Small business ideas
Hello 2012! Are you ready to start a business?
We have experienced a lot back in 2011; entering 2012, there are mixed messages surrounding business owners – will it be gloom and doom or will economic recovery ready to kick off? Either way, small businesses will continue to thrive and be the propeller of economic growth worldwide.
So, to take part in our campaign to better the economy, Noobpreneur.com presents you with 10 small business ideas that we think lucrative for 2012. Without further adieu, enjoy the list and do let me know what you think of them!
Top 10 small business ideas for 2012
1. Online business/make money online
Despite the potentially disruptive Stop Online Piracy Act law issues on online businesses, my all-time favourite small business idea, online business, will continue to thrive. Web-based business’ role has increased steadily over the years, revenue-wise and potential-wise. As cloud computing will become mainstream (or it’s already mainstream?) and plenty of web tools to help you build a web business easily, online revenues are more accessible to non-tech webpreneurs.
2. Social media specialists
Despite social media campaign’s ROI is still trivial to figure out, social media continues to be important vehicles for enhancing business branding, engaging prospects/customers and increasing business profits. That being said, businesses need someone who is social media savvy. Offering various social media-related services – managing clients’ social media profiles, etc. – establishing social media consulting business hiring social media savvy people will be a great, lucrative business.
3. Remote/cloud working services
Remote working or cloud working will even be more prominent in 2012. As companies are (finallly) acknowledging the benefits of remote working, ranging from reducing office expenses to enhancing employee morale, cloud workers (who work remotely by utilising cloud services) – and any other variations – need any helps possible to support them; establishing cloud working services business and offering various services to cloud workers – including services to plug their business/work to the cloud – proves to be a lucrative business.
4. Crowdsourcing/crowdfunding services
Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding continue to be great ways to get projects done or launched quickly. Crowdsourcing lets businesses to source for great ideas, while crowdfunding lets budding entrepreneurs not to worry (too much) on project funding; they can focus on developing products/services. Starting a crowdfunding/crowdsourcing business to faciliate project owners to get things done/funded by allowing people to take part by offering their money and/or talent will present you with great chances of success.
5. Personalised products
Custom-made products will always attract creative customers. Ranging from design-your-own jewelries to make-your-own wines, starting a business offering not only customised products to total customer experience will always be lucrative.
6. Reputation management
With the ever-available Internet, managing your reputation – especially online – is challenging. A “not so professional” photo tagged on Facebook can ruin your business reputation. Getting tagged as a scammer by unhappy customers or “creative” competitors and be found online via search engines can ruin your business. Offering reputation management service can give you unlimited stream of customers.
7. Business continuity services
Business continuity is a big issue in the past few years – with all the natural disasters (earthquakes, snow storms, etc.) and people movements (such as Occupy Wall Street) – businesses need to do strategic planning in ensuring their business continuity – or seek help from others to help them in their disaster planning, to the least. Establishing a business that take care of the whole process for companies is highly lucrative.
8. Green and sustainable business
Green business rocks. Period. Establishing a company offering tools to generate green energies right from your home, constructing green buildings, renovating premises for less energy consumptions, building gadgets from recycled material, etc. – the possibilities are limitless. Go green, be profitable.
9. Business technology Intermediaries
Technology advances rapidly, and keeping up with such advances troubles businesses. Cloud computing is said to be beneficial for businesses; but integrating cloud computing solutions to existing IT infrastructure without proper help from a cloud consultant to overseer the integration process, things could backfire.
10. Copywriting
For websites, content is always important. But with the latest development in search engine arenas, such as Google Panda update that slams both low-quality sites and big user-contributed sites (i.e. eHow.com,) quality content is even more important today. There’s no sign of slowing down; demand for quality content will grow even more significantly in 2012 – a big opportunity for both talented freelance copywriters and copywriting companies to grab.
So, there you go – our very own small business ideas you can pursue and profit from. Want to add your own small business ideas to Noobpreneur.com’s top 10 small business ideas list? Please share your ideas by leaving your comment on this article.
Ivan Widjaya
Top 10 small business ideas for 2012
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Well done and thoughtful list. Lots of great ideas!
Thanks for your kind words, Patricia!
A lot of thinking has gone into that. How very generous of you to share your ideas.
Cheers, Anne!
As a freelance writer and ghost writer, I’m thrilled businesses need quality content. I’m here to help!
BTW: I want to begin creating my own products too. I have a lot of ideas; however, I need to meet the ‘right’ people to help me with some of them.
Amandah,
‘Care to share what you have in mind?
Could you please tell me how can i start for “make money online”. what are the trusted online business too?
Thank you very much for your suggestions.
Hi Prasad,
If you want “trusted” online business, then you should STAY AWAY from many so-called opportunities offering you “thousand of dollars of income easily with no work” or such. Online business needs a lot of work, and there’s no shortcut to success (be aware – indeed, there are “easy money” opportunities available, but those will usually last for a moment.)
I hope this helps…
Cheers!
Hi
Good tips on this site,Could you advise on what kind of projects or business type I can start with minimal income of between £100 and £200.
You have my email,any help will be appreciated.
Thanks
Hi Kel,
There are LOADS of business ideas that can help you make money. If you want to start small – even with nothing down, you might want to read this post I wrote in the past.
Those are great ideas! Very current and most have a tech slant. There is still room for the basic personal service business like a handyman who serves the growing seniors market or a dog walking service that serves the growing pet industry.
Just my two cents for those that might not be familiar with the “new economy”
Best Regards
Rob
Rob,
Thanks for the great ideas, particularly the personal service business you mentioned. It’s a great niche that cater a growing baby boomer market!
Hi Noobpreneur,
You just told online business but how could i start a online business.. plzz help meout
Hi Jith!
The best way for you, in my opinion, is to check out what kind of online business ideas and opportunities that are lucrative and requiring minimal startup capital. You can start from webmaster and Internet marketing forums, such as forums.digitalpoint.com and warriorforum.com, and start reading threads and asking questions.
I hope this helps…
The internet is the best teacher in giving you online business ideas, you can ask in the forums and know all you need in the type of online business you want to try.
Business Strategy,
Agreed. I learn almost everything from the Internet :)
How about being an SEO Reseller?
Basically, you, as a reseller (hoping you would be) will be communicating with your prospect clients. These clients are business owners with or without website that doesn’t have much traffic, doesn’t have good rankings on their keywords, and most of all they are not that happy with their revenue.
Your role would be, you will look for these business owners and offer them SEO services. Whether it’s through email, forum, blogs, Skype calls, meeting, or whatever tactics you have. You can work online. You can work at anytime you want. You will be your own BOSS (technically), for we, EndlessRise Inc. will be your back-end that will provide you the services to your clients.
Moreover, you can use your own Name/Company Name to brand your services. This means, we will do the job and we will use your Brand instead of our company name. Its like running an SEO Company of your own. This is what White Label SEO is all about. Sounds good?
Please let me know if you still have any questions.. You can reach me at gary@endlessrise.com
Gary,
That’s a great idea. Despite the competition, as long as the SEO services we are partnering with can offer true SEO solutions (e.g. not using black hat or grey hat techniques) I’m sure reselling SEO services can be very lucrative. And yes, everything white label sounds good to me :)
Hello, I have a small emergency auto lock-out, battery jump, and emergency fuel business. I need to add onto this business to bring in more income with little overhead. Any suggestions that would pair nicely to this kind of service ? Thanks in advance for any comments. Scott
Scott,
How about adding more emergency-related auto services, such as replacing flat tires… or selling complementary products, anything DIY in emergencies…
Hi!
Great ideas. But I have one question, how do one charge as a social media specialist.
Ex.: For setting up a firm account? a fixed price.
And what about maintaning the page? hourly, monthly?
Thank you
I agree with 3. Remote/cloud working services and 9. Business technology Intermediaries that is what my company is doing , even the rest of your list is great.
The only edit you need to put is it still takes hard work to make any 1 of them to work, there is no quick fix to make a business.
Nice impressive list. I can see you put a lot of work into it. I think I will expand on a few points you made here in my own blog. Keep up the fantastic work.
Hi S.A. Williams,
That’s great – please let me know when you have published yours.
Drew,
Indeed – there’s no fast-track whatsoever. Hard work and perseverance are required to build a successful business.
Rafava,
That depends on your target market, really – just like in article writing and other service-based business model; The prices can be varies greatly. A social bookmarking service charge $10 to submit to 100 social bookmarking sites. A social media manager charge top dollar per hour to manage your popular fan page – different projects will have different way to charge clients.
I have hired someone under $50 to manage my social media work for a week. In other instance, I have hired someone for just $5 for a small social bookmarking task. Those are just a couple of example on how wide the range of prices charged by a social media specialist.
Here’s one thing to consider: Are you going to be offering social media services as freelancers or as a business managing social media projects, employing staffs and/or outsourcing task? Your answer will determine how much you can charge (obvivously, as an LLC, you could charge more as you are somehow viewed as a more reputable service provider than freelancers.)
I hope this helps…
Hi Ivan,
Yeah.. SEO increases its trend dramatically in year 2011 and still growing.. It’s obvious that not all of us can have their own SEO company that fast, right? So, big companies like us thought that we should be giving an opportunity to these entrepreneurs who want to have a recession proof online business.
Currently, we provide SEO for our resellers. SEO Resellers could be an SEO company, SEO Expert, Guru, Internet Marketer, and Individuals who are tired of their day job and just want to stay home and earn money. So, even if you are not an “expert” in internet marketing or SEO, you can be part of this. You can visit http://www.endlessrise.com and see if there is something you can learn about it.
BTW, I’ve added your blog on my personal round up.. Thanks!
Yes, I’m very thankful for your answer. I will have a LLC and start eventually hiring people.
I will offer social media management and SEO together. I was looking into endless rise and SEnukeX, any thoughts about their products?
What is the average price for delivering SEO?
Thanks again.
Rafava,
In my opinion, tools are generally helpful, but only use it to make things easier for you; automation is good, but don’t over do it. I recommend you to go strictly white hat route, as your market is there for a long term (with Google is so strict with all the penalties and bans, you can’t just take things for granted…)
Partnering with companies like Endless Rise can be a better route to go – reselling service means you focus on marketing, instead of worrying about what’s right or wrong in SEO :)
Social media management is a rising trend – you will face stiff competition, but as long as you avoid price wars and opt for quality and value, you have a bigger chance for success.
SEO pricing, again, varies greatly. A company I know offer $700/month for online reputation management (SEO and SEM). I once hired a manual directory submission service, submitting to 1000 directories for $80 or so.
I hope this helps.
Gary,
I am considering your reseller opportunities – it’s a good way to jump into the SEO bandwagon :) Will email you soon…
Anyway, many thanks for adding my blog to your personal round up!
Thank you very much for your help Ivan. Appreciate it.
Hei noobpreneur
thanx for ur suport but i live in ethiopia so what do u think i have to do to get opportunities of these kinds can u write me some of them thanx again and here is my email
endutekle at gmail.com
Endale,
There are plenty of businesses can be done in any part of the world. As I’m not familiar with business activities in Ethiopia, I can’t possibly suggest you any specific ideas other than what I mentioned in the post.
But regardless of where you and I live, you can start a successful business if your startup solve problems in your neighbourhood (I got this from Robert Kiyosaki) – so, if you see something in where you live and think you can make it better, that’s a good starting point :)
Rafava – cheers and good luck with your entrepreneurial journey!
Good point on #10 – Copywriting is really the marketing of the future. Small businesses seem to be understanding that they can shift their marketing budgets away from old methods like the yellow pages. But, while adwords can do the job, the consistency of having a firm or actual copywriter on staff is going to be a big change for them.
Hey Ivan,
Love your post.
I still remember that how those websites use to lure people and pay hardly a cent per each click ;) But thankfully people are now aware about them and can be a little aware about what to choose for making money from home :)
I’m a student and doing it as part time for about 2 years and I believe that there are a lot of scope in technical and writing areas and if someone understands dropshipping well, it can get some quick money.
Providing services of internet consultant and running domain and hosting reseller service and looking for some other areas of work :)
Got to follow this article as I’m serious :)
Marshall
Marshall,
Thanks for sharing your story!
Great ideas. It’s important to be creative in this economy. Self storage properties might be a good fit as well.
Kelsey,
Please elaborate about self storage properties as a small business idea?