Each week PEX Card reaches out to industry experts to provide advice, solutions, and answers to your questions. This week we have Rieva Lesonsky, CEO of Growbiz Media answering questions.
Question: What areas are hot or trending right now in the startup/home-based business market? We provide a service to help new companies get started on the right foot and see more and more people starting businesses from home.
Answer: Hot Home-based Opportunities
Starting a virtual business is a smart idea, since it saves you money, both on commuting costs and overhead. These days, due to technological advances, you can run almost any type of business from your home. First, before you get started you need to check with your local municipality (city, town, country) to make sure you are in compliance with any zoning regulations. Food businesses may have extra restrictions on them, and what may be legal in one city, may be illegal in a neighboring town. If you want to be a retailer, there are plenty of online outlets (most notably Amazon and eBay) for you to sell your wares. Of course you should also create your own website to sell from. If you’re looking for a source of products to sell, try Alibaba. Your best bet is to target specific niches: beauty and grooming products, especially for men, are very hot right now. Speaking of creating websites, graphic designers, content providers and web developers are in high demand right now, and due to likely working across many time zones, working from home is often preferable. Business services in general are also still hot. The virtual assistant business, an industry that barely existed a decade ago, is growing.
Also, as more businesses go global, language translation services are a hot niche. Don’t discount starting a business that has been around for a while and may not be considered particularly “hot”. What’s hot and what’s trending can be transitory. It’s more important to “fill the holes.” What business is your area in need of? In some regions day-care services are lacking. I wrote about a woman who started selling plus-size bridal gowns out of her home. As much as things have changed in the world of small business, the age-old advice still holds, the key to success if “find a niche and fill it.”
Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at [email protected], follow her on Google+ and Twitter.com/Rieva, and visit her website, SmallBizDaily.com, to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free TrendCast reports.
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