Just curious if anyone is using this time to start a business or 'side hustle'?

If you are, I'm not looking for specific in depth (re:personal) details, just basics like what you're trying and if its working.

(yeah, I'm kinda board at the moment).

Anyone?

My wife has a business she's been working on for a while, and was just about to launch a new line of earrings, buuuuutttt, now that a lot of people don't have jobs, we figure they'll be a little tighter with their disposable income :-/

Plus she now has to keep the kid busy and doing schoolwork, so she doesn't have the time like when she was in school.

There are SO many business opportunities. I swear every week I see/think of one. Mostly out of my own needs and not able to find anyone. But this corona virus would put a lid on many of them.

For example....

I need the cracks in my asphalt parking lot filled. Not with the Home Depot slop but with the professional stuff. I called a couple companies and literally 2 old drunks came out, one at NIGHT with flash lights. One gave me a CRAZY high price after a week. The ones that came at night never called back. So one Sunday while driving by a 7-11 I see 3 guys with these lawnmower looking things FILLING cracks. I stopped got a card. Guy showed me the equipment. The boxes of tar/goop that they put in these things that were heated by a propane tank. I texted our address like the guy asked. Even snapped and texted a picture of our lot with dimensions. Days went by. Nothing. After a week I called he said he would stop by to quote. You would think an adult would let me know it it was too small a job. Maybe I'm just poor trash but $1000 for a day of work is real money.
IF I WERE YOUNGER I'd buy one of these and make a grand a weekend. They guy I think said $3000 for the 7-11 lot which was about 3x bigger than mine. I would have gladly paid $800-1000. Cheaper than the $16,000 I paid to redo the lot.
I'm pretty sure I AM going to buy one of these or see if a place like Suncoast rents these. Would be a great time to do it right now. Oh, and the guy that never came out to quote gave me a tip. He said they use a wire wheel device to clean out the cracks. I had thought they would be using compressed air.

I would still do compressed air! There's a reason NOT to wire wheel rust on body panels - it drives the rust deeper into the pores and comes back later when you don't want it to.
Use compressed air to clean the crack out as much as possible so the tar can get as near the base of the pavement.

I thought of a beer delivery service using drones

Back when the video movie rental business was taking off, my idea was to get one of them together with a pizza joint. Get pizza and a movie delivered at the same time.

I think in today's world you really have to dumb things down...

The wife saw a post yesterday where some lady was painting rocks and selling them for accents in flower beds...

5 to maybe 10 rocks that when laid out in a flower bed form an image...

Constantly see people painting old skids with flag paintings to put in their yards...

A couple years ago I guy I knew made a ton of Corn-hole boards and sold them...

My neighbor was an artist of sorts and taught painting at the local college...she does pretty good making paintings on old saw blades on the side...

Few years back we were at a Mopar show in Wooster, OH. a small business (in (2) 15,000ft steel buildings) found a niche selling wood signs (old painted scrap and pallet wood) with mostly religious and motivations messages.

it always seems i think of things, then a while later, someone is offering what i thought of and making bucks.
oh well.........

Same here.

I thought now that everyone WILL be wearing masks for the next 2 years (or forever), to take a picture of a persons (your own) face and print, using one of the direct to garment inkjet printers, the mouth area on a white face mask so it doesn't look so extreme. OR make it extreme by adding "Billy Bob Teeth" or a Joker smile etc. I'd honestly consider doing this if you could even purchase face masks. Someone could email a picture of hat they wanted printed or a picture of the lower 1/2 of their face.

Like i said, theres a million ideas.

if i took a picture of my face with the bandanna/coffee filter mask i use, i would be jailed immediately ! [at least that's what my chief of police told me the other day. ]
if you want to use my face, feel free !

After hours hair salon.

Cash only and don't tell nobodies where you got it.

that's me too! One of mine was attaching a camera to a race car somehow or while adventure sporting. Now we have Go-Pro's everywhere. I was fully 3 years before him.
Another was virtual stock car or sprint car racing where you could watch / participate from home. Know there's NASCAR doing it.

Back about '90, I had a neighbor who bought a van, then stocked it with the latest VHS movies, kinda a rolling 'blockbuster', and would come to you. He would have snacks for sale too. He did pretty good for about a year.

I was thinking about a new line of condoms since everyone is stuck at home with too much time on their hands.

I haven't started one but continue to run the one I have, business is going pretty good.

Thought about a home delivery service called Lick 'em & Stick 'em but there might be too much competition.

Back in 2006 I was fired from a job I hated anyway. Best day of my life !! Things had changed and it was obvious companies no longer gave a [censored] about their people. I swore I'd never work for anyone again. I took government "small business" courses and at the age of 55 started a small business with the intention of it mainly supplementing the household income. I developed a local customer base and through YellowPages advertising, a one page webpage and word of mouth it accomplished the goal. The two covid years were my busiest ever. In addition, for the same length of time I've been building vehicle rotisseries for the Canadian market. Again, the covid years were just nuts. And in addition to that in 2009 I bought a concession trailer and vended at fairs and events from spring till fall for the next ten years. Every one of these has been successful. I credit the success to being honest and friendly, providing an exceptional level of service and value for the money. My advice to anyone is to do your market research and look for the weaknesses in your competition and make their weaknesses your strength. Also keep in mind that it takes money to make money BUT don't be foolish with your spending. When I first started my business I went looking for a facility to rent. Its now 17 years later and I can still run the business out of my garage and a small office in the house - which is a tax deduction instead of an expense !

The last time I was laid off due to politics I was pretty PO'd. On the way home I decided I was done with corporate america their 💩, and was going to try and take my part time business full time. I told the wife I'll float some resumes which I did. I spent 300.00 on a color printer, made some flyers and started hitting the shows littering interiors. leas than 8 weeks later I dropped unemployment as i didn't need it.
That was in 2001, I was up to 4 employees, made some mistakes along the way, but am heading into part time retirement. Would i do it again? In a heartbeat, BUT I would definitely do some things different

The beginning of the pandemic was difficult for me as well.
I was fired from the store where I worked. I worked in that place for 7 years and all these years they talked to us about loyalty as long as they needed us to work overtime, but when the pandemic came and sales dropped, the loyalty ended as well. They fired us mercilessly.
I was unemployed for 2 months, living on my wife's salary.

Looking online for ways to earn money from home, I came across articles on how to open a business. I did an analysis of the businesses that are in the small town where I live and I understood that we don't really have bakeries in the area, and I am passionate about making cakes at home.
In this way, I started to advertise the cakes I made for the family, so that later I ended up making cakes for various local events (especially weddings and birthdays).
A year ago I leased a space in the center of the town which I transformed into a bakery cafe.
The entire process of opening a bakery was described by my wife in this article. It might be useful to someone who has the same passion.