How To Come Up With Profitable Small Business Ideas: In 4 Simple Steps

How to come up with the best profitable small business ideas?

How to find profitable blog niches to start your blogging journey?

Ho to find amazing business ideas you can start today to make money?

How to come up with an entrepreneur idea?

How to come up with ideas for small businesses?

How to find profitable niche markets with low competition?

What niches don’t fit small businesses?

How to come with viable lucrative business ideas if you are a new entrepreneur with no clue?

These are the kind of questions likely to be asked by new and aspiring entrepreneurs or bloggers.

I know I did when I started my business’ journey.

Having established that you do want to start to run your own online business, you now need to find your awesome profitable small business ideas.

It can often be difficult for newbies to think or come up with a list of suitable business ideas.

They know that they want to start a business but have no ideas or don’t know where to start from.

If that is the case, then don’t worry.

This article attempts to illustrate the best-proven methods on how you can find your best profitable small business ideas or blog niches in 4 simple steps:

 #1: Doing Something You Are Interested In Or Are Passionate About

The most obvious way could be derived from something you are already doing and are passionate about it, such as a hobby that you absolutely love and adore.

There is nothing worse than someone can do by forcing themselves to do something for a monetary value they have no enjoyment in it.

This could be catastrophic in the long run as you need to imagine yourself doing the work, day in and day out for the foreseeable future.

If you happen not to like it, there could be trouble ahead.

Perhaps you are a budding photographer and enjoy taking photos of various subjects, landscapes, objects and sceneries.

Your passionate idea can be turned into a profitable business.

This way you will be able to kill two birds with one stone, doing something you love and make extra income out of it.

You might be the sort of person who enjoys the company of children or you are a homemaker looking after your own children and occasionally have been asked to look after other people’s children by family, friends and neighbours.

If you fit this description why not turn it into a business.

Another idea could be related to collecting children from school whose parents are at work and due to unavoidable reasons are not able to carry out these duties themselves.

As well as collecting children from schools, you could offer services such as supervising homework, preparing meals and taking the children to after-school activities arranged by parents.

If you enjoy gardening and have a reasonable knowledge of plants, flowers, soils, growing home vegetables, herbs and fruits, why not turn your passion into a thriving business.

You could offer tips and advice on gardening issues or garden accessories. It could turn out to be a profitable business.

You could also be someone who likes to shape the mind of students by teaching.

Why not apply your skills, knowledge or life experience in a form of service or product that you can offer to people and get paid for it?

The list is endless you just need to be creative and think of something you are comfortable doing it for a long time.

By doing so, you could create for yourself a great business opportunity that could provide outstanding value to your customers which will, in the long run, make good money for you.

#2: Find Your Best Profitable Small Business Idea By Solving Problems

Another great strategy you can use to come up with ideas is to look into solving problems that are not being met in any given marketplace or niche.

Perhaps you are fed up with something that has been bothering you for some time, deep down you know something better or different could be done to improve the situation.

This could be anything you can think of ranging from physical products such as clothing, shoes, beds, bags and accessories for very tall, wide or short people who could either be a man or woman of a particular age group.

Most retailers are accustomed to offering services for average people but maybe lacking in catering for a small number of the population who happen to be different.

By noting the gap in the marketplace, you can definitely turn it to your great advantage and use it to develop your ideal brand and provide your service to prospective customers.

You can also research existing services and products and see how they can be improved.

Perhaps your product or service can offer something different than what your competition is already doing.

This could be to your advantage.

You always want to differentiate yourself from your competition.

Human beings are constantly looking for solutions and are prepared to pay to solve their particular problems in order to improve their experience and alleviate their discomfort.

We live in a fast-paced world where increasingly things happen in the blink of an eye.

People are becoming more impatient, want convenience, reassurance, instant gratification, speed and ease.

Anything that can reduce time, alleviate pain and offer some level of comfort is great news for business owners.

The demand will always be there and will need to be fulfilled to make the consumer happy.

Put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customer.

Imagine what would you do if you wanted to solve a particular problem you are having right now.

You might have been awakened in the middle of the night and can’t fall asleep any longer.

You want a solution straight away.

You might grub your phone and google out your problem or go to YouTube and see what videos are being shown to solve your particular issue.

Many businesses, including both offline and online originate their ideas this way.

Another helpful thing you can do to help you find out the issues people are asking is to visit the online forums such as Quora, Reddit, and Warrior forums.

As well as looking into Google Trends where you can search and analyse the most popular search queries on any topic by time and location.

You will be amazed at the type of nagging questions the general public are asking on anything and everything. 

See typical examples below:

#3: Take Pride In What You Provide

You want to make sure you provide a service or product of high quality.

Ask yourself, if you were the customer, would you buy it if it wasn’t good enough.

The answer is ‘most probably No’.

Your prospective customers deserve better.

If you aim to offer a good service, your customers will return for more and are more likely to recommend your services to other people.

Your services and products represent who you are, your reputation and what values you hold.

It is important to get the balance right from the beginning.

Choose products or services which will give your customers good value and make them happy.

Your success is a combination of all these factors.

#4: Choose a Profitable Business Idea/Niche

As well as looking into choosing something you have a vested interest in or a business that solves the needs of a particular problem.

It is crucially important to choose a business idea or blog niche that will make you money in the long run, otherwise, there is no point in doing it.

After all, you are investing your valuable time, effort and capital to some extent.

You want to make sure you get a good return on your investment and for the hard work you are putting in.

This can be done by carefully and purposefully researching for hot profitable ideas from a number of available ‘hungry niches’.

This is well explained by Stefan James from Project Life Mastery in his featured video below.

You heard the saying ‘No need to reinvent the wheel’, just study the current market and see what niches are currently doing well and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Partly, because there is a ‘high demand’ for them such as fitness, health, weight loss, personal finance, relationships, self-help, etc.

What Is a Niche?

Many people describe niche in so many ways according to their interpretation and understanding of the word.

Some describe niche as a group of people that you ‘select’ to market something to.

Others say…

A niche is a distinct segment of a market, in other words, an ‘audience’.

A niche is a group of people looking for stuff.

A small section of a broad market.

Source:  Wealthy Affiliate members

However, after doing some research I came across a very simple and yet clear description by Eban Pagan’s report who states that a niche can be described as:

A need many people have that your product or service fills.

In simple terms, he says…

‘It means that a niche isn’t something that you just ‘pick’ from among a selection, like a song on iTunes but rather it is something that must be found’.

A niche must be discovered, uncovered and ‘solved’.

The process of targeting a niche is about finding a ‘need’ that many people are having, then creating or finding a product to ‘solve it’.

Which affirms to what I said earlier in the solving problems section where I alluded to the fact that:

‘Your business idea or blog niche can be found by solving problems that are not being met in any given marketplace’.

How Do You Choose a Niche?

The simple and most effective answer is to go and discover:

• The complaints
• The issues
• The problems
• The pains
• The difficulties
• The frustrations
• The fears
• The wishes and desires
• The challenges people are having in their lives or businesses

Your job is to uncover what it is and come with a suitable solution that your product or service can provide to your prospective customers.

To give you my example, as a growing entrepreneur with so much responsibility in my hands.

I struggle to manage my time effectively so that I am able to achieve the kind of results I am after in a given period of time.

As it stands:

• I have a demanding full-time job
• I have family responsibility
• I have an online business to run
• I am writing my book
• I am studying various disciplines to develop my skill-set and expertise in various aspects of my business and personal life

I have 24 hours a day.

How do I fit in all these stuff without slowing down my progress and more importantly not harming my health in the process?

I recognize and accept that success requires momentum and focus, but equally, I also acknowledge that I need to rest to allow my body to recover and perform at its optimum best.

By describing these issues I personally face, I hope I am able to demonstrate to you the kind of pains and challenges I face on a daily basis.

These issues require desperate solutions so that I can fulfil my true ‘potential’ and at the same allow me to be well and sound.

The solution may lie with figuring out how to best manage my time so that:

• I can  be more productive for less time
• I can be more focused
• I can be less stressed
• I have adequate rest and sleep
• I am able to reach all of my goals and vision

By breaking it down into the nitty-gritty of things we are able to pinpoint exactly what are my biggest frustrations are.

These frustrations can be broken down into further sub-sections or sub-niches thus allowing us to be very specific and laser targeted to solve my personal ‘needs’ or the needs of other people who also happen to share my challenges.

By the way, this problem is universal to all group of people worldwide.

Anyone can relate to it.

For example:

• Extremely busy entrepreneurs and business owners who are consumed by the demands of running their businesses
• Students with a heavy schedule of studying to do
• Busy mums and dads with so much responsibility in their hands
• Junior doctors bombarded with work. Some have a 24-hour shift
• Employees who are overloaded with so much work by their superiors
• Musicians with tight scheduling and much travelling to do

And the list goes on …. you get the idea.

Check out our Customer Avatar Worksheet below to help achieve the very thing we just talked about.

Identify your ideal target customer’s pain points and see how you can come up with a solution that will help him/her solve their issues with your offerings.

Examples of Profitable Niches

There are many, but the following are examples of broader niches which can be broken in to further sub-niches

• Wellness
• Weight Loss
• Relationships
• Business & Money – Make Money Online/Offline
• Hobbies
• Self Help
• Health & Fitness
• Personal Development
• Stress Management
• Fashion & Beauty
• Male Grooming
• Personal Finance
• Sports
• Travel
• Food & Cooking
• LifeStyle
• Parenting
• Technology
• Games
• Pets Service
• Pets Care
• Renewable Energy
• Etc

Hint: Your main job as an entrepreneur is to solve problems and creating or finding useful solutions for your prospective clients.

The opportunities for entrepreneurs and business owners alike always lie where there is an underlying problem that requires a desperate solution to be solved for their customers.

Your customers can also be business owners such as yourself known as selling B2B, in which case you know exactly what issues they are going through as you do in your own business.

You create or find a solution that solves your problems and their problems at the same time.

Take Home Message

Having explored and validated the different methods of coming up with your top creative profitable small business ideas or blog niches, choose one or two that resonate well with you.

Once you have decided that this is the best amazing business idea for you, go for it and don’t delay.

If it doesn’t work out, you can always ditch it and try a different one.

Part of being a great entrepreneur is the ability to adapt and change to different situations to accommodate the needs of your business.

You will grow as your business grows.

It is a continuous learning process and may involve some risks.

The risks may be worthwhile taking, if it means, it is a way for you to build a better secure future for yourself and loved ones.

It is better to try something than not doing anything at all.

Remember that nothing in your life will change unless you change.

Don’t be afraid of failures or to make mistakes in business or life.

Learn from your setbacks and move on to the next adventure.

Just in case you want to avoid the stress of researching the business idea yourself, then consider your problem solved.

Explore your next potential profitable business idea with our done for you solution below.

You may also like to read and explore:

• How To Make Money Online – The Essential Beginner’s Guide
• Quick Guide On How To Start a Blog For Beginners Step By Step
• 9 Entrepreneurial Mistakes To Avoid On Starting a Business
• Exclusive Products, Training Programs & Business Solutions
• Essential Marketing, Business Startup Tools & Resources
• 21 Fatal Startup Mistakes Newbies Often Make And How To Fix Them
• The Digital Startup Blueprint – Roadmap To Start Your Biz Like The Pros
• Customer Avatar – How To Map Out Your Target Audience Pain Points
• Entrepreneur Friend Store – Quality Affordable Done for You Solutions

Do you know of any other ways – to identify the best profitable small business ideas and blog niches we can add to the list?  

Love to hear what you think – Leave us a comment below.

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Empowering Entrepreneurs