Every employee that decides to start their own business venture does so because they perceive entrepreneurship as the shortest route to self-actualization. In other words, they wish to unleash the entrepreneurial potential deep inside themselves and seize control of their own destinies.

Yeah, right. In reality, almost everyone who starts their own small business does so for two reasons. First, they think they’ll get paid their true worth. And secondly, they relish the freedom where they aren’t answerable to someone else.

Budding entrepreneurs need to find work that they can do during the flexible hours that make up their spare time. That way, they can deliver that much-rehearsed speech to their existing boss only when they’re sure they can afford to.

Here are 10 new business ideas:

1. E-Commerce

If you’d like to own a retail store, but can’t afford either to pay the rent or to put in the hours, then e-commerce is for you. It takes very little investment to start up, you can begin on Amazon and eBay, and you can expand with your own e-commerce website as you start generating revenue streams.

The principles behind e-commerce are exactly the same as those for other forms of retail:

1. buy cheaply, usually in wholesale and bulk;
2. sell the products for less money as there are no overhead costs;
3. make sure that the difference between your buying and selling prices (your profit margins) is enough to cover your costs, and deliver a healthy profit stream.

It ain’t rocket science, not least because someone who builds a successful e-commerce web site design can often make more than a rocket scientist.

2. SEO (search engine optimization)

If you like the online world, you can specialize in the search engine optimization (SEO) field. This requires specialist skills, which helps a web site to appear higher in search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. With search engine optimization services, you need to be able to identify keywords and write rich keyword based website content without repetition becoming too obvious. You see? The keyword “search engine optimization” appears three times just in this short paragraph.

3. Telemarketing services

Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Maybe it would suit you better to find part-time work that you can do from home around hours that largely suit you. In that case, why not investigate freelance telemarketing opportunities?

Of course, you’ll only succeed if you’re good with people, and don’t mind the occasional bit of ripe language from callers whom you’ve dragged out of the john. You won’t make a fortune (most telemarketing companies earn $6-$12 an hour) although there may well be commission opportunities as well.

5. Call Center Services

Providing you have a broadband connection, you could always think about offering inbound call center services. This is quite similar to telemarketing services, but you’ll be handling inbound calls from customers and the public, so it better suits people who can’t cope with cold calling. You just log on to the call center using your home computer, and calls are automatically routed to your home. And you have exactly the same applications, on-screen scripts, and information that someone based at the real call center has.

Just think. You might end up working for your voip services provider, bank, or credit card processing companies.

As if you aren’t already.

6. Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay Per Click Advertising is all about pay for performance marketing. This is when advertisers don’t pay a flat rate to have their banner appear on a Web site. Instead they pay for performance – every time someone clicks on the banner and links through to the “landing” page.

It’s absolutely essential that these banners and text ads are constantly monitored in order to make sure that they continue to perform well. This is called Pay Per Click, and takes the form of someone analyzing volumes of data. If you love data analysis, this may be an ideal entrepreneurial business for you.

7. Website Design

It was only recently that Web site design was an incredibly difficult job that required many skills and much specialist knowledge. Nowadays, anyone with a good eye for layout and a professional web design software can build very appeal looking websites. To check it out, just type “easy Web design application”  in Google.

Of course, large companies still need specialist web designers, but with mom-and-pop stores going online all the time, there’s plenty of demand for talented small business website design companies as well. You’ll do even better if you team up with a graphics designer.

8. Tax Preperation

Entrepreneurs are often bad at keeping their books in order. So there may be plenty of small businesses in your area that would welcome help with their tax preperation.

You may have to offer to pop in every week or two to pick up the latest invoices, receipts, bank statements and so forth, but the work itself can be done in your own home at times that suit you.

Tags: E-commerce Solutions, entrepreneurs, SEO, small business

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