One of the many nice things about documents saved on CD is the fact that they are small and you can spare people the many piles or even boxes of paperwork they may have been keeping needlessly. They can easily find a safe place to keep these small CDs. Make this a selling point to those that may have never given thought to transferring their important paperwork to CDs.
For people that have small businesses and don't use computers, this could be such a relief for them too. You could offer to come in and scan all of their documents for them, leaving behind CDs for them to store. You can offer to print up anything they might need afterwards too, for a small fee.
You should be able to ask about $1 per scanned page and the nice thing about this is that they will continue to need your services as long as they keep receiving more paperwork. This will assure you of repeat customers if they like working with you.
There are also many communities of people that just don't have the computer skills to be able to accomplish this simple task, or others that don't want to take the time, or have the time, to do this tedious job. Many families would love to have all of their pictures from many years put on CDs for safety. This would also allow them to keep many of their pictures from deterioration over many years. In burning the copies, you can also make a master copy and burn many copies of the family pictures for many different family members to keep. The price you might charge for this service would be up to you, determined by how many pictures are involved, the number of CDs you will need to use, and the time it will take you to accomplish the task.
You will find a vast variety of people and various reasons for needing your services, you can decide if you would like to specialize in one area or offer your services in many different areas. You should advertise your services in local newspapers and phone books; searching out older communities and leaving flyers with them or in shops, or stores, they may frequent.
If you want to start your business slowly, with little investment, this type of business won't require you to invest much to start out, especially if you already own a reliable computer and scanner. You will need to invest in a large amount of CDs, but only each time you start a new job. You could start out slowly offering to copy items for friends and families and ask them to refer your services to their friends and family members. This will give time for your business to grow and help you acquire a sizeable customer base.
Resources:
http://www.fujitsu.com/emea/products/
http://www.creativeworkathome.com/get-organized-creating-a-paperless-office.htm
http://www.lucion.com/paperless-overview.html
http://www.asha.org/about/publications/leader-online/archives/2002/q2/020611d.htm
http://www.efilecabinet.com/homepage.php
July 22, 2009
