4 Innovative Business Ideas!!

Trends... Were always trying to keep up with the next latest thing even if you aren't an entrepreneur. Well, this interesting article came up on  trendwatching.com. Supposedly, these are the hot new trends coming in 2012. Read it here: http://trendwatching.com/trends/12trends2012/

These were the 12 consumer trends 

1. Red Carpet - luxury quality service 

2. DIY Health 

3. Dealer Chic 

4. Eco - Cycology 

5. Cash-less

6. Botton of Urban Pyramid

7. Idle-sourcing 

8. Flawsome

9. Screen Culture

10. Recommerce

11. Emerging Maturalism

12. Point and Know 

As I am currently feeling ambitious and I'm up for a challenge. I'm going to attempt to come up with some business and application ideas relating to these trends. Hopefully they are all good ideas, and hopefully one day I'll regret putting these ideas on my blog.   

 Red Carpet - Luxury Quality Service 

• Theres a common problem with cabs and mini-cabs in many countries. They are either rude, unsure of directions, try to scam you, or are never on time. A great 'luxury' service would be a cab service like MK Cabs but for the western world. If you've never heard of them they are a big cab company from South Korea which operate in both Korea and Japan. They practically rule the cab industry in Japan. Why? Because when you see the glowing heart above the cab. You know if you choose them you will be getting a professional service. All the drivers are extremely courteous, wear a uniform (which looks something like a chauffer driver), and they ALWAYS arrive on time. Seems simple enough but in the two big cities (London and NYC) I have lived in its the same problem rude and late cabs. 

 DIY Health 

• I don't know much about health. However, what I know from my experience and seeing those around me. Organicity and locality of food produce seem to be a growing concern for many consumers. A mobile application which lets your track where your food came from might be a novel app for many environmental and health conscious people. 

 Dealer Chic 

• My application :P

Eco - Cycology + Recommerce 

• What about a website that lets you trade already read magazines. So for example lets say you have a monthly subscription to national geographic, and you would love to read the new yorker once a month too. Unfortunately, you cant afford the monthly subscription for the NewYorker. So you go to this website, lets just call it subscriptiontrade.com, and find someone who would like to trade. So from now on, every month when your done with national geographic you send it to your trade partner and he send you the New Yorker when he is done with it. Now your getting two magazine subscriptions for the price of one.  

 Screen Culture

• This isn't really a business idea but still a really cool idea. Something you would see on dragons den or shark tank. Anyways the idea is basically a standard computer desk, however, there is a small maybe 9 inch touchscreen installed on the surface. This touchscreen is where you can control your calendar, locks for drawers, control speaker volume, check the weather, make phone calls, contacts, passwords and many other functions. If actually done well this could simply your desk and help you get rid of all the clutter on top of your desk. 

5 Essential Tips For Research!

I'm sure every person starting out knows that you must always research your targeted market and competition. However, I have to reiterate the importance of research.


So Lesson Number One I learned while creating my application was: Always research your competition and target market, thoroughly. I can't stress the throughly part more. As most of you know, I am developing an iPhone application which in a simplified form is an average price finder for auction sites.Of course, before we created the application, we needed to find out if an application like this has already been created. Luckily, the selection of eBay applications was mostly ebooks on eBay strategies. Most importantly, there was no other application like ours. Now we were ready to go- this is where I made a big mistake... I was too limited in my research. My partner and I failed to look beyond the app store. We didn't think of other markets where this could of been done. Mainly the web. When we searched for average price finders on Google there were several websites offering a similar service. Fortunately, we were saved by good fortunes as all of the sites didn't work. To ensure your idea is viable and potentially profitable - here are a couple of research methods and questions I learned through my project.


1) State your idea as a question. For my project I stated it as: "How do I find the average price on ebay?" To optimize your search on Google you should just search "How find average price eBay". This way it  helps you find out if your idea is actually solving a problem. We found out that finding the average price of eBay items is actually quite difficult. A good place to look is Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers, Wikianswers etc.
Another good source of information are forums. Forums allow you to ask questions and discuss topics directly with your intended market. 


2) Find out if there is a market for your product. Google Trends and Google Keywords can help you find out the extent of the market. Enter some keywords related to your idea/product. For example, I entered keywords like "eBay average price" "ebay buyer tool" etc. and found out that there are about 10,000-50,000 monthly searches worldwide with those keywords. Meaning there was a pretty active market.


3) Do you have an easy way to market your product to 'specific' customers. For example, my iPhone application is best marketed to eBay consumers whom are looking for deals, are savvy buyers, or eBay sellers. So, we needed to research if there was an easy and cost-effective way to 'talk' to these specific consumers.


4)  Do the potential consumers currently use similar products or services? This can help you focus your marketing efforts, giving you insight in the demographics (age, sex, etc.) of your potential consumers. It also allows you to see wether your facing any competition, where you can market your product, and how saturated your specific market is. 


5) The final key question is: What does your product do, that similar products don't. Your idea doesn't have to be particularly original or inventive but it does have to be different. You have to offer new features that will make your product more appealing than anything on the market currently. 

How to Create an iPhone Application Part 1

So, this is my first foray into entrepreneurialism. On a lazy friday lunch, my friend came up to me with a strange proposal, "Let's start a business." That couldn't be a broader statement, what does that mean? A lemonade stand on my street or an empire of fast food restaurants. Of course, I jumped right in and said "Why not?" 

I mean, why not, right. That's the attitude that got Richard Branson somewhere. He is always known for his 'Screw it, Lets do it' attitude. That willingness to live on the edge, the ability to make a decision and not even hesitate about it. Its those bold actions that make empires. Okay, I'm getting a bit ahead of my self not. My project is no Virgin Inc. 

Read more about it here: Richard Branson. 

So, we were left with a business, we didn't know what our business was called. We didn't even know what our business was. After tossing around several ideas none of which were particularly feasible. We decided to create an iPhone application. Unfortunately, neither of us were programmers, nor did we have the time to educate ourselves in programming. Luckily, my friend knew about a freelance website called elance. So the idea was feasible we knew that much.

My partner, whom is a frequent user of eBay,  thought it would be great if he could find the average prices of eBay items to know what price to list his own items. So those were the sparks of the flame. The flame being what you see above EasyBay. EasyBay is an application which lists items currently on eBay below the average selling price. 

Now we had the idea, we got the ball rolling immediately...