10 Small Business Ideas for People Who Love Nature

Almost anyone can be an entrepreneur; the only thing missing for many is a great idea. The best place to find a great business idea is to look into something about which you are passionate, for example, if you’re passionate about nature, there are plenty of business ideas with which you can run!

1. Adventure Club

A great idea for those who know the area around them and aren’t afraid of a little excitement is an adventure club!

These clubs usually consist of a leader (that’s you!) taking members on outdoor adventures. The element of excitement is really up to you and your adventure-seeking customers. These adventures could be as simple as hiking an easy trail together or as exciting as white water rafting, depending on your expertise. 

Your profits will be even higher if you are teaching your club members something they don’t know. For example, teaching people how to rock climb might come with a higher charge than group hikes.

2. Outdoor Cleaning Service

You probably already know that cleaning service businesses are profitable.

While it might take a little more time than cleaning a bathroom, you can also take a cleaning service outdoors. You can keep your services as simple as cleaning up litter in a backyard to as involved as construction clean up or even graffiti removal. Depending on the area in which you serve, one type of cleaning service might be more popular than the other.

3. Landscaping

If you love the outdoors and have a bit of a green thumb, consider starting a landscaping business. A landscaping business helps people transform their yards, gardens, or other sites into something they love and even boost kerb appeal.

It’s important to note that a landscaping business typically requires some level of education. After all, you have to know how to analyze a site, plan out a landscaping blueprint, and become familiar with local and national building codes and ordinances. It’s also important to know how to not only make a site attractive, but also how to make it safe and effective. For instance, you will need to consider factors such as stormwater management.

4. Run a Horse Stable

If you love horses, you could always make a living working with them. Simply owning horses won’t really earn you a living, but if you have land and farm buildings, then you could offer a boarding service for other people with horses. 

Alternatively, you could also teach riding, subject to the appropriate qualifications, licensing and insurances. This will give you the opportunity not only to spend time outside with your favorite animals but to share that love with others as well.

5. Small-Scale Farming

If you want to make a name for yourself at your local farmers' market, you don’t have to turn around acres of crops. Instead, you can turn your garden into a space for growing some veggies and maybe even fruits. You can earn extra by offering products as well as raw crops. For instance, if you know how to make jam, you can sell this for a higher price - again, subject to the necessary certification.

6. Dog Care

Maybe you still want to take care of animals but large animals are a little too much; maybe they aren’t your preference or maybe you don’t have enough land. However, there are plenty of animals that you can take care of while living a smaller, more frugal lifestyle.

To spend time outdoors, you can start a dog-walking business. This is a great option because there are many people who can’t take time in the middle of the day to come home and walk their dogs.

If you want to push this business to a more profitable level, you can board dogs as well. You can be selective in the dog breeds you choose to board to ensure you don’t end up with an untrained dog in your house for a weekend.

7. Start Your Own “Green” Shop

If opening a retail shop or purchasing a franchise is a bit too much, you can easily start small by opening an online store. You can also sell products that you make to a small following. You can link up with sites like Giving Assistant to help earn you a following and boost sales.

Your love of nature comes in with what you make. Maybe you want to make your own, homemade tea blends or make everyday products through a greener process. This is your chance to use your love of nature to create something of which you can be proud.

8. Open a Beauty Salon

Creating your own beauty salon doesn’t quite sound linked to nature, but it can be, with a little creativity. Think about it this way: When you visit the beauty salon, how many chemicals and ingredients damaging to the environment do you see?

As an alternative to this, you can start your own beauty salon that uses safer products. There are plenty of hair products and skin care products that you can make with completely eco-friendly, vegan ingredients.

9. Eco-Consulting

Do you already dedicate your life to green living? Is recycling and composting a part of your daily routine? Are you greener than the average person? If so, then you might be the perfect person to start an eco-consulting business!

Many people don’t live or operate their offices in the most eco-friendly ways. In many cases, these people simply aren’t sure of where to start and where to go. This is where you step in: Your business would be to help these clients transition to more eco-friendly businesses, operations and lifestyles.

10. Green Housekeeping

As we pointed out earlier, many people are willing to pay for cleaning services—inside and out. However, much like we mentioned with beauty salons, these services usually include an alarming amount of harmful ingredients to nature—and humans!

Regardless of the type of “nature” business you choose to start, there are plenty of options available. With a little creativity and hard work, you can turn your love for nature into a healthy living—in more ways than one. 

You should always check that you have any essential qualifications, permissions and/or insurances necessary for carrying out your chosen business ventures but there is bound to be something you can do that combines your love of nature with income generation.

Frugaldom Project April 2015 Part 2

Easter weekend and the weather is finer than it's been all week, This morning, the sun shone and work continued at Frugaldom. I was absolutely delighted when the phone rang to say that the fencing of corral #1 had been completed and was eager to pour over the resulting photos, so here goes... the culmination of a lifelong ambition to have a post and rail paddock!

Not much to say about this as the pictures speak louder than words, so I hope you enjoy seeing the progress being made at the Frugaldom project, here in southwest Scotland. I have published a separate post here detailing our unusual fund-raising event, whereby individuals or businesses can 'Tag a post at Frugaldom for £10' by as an additional way of pledging support.

To the left of this line of fencing we are in the process of planting a new willow bed and strip of woodland comprising birch, hazel and rowan, which can all tolerate the boggy ground during wet weather. Beyond that is the second corral, which we hope to fence sometime in the not too distant future.

This is looking towards the yard and what will become the start of our planned willow walk, which was being pegged out last month when planting the willow cuttings.

Now we need to finish painting the barn and getting all of these front posts tagged before the next phase of work can begin. It shouldn't be long before the grass starts growing, so I'm going to try to flatten out the tractor ruts next week.

This is looking straight across at the second corral, which will eventually be separated from this one by a new willow bed that will be coppiced for crafting materials. Beyond corral #2 is bog myrtle or sweet gale and to the right, you can just see the tree protectors from all the new crab apples we planted around the little quarry in November.

I don't think I will ever get tired of the view from here, it is just amazing. I've now seen it at dawn, at dusk, in sunshine and with snow on the Galloway Hills. I've also seen it disappear in torrential rain, but this is Scotland, all of the above could have occurred within the same day.

Final view of corral #1 at Frugaldom, looking towards what we call bracken hill and the future willow walk. Once things begin to grow, you may soon see traces of the willow hide I planted late last year. I hope it takes root and begins to grow soon.

That about wraps it up for this evening. To find out more about what's happening on a day to day basis, register free to join the forum and look for the dedicated 'Frugaldom Project' section.

Aside from this, I am still pursuing my challenge to slash the grocery budget to £5 per person per week and have managed, so far, to get it down to less than £1 per person per day. You can find more about that in the 2015 Challenge section of www.frugalforums.co.uk

See you all there!

NYK Media in Frugaldom.

Frugaldom Project April 2015 Part 2

What is a Frugaleur?

What is a Frugaleur?

We've all heard of entrepreneurs, then came mumpreneurs, dadpreneurs and any other type of 'preneurs' you care to mention, so we decided that it was only fair to introduce frugaleurs to show the world that even those of us who live a frugal lifestyle have the chance to build a business and make it pay. At the end of the day, entrepreneurs are just people with vision and a will to succeed, aren't they?

Have you got what it takes to become a frugaleur and run a debt free business? Or perhaps you are turning around a failing business to steer it to success by way of money saving and money spinning tactics? Whatever you are doing, if you are doing it for yourself then join our project and share our vision. All our members can benefit from additional shared (FREE) advertising, marketing and promotion by way of some rather unique methods we have researched and tried out over the years… Read more here

Making Progress in March

Making Money (and Music) Plans

Good evening to anyone who happens to be reading. It's been another hectic day of work at the computer screen and, to be perfectly honest, I haven't cooked any meals, haven't been out the door and haven't done any housework. I threw some mix in the breadmaker first thing this morning and, thankfully, it turned out alright. I had bread and homemade soup for lunch, but it was 9pm by the time I ate my pudding! On the plus side, this means I didn't spend any money today, so that is good.

In order to save, I need cash; in order to have cash I need work and when you are single with no car and relying on home-based self-employed, that work needs to pay. We are now approaching the end of the tax year, so I have been doing some extra book-keeping, selling extra web content and have invested in having a brand new web site designed - I wanted something lean, clean and simple from which I can begin propagating and cultivating some of my wacky money saving and money making ideas.

We're not out of the woods yet but, at 9.44pm this evening, the new site went live! I now have 60 days 'Warranty' during which time I need to learn everything there is to know about it. Fortunately, I enjoy a challenge, I love writing and I'm not afraid to ask for relevant answers to pertinent questions. :)

The new site went live tonight.

Now I just need to rebuild all the pages, link up all the blogs and channel some creativity into it. The new forums, although not yet filled with all the topics from the old ones, are ready and waiting for new members. As always, being a part of any of the NYK challenges is totally free and we are always here to support frugalers.

From tomorrow, this blog will be published live on the new site where my ever-so-helpful techie dude has made it possible for us to share and comment while also keeping a running commentary of ALL the topics covered, not just money saving and frugal living. Don't worry, the blog will still come across here too, but I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for me to work from absolutely anywhere without having to spend a fortune on new computer equipment and some rather expensive software. Tonight, I am posting in both places just to try out the new system.

Tobermory, Isle of Mull, photo by Leslie Barrie.

Now off to have some reheated coffee and then bed to dream of the next big frugal adventure when we jet off to Balamory! OK, it's actually Tobermory on the Isle of Mull and we're not flying, we're back-packing up there with a tent, but my golden wellies should get to accompany me for their first trip away from Frugaldom.

I now have four weeks to 'drop a dress size' and fit back into the walking gear that I haven't needed since the Tinto hill walk in October! And yet, still, I ate lemon drizzle cake and custard for pudding! Sigh... I'll start the diet tomorrow. :)

Day 18 of Making it in March is about making Progress

It's Great Saving Money but we Need to Earn it First

Please note that this blog post is not selling you anything, it is simply giving you the story of Frugaldom so far.

Over the past 15+ years I have been involved in many money saving projects, worked within many industries and, throughout, maintained my status as a self-employed individual. Along the way, making significant income has never been my priority - I don't know why, I am simply not motivated by money. Getting the best bang for my buck, however, is a definite motivator when it comes to spending... when needs must, you understand.

Recently, I was sharply reminded that buying a fixy-up house for cash and then focussing almost all of my attention on how to develop the property in the most cost effective way may not be the best thing to do, especially if I intend actually living here for any length of time. For starters, property development works ONLY if the completed project is sold at a rate that both recoups all original investment and generates sufficient profits to warrant the equivalent of a fulltime income over the period of the project. Hmm...

As I said recently, we are now 3 years into what I consider to be a 5-year project but while concentrating on this, I have taken my eye off my own long term financial prospects. Creating a self-sustaining microholding is all well and good but the economic and political climate in which we live dictates that we must deal with hard cash. Put bluntly, no amount of berries picked from the fruit garden nor eggs laid by the poultry will pay ordinary household bills, nor will they pay the costs of maintaining my self-employed status. Cue some speedy research!

NYK, Frugaldom on Facebook

I haven't focussed much attention of Facebook but am assured that we 'need' to be there because 'there' is where everyone else is, apparently. If you use Facebook, please consider visiting my NYK/Frugaldom page and clicking the 'like' button so I know people are seeing it. Thanks.

NYK's Scottish multimedia sites preparing for upgrade

The NYK websites have been hanging around since the late 90s, changing now and again in between years of neglect during the more trying times that have included divorce, 10 house moves, daughter's engagement and then wedding, the birth of 2 grand children and the tragic, sudden deaths of more family and friends that I could ever have imagined possible. Just staying financially afloat has been the main focus, but so far so good. Having never had the security of a well-paid professional career, I can't miss it - hence the reason I think I'd feel cash rich if I ever managed to earn myself the UK's minimum wage!

Earn a living, I must! And that's why I now need to spend so much time pulling everything back together again, in an effort to earn the income that I need in order to budget for my frugal lifestyle of the future. I decided to call UK2, my web hosting company, on their 0800 free phone number after logging into my long-suffering control page. I was shocked at how out-dated everything was! But I couldn't believe my luck when I saw the half price sale for upgraded web services, so an investment has been made! I'm calling it an investment because I am hoping that the new and fully interactive site will pay for itself then begin earning me a small income before the house project is completed.

Fast approaching 50 and no longer a tech-savvy frugal babe, I've had to employ the services of a professional to pander to my every online need! We are currently working on design concepts that can encompass everything from blogs, forums, social media and PR/marketing/advertising opportunities to the online book shop and arty stuff, so it's a real challenge. (Sneaky peek at Wilbur, my flying pig, trying out a new page layout.)

Working on the new interactive version

Now we all know I blog and those who know me personally know I could talk for Scotland if given the opportunity, so communicating with the outside world is always a major concern of mine - I live a rural lifestyle of frugality but I place a very high value on social interaction - I'm sure it's what keeps us sane when things get tough. I've been using Twitter for a long time but only relatively recently decided to link it up with the frugaldom challenges. I love my number-crunching, so I decided to do a quick bit of research into how necessary it is to have a decent Twitter following... and proved my own point! Social media is not the be all and end all of succeeding in building yourself a customer base for your self-employment. See for yourself...

Researching aspects of social media

I won't name the businesses connected to the above figures but, suffice to say, you wouldn't expect many serious start-ups or home-based entrepreneurs to wish themselves into the unenviable position of the final listing - would you? I would!

Contrary to everything that the marketing and business gurus are saying, that tiny 260 followers Twitter account belongs to the Startups Award for 'Home-based freelance Business of the Year 2013'! I wonder if Catherine Kennard is a frugal living fan?

In conclusion, today's 'Making in March' has been all about making progress towards becoming self-sustainable in both home and working life by making plans for my frugal business empire.

The big question is, can I do all of this without incurring any debt and, at the same time, fit in my next crazy mini-adventure with my wacky friends? I am running out of time to chase the aurora borealis this winter, so I think we should infuse a little more excitement into this frugal life before the time comes to spend every minute in the garden. Better still, if the new website plays nicely on my Kindle or iPod then I may not even need to come indoors to check on my work status this summer! How great would that be?

Already setting budgets, checking travel costs, accommodation costs and route options while comparing notes with willing frugal friends! :)

Graphic above courtesy of http://www.blessedaretheweird.com/ and UK2 is an affiliated link. In their favour, their 0800 Freephone help is great, especially for someone of us whose knowledge of anything tech doesn't even stretch as far as working the TV remote control!

Day 9 of Making it in March - Bread and Butter Pudding

Day 9 of 31 - Making Something Different Every Day in March

It's Sunday, I had a friend visiting this afternoon, I haven't done any crafting, but we did get a second duck egg and not one, but TWO chicken eggs from our feathered friends in the garden, so that made my day!

 

Friend brought me a carton of milk from the village store while on her way here, so that will take me up to 5 empties for another project that I want to try - making a vertical garden using a pallet, cup hooks, garden canes and recycled milk cartons. 'Mishy' from sunny Suffolk will be running this year's 'vertical growing pods' challenge in the Frugal Forums. My delay in starting this project is that I get so few plastic milk cartons here - I mostly get UHT in the waxed cardboard litre cartons. I'm saving what I can and will ask a neighbour if they'll save me some.

 

Back to today - what did I make?

 

The extra milk and the eggs are a clue - the duck egg shell has been kept to make another tiny planter and the eggs got combined with the milk not to make French toast for breakfast, as I'd envisaged, but bread and butter pudding!

 

Frugal bread and butter pudding

 

Ingredients

 

Eggs

Milk

Bread

Margarine

Sugar (I used my homemade vanilla pod sugar.)

Sultanas

Cinnamon

 

Method

 

I used 3 slices of homemade bread with the crusts removed - these get turned into breadcrumbs and go in the freezer. Cut the bread to preferred size and spread with margarine/buttery spread. Sit these in an ovenproof dish, sprinkle with sultanas or raisins, sugar and cinnamon, then repeat for the next layer of your sandwiches. Beat the egg and milk together (as though for scrambling) then pour it over the contents of the dish. Add another sprinkle of dried fruit, sugar and cinnamon then cover the dish in tin foil and pop it into the oven until the egg mix has baked. Mine took about 40 minutes at 180 Deg C in the mini oven.

 

Bread and butter pudding

This is very filling, so the 3 slices of bread is sufficient for 4 servings, at least. We ate ours hot with a little extra milk over the top. You can microwave this dish and it cooks in minutes, but I was already cooking rice to go with some sweet chilli chicken. It did mean that I was able to warm all the plates on top of the mini oven and have a warm kitchen.

 

Making... Important Decisions!

 

Owing to the nature of Frugaldom, it derives very little by way of income. Let's face it, you read this for a reason and it's not because you have a huge income and millions in the bank. My blog caters for a very specific section of society - those living below the breadline. I am a genuine frugaler who genuinely lives on my £4,000 and I earn less than minimum wage: I NEED to be frugal. I NEED to steer clear of debt and attempt to save to protect my own future. But I also NEED to earn my income in the first place. For the majority of my working life I have been self-employed, which means no unemployment or sickness benefits to fall back on and no employer paying my tax and insurance, or even guaranteeing me an income in the first place.

 

However...

 

Online is where my business exists and that is where I need to focus my energy. I have several blogs, forums, websites and social media accounts so I have had to give this a great deal of thought to help determine the right route to take.

 

 

If you would like to follow Frugaldom on Twitter for the frugal living, money saving, penny pinching, budget busting, cost cutting blogs that include baking, making, cooking, crafting, gardening and recycling, then you should follow @Frugaldom

 

 

If you would like to follow NYK Media, where I write and blogs for my income while pursuing a career as a frugal entrepreneur with an active interest in horse racing (it can be frugal, I tell you!), then please follow the newer account @Frugaleur Just as we have money-saving and money-making challenges on the forums, so too do I have money-saving and money-making Twitter accounts, blogs and websites.

 

Back to normal tomorrow with the workaday things and ever hopeful of some sunshine soon. We ended up with more fog here this afternoon, then the rain returned this evening. I need to get into the garden soon!

 

NYK, Frugaldom

Sample Frugal Food and Fun for Less than a Fiver! Limited Offer, Free UK Delivery

We’ve done it!

Frugal Cards about Frugal Recipes and Frugal Fun

As part of our ‘Novus Frugalus’ money challenge in the frugal forums, I have teamed up with the Deki Tenner Tournament to help raise funds for frugal entrepreneurs (frugaleurs, to you and me) on a global scale.

Every year we run money challenges involving cottage crafts and working from home for our frugal entrepreneurs. It’s usually in November, as this allows us to start preparing for Christmas while hand-making gifts for friends and family. November is also the month during which Global Entrepreneurship Week takes place, so it’s a good month to begin any new enterprise.

We’ve now launched the first ever set of Frugaldom Food and Fun Card Sets to include a special, introductory fridge magnet showing Murray, our flying pig. All this and free delivery within UK for well under a fiver!

These frugaldom sets are a basic ‘how to…’ about frugal living, with this first set including recipes and tips about how to make soup, assorted cookies, lemon curd, traditional Scottish clootie dumpling, shortbread, micro-meringues and even a fabulous, fun activity that all the family can enjoy…

Read more here

NYK Media's Frugal Green Desk

NYK Media's Frugal Green Desk

We’re adding a little more greenery to the Frugal Blog.

If you would like to find out how you can join in and put your name on the Green Desks global map, simply read on…

Now You Know - it really is frugal.

'Now You Know'

As you may know, we began life as ‘Now You Know’, hence the NYK, away back in 1998. A group of us got together to try and beat the budget and try to afford to build businesses, create comfortable homes and generally live a good life that would lead us safely out of debt.

 

Along the way, many fell off the wagon. In fact, if I’m perfectly honest, the current day group of frugal living challengers includes not a single one of the original group, although there are still a couple of them on the side lines who are still battling on bravely to keep their heads above water.

 

‘Now You Know’ began as an online newsletter and then developed into what was then known as an e-zine (an electronic magazine), before becoming what, to my knowledge, was the first online Scottish newspaper.

 

In 1999, we went into print, publishing a monthly newspaper. It didn’t last long – the big boys don’t like the little people playing with their toys and by toys, I mean advertising revenue. But that’s an entirely different story.

 

The premise of the entire project was always, always, always to help others find ways of affording to do things they may, otherwise, not have afforded. Whether it was providing virtual or office support for home-based business, networking to promote one another, assessing budgets to help deal with debt, or even just demonstrating how to feed a family for a week on a tenner, it was always fun and frugal.

 

Now, 15 years later, we are able to turn out not one, but two daily ‘newspapers’, and all at a cost of zero pounds. I earn nothing from the publications, nor do I have full editorial control or any rights to any advertising revenue, but I no longer need to pay a graphic designer and a printer £1,000 each month, nor do I need to pay a distribution company, an advertising salesman or the overheads of a busy office.

 

Over the past 15 years, I have been stripped clean of all those costs and do you know what? I wouldn’t have them back if you paid me.

 

So, friends of NYK and Frugaldom alike – this is the current version of ‘Now You Know’, still covering Scottish news, views, reviews, stories, pictures and it sometimes even spills over into Frugaldom.

 

If you want to become a part of it, there are a number of things you can do:

 

Follow @Frugaldom on Twitter

Like the Frugaldom page on Facebook

Join the free Frugal Forums

Follow this Frugal Blog

 

Whatever you decide to do, remember we are about helping one another and making life and work affordable. We have challenges galore, including those for frugal entrepreneurs, new cottage industries, crafting, frugal living, writing, blogging, artwork, cooking and starting a new home-based business.

 

Just like Richard Branson, we began out journey with a small newsletter. Unlike Sir Richard Branson, we didn’t turn it all into a highflying multi-national phenomenon, but that, dear friends, would not have been frugal living.

 

I often wonder how much debt is owed by big business and who, ultimately, pays all that back in the event of a collapse. I was saddened to see that in the case of MPG Printgroup, it is likely to be around £10,200,000.00 (according to administrator's report). That has to adversely affect many. It must be affecting every one of the 210 employees and their families. That’s another 210 families that could suddenly be thrown into what this nations deems ‘poverty’ (based on their income) and I think that is just wrong.

 

But I digress – this was supposed to be a blog post about how to get your free daily copy of ‘Now You Know’ to accompany your free daily copy of The Microholding Daily.

 

NYK, Frugaldom

Looking Forward to 2013, plus some interesting old links.

Frugaldom's Final Blog of 2012



 

Let's hope the view from Chilcarroch standing stones doesn't change forever over the next year. It really would be a shame to see a wind farm going through it but who are we to halt what our Government considers to be the winds of change?

 

A final fling from Frugaldom in 2012... before the start of the great challenges of 2013 are upon us!

 

It's about six hours until the start of the 2013 Challenges, so here are the new links to the main ones we have listed, for anyone who cares to take part:

• ENERGY SAVING
• FRUGAL FITNESS
• GROCERY SHOPPING

For all the individual challenges, you can browse the following sections of the forums:

• GENERAL MONEY SAVING
• GENERAL MONEY MAKING

Anyone is free to join any of the challenges at any time and, with over 15,000 previous posts to read, there's plenty to keep you busy while we await the 2013 lists being populated. You may need to register (FREE) in order to read everything but it's the only way we can exercise any sort of control over scammers and spammers.

 

Having had a look around while trying to summarise my past few years of frugal living, I located a link to June 2008, when I first added the Frugal Living message boards to the website. Hope nobody minds if I list it here for ease of access at any given time. It's from three houses ago and handy for looking back over various prices, budgets and events that occured during that time. Apologies for any dormant links if anyone happens to take a look back at our past endevours.

 

After a bit more 'web tidying', I came across some of the  2005/2006 messageboards that are still listed online, so I have taken the liberty of adding a link to them here, too. These 'historical hystericals', as I like to call them, can help highlight the major changes that have occured over the years, as well as remind us of some seriously funny (verging on ridiculous) situations. Looking back on this particular challenge, however, I am almost tempted into resurrecting it.

 

Anyhow, I won't babble on, as it's Hogmanay. I hope you have all had a great year and that 2013 will bring everything you hope and dream of, without breaking the bank.

 

Live long and prosper, as they say, but prosperity doesn't need to be about cash in the bank. Kill the debts and the savings will follow and remember the Frugaldom motto:

 

'The less I spend, the more I can afford'.

 

Until next year,

Frugaldom