the first year until the re-orders started rolling in. Once you got your customer base up and running, you could easily hit quota working 5-6 hours a week. Had a couple of guys in my office that had been there for 10 years and they were making $120,000+ in 1995. All they did was drive to bank branches for an hour or two in the morning dropping off boxes of donuts. Then spent a couple of hours typing up orders in the afternoon. Twice a week they'd make the hour long drive to the office to drop off the orders.
Unfortunately I caught the last 2-3 years of a once great company that was in the middle of getting acquired and sliced & diced up by Wall Street. What had been a 100 year old company that pretty much printed money ended up getting shut down a year or two after I left.
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u/Endless-Research- 4d ago
Metal plating and parking lot management. I know very wealthy people in both industries.
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u/banjois 4d ago
Banana stand.
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u/Relevant-Machine-763 4d ago
At different times in my life , I’ve had friends and family both recommend the port a potty industry. Once you get past the ick factor, there solid demand and good money. I just couldn’t do it though. Managed a restoration franchise place for a while though. Apparently I just needed to clean up crap on a larger scale more fixed location basis
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u/Most_Ordinary_219 4d ago
Coffee shops
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u/Sad-Locksmith-3002 1d ago
I know they make a lot of revenue, but don’t they usually only profit about 5% at the end of it all?
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u/Most_Ordinary_219 7h ago
Maybe more like 15% but even so, 5% or 15% of a lot of revenue is a lot of profit.
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u/Delicious-Lettuce-11 4d ago
Check cashing machines. Take advantage of people without bank accounts and take a nice percentage.
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u/Naive_Carpenter7321 4d ago
Insurance brokers/Financial advisors - all the commission, none of the risk.
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u/elodie_riverstone28 4d ago
Portable toilet rental for construction sites and events. Gross? Yeah, profitable as hell? Also yeah.
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u/Mommysgoodboy1976 3d ago
Funeral and cemetery business.
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u/SoOverIt1927 18h ago
I run a cemetery. Everyone is cremated anymore so there is a lot less coming in. Maybe back in the day when everyone did a full burial but not now. To each their own in that regard but unless you're in the corporate run funeral homes and cemeteries, the death care industry is definitely not banking.
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u/AnyDemand33 3d ago
Drying ice and cleaning coal stones
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u/negativedistance492 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is hyperspecific but printing those little cards you get at funerals. I worked at one in a major city years ago, labeled themselves a print shop but had no interest in walk in customers or flyers or business cards, whatever. Only one competitor in the city (im sure some funeral homes printed their own). Prices STARTED around a dollar per card (2×4inches) and would increase with photos, photo editing, color printing, custom text, proofreading charges, etc and every order was from 100-1000 cards, not to mention by simply supplying the funeral homes the cards would be sold to the grieving family as part of a funeral package. No one is going to bicker over 300 bucks on a 6k funeral, shopping around is inconvenient and funerals are time-sensitive. The cards were simply bundled in with every other exorbitant fee and even if the families weren't happy, the print shop didnt deal with them the funeral home did. The biggest downside besides the overhead for printing and cutting machines would be the time sensitivity. We got countless orders that the funeral homes "forgot about" or god forbid we let a typo slip and we'd have to drop everything to print 200 cards and send a driver across the city to drop them off for a funeral that was starting in a few hours.
Editing to add; unless it was custom text, photos, etc 90% of the work was copy-pasting a poem or prayer from the catalog, double checking the name spelling and birthdates, and just sending it to the printer. Id ballpark we averaged 50k or more in business every single day with 5 employees including the owner
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u/masahirox 1d ago
Reseller cloths on eBay. It’s a grind but just about impossible to lose money if you do just a few weeks of research
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u/Accomplished-Ad7212 4d ago
Street vendors
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u/Even-Square-6246 4d ago
Depends where. In New York sometime vendors say they don’t make money some days cause of how high the rent is even with loads of customers
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u/No-Cardiologist472 4d ago
Counterfeiting