Category: Business Ideas

If you have good writing skills why don’t you capitalize on this skill for your retirement business? But there is a catch to these types of businesses. Don’t think your main business will be doing the writing. You main business will be selling. You’ll see as I go along what this means.
You could write a book and try to find a publisher to publish your book. It’s a low probability situation that a well known publisher will pick up your first book. You could take your book and have a “self-publishing” company put it together and make it available at all of the on-line book stores and any book store can order it for a customer. But you are the “Chief Marketing Officer” and the hardest part of the job is generating the sales.
If you have an expertise in some industry along with your writing skills, you could produce a newsletter for that industry. Most industries have national and statewide magazines. Focus on a citywide newsletter for that industry. Let companies buy advertisement to sell their spare capacity-time, spare raw material inventory, job openings or their unique expertise. You will have to add a number of industry interest articles each month, much of which you can get from the Internet, with proper approval from the author. You can also write articles about local industry leaders. Much of the work will be maintaining the mailing or e-mailing lists to send the newsletter to and getting it out. You will see that much of your time will be in the advertisement sales and newsletter distribution tasks.
You can also select a small “interest” or “geographic” area and develop a newspaper for that area. College campuses, ethnic groups, noted neighborhoods and hobbyists are some areas you can consider. The hard part of setting up a successful newspaper is finding a sector that businesses will be willing to buy advertisement to reach that audience. Once you have a large enough critical mass of advertisers, it is easy to tailor the articles and reports to be of interest to these groups.
Writers get your quills out and try one of these ideas. It is a low initial investment to get these businesses going. You will put in a lot of your time to get them started but it won’t take too much up front money. Small publications frequently do not provide enough profit for a full time job, but we are looking for businesses that will only supplement your income. More details of each of these ideas can be found in my book.

This new weekly column, 101 New Business Ideas for Retirees, is compiled specially for GetEntrepreneurial.com readers by Stan Spector. View all articles in this column by Stan Spector.
Stan Spector is the author of “Baby Boomers’ Official Guide to Retirement Income – Over 100 Part-time or Seasonal Businesses for the New Retiree”. The book’s website can be found at StanSpector.com.

New retirees are looking for a different type of small business than the general public. If they are on Social Security, they may be penalized if they make over $12,600. Some private retirement policies will also penalize you if you earn money in your retirement years.
Many retirees dream of taking extended vacations or wintering in Florida. They want their new business to work around their life. Many insist that they do not want to have employees since having employees complicates the business and necessitates payroll services, accountants, and workman’s compensation insurance that quickly eat into their profits. They want a business that they can run, possibly with the aid of their spouse, and any outside labor would be hired through an independent contractor. Some of the retirees are looking for a hobby business, making some money while enjoying their hobby and traveling around to locations and conventions for their hobby.
Business brokers try to sell mid-sized businesses costing $100,000 to $1 Million. If the business would fail, this would put a big dent into anyone’s retirement savings. Brokers wouldn’t make much money if they got a 10% commission selling a $3,000 business so they push the larger sized businesses. Likewise, franchises require large up front franchise fees and most of them are centered on businesses that have high start up costs. But retirees should look for businesses that cost under $5,000 to start and try to fund these businesses out of their own pocket. Most of the low investment businesses would fall into the service sector where you are really selling your specialized skilled labor time.
And all of these goals are really possible. The following criteria will be used for businesses in this column.

• They are mini-businesses run by the owner and the spouse with no one on the payroll.
• They should be able to start up the business for $3,000 to $5,000. Many of the people who start these businesses may decide to grow the business with more investment after they have proven their business can produce good cash flow to them.
• No long term lease commitments (space or equipment)
• They are seasonal or part-time businesses. They will not require the 60 to 80 hours a week to start them that most start-up businesses require.
• The cash flow may be small but on an hourly basis it should be worth the owner’s time. Some may provide a real benefit in tax savings by utilizing portions of you house or apartment, allow you to travel to hobby conventions as a business expense or renting property you own to the business.

I will try in future columns to provide you with some new ideas for your business start-up that meet these criteria.

This new weekly column, 101 New Business Ideas for Retirees, is compiled specially for GetEntrepreneurial.com readers by Stan Spector.
Stan Spector is the author of “Baby Boomers’ Official Guide to Retirement Income – Over 100 Part-time or Seasonal Businesses for the New Retiree”. The book’s website can be found at StanSpector.com.

Business Advice Pro: Entrepreneurs spend days, weeks, months in order to come up with new products which, very often, might not even sell. But what if you could see its selling power before you create the product?
This would mean you don’t spend the time nor money to create products or services that won’t sell. In a very broad view, it might look like I’m suggesting you to become a scam artist, but just think about it. You are not selling air. You are actually selling a product which you don’t have yet. But if you see the product would actually sell, you make it happen, you create the product.
When selling something that does not exist, you test the waters. You see if people have any interest towards it. If you get a lot of people to sign up for free, you already have a knowledge that this product actually has the power to sell. And if that’s so, you will start working on it, if needed 24/7 for two weeks in a row. You now know it is going to sell like crazy (if you won’t make any fatal mistakes during the actual selling process that is). You already have a certain number of people who are interested in buying your product. You know it because they have subscribed via your free subscription form. Just to be notified when the product gets ready.
Selling something that doesn’t exist (yet) [Business Advice Pro]

WSJ.com: Sick of cleaning sticky floors after bouts of beer pong, a popular campus drinking game, recent Northwestern University graduates Andy Wright and Mike Johnson put their engineering degrees to use. They devised a triangular rubber mat that helps keep plastic cups of beer from toppling over.
Then they started marketing the mats through their online company, Bottle Cap Technologies, for $9.99. They say they have sold more than 100 since April and are negotiating to sell 1,000 in one swoop to an online store called drinkingstuff.com. “Now, you don’t have to clean up the mess and you don’t waste beer,” says Mr. Johnson.
These guys aren’t exactly Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. But Messrs. Wright and Johnson, both 22 years old, are part of a new wave of young people trying to make money tapping into their peers’ devotion to beer pong, a cross between ping-pong and beer chugging. As beer-pong season hits a peak with the start of the school year, these beer-pong entrepreneurs are running tournaments and peddling customized beer-pong tables, balls and apparel.
Thwock, Gulp, Kaching! Beer Pong Inspires Inventors [WSJ.com]

Businesspundit: If you want to be an entrepreneur but need a business idea, consider renting ducks. It’s apparently doing very well in Germany.
Germans are lining up to rent farm animals to help with the gardening as part of a new green scheme. Werner Kiwitt, who runs an ecological park in Schleswig-Holstein, is offering sheep to cut the grass and ducks to eat the slugs.
He said: “You get free fertiliser provided by the animals as well, so it’s not a bad deal.”
Who would have thought you could turn sheep and duck doo into a selling point? Now that’s a good entrepreneur.
Weird Business Ideas: Rent a Duck [Businesspundit]