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As aspiring entrepreneurs with broad skill sets, it can be perplexing to choose the right business opportunities that will be right for you.
Ideally, the business juncture you choose makes the best of your skills and experience, taps into a niche in the market, and rewards you for doing work you love!
In order to determine the best business to pursue, you need to know more about the types of entrepreneurship opportunities that exist.
Serial entrepreneur Richard Branson says, “Opportunities are like buses. There’s always another one coming!”
In this article, we’ll help you answer a few key questions to help you learn about the different types of business prospects available these days.
You’ll become aware of all the options out there, and have a framework to evaluate them to pick the one that best suits you.
#1: How Do I Find Business Opportunities?
For starters, you can find entrepreneurship opportunities by reading blog articles like this one! We love helping indie entrepreneurial folks too.
When finding a business opportunity, it’s important you fill a market need. You need to figure out a pain point, or a gap in the market to come up with a profitable idea. And the only way to know if an idea is going to work is to try it out!
You can use the following methods:
- Talk To Your Target Market: The only way to address a need of the market is to get to know them. The only way to get to know them is by talking to them! If you’re planning to start a Chinese restaurant in your neighborhood suburb, it’s best if you speak to your neighbors! Find out if they like Chinese food, and would pay for it. It’s the same with any online or offline business you’re planning to invest your time and money into.
- Refer To The Business Directory: If you refer to a business directory like the yellow pages, you’ll find out about existing businesses that are established, serving a specific portion of the market. By understanding the market, the competition, and who’s in it already, you can put your own unique spin on things to identify new opportunities.
- Research Industry Trends: Being aware of what trends are shaping your industry is key to finding new business opportunities. For example, the taxi industry has been deeply impacted by the entry of ridesharing companies, opening up new entrepreneurship opportunities for independent taxi drivers.
- Use Your Gut Instincts: If you feel you have an idea for a business, the best thing to do is to test it! Rely on your gut instincts, scratch your own itch, and just get going. Entrepreneurs don’t waste time talking, they learn by doing!
#2: How Do I Evaluate Entrepreneurship Opportunities?
If you’ve got a few ideas you’re looking to pursue, the next step is to pick one. Not necessarily, the right one, but picking one is important!
You can create an ‘idea/opportunity evaluation matrix’. In this matrix, you can list a few selection criteria to filter your ideas through.
The selection criteria is a list of all the factors that you’d like your idea to meet.
For instance, you might want the business to be location independent, or you might have certain financial goals you’d like to the business to meet. Running all your identified opportunities through this evaluation matrix is a big help to pick the one that suits you.
#3: What Business Can I Do From Home?
If you’re an Indie-Entrepreneur like most people reading this blog, you’ll want to do a business you can run from home. Tech startup ideas could be a great opportunity to start with.
The ability to run a business from home gives you the freedom and flexibility to manage your time and location, which can be great if you’re disciplined.
Some examples of businesses that can be run from home are:
(1) Online Businesses: If you’re starting an online coaching business, or a SaaS business, or a copywriting service, they’re all businesses that can be run from anywhere.
(2) Recruitment Agency: You can interview potential candidates for jobs from the comfort of your home office, and go out to meet clients when needed.
(3) Arts Business: If you’re an artist, creating paintings to sell to art connoisseurs, you could paint from home!
The above isn’t an exhaustive list of all options. You should ask yourself who your customers are, where you need to be in order to serve them and then decide your location based on that.
Learn More How to run a business from home
#4: What Are The Most Profitable Businesses To Start?
While you can never be sure of which entrepreneurship opportunity is the most profitable, you can answer a few questions to arrive at a decision on profitability. These include:
- What are the profits of similar businesses currently in operation?
- What are the potential revenues and costs for the opportunity you’re considering?
- What is the future earning potential of the business, over a 5-year time frame?
If you can accurately answer these questions, you can get a sense of how profitable a business opportunity might be!
Now that we’ve covered some of the fundamentals of business opportunities, we can look into some more specific business ventures you can start.
The remaining part of this article will give you concrete examples of entrepreneurship opportunities.
20 Business Opportunities You Can Make the Most of Now
1. Online Rental Business
Online rental businesses can be hugely profitable. This is especially true for products that are expensive, and have a solid demand in the market. People would rather pay for hiring a product for a short period of time, rather than incur a large upfront cost for buying the product.
Some examples of online rental businesses include dress rentals, event venue rentals, camera rentals, music instrument rental, water sports equipment rental and many more!
Check out First Camera, a video camera online rental business in the USA, Skipti, which is an American online rental marketplace to hire anything.
2. Home Delivery
There is a range of home delivery businesses you can run, as people love the convenience of being delivered products and services at their doorstep. If you love making pizzas, a pizza delivery business is a no brainer opportunity. Apart from that, you can deliver laundry services, food, pet supplies or anything that people would appreciate receiving at their doorstep!
3. Green Business
A green business is one that operates without causing any negative effect on the environment. The net effect of running such a business is a positive impact on the environment, reducing global warming, or creating sustainable living communities.
Examples of green businesses are a paper recycling business, where you can recycle paper to recreate it into interesting objects like greeting cards. Community gardening business, where you can grow fresh fruits and vegetables for your community. An example of this is Grow Stuff which is an online community food gardeners.
Another business opportunity in this space is in the field of waste management, where you can charge a fee for collecting waste discarded by people. A great entrepreneurship opportunity if you like to organize and have a passion for cleanliness!
4. Shared Economy
In the world we live in, resources are becoming limited, while the global population is on the rise. This creates opportunities for creating ‘platform type marketplaces’ for buyers and sellers to share resources.
Think Airbnb, which connects hosts with renters of property. A great way to ‘share your space’ with travelers who are looking for cheap and flexible accommodation options.
Uber, which is a popular ‘ride-sharing’ business that connects drivers with consumers.
How many people have RV’s sitting in their driveways for most of the year? RV Share has turned this into a profitable business.
There are plenty of opportunities within the sharing economy, so be creative and you’ll find a ton of opportunities.
5. Flipper (Flipping Items)
You can flip products or services by buying low and selling high. And the sky’s the limit regarding what it is that you can flip! For example, there’s a website by the name of “Flippa” where you can buy and sell domain names, websites, and online businesses. Have a look and you’ll probably end up discovering a heap of online businesses to buy and run!
Read more: Check out our article on items you can buy and flip for a profit
6. Refurbishing
If you like picking up something old and damaged, fixing what’s wrong with it, and then making it ready to sell, refurbishing is your calling. From refurbishing old cars, properties or vintage vehicles, you can choose your product of choice in this business.
The profits can be quite large since you’d be taking on the risk of buying and acquiring the asset that needs to be refurbished. Your ability to refurbish assets to high quality is what will determine the price at which you sell the refurbished asset.
7. Consulting
If you’ve got grey cells in your head, and love to help people solve complex problems, consulting is one of the best businesses to be in!
The best benefit of starting a consulting businessis that you can start one with no capital. All you need to start a consulting business is your time and knowledge.
There is a range of consulting services you can offer, like management consulting, marketing, interior design or law.
Consultants can charge a fee for their time, or charge a fixed price if they’re engaged on a project. Just make sure you have the expertise to provide consulting advice. Word of mouth, authenticity, and quality of service are your keys to success in this type of business. Your reputation and trust with the clients you serve are everything!
8. Coaching
Coaching is similar to consulting, as you charge a fee for your time.
The word ‘coaching’ is often used for business opportunities like life coaching, sports coaching, or business coaching or even dating coaching. The whole idea is that you’re helping your clients get better at something!
Coaching is a booming industry in the current economy, with a large part of the workforce becoming independent freelancers. The great thing about coaching is that you can deliver it online, via video conferencing, or offline, via face-to-face catch-ups.
Tony Robbins is probably the king of the life coaching business. He runs conferences on life-transforming topics and provides life and business coaching through his company. You can choose to become certified which will add credibility to your personal brand. For instance, Action Coach provides business coaching certification programs, and supports you to run your own business coaching business.
9. White Labeling
White labeling is a fantastic way to sell products that your buyers can rebrand. By selling white-labeled products and services you’re empowering your buyers to build a brand.
For those who may not know, white labeling basically refers to selling something without any brand name on it, so others can put theirs on it! Some of the products you buy online may not actually be made by the seller! They’re simply packaged by them to look like they’ve been made by them.
The benefit of running a white labeling business is the volume of sales you can make. You’ll have many buyers in the market who are not interested in taking the pains of making a product, but just want to sell it!
10. Virtual Assisting
You can become a virtual assistant to corporate executives as they’ve got a ton of tasks they don’t want to execute themselves. The need for virtual assistants has arisen due to the price discrepancy in hourly rates charged by assistants in western countries, compared to rates charged by assistants in Asian countries.
An example of a very successful virtual assistant business is BrickWork in India. They provide virtual assistant to people around the world at very reasonable rates ranging between $5 – $30 an hour, depending on the work.
11. Online Teaching
Online teaching is a great business opportunity, as you can create both, active, and passive income from it! Active teaching is when you teach students a skill online or offline and get paid for it. Passive income can be created by creating online courses on platforms like UDemy, Skillshare, and other eLearning platforms.
If you have any skills and enjoy teaching, we’d recommend you build an online audience of students who’d like to learn from you. Use a platform like Patreon for engaging interested students and building your social following as a teacher!
12. Affiliate Marketing
Some business takes quite a bit of upfront effort, but have larger payoffs once you put in the work. Affiliate marketing is one such type of entrepreneurship opportunity!
The way to go about it is to build an online community of people around a topic you’re interested in. For instance, if you publish content on health topics, you can become an affiliate marketer for health products made by other makers who have an affiliate program. You’ll be rewarded with a commission every time you sell a product on behalf of the seller, as an affiliate.
There are many examples of successful affiliate marketers who build large social followings, and a sizeable passive income through affiliate commissions. Social media influencers are probably the ones raking in the moolah with this entrepreneurship opportunity.
I’ve personally made around two million dollars since I started my first online business several years back. Affiliate marketing can be quite lucrative if you do it right.
13: Reselling
Reselling is when you sell products made by other manufacturers. As a reseller, you own a ‘reselling business’. For instance, you can become an authorized reseller for Apple products, or become a reseller for Hubspot, an online marketing SaaS tool.
The main difference between reselling and affiliate marketing is that as a reseller you need to be outselling the product! So it’s usually active income, compared to generating an income passively from affiliate commissions.
14. Freelancing
If you’re a writer, marketer, graphic designer, or software programmer, freelancing seems to be an easy way to start a business. Much like coaching or consulting, you don’t spend any money to start freelancing. All you need is your skills, and the time and patience to find clients.
A majority of the US workforce is predicted to be freelancing by 2027. So quite clearly, this is an upcoming business opportunity if you’re seeking an independent way of working.
15. Popup Shops
A great way to make money is by selling products at pop-up shops. A pop-up shoppop-up shop is a temporary shop you can put up in a tradeshow, park, or mall to promote products and services while getting people excited about what you do!
Pop-up shops are cheap to assemble, as there is no brick and mortar involved. All you need is a tent to assemble a shop, and some chairs and tables to promote or sell your products. You also need to book your spot with the venue where you’re planning to open your pop-up shop, so coordinating with them is important.
16. Care Services
If you care for animals, elderly people, or children, you can be in the care business! Animal care shops are a great business since a lot of pet owners spend money on the upkeep of their pets. Dog grooming, pet sitting, and dog walking are all services you can launch as part of your animal care business.
If you’re passionate about helping older people, you can be in the aged care business. Geriatric care is big business in a lot of western countries where a large part of the population is aging. You can play the role of connecting caretakers with those who need care or provide an educational service to help the elderly learn how to use technology to connect with their loved ones. There are a lot of ways to care for people!
17. Online Publishing
Just like the Income Spot, you can choose to create your own online publication. When you have a large subscriber count, the online traffic to your publication will make it viable for you to monetize the traffic through paid ads, or by charging a subscription fee.
Think about a topic you like to create content about. Then decide what format you like to create the content in. If you like to write, then think of starting a blog, if you like to talk, they think of creating a podcast, if you like to create videos, then consider Youtube! All of these channels can become great sources of revenue if you build a large audience, and create interesting, engaging content your audience loves!
18. Opportunity Homemade Arts & Crafts
If you’re good with your hands, you can make creative products. For instance, you can make stained glass products where you create colorful glass windows or glass vases. Or you can create hand-painted wallets and charge a premium price for making handmade designs.
19. SaaS or Software as a Service
If you have programming skills, you can create a SaaS business, serving customers globally. The most popular SaaS businesses are usually started between 2 or 3 co-founders.
Check out the story of Buffer, a social media management SaaS business, that was started by Joel Gascoigne. Amazingly, they created a SaaS business with a turnover of $5 million, with a product that’s loved by marketers around the world!
20. Event Planners
If you love creating experiences for people, then event planning might be your passion. From organizing parties for children to doing fancy corporate events, you can choose the niche that best leverages your relationships and networks for this entrepreneurship opportunity.
Event planners usually charge a fee and play the role of coordinating multiple vendors to get things done. It can be a lot of work, but you’ll meet a lot of people through being in this business. If being organized, highly creative, and people-oriented are your strengths, then dive right into this business.
Wrapping it up
Choose the business opportunity you love is the rule of thumb to pick the right one. Starting and running a successful business is hard, and you’ll only survive if you love what you do!
