Earn Extra Cash this Holiday Season by Painting Windows

It’s time to share another idea with you to help you make some extra income this Christmas season to help you have a debt-free Christmas, pay extra bills or have an even bigger Christmas! Either way, we have the master list over 100 Ways to Earn Additional Income that we are continually adding to and highlighting topics to help you and your family find some money-making opportunities.

Today’s idea is for those of you who may have someone in the family that is an artist! Holiday Window Painting is the name of this money making idea.  We have personally known a family who does this as a regular gig in addition to their full-time jobs so that they can earn extra income.  They have stated the holiday season especially booms with clients (business owners) wanting to draw customers with fun and festive windows.  The family that does this is self-taught hobby artists and they do a great job!  They love to do it and they actually get jobs all year round as it is a fun and affordable way for businesses to utilize their window space for marketing any time of year! As always, because you are in charge of the business you can invest as much time and effort as you would like.  This could be as small as painting for a few local businesses or as involved as a full-time year-round venture.

So if this seems like something that would be fun and potentially a great way to utilize the skill-set of some of your family members, then here are some ideas to get you started.

Marketing ideas

• Paint your windows on both your home and car and place a sign in your yard offering window painting.  There is no greater advertisement than someone actually seeing your work! You could also offer to paint friends’ windows for FREE for Christmas if they are willing to put a sign up in their yard too!
• Get your listing up on your local free classifieds – This is a tried and true way to get business for FREE and you can generally post pictures to show off your work!
• Take brochures into businesses with pictures of your past work.  You can even consider providing a discount to them if they allow you to put your contact information on the window under the painting (like an artist does, but advertising your work).  Consider offering a year-round package at a discount for the commitment (if you want to make this even bigger).
• Offer incentives to your current customers.  These could range from ideas like giving them a gift card for referred customers, discounts on future window paintings for referrals, etc.  Not only are you getting word-of-mouth referrals (which are the best kind!) but you are giving them an incentive to do so and helping them reduce their overall cost of service – the more they refer, the cheaper their overall price is!
• Offer a gift card to your own network of friends and family – They may not have paid for your service, but again advertising spread by word-of-mouth can help you grow your business organically!

As far as the costs involved, it really can be a low-cost overhead type of business.  There really isn’t many items needed much more than the proper paint (which you may be able to find some great discounts on at places like Amazon and warehouses), paint brushes, window cleaning supplies and your marketing materials.

Other considerations

• Think outside of the box for how the whole family can work together – Each member of the family might offer great talents that you can use for the job.  Does one of the children have a great eye for design (e.g., our 7-year old marketer)?  Use him or her to design your marketing supplies!  Consider using some of your older children to help pick up the supplies from the store or even shop around to find a great deal on them!  If you sit down as a family you just might find some ideas that you would have never considered before.
• Taxes – This is standard on every money-making post, but make sure to discuss with your accountant how to track your costs and income to prepare your taxes.  There might be some deductible expenses (e.g., all the mileage for the work/advertising, cost of supplies, etc) that you might not initially consider as part of this business.
• Insurance – Make sure to discuss with your insurance agent and consider whether something like this is necessary for this type of work in your area.  Every business has risk involved, so it is always something to think about.

We hope some of these ideas will at least get you started in utilizing skills in the family to help generate some extra income.  We would love to hear other considerations you might have and anything else we might have missed.

Finally, we encourage you to check out our full list of over 100 ways to earn additional income!  We plan on expanding this list in the days and weeks ahead as there are some great opportunities with the holidays approaching!

Photo credit:  JJGrabber.com who looks like he is doing exactly what we are talking about 😉