100 Ideas

I’m fast! I’m as fast as 100 ideas-per-hour. I have always had this talent of coming up with good ideas, sometimes great ideas. People say its not about the idea, its about the execution. I say validation.

UPDATE: I have the mother of all blog posts coming soon that will tell you how I came up with an idea, executed that idea step-by-step and made $5,000. I will be giving this away in February – if you want me to let you know when its live

Hello 2014. One goal I will be fulfilling is launching a validated startup. I spent the latter part of 2013 validating this idea and I am glad to say its an exciting place to be when you have a good idea that’s validated!

“But Scott wait! What about me?” I hear you say “I don’t even have an idea, let a lone a good one!” Fear not friend, I am here and have 100 golden business ideas for 2014 just for you!

NOTES: These range from futuristic ideas to new angles on old and existing ventures. Yes there will be companies already offering a service like my idea but don’t let that stop you! Attack the problem NOT the competition. There is something here for everyone. Every idea here is an idea I have had during 2013 and they are ideas of have seriously considered bringing to life. I want to share these with the world and would love for someone somewhere to pick one and say “hell yeah, I’m gonna launch this“. If you do – let me know.

Can I also encourage you to SHARE this post by ClickHere2Tweet and also get involved in the comments, even if you hate me and my ideas – let me know you hate them! What’s your favorite idea – leave a comment and win a trip to space (if Rich Branson emails me back).

In no particular order:

Bamboo Eyewear: Sustainable eye wear is awesome. I  had this idea two summers ago and bought several bamboo sunglasses from Alibaba.com but never got round to launching. I even bought the domain Vayders.com as a bad-ass brand name. WearPanda are doing a good job here but plenty of room for healthy competition. I know nobody is really killing this in the UK as I have given all of my samples away and the buzz those seven pairs generated was exciting. Start now and you will be ready for a big launch this summer!

Rock Your CV: I was once a manager and also hired someone to work for me when i ran my own business. The rubbish that was CV’s representing people is ripe for disruption! If people really wanted to earn $100k a year then they should be investing upfront in themselves. One option would be to offer a service where you re-design peoples CV’s like the hundreds of templates available on GraphicRiver or find a designer to build you 5 templates. Charge $49 per CV. Can’t design? Then find an offshore designer via oDesk. People should even be going as far as this to stand out from the job competition!

GradFolio: I love this idea and believe this will be a real winner if done right. Imagine a website launches called GradFolio (domain name available to purchase). A student is just entering his first year at University but signs up onto the site and starts putting his interests and also features projects on there. He likes to build drones and already Amazon’s HR team see this and start a dialogue with him. Over the years of his study they let him know what other skills and technologies they would like to be using in the next 3-5 years so he can also study towards these and land a dream job. The students can tailor and change their study here and there to work towards a specific company and project and can better his/her chances of landing the job. The companies can pay you a fortune for this access as they can start influencing their graduates who will be more than ready for their firm.

50 Ways: I was speaking to three restaurant owners this week. Two were independent and one was a manager of a local restaurant which makes up a larger corporate chain. I pretended to tell the manager that i had just finished writing a book with online references and case studies of “50 Ways for a Restaurant To Get More Customers”  and all three said they would be very interested in getting a copy. I then said that it would sell exclusively to one chain that they can then send to their location managers. If you went even further you could create an online log-in training area to compliment the book. Plus you can go and get a sale without even typing a word! If you have $0 or even worse -$0 then this is what I would be doing to pull in a few thousand dollars. Start here and here to give a few ideas away for free!

Virtual Data Room: For some reason I know a lot of legal people. I read an article in some business magazine while on a lads holiday back in 2012 about virtual data rooms used securely for legal conclusions, signing documents, exchanging contracts, deeds etc. Historically it was done in a lawyers office but now technology is allowing a secure way of doing this remotely. Each law firm would pay a monthly fee to hire their room or rooms out. Two of my network now use this as a solution. I’m not the only cat who thinks this is a sexy business idea – see here, here and here!

Gmaids: I remember watching a Mixergy interview about two immigrants in the US who were cleaners. Then they transformed their lives into owning a successful cleaning company. It was such a simple business concept and done in a step by step way that anyone could follow this. I then learnt of other people doing this and following an online guide that a cleaning entrepreneur had made for people. Again if i had nothing – i would start here: From An Idea To Replacing My Full-time Salary in 4 Months

WordPress Theme Review: As a WordPress developer I was stunned to see how much a WordPress Review website went for in a Flippa auction. Sold by a friend of mine he was making a killing reviewing WordPress themes and making an affiliate commission. He built it up over 3 years and did spend a few hours each day on it but still – it made my ears stand-up, especially when I seen his bank statement as proof! Start here.

English Teaching Website for Chinese Students: I watched a BBC documentary on millionaire teachers in China and thought there had to be an alternative now using technology for Chinese students. Why not connect them one-to-one with UK or US students? There is an opportunity here.

Entrepreneur Course for Kids:  During Summer I had setup a small cake stand at a local charity event and my 3 year old daughter manned the till and I was showing her a few entrepreneur and sales techniques and a few parents commented on this about there should be a class for this type of thing. As a parent if my school or local center ran a business class for kids and made it fun – I would pay. There you go – one validated parent! You could design an online course for parents and their children or create fun games or animations that teach an important basic business lesson. Check out Cameron Herold on TED discussing teaching kids to be entrepreneurs.

Technology Course for Kids: Moving on from my last point. I am teaching my daughter typing at the moment as she has been brought up on swipe screens on the iPad and iPhone. I will then go onto teaching her how to setup a basic WordPress website and basic coding skills. The foundations. If today you told parents if a kid learns to code they could be another Zuckerberg I bet you would have a queue. This could be done online or offline.

Couples Curated Breaks: Me and my wife love to get away once a quarter just the two of us. Recently we have discovered spa weekends, now as a meditator I like anywhere peaceful so yeah spas rock! My problem is there are too many all-female groups at the spas drinking and generally making too much noise! So a couples curated spa break would be perfect and I know there are sites out there but they are just too expensive. Team up with 30 spas, ask them that one weekend each month they put on a couples event where they minimize hen parties and you’re good to go!

Sales Training MOOC: There seems to be an explosion of MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Course) over the past 18 months and there still is the question on how they make money but I think a niche MOOC such as in sales training could work – charge sales people to use the site, have them enter there sales goals for the year so they can personalize the site and keep them coming back. Here is a list of current MOOC’s and start building your content from here.

Beer Feedback Service: Craft beer is exploding in the US and UK. While out one night with friends sipping craft ales i mentioned a club where up to 1000 people join and micro-breweries pay to distribute samples of the beers to gain live feedback from the experts. They can “lean test” their beers before they have even completed a massive batch. This saves money and generates a buzz of a new beer being launched, something that craft breweries struggle with right now. You could get this started right now – find the biggest voices in social media on craft beer and hit them up with a free beer!

Food Lessons by Local Restaurants: My wife’s favorite of my ideas she would use this herself. So you signup some of the countries biggest chains and independently owned restaurants and consumers can signup to a cooking class in one of their kitchens with a real chef. They can cook their own meals. Great as a gift, group gift and more and awesome marketing for restaurants. Businesses catering (excuse the pun) are exploding everywhere right now.

Corporate Lunch: I work in an office where we usually order a corporate lunch in 3 times per week for clients who are visiting us. Its typical buffet food wherever you order it from. Same old bacon, lettuce and tomato triangle sandwiches, sausage rolls and crisps. Disrupt the market – one brand, one website with a really simple menu that has been developed by a good chef. Recruit nationwide caterers that could replicate the menu and use them to deliver the last-leg. I would use it! Also as a vegan some good vegan dishes! Most companies say “vegetarian” when i say “vegan”. Check out the vegans here discussing this very issue.

Press Release Service: I have had some good results from using a number of free press release services. It has often led me to get some coverage that has either generated leads, sales or contacts. But using free press release websites sucks. Why not setup a press release writing service that also sends them out to hundreds of free press release websites. I have used a guy I found on oDesk who could mass submit them saving me time and you could use him as your supplier.

Security Analytics: This is going to be a growing area in 2014 as we see more and more hacking stories in the press. Most organisations have the data but how do they visualize it into meaningful results? Maybe a start would be to offer a data analysis service using offshore experts, after this start figuring out what a core product would be that these companies want. Here’s a good post on the current situation of companies not knowing where to start.

Online Shoes: You can’t go wrong with online shoes! But one area I have seen my wife moving into is using services where she designs her own shoes using a company such as Shoes of Prey (which is such a bad name). She had an idea where you subscribe, get a monthly email with a unique shoe design and it is limited to say 300 or 500 shoes. People then pay for it and once you have the money you then go and get the shoes manufactured. A lean shoe business! My wife would love wearing shoes that there are only a few made. here is a good article on why shoes have dominated the online eCommerce market.

Kids Charm Bead: I loved reading the success story of the Rainbow Loom. The founder took a simple idea, a little bit of savings and turned this into a multi-million pound business. My daughter makes her own toy right now and me and my wife always talk about turning this into a kids toy. She has a hair braid that she attaches into her hair, then she makes little charms out of cardboard that she then puts onto this braid. You could easily turn these into colorful charms and shapes or characters and each one represents a letter so you can make secret messages that only your friends can translate. But these offline ideas are still like gold. I think revisiting all of the past 80′s and 90′s toys and gadgets and seeing how you can improve them or make them a little different. But I know kids are BIG into personalizing stuff – so if you could have a whatever, hair braid with charms if you can make secret messages in that only their friends can understand – bingo!

Website Security Check: I met a guy who asked me if I wanted a free WordPress website security health check – sure i said! Then he came back with a list of vulnerabilities. Now I knew enough about WordPress to know he was genuine and not just inventing threats. I could easily fix around 90% of them but the others I happily paid him to correct. I experimented with this idea and within 4 hours I found 3 offshore security experts with qualifications recognized in the UK to perform remote website security health checks. I went on to charge 4 people £99/$163 each to do this check and fix the threats. You could start tonight and get your first 5 clients by offering free security checks.

Estate Agent Intelligence: I’m not sure if this would work elsewhere around the world outside of the UK but there is a company called VizziHome who are leading market intelligence in the estate agent industry. In fact they are the only provider that I am aware of and they were just acquired!

Crowdsourced Fitness: Another of my wife’s favorite – you setup a website that connects local people who currently have a fitness regime e.g. they run locally every morning at 0600am or a yoga practitioner who does her workout in her garden at 0700am every other day. They register and then you can sign up to joining them on their workout and they train, coach you. Its on a micro-level but that’s what is appealing to my wife. I know there are online coaches using webcam and Skype and that could be an option too.

Get Me This Job: I am working on a what I consider a big project that will involve jobs which I am launching in March 2014. I am fascinated about jobs, the recruitment process and also how people portray who they are. How do you stand out from the crowd to land your dream job? I think this requires an expert to help and guide people, even professionals. Think about it – you want a job paying $100k per year yet you refuse to spend say 1% of that in investing in yourself. So the idea here is that you work with a candidate towards a specific job. This could be coaching via Skype, designed CV like my idea number 2, maybe even an animation like here. Fix fee $1,000 per client.

Lesson Recorded: My wife is a teaching assistant and even she wishes she could go to some place and pull up a recorded video of the class she sat through so she can go over the lesson with her students with learning difficulties. Why aren’t lessons recorded so students can go back later that day or week to learn more? A teacher could also send out a week ahead schedule that also includes links to Wikipedia links and other blog articles so even before the lesson the student has had the chance to read up and be grounded on a particular subject. The idea is being discussed by geeks as I type!

Extra Lessons: So instead of a just starting yet another websites offering tutors for extra tuition on your standard subjects you could launch a website where people can put up adverts that request an expert in whatever subject or field they are struggling with and then the experts or students can come along and put forward a proposal on how they will teach you this. So a salesman needs to go and pitch for some business in a sector he is not that conversed with – he could pay for an hour of someones time to get educated in the core basics, sector, competition, suppliers, challenges blah blah blah.

Thank you Cupcakes: Whenever have won a significant amount of business, once I had successfully delivered it I would say thank you by sending cup cakes from a local deli in town. Even if a client lived in the US or Australia I would Google a local cafe to them and get it sent. There is ROI from saying thank you. Saying thank you is a great way to stand out from all the other salesmen calling your clients. So I was pleased to see a company called MailLift who are doing this with hand written letters. They have even integrated with SalesForce API which is genius! So i still think a global ThankyouCupcakes.com (I own that by the way) where you team up with cupcakes makers all over the world that could hand deliver them next day would be awesome plus if you integrate it into SalesForce.com. So every time you complete business – cupcake request gets sent automatically.

Cloud Storage Re-seller: Come on! It’s the cloud! What I love about cloud now is its a no-brainer. I mean even my mum gets it and wants to “digitize” everything to go on the cloud so when she is in her nursing home in years to come she can sit and watch hours and hours of memories all safely backed up in real-time. So if I take a picture of my daughter almost immediately it gets added to my mums photo cloud account. If you have no money – get a cheap WordPress website and starting re-selling Cloud services.

Cloud Storage For Kids: Again my wife thinks a very secure cloud storage service for parents where they can store everything that their child produces digitally is a good offering. My wife takes images of every drawing my daughter does and uploads them to a private cloud. A service dedicated to this and marketed towards parents is a great idea. Another one you can call on us for custom!

Airbnb for Corporate Accommodation: I never knew the secret world of corporate rented accommodation before until I visited a friend of mine who was staying in Birmingham. His swish high-rise apartment overlooked the city and I was very impressed when he said that his company rents this place out and they also have several other apartments over the UK that he uses. Looking into this I thought a marketplace for this secret world would be a hit as it would bring more accommodation into the marketplace and also encourage better pricing and community feedback. Take a look at StayBay for example.

Customer Experience Expert: Most companies don’t have a clue about their own customer experience. That is what a customer of their’s see’s, feels and experiences as they go through the buying process. An easy way into this area would be to become an expert in customer experience. You could setup a website of the top 100 retailers in your country and then take a look at their customer experience. Visit their shop, ask their staff questions, go on their website, find information. Maybe build a 10 point checklist and mark each area out of ten. One area UK retailers are falling over is in Click & Collect. It’s meant to be a smooth process but it actually is a painful one. Send your findings to the retailers and then offer them a consultancy fee to come in and inform them where they are going wrong and how they can improve it. 

RFID Limited Edition Toys: There are literally thousands of toy collectors around the world. Why not design and develop your own limited edition collectors set? You could release only a small amount over time e.g. 5,000 units per quarter. Go a step further a put in a RFID chip in each toy so it can be verified as an original and not a fake. This would also give an old toy a modern appeal and generate buzz among collectors. Again find a designer on oDesk and then get a supplier to build them.

Sell Your Business: Selling your business is tough. Where do you even begin? Well I have sold three businesses for people and also I have sold more than 10 projects (micro businesses/websites etc). There is a right way and wrong way to do it and most people opt for the latter out of experience. Some of the worst people to sell a business are the owners as they are too personally attached. So if you could come up with a good way, a easy app to guide business owners through this process or even just become a sales agent and sell it for them – I think you will do well. Again this is what I did when I had no money. I sold a furniture store in Birmingham for an elderly gentleman and made a neat commission of $6,000. Research how to get started. The best people to sell a business to are competitors as they can grow overnight.

Problem Shared: I work in a small business, 7 off us and over the past year we have gotten into a very healthy habit of working with each other on our own problems. Sharing an issue before we react means we can use 7 of us to resolve it. We do this even down to checking an important email or response document. So far we have been using a shared drive or email chain but this is getting out of hand. I think a web app or piece of software that allows you to share problems that crop up throughout the day will make the workforce a lot more efficient. After writing this I have seen Deezco offering a solution to this.

SEO Outsourced: Flippa is a great resource to see who is making money – how much and how. OK there are some clear cowboys on there selling nothing but a dead horse but one winner I always see are people who have built up an SEO service and they also totally outsource it. There a hundreds of thousands of tiny small businesses out there that struggle to get new clients – its one, if not there biggest issue. Solve it – and make some money. Find a good SEO’er on oDesk.

Problem Solved: I love problems. I really do. I pride my cool, calm and collective approach to coming up with as many ideas to solve the problem as possible. I also accept not all problems can be solved, and a lot of problems aren’t actually problems! How about a service, web app or mobile app where a person for say a few dollars can submit a problem for you to resolve, maybe for a fixed fee they can have 5 problems worked through. If you can solve problems – you can make a lot of money.

Nursing Home Review: It’s a really tough decision to make to place a loved one into a nursing home. One opportunity in the UK is for a good service to provide a fair review of each nursing home. You could easily make money for advertising or listing of each nursing home. A sort of TripAdvisor for nursing homes!

Research Business: Its never been easier now to access some fabulous minds. There are scientific, legal and medical students based offshore who can help you provide a robust research service. I have used students found on the likes of Elance and oDesk to do this for two companies based in the UK. One was to research the Europe market for Click & Collect in grocery stores and the other was to write a whitepaper on a manufactured replacement for Coltan – circa $4,000 in profit.

Showrooming Whitepaper: Showrooming is the process of going into a shop, looking at an item, maybe trying it on and then using your phone or going on the internet to find it cheaper and buy it there. Showrooming is a big issue for some retailers and there are some things retailers can do to turn this into an opportunity. I could give you 3 ideas right now! Why not create a landing page for a whitepaper on this offering and see how many orders you can get from retailers – once you have $2,000 in orders – outsource it to a smart student offshore.

Content Marketing: Another marketing technique that can be onerous and time-heavy for a small business owner. Why not find a team offshore that has the experience, case studies and ability to provide an ongoing service. You could even look at the top ten industries – get a good keyword domain, start loading it with content and then sell it to a company in this sector, as well as find 10 companies a month to give you recurring revenue and for you to manage their content marketing.

Reboot Reload: I have recently undergone a huge life-hack. Its taken about 18 months since I begun. I got out of debt, I got in shape and lost a lot of weight. I gave up being a Christian and became a Buddhist! I opened a savings account (my first ever) and filled it with $10,000. I became a minimalist and now I am still improving day by day. I wish looking back that I could have undertook a course that shaped this journey as it was tough and at times I didn’t know what I was doing. If it could give me the results that my own life-hack has given me I would have paid $10,000 per year easily. I have friends now asking me how I did it. There a re a lot of people who are not happy and they need a guided process or program to get them started and through until they can wake up with a burning desire for the day. Maybe you can just choose one area and offer to help people achieve this.

Complaint Hero: I am the best at resolving beef with any commercial company. As I write this I hold a cheque for $400 from a local bus company that slightly burnt my daughters leg by not having the bus heater covered correctly. My wife has a huge bunch of flowers on her kitchen table after she received an annoying sales call from a UK energy company. I get results. Then there are people who do not know how to handle these vicious corporate bullies. I have helped my wife’s two friends settle disputes and they even said they would have paid me to do this on their behalf. Maybe there is an opportunity to manage these disputes for a fee.

Pimp My Printer: I love 3d printing and think we haven’t even scratched the service yet in terms of really using this technology. I have three friends that have all purchased their own 3d printers. I am yet to get one! There are now companies starting up to collectively represent printer owners so they can take on local or large scale work. PimpMyPrinter.com is still available as a domain and would make a great brand name for this!

Positivity Training: I was working inside a large UK retailer in December and for two days they had a huge conference going on. When I inquired they said that they had “positivity training” going on and that they have this every 3 months! There were hundreds of people attending and this plays a large part of this companies structure. Get training now in positivity and start a consultancy in positivity!

Idea Management Software: I had this idea years ago being an idea mad man! The beauty and skill of an idea is writing it down and then developing with experience, more ideas, positivity, validation  and realism. Now I see a UK company is leading the way with a solution. You could even launch sector specific software or couple it with idea brainstorming workshops.

Droplet Soap: OK this is a little wild but maybe you make soap at home or maybe you partner does but offer a handmade soap the shape of a droplet and the size of a small tomato so you only use enough for one wash. This means the soap saving and waste saving  every hotel in the world will make!

Night time Delivery Service: Again an idea I have had since eBay became mainstream and people were ordering a lot of stuff to be delivered at home but they weren’t in. The solution is you launch a niche delivery courier service in your town where consumers can have their parcels delivered to the depot in the day and then when the consumer is at home in the evening they are in for the delivery. I recently seen a San Francisco company start this.

Contract App: Freelancers like me need a better way to remain professional and protected and a contract app that can also do other things such as generate invoices and NDA’s would be a great service. I like what ProperApp has done.

Man Catcher: Attacks in schools all over the world are more common and the threat will only increase as radical groups continue to commit all sorts of atrocities. A solution for schools to better protect themselves and deal with this threat is urgently required. I see a consultancy setting up to offer training, risk management and also some practical solutions such as door locks that teachers can apply quickly and intruders cannot disable. So if a man or student is walking into classroom after classroom to shoot students, each classroom can be locked down. Also how do you disable a man with a knife? How about resurrecting an old Medieval device such as this? Develop this device and sell it with training to every school in the US and Europe.

Hotel Reputation: Me and my wife stop in a lot of hotels and bed and breakfasts around Europe. Some are just awful and deserve a good rant in TripAdvisor! But what about the good hotels who get something wrong once in a while? What if there was a solution where you could work with the hotel on that issue and get rewarded for putting it right and not just going charging into leaving a damaging TripAdvisor report. So work with hotels on a service that limits damage and manages the risk. You could put flyers in the rooms, with a website where they visit to report their gripe. You deal with on behalf of the hotel and then reward them with a gift. You could set up a recurring revenue package for this. This is a company in the US that has just received funding for something similar for shops but i cant remember the name.

Crowdsourced Care: This is an idea my mother had. So this would be an alternative to going into full-time care. You could go onto a website and browse older retired peoples profiles in your area and then match them with a hobby or interest with your elderly loved one. So for example my mother one day will be very elderly and once a week I can hire a local lady who will take my mum to the garden center, buy flowers and then help her in the garden plant them. Maybe care is the wrong word here but you could have two levels, CrowdFriend and CrowdCare. Care could be retired nurses who still want to do a few hours per week. They would also put their hourly charge in their profiles.

Kids Depression Tools: Its sad that kids get depressed but at least there is a way to help kids out. A UK company is leading the way in providing tools such as books and MP3′s. Most sales will come from schools, doctors, counselors and parents.

Boutique: My wife would love a niche service where once a month boutique designers could send sketches and design boards where my wife could offer her feedback and then buy that dress. It would take a lot of work to get a good base of boutique designers but you could command a high price for the end product.

Music Tour List: So there maybe is something out there already in a form of an app but I am thinking a simple app where I put in my favorite bands and I can receive notification when they are in my town or country on tour.

My Cause: So MyCause would be an About.me type page but for peoples personal efforts in activism for good causes. So it would be a proud way of saying “I fed 300 schoolchildren this month” or “I saved a little girl in Somalia“. These would be a clear achievements in good. Why? Because people are proud and if this means everyone can now have an activism page which they fight for causes they believe in then great. You would make money by charging charities to get involved.

Funeral Videos: OK a bit dark and deep but how about a service where you can signup for a monthly fee and record a personal video say once a month. Over the years the video footage can be reviewed and each year a video of your best bits of what you would want playing at your funeral and a gift to everyone that came. So each year you build more of the video and continue to edit it. You can also upload photos and other video footage. At your death with a permission of a certified nominee you can have your video edited for the final time and released. NCH even advertise in Google for their software for this very thing.

Intropop: There are so many music apps out there. I love music and I am still not happy with any app for discovering new music until now. I have in my head the perfect app. So it would be a really minimalist design. You would put in your likes and music genre. Then in one minute you would hear a 1 minute mix of 6 x 10 second samples from the middle of each new song. If you like the sample you hit like while playing that specific sample and it would add the full track in to your daily curated list for you to listen to later. Awesome! You could make money from ads or royalties for selling songs.

Minimal Political Website: So this might not sound like a business idea but politics is bigger than ever. Everyone even the youth follow politics. The big issue still remains that politicians and political parties are not very good at communicating their messages to the youth. This would be a simple webpage and app with the top 5 things the party wants to get across about why you should support them. Also you can select a topic such as healthcare to compare the parties. You then get the political parties to advertise on it.

Recycled Jewelry: Me and my wife finally went (going) vegan after being ignorant to where our meat came from for so long and we are so glad that we did. More of the world and especially our youth are being brought up now aware of the environment and so recycled jewelry I think will be a leader here. If you could bring about a range with a great brand name, get some famous person to wear it like Lady Ga Ga and then you can continue to look for more rubbish to recycle! Again there are plenty of offshore suppliers that can help you here.

BookSnips: So this would ideally be a service for publishers to promote their new releases. A reader would download BookSnips app or sign up for the email service, select what types of book genres they are interested in and once a week they would receive a snip of a chapter from a new book. If they liked what they read they could then order the book. You would make your money by charging publishers a fee to enter snips of their books.

3D Art: I love 3D printing and so one idea i thought of would be to print 3D art for blind people to enjoy.

One Page Biz Plan App: I am against the myth of writing pointless business plans that take years to write and nobody reads! With the “lean startup” movement taking hold everyone now hopefully knows that it isn’t about the size of your business plan, but the validation of your idea that counts. I think an app that would allow you to take that idea (or any of the 100 here) and work it through would be very beneficial. I often have a leaner version of “lean” which I blog about here

Blog Writing App: How do you know what to blog about? What if your company blog needs to be focusing on whats current and trending? How about an app that emails you once a day with the current trending topics in your sector for that day. Charge a monthly subscription service to pull all of this together, package and sell it.

MyDish: This would be a mobile app or website where users can put up their own recipes and invented dishes. You could charge for advertising.

Failure Training: I see a lot of noble blog posts about failure. I don’t like the “failure-worship” I also see but that’s another article. But I really do think there is a need for failure training. Getting people to be comfortable with failing BUT also teaching them how to learn from a failure. How to do a failure postmortem. This could be done via talks, training, online courses, books, podcasts, challenges, app, consultancy etc

WordPress For Schools: Oli Barrett tweeted a good question some time back about what do you wish you had learnt at school. I replied “learn how to setup a WordPress site”. Imagine if every kid coming out of school could get online with their own website? WordPress makes it so easy to do this so I think offering a service where you go into schools and teach courses in WordPress would be well received. If I was asked to pay extra so my girl could learn how to build a website – hell yeah I would pay! (But she will be so ahead of this when she hits first school!)

AnalyticsYOU: I would love to wake-up in the morning and look at all the analytics that it has to do with ME. So I log in, see how much money I have in all of my accounts, get a quick traffic report on my websites, see how much weight I have lost in the past 30 days, how much electricity I have saved etc especially with the rise in quantified self.

CEO Dashboard: I have an idea for a web app or mobile app or both where a CEO can login and quickly see everything he needs to know without calling ten different people for updates. So he/she see’s current money in the bank, profit for this month, outstanding money owed, debt, leads, sales for the month etc. So it could be an app where you can add in streams of data, API to fetch all the info required. A bit like this.

Niche App Review: It’s app mad and apps are still growing and making loads of money. But I think one area that need a little help is some expert somewhere in a certain niche telling people like me on a weekly basis which apps I should be trying and why! For example, there could be an app reviewer focusing on sports apps, music apps, productivity apps, entrepreneur apps, marketing apps the list goes on. Start off by reviewing peoples apps and then become an expert in that niche so that any new apps will want you to review it. You can then charge a review fee, build up a newsletter list and take on sponsorship.

Spin Dinner: Sticking with the app theme here is a great app I would love to see. So you turn up in San Francisco after a long trip into town and you are a little peckish but not sure what or where to go to eat. You open up SpinDinner (SpinDinner.com available) app and literally hit “SPIN” it then will use your location to find a random dish out of the local restaurants. So you could get each restaurant to submit their top 10 dishes and these come up as opposed to just a “Chinese restaurant”. The user can also setup what they like e.g. vegan etc. You could charge each restaurant per dish.

ThisIsHowIWouldDoIt: So the idea here is a web app or mobile app where for a small fee people could submit challenges they are having and either one person or a network could resolve by saying “this is how I would do it”. Sort of a paid Quora but more in depth answers.

Blog App: So I read a lot of blogs. One blog I really like is the Buffer App blog. Imagine if Buffer had an app (this is my idea here) where at the end of the post a little popup comes up and says “What articles do you want to see on the buffer blog?” and also it will have the top 3 article ideas with how many votes each has. Then Buffer can start writing blog posts that people want to see. You could sell this as a plugin or as a service.

Twitter Stream Review: This is so needed! So many people are writing crap on their twitter feed. I’m a little guilty here also but it is my personal account and not a business account. So I think a good idea would be for a twitter review service. For $10 we review a company’s twitter feed. We take 1 months tweets and review and rate each one for value, relevancy, information, etc. We then score the account and provide guidelines for a better feed. To get this going you could pick 10 competitors in a certain space and rate their feeds and publish it on your blog.

Police Translation Service: In the UK the amount of money spent by police forces alone in translation service is unbelievable. I was working with a local Police force on an RFID project and so also knew from a personal level the challenges they have. Currently they have to call up a live translator and get charged a huge amount per call per minute or have to buy a bulk contract. If there was a way for a software application between two terminals that could negate this cost then there is money to be made. I was only too aware of this when I read about a company called ChatLingual who have a fantastic piece of software. In fact I was so hyped about their product I spoke to my contact in the Police force and said if I had x would you at least trial it and he said “hell yeah!”. So i reached out to ChatLingual hoping to form some commission-only arrangement and get their product into a huge Police force – but they never got back to me. If you could find out how ChatLingual do what they do – repackage it for the Police and ca-ching.

Curated Courses: So this is an idea using free information that is out there on the internet. So for example I want to learn about starting a blog. I would come to Curated Courses website – enter my subject, pay a fee say $12 and then they get back a hand curated course in their subject that includes the top blog posts on this subject, then a link to a how to YouTube video and a list of apps and services you can use to start your blog. The pain at the moment is there are so many pieces of information and advice out there but how do you package this into a learning module.

Followgen/TargetPattern: I am just going to come and be bold and say will someone please build what these two are doing and do a better job than they are and you will make a lot of dollar. So these companies for a fee will take your top 5 interests and then match these to people on twitter who are talking about these things. It will then from your account ‘favorite’ these tweets in the hope that these people respond by following you. You gain a lot of followers all in your niche areas. I have tried both and it works. It absolutely works. They are both making a lot of money doing it but so far they are both always down due to demand. Do it and I will sign-up.

Browser Check: How many help desks out there ask you what browser are you using? I don’t know! They should have a tool that tells them everything about your browser so they can fix your fault quick-time! So i had this idea years back and so far I have only found one guy doing this here. But I don’t think he’s pushing it so do it!

How To Be Awesome Course: The word awesome is probably one of the most marketed word used in 2013. A course in how to be awesome would be cool. It could teach you how to be cool, relax, be minimalist with monthly challenges. How to send emails properly, how to send marketing emails correctly etc How to be a better manager, better co-worker, better person! Life coaches could definitely do this instead of “life coaching” which is very off-putting and 1990′s.

Get Started: So I won some business last year for large accounting firm who wanted me to write an online “Get Started” manual for social media and anything that the older employees needed to know about the online and social world. So I asked them for subjects and then I typed a “How to Get Started” list and actions which went down really well. I think a website with say 100 topics to start with and then a how to get started list. Here is a good example from Anthony Feint.

3 Friends: Another app idea. It involves you and two other close friends and how you much you really know about each other. So you download the app – connect with three friends who also download it (viral effect) and it then sets up a set of questions about one of the friends and then the two other compete against it by getting the answers right. It then feeds back the score. You then play this game two more times alternating the friend in question. Its incredibly viral as you keep asking more and more friends to beat your score. My wife loves this one so if you do decide to do it – let me know!

GIF Tutorials: This comes from an idea Timothy E. Johansson had as day 2 of his 100 Day Growth Hacking experiment. Using GIF images to show users how something works. You could offer this service using an offshore partner and offer it to every technical company in you can speak too. Cheap but hugely effective and we now use this at our RFID business showing customers how to setup the device and it has had raving reviews.

Santa Has Been: This Christmas was special in the fact my daughter was old enough to understand and be excited by Santa turning up at our house. I used a cardboard cutout of a boot and sprinkled talc powder around them all over the house to represent magical Santa footprints. We even put fake reindeer hair by the front door. I wish there was a “Santa has been” kit that I could order each year that had all of these little tricks and more to make my little girl experience the fact Santa has truly been. If you could do this – I would buy it!

Competitor Watch: This would be a paid monthly service where I can request competitor reports on a company. You send me a report detailing all of their activities in that month via social media, news etc You could even include marketing information e.g. where are they advertising, what deals and pricing are they offering. I know there are social media listening services that offer this but this could be a little more.

Drone Service: I don’t know what yet but I have been watching the Bloomberg reports about drones being used in all sorts of sectors and I can’t help but believe this will one day be a big industry. Start something in this space, drone parts, service for Drones, their already is a lawyer setting up shop to deal with drone legal issues – what else can you think about to setup for the drone invasion?

Solar Panel Cleaning: There are loads of these solar panels up everywhere – even in dull and dark England. If the cells aren’t clean then the performance of these can be seriously reduced so keeping them clean is important. But also cleaning them you really need to know what you are doing. In the UK one guy has setup a website offering to advertise window cleaners who are currently now offering this service. He then went onto make a fortune on training and qualifying people to safely clean solar panels. There are more ways to make money than just selling and installing solar panels.

Vegan Education: Me and my wife have been ignorant for so long at the suffering of animals and so have embarked this year on a road to going vegan. Its hard and were about 90% there but boy do we feel we know nothing about food. We really do have to question everything and we wish there was a better way of going vegan. We haven’t found any decent iPhone apps, there is nothing online yet that we have found useful – just thousands of pages of info. We need a hand-held course to show us what to eat, where to get it from, how to swap this with that, the biggest challenges you will face etc

1 Goal/1 Mentor: So this is where experienced people can either give a bit of their time back for free or earn extra income mentoring young people of tomorrow. So for example a student sets up a business with a revolutionary new technology but needs guidance in how to protect it, market it etc. They can put an advert up for a mentor to see and apply. You could build a high-level platform and have FTSE 100 companies and try and invite them to join and then charge a premium for access for people looking for mentoring.  But they key would be on the fact that there is a goal and also an expert in that field as a mentor.

MySpace 2: This sounds silly but if you look at the way Facebook is now being left behind by the new younger generation who are now using sites and apps such as WhatsApp and WeHeartIt you can see they are using personalized pages and images of their favorite things. What if you offered a combined website and told them that everything they share can have an affiliate link so if some purchases something on their page they can make money.

LoveLanguage: Learning a new language by discussing stuff you love so you could have combined cooking classes with a Spanish teacher, fishing with a French teacher and yoga with a Mandarin teacher! Or combine videos or lessons about subjects or topics that people enjoy and they can learn that way by doing something they enjoy and are passionate about. This would also work really well with kids. A bit like Messy Church phenomenon but with learning a new language.

Curated Corporate Training: Companies drop huge amounts of money on training courses for their staff. One issue we have noticed here in our 7 person small company is that the larger frequently run courses do not offer us enough tailored training and so we never attend these. If there was a provider who could curate us a course that tackled our needs then this would be very appealing for example, we have started social media but we do not do it very well and we know this. We also have a blog that needs a better strategy. Maybe a one day course curated to cover all of these issues we would go for. You could go out and talk to companies, ask them what their biggest challenges are and then go and find experts in this area to deliver this and you take a commission.

Habit Homepage: An app-homepage that you can bookmark where you make your daily habit change or goal for the day or week. So you see it throughout the day and even make it your background image on your PC.

Dart: Imagine a web app where you can view items online and be notified when they become cheaper? So you might look at some shoes online but they be a little out of your budget – you can let the company know you like them but you won’t part with you hard earned until they lower the price. The retailer will have a firm list of people who will buy them at a lower rate so when sales drop off the retailer can act and still shift the stock.

Blog CV: Ryan Hoover writes some modern wisdom – check him out. One recent article he wrote was about your blog being the new CV. In fact when we recruit people we ask them for a blog link. Its a great way for you to demonstrate you, your knowledge and skill-set and give an employer a really good insight into who you are. Many people have been headhunted because of there blog. So what about people who can’t or don’t write blogs? Offer them this service!

Best Mans Speech App: So this would be an app where you survey all of your grooms friends for stories and photos for the ultimate best man’s speech. This would help you truly give a 360 about him with stories he would have never thought you would know!

CartRecover: I always imagine a great service would be one that could solve the issue around people who abandon a purchase on a website. Imagine a service that could ping an email to those people who gave up on your shopping cart before giving you money to say hey please come back and complete your purchase here’s $5 off if you do it today!

JournaLIST: This idea came from an article that I can now longer find where a journalist mentioned sending her Press Release articles does her head in! She recommended sending her an article that she could use – so all the research done, interviews, quotes and even images! So this idea is for a service that you research the top 10 journalists for your product and service and helps you prepare a piece to submit to them.

LastPillow: This would be an app where owners of small guest houses and BnB’s and even hotel could put on last minute rooms that they have. So for example I might be in London and open the app up at say 1500pm to see what accommodation is available. The hotel might have a cancellation and so now can make money on the room if they release it last minute at a discounted price.

Christmas Party Booker: Every corporate Christmas party is a nightmare to book. Why not have one destination like we do for everything else where venues can advertise and you then connect with companies.

3D Job Tests: Taking recruitment that one step further by testing potential applicants before you hire them. So in the UK there is a company who has a mock office setup and they hire actors to form a fake workplace scenario and a potential employee will spend they day going through different scenarios and being assessed. Why not take this online. Use 3D animation scenarios and a number of questions that potential candidates must go through before a company wastes times and resources interviewing lots of people.

Self-Publisher Reviews: The high number of self-publishers calls for marketing companies to offer ways to promote their work. More people means more competition. Like an app review service you could review a new publisher and their work by reading three chapters. Build up a bit of a back date in work and you will soon start getting publishers asking for your reviews. Build up an email newsletter list where you can also make revenue advertising. Even break off into niches e.g. sci-fi, poetry, self-help etc

Sell My Car: I am serious about this one – this is still a huge problem that has not been resolved. I hate selling my car. You have to deal with time-wasters and weird people kicking your tyres and looking for a cheap steal! I would happily pay £100 here in the UK for someone to sell my car on my behalf. So I don’t think this is a major international web app but more of a local service with a local agent that sells peoples cars. If you could solve the pain here – there’s money to be made.

There you are! If you need any help drop me an email.

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Don’t forget to leave a comment below – what was your favorite idea? What would you use as a consumer?

Have an awesome 2014 and be prosperous!