50 Brilliant Ideas

All these simple ideas have worked for me or for people I have known. Most of them have become freelance businesses. Remember, listen to complaints of unmet needs and take note of what people say they will pay money for. Maybe one of these projects could be yours.

Teach people to do the things you find easy - cooking, typing, sewing, painting or word processing, for example.
Write a guidebook about your new town for newcomers, tourists or visiting grandparents.
Learn a new skill and turn it into a business. Aromatherapy, reflexology, meditation, yoga, astrology, hypnotherapy, writing, painting, teaching, flower arranging, cooking, stencilling, fitness, interior design and so on.
If you can't do anything artistic or creative yourself, then be aware that there are lots of artists out there who are hopeless at marketing. Offer to help them with their business. I knew an artist who teamed up with a marketing person and together they ran a successful Christmas card business.
Teach other people to teach something that you already teach yourself. After I taught word processing and ran my own computer training company , I taught others how to teach too and run their own training courses. Produce a course outline and sell it to potential teachers.
Make your life one long garage sale. Buy things cheaply and sell them at a mark-up.
Export local goods back home.
Import goods from home to the place you are living.
Print tee-shirts or sweatshirts with locally desirable motifs.
Offer to act as a guide to other people's visitors.
Type from home. People often need their dissertations, curriculum vitae or labels typed or word-processed. Small businesses may not be able to afford a secretary of their own.
Paint individual greeting cards.
Paint Christmas cards, get them printed, and sell them at Christmas bazaars and to friends.
Paint a picture or take a photograph, enlarge it at a copy centre, and produce laminated copies to sell as place mats.
Offer to paint or photograph people's homes.
Make and sell chutney or jams from local ingredients.
Offer to make soft furnishings for your friends.
Get a wood-burning pen and engrave personalised messages on simple boxes, memo holders and other gift items.
Make items out of locally available products. Perhaps you could turn shells into jewellery or ornaments.
Make special occasion cakes to sell for office birthdays and other celebrations. You could even deliver the cake yourself, with a helium balloon and a personally delivered song or poem.
Start a mobile sandwich service selling in local offices.
Offer to rewrite any poorly translated English for local companies.
Contact food manufacturers and see if they need people to promote items in supermarkets.
Contact exhibition organisers to see if stallholders require help.
Offer a dog walking or child walking service.
Prepare cocktail nibbles for delivery to parties.
See if someone you know would like to start a takeaway or ironing service and offer to market these services on a commission basis.
Offer to water plants, feed cats or open and close curtains for people who are away on holiday.
Offer to look after people's holiday homes off-season. When a British couple based in France thought about this, they decided to help them rent them out too. The idea became a thriving business and franchise for http://www.franceonecall.com.
Take photographs of local scenes and sell them to photo libraries back home.
Rent out baby equipment to visitors, or sell second hand baby equipment.
Start a group for other mothers, organising playgroups, support, equipment hire and coffee mornings. Charge for a monthly newsletter.
Lead a conversation group, or a book group, in your home in a language you speak well.
Join a recruitment agency and offer to do temporary work or holiday cover.
Start your own recruitment agency.
Create a website covering what's going on in your local community and charge local service companies to advertise.
Run a crèche or playgroup close to shops.
Offer to do shopping for people and deliver it to their home. This would be really useful to mothers of small children who live in apartments.
Make bean bag chairs to order, in fabric chosen by your clients.
Grow herbs or plants to sell at garage sales or fundraising events.
Make Christmas decorations or handmade crackers and sell them.
Offer to take newcomers round the shops and markets on a familiarisation tour.
Write travel articles on where you go on holiday and sell them to your local magazines upon return. Take good quality photographs while you are away, and investigate all the travel logistics and prices.
Organise children's parties. You could create them according to a theme, arrange games, provide food and perform a puppet show or narrate a story.
Teach people how to cook the food from your home country, showing them where to buy the best ingredients locally.
Start a newcomers support group and consider selling membership to local companies.
Run a curriculum vitae production service.
Become proficient in beauty therapy, colour or style analysis and run a business from your home or visit your clients in their homes. Wardrobe weeding and personal shopping are also popular services.
Become a counsellor, career adviser or life coach. You should even be able to study online for your certification and work with local clients face to face, and with others by telephone and email.
Buy books, videos or audio-tapes at discount from small publishing companies and sell them locally.
Organise local seminars, plays or concerts from visiting speakers or artists. Often you can identify local sponsors who would be glad to help with funding.
Become a qualified Teleclass leader, and run your own seminars by telephone from anywhere to anywhere in the world. Find out more at http://www.teleclass.com

Fifty Brilliant Ideas