My bird’s toys are either soft woods designed to be destroyed (I use limbs from apple trees) or hard woods that discourage destruction (manzanita and similar).
New post for a different type of comment…
The online retail shop I launched is very low overhead so it required virtually no capital and under $5,000 total cash. But I’m finding that the profitability aspect is quite hard work. People who want to know what is an easy business to get into are often misled by articles that make it sound like no work is involved. Even the blog published by my online platform is guilty of this. At least once a week they post an article about some business launched on the platform for very little money and that saw $$,$$$ in profits in one month. The odds of that happening to any particular business-starter is about the same as getting struck by lightening, so it’s really annoying that they keep posting that crap.
Here’s what I found to be easy: start a business for very little money
Here’s what I found to be hard: making money from it with little or no work
We use mulberry limbs and wild grapevines: non toxic and fun to destroy (Cockatoos are big chewers). We also use a hardwood (oak banister railing cut to fit) as a more permanent (ish) perch because nothing is more annoying than when he chews a perch in half at 9pm.
On the opposite end of parking your car: a Toll Road.
Here in Fairfax county the Dulles toll road has some 80,000 cars per month, paying an average $7 round trip = over $125M / year.
Buy a highway, install toll booths, collect.
There was a Laundromat I used that was completely automated. The lock had a timer on it, so the front door automatically unlocked at 6 a.m. and locked at 10 p.m. The owner would come buy a couple of times a week to restock the vending machines, top of the change machines, and collect all the quarters. No employees, and if a machine stole your quarters or broke down - tough(though I didn’t see that happen much). There was a stack of pre-printed notes you could leave when something was broken, so they’d know to call a repair person in a few days.
The local car wash was similar - you washed your own car in the bay, and there was only an attendant from 10-6.
They seemed pretty low maintenance to me.
Tool rental. Requires a couple employees, a small store front.
Buy/invest in a basic selection. Charge a returnable deposit to make sure it’s not stolen.
The trick is to stock specialized tools that are required for certain jobs.
Like a vinyl tile cutter. It’s a must have tool to lay a tile floor. No one wants to spend $200 for a tool they’ll use once.
Same thing for a wet saw to cut ceramic tile.
We are doing pretty well off three businesses. None of which are a ton of work
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My husbands consulting business. He is budgeted to bill about 1,200 a year. Last year he worked a lot more, and he’s on course this year for a little more. Its his choice to work fewer hours. Of course, he has twenty years in an obscure specialty and has a professional network of hundreds of people - but other then the investment in twenty years worth of expertise, a Mac Book and incorporation fees, it was cheap to start. When people hear he is available, his phone starts ringing. Not everything comes though, but enough does.
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Our consulting placement business - we use the network he has to “matchmake” between developers and companies. We take an hourly cut. Our salesperson and partner in the business works this full time and gets a larger cut than we do. My husband has the name and the contacts. I handle the backoffice and provided the capital. Billing, payments, etc. All our consultants are corp to corp - so there isn’t payroll. But there was a significant capital investment. Corporations don’t want to pay until 60 days. We pay out in 30. So we’ve invested in that initial float to pay people quickly. That helps developers make the jump from being a regular employee to being a consultant.
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Not really a business but - My investment portfolio. That pulls about $10k a year in dividends. I don’t count capital gains and that isn’t including anything in 401ks. Not enough to live on, but we aren’t living on it.