Every morning I have to catch a 1 hour train to go to my university (This is how far I live). First few days, I use this time to study, but then after a while, I get so carried away to thinking about nothing. It might sound funny, but if you are sitting in a bus or any transportation, or probably moments before you sleep, you find out that your mind is wondering by itself somewhere and this is where *click! idea comes to your mind.
Coming up with any business idea may not be very difficult. But it is quite hard when you are talking about unique idea. Beside sitting down in a 1 hour train and wait for the ideas to come up, you could probably try to THINK about it. Here, I would tell you how you should come up with business ideas.
1. Consider on what you are passionate about.
To have a unique idea you have to be passionate about something. Unless you love what you are doing, you wouldn’t be able to be successful in your business. Because, without passion, you do not have the heart and desire to make your business a successful one. Turn your hobby into your profession, and you won’t have a single working day in your life. What can be a better way to earn your living?
2. Get the help from your family members or people around you
You might think you would be able to come up with the ideas for yourself, or in my case, my family members ain’t too keen about business, of course, when I ask them about something, all they say is food, food, and food. However, sometimes what they say can connect to the next idea in my mind. For example, I know my mum is very passionate about cooking, at least, I think she is, her cooking taste real nice. Whenever I ask her things, she answers with Food, “blah blah… by the way, you have to learn some cooking” This is where I come up with the idea, opening up my own recipe website, or making my own recipe book. This didn’t finally end up being a real business, all because that time I was only sixteen years old and I had to do my preliminary exam. Hey, at least I came up with the idea.
3. Know your customers
Even if you don’t know your customers, at least, know what you are going to target. For example, if you want to target youngsters you couldn’t possibly make a website about stock or trade. Of course, there is going to be some people and youngsters interested, but then not many of them are. I would say, dating or games are more likely the best bet.
First, you have to determine who your customers should be. What does this have to do with your idea? Of course, if you are around these people, you would soon find out what they need. Don’t your little brothers or sisters whinge sometimes that they need this and that? You might eventually be able to identify their need that you can fulfill. For example, your brother goes, “I can’t find a good ring tone for my mobile phone”. Hmm, if you are good at creating these tones, don’t you think you should have a business on this?
4. Find out what’s good in the market
Find out what’s ‘HOT’ at the moment. Research and test your idea with your niche market. Do not just plunge in, and create a $6000 website about your idea, make sure people ARE looking for your idea. I’ll give you a joke my brothers use to say, there is this friend of his that always say, “I’m going to be unique, I’m going to have a company of ‘BENT RULER’.
“Yeah right, bent ruler, sounds good,” he puts a smile on his face. Well, I’m sure you do too. If you are creative, and you create drawings, would people pay for your drawings? if not, then forget about it.
5. Know what kind of profit you would like
If you have just a little idea on how much you need in a week to live, you should know this. What I’m saying is, you know when you are working as a data entry or a factory worker or as anything, you get those pay coming weekly or fortnightly straight to your bank account. What do you use this for? Why is the account always going down not up? You also sometimes say “If I could just get X amount a week…”
Although, be careful with this one, anyone could easily say, “I want a million dollar a week” Well, it’s possible, but it’s not easily possible.
Back to the topic, once you know what kind of profit you want, you should be able to know what kind of business can get you this much. For example, you probably know for sure doing catering for parties probably won’t get you thousands of dollars a week. (Unless…again, you’re completely lucky).
6. Who’s your competition?
Every time you are surfing the net and a pop up comes up about a business that you’re thinking about, they are your competitors. To tell you the truth, in the era of internet, your competition is not only one, or two, it’s probably millions. (Well, again, depending on what kind of business you are thinking about). However, don’t worry about it too much, if they do not know how to advertise or promote their service, they wouldn’t be your competitor at all. Find out How are they managing themselves? What’s their speciality? Are they unique? Is their customer service real mad? What makes them so good? Can you beat them?
Ask all these questions in your mind, nevertheless, use their good side as your template, and add to it.
7. Stand out from the crowd
Sometimes if you’re not too creative, you can’t think of anything too creative such as “Finding lost cats and dogs”. You would probably end up with a business idea that’s already existing as a ‘HOT’ product. So it’s like “Yes, I got an idea” and your friend probably tells you, “Hmm, I think people thought about it Long ago, you sure you’re not copying?”
This is where you should be able to stand out instead. You don’t have to think about something new, because even if it’s new, soon enough you won’t be the only one. There would be people copying you, and there you go, you’re stuck with competitions once more. So what are you going to do?
Focus and maintain your quality of service at all times. Also, have something that your competitors can’t. Remember, earlier I said about doing something you are passionate about. This way you can probably beat your competitor, for example, who knows you could be the hacker that finds out all the cheat to one special video game that no one knows about? If you keep on your quality, words of mouth could be good enough already to earn you a living.
Alright, business ideas might not come up every single day of your lives, but I guarantee you, sometimes soon it would. Also, you don’t have to force to THINK about it. Sometimes, they come by itself.
Sally Widjaja is the editor of http://www.auBizHelp.com. Currently she’s offering “how to turn affiliate programs into your infinite CASH ATM” for FREE. (Click here for more info) Visit the site for more tips tricks plus insider’s secret on home business topic
