One of the questions quite a few people ask is: “How and where can I find inspiration and ideas for niches/businesses that I can run from anywhere?”. If you’re curious about that too, here are some resources that will help:
1) Look at job boards
Firstly for actual jobs and secondly for ideas about some of the more in-demand skills. The following often have jobs you can do from anywhere:
- Problogger – for blogging gigs, naturally!
- Freelance Switch – for design, development, writing, illustration and miscellaneous jobs.
- And for the grandaddy resource of them all, Freelance Switch has compiled this monster list of freelancing job sites.
2) Do the obvious – use Google!
The internet behemoth has plenty of useful tools to help generate ideas. These include:
- Google News - great for getting a mass of news-worthy information about specific topics to stimulate ideas.
- Google Trends – check out the hottest trends of the moment or search to see whether anyone is searching for your idea.
- Google Groups - online discussion groups which can help stimulate ideas or work out whether there is much interest in your chosen topic.
3) Browse the blogosphere for inspiration and resources.
Search on Google using “work from anywhere”, “home-based business” or other relevant term and you’ll be faced with a whole host of sites to visit. Some good, some not so good. To save you some time, I’ve done a lot of the leg work for you and picked out some of my favourites…
- The home-based business ideas archive from Entrepreneur.com
- Springwise – “Springwise and its network of 8,000 spotters scan the globe for smart new business ideas, delivering instant inspiration to entrepreneurial minds from San Francisco to Singapore” – includes an extensive “ideas archive”.
- NicheGeek – “showing you what others overlook”, I especially like this article: 10 unconventional but successful online home-business ideas
- CoolBusinessIdeas – a wide range of ideas for many types of business. The “Trends & Insights” category might just stimulate an innovative idea for you.
- Startup Nation – lists the Top 100 Home-based Businesses each year.
- The Hot Center – at Entrepreneur.com has got the 2008 Hot List to predict the hottest industries for the coming year.
- 10 new ways to make money online - from Web Worker Daily
- 1042 Top Ways of Making Money Online – it’s not pretty and apparently it was put together “more as a laugh”, however it does have plenty of ideas.
And for some light-hearted relief and ideas to avoid, try the top 10 worst ideas to make money.
More importantly, once you’ve got a list of ideas the next crucial step is deciding which ones have potential and which ones don’t…and choosing which is the best idea for your location independent business.