Finding Business Ideas

sugeng — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:51:14 +0000

Many people aspire to have their own business, or at least this is what I encounter in this part of the world. They want to become the boss of their own company. Most of the time, the thought is just a thought with no further follow up on what needs to be done to progress further. Everything needs the first step to start. And the first step to own a business is to start a business. And the best way to start a business is to find business ideas.

There are many ways to find business ideas. The best is to start by brainstorming if you don’t already any idea what business you want to start. During brainstorming it is best to explore all the options without censoring anything. We will leave that to the next step in the process. Let whatever bizarre ideas you might have and just record them down. The more the merrier no matter how funny and crazy they are. We want to encourage our creativity juice to flow.

You an also go to the internet and get the search engines to help. Open up your favourite search engine and just search for “business idea”. You will be provided with many search results. When I did the search on Google, I received more than 72 millions results within a split second (0.17 seconds to be precise).

There are many sites that provide ideas for new business. Among the few that I like personally are:

1. coolbusinessideas.com
It is a blog style filled with new business idea almost everyday. The ideas are unique based on real-life experience.

2. springwise.com
The tagline said it all: One of the world’s leading sources of new business ideas. It is powered by a network of 8000 spotters around the globe that scan for smart new business ideas.

3. Business Ideas on a Budget
This article is published by entrepreneurs page at about.com. The tagline of the article is: 10 Legitimate businesses you can start for under $20. It also includes the estimate of how and where the $20 will be spent.

4. 105 Business Ideas
What made this article interesting is that all the 105 business ideas were thought of by middle and high school students within 90 minutes period on 20 July 2003. The ideas were quite unique and special.

After you have brainstormed the ideas, you should have at least a hundred of them. From the list, it is time now to categorize them. Feel free to add any other ideas as you are categorizing.

When you have all the categories in place, it is now time to do the selection. There are many ways to setup criteria: your education, your work experience, your interest, your hobby, your family background and many others. Of course you should also not forget if the ideas are applicable and easy to monetize. There are always ways to find the monetization model but it is better to focus on ideas with easiest way to monetize. You will also remember to take into consideration on the market demands. It is better to develop a business with great market demand rather than build business first and create business demand later.

If you still need help on generating ideas, here are few more sites that should be able to help you further.

1. IdeaCafe
This site has categories like start a business, business ideas, business financing and marketing & more. Just like the name, the site is like an idea cafe for all business owners.

2. MySmallBiz.com
This site is dedicated to helping people find business ideas based on certain criterias like low-cost, home-based, online, service, mom-biz, retail, pet-biz, etc. Just explore the site and you will know what I mean.

3. Business Idea Forum
This is a forum that links people with business idea, with resources and with critical information to form profitable business through beneficial partnership.

I hope this post has helped you with ways to generate business ideas. Please give suggestion if you know of better sites.

Internet Business Toolbox» Business Ideas

Finding Business Ideas