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Small home or cottage business ideas - what have you got?

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mikeselectricstuff:


--- Quote from: bd139 on October 29, 2018, 09:47:58 am ---The best thing to do is:

1. Perform a service. This requires nothing tangible and no stock.

--- End quote ---
But it does require that you be there most/all of the time, and can cause significant scheduling issues once you get multiple customers.

A nice thing about a successful product is it earns money when you're not doing anything.
 

bd139:
You need multiple customers here at least. IR35  >:(

cdev:
Oftentimes some industry has evolved in a high margin environment and pricing is totally disproportionate to costs but all the major manufacturers have simply found there is so little competition that somebody can come in and even if they make the product by hand, undercut the commercial products by some huge margin, and offer equivalent or better quality, they can succeed and even thrive, but their volume will likely be low because they just dont have the capital.
The drawback is, once you go into business, eventually the big players may just lower their prices (or buy you out, or just ignore you and count on your lack of advertising resources to limit your sales.) Or somebody with even lower costs, may copy your product and sell it for even less.

Except in the last case (which is probably the most likely, unfortunately) there may still be the space in the market for you to operate and make a profit as long as you want.

Maybe you will be able to expand it too.

The key is finding a niche market.

coppice:
A huge problem for many people starting up on their own is they start because they have had a good idea for a product or service - just one good idea. That idea may fail from day one. If it succeeds it won't remain successful forever. Once you have gone your own way, it can be hard to get back into well paid employment. So, keep focussed on what you are doing, or its doomed to failure, but always make some time to consider what you do next.

AndyC_772:
I wouldn't be too concerned about that; after all, every company has a first product.

If it's a success, then that's great.

If not, then:

- *accept* that it wasn't a success. Don't go throwing good money after bad.
- try to figure out why it wasn't a success. (Hint: it probably wasn't the technical details of the product)
- make a new product which is more commercially viable than the first one.

The new product doesn't have to be objectively "better"; it needs to be a closer fit for the needs of a particular group of customers. That could mean simpler, cheaper, easier to use and understand, and NOT having more features, better accuracy, or whatever.

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