Small Business News, Tips, Advice

Get free online marketing tips and resources delivered directly to your inbox. If you plan to do all of the work yourself, you’re limited by the time you have available to invest. If you plan on hiring help, you’ll need to account for those costs—as well as the time involved in finding and onboarding freelancers or employees. This could come from your personal interests, a market opportunity, an experience—anywhere, really. Think about how you can zero in on a specific audience for your products and how the business you build can serve them. If you already have a sizable audience , maybe you can even find a way to base your business off of that existing audience.

I F*cked Up: Three Entrepreneurs Get Real About Their Biggest Fails

It’s good to have a balance of ambition and realism with your business aspirations. At the end of the day, your prices can be tweaked and you can experiment with a variety of pricing strategies until you find one that works for you. Get the business plan template delivered right to your inbox.

With services-based small business ideas, “time” is your inventory and your biggest investment. You’ve only got a limited supply of hours in your day. However, that makes it easier to get up and running if you’ve got skills that are in demand. Luckily, marketing is a lot easier when you’re catering to a specific target audience or identity (e.g., vegans, board game lovers, photographers in your city).

Need A Business Name? Try These Free Tools And Tips

If you enjoy taking care of kids and can get the proper licenses, a new child care business could be a good business idea for you. Memberships are great for managing members-only access to content on a website, and even for physical businesses that offer guided sessions online. Yoga studios, gyms, clubs, and art schools are a few examples of businesses that can easily take advantage of this low-investment business model.

You don’t want to create a negative yet avoidable experience for customers who receive an item they can’t even use. The Give & Grow Shopify app makes it easy to partner with charitable organizations and incorporate your mission into your business. You can set it up to donate a specific amount or a percentage of sales, or ask your customers to add a donation at checkout. If you’ve already got an engaged online following—say you’re a cartoonist or an urban photographer—you’re in an especially good position to give this small business idea a try. If you’re artistically inclined or know your way around a camera, you can dropship using a print-on-demand business model to let others physically own a piece of your work. Just be sure you have the rights to the content you want to print or are using public domain assets you can freely monetize.