25 Business Ideas for Beginners in 2017

Ready to start a business?

…but don’t know where to start? I’ve definitely been in the same situation through my entrepreneurial journey and I wanted to put together 25 business ideas for beginners who are looking to start up.

If you’re like most of my readers, you are passionate about learning and want to get it right the first time while building your business. You know that you want to start a business and you’re prepared for the ups and downs that will come with it, but you just don’t know what idea you should go with.

Start with your strengths

My advice to you if you are in this situation is to start with your greatest strengths. What are you best at? What skills have you acquired throughout you professional career? Most importantly, you want to choose a strength that you are also passionate about it.

In order to make it through the first years of starting a business is tiring and requires you to be extremely passionate about what you’re doing. If you aren’t, you aren’t going to get the life that you’re seeking out.

I know because I was in the situation where I didn’t absolutely love the business that we were in. I wasn’t waking up every day passionate about what I was doing and it wore on me over time. Since that situation, I have been making sure that my mind is 100% behind what I’m doing every day that I wake up.

How do you start with your strengths?

An aspect of every great long lasting company is happy customers. If you create an amazing experience for people right off the bat and you continue to offer them a unique solution accompanied by outstanding support, your company is going to go places.

Once you’ve decided on the strength that you are best at and most passionate about, you want to start your business with that skill. Offer it to businesses where you can help them with growing some aspect of their company. Charge an hourly rate as if you are a consultant and start to get your first customers.

As you make it through the first couple of months and you meet more and more customers and take on projects for them, you create a loyalty from them to you (as long as you are giving them a good experience!). They become strong backers for you as you go after more clients and start to transform your company into a larger agency or something completely different.

Something completely different? Sure! If you keep your ears open when taking on your first customers, you may hear a trend of a particular feature of your service that they really enjoy. If it makes sense, you can take that unique aspect and turn it into what makes your company different and valuable to customers.

See where we’re going?

Do you see how a business was just created right there piggybacked off of the strengths that you have?

• Identify strength you are passionate about
• Spin up a website with your services
• Create your social media accounts
• Start to reach out to clients with your service
• Start to perform work for clients
• Focus on the services that are getting the most attention
• Get feedback and reviews from your first customers
• Bring in new customers
• And so on…

If you want to start your own business, you can 100% do it. You don’t need an idea that is going to change the world or revolutionize how people live their daily lives. While it would be awesome to come up with that idea, you can be running a profitable and successful business before that perfect idea comes to you.

 

25 Business Ideas for Beginners in 2017

You ready for this list? These aren’t business ideas that anyone can start…they are specific to the skill sets that people may possess. BUT, everyone should be able to find one that makes sense for them to start up.

Skills Specific

1. Social Media Agency

Are you an expert at social media? It’s an industry that is growing, growing, growing even after 10+ years of strong expansion. This is a skill set that 90% of business owners need for growth and relevancy. Don’t let your skill set go to waste.

2. Facebook Ads Agency

Have you see all of the Facebook Ads that appear in your News Feed these a days? I think that it’s about 1 for every 9 items is an ad now. If you know how to create Facebook Ad campaigns and then grow them, you have a skill that is prime for the current market.

3. Google Adwords & PPC Agency

Google Adwords will never get old. Millions of searches every single day giving people the opportunity to drive new business to their website, only paying when someone actually clicks on the link. What a great idea. Help other businesses increase their ad spends smartly so they get more customers.

4. Content Creation House

Are you a content wizard? Have you ever heard the saying ‘Content is King’? It still continues to ring true. Content marketing has become a consistent marketing strategy that growing startups are using to attract more users and educate them within their niche knowledge. This is a great way to start a business.

5. A Blog

Do you enjoy writing and educating groups of people on something that you know? Blogging is a perfect avenue for that. And while it will take 6 months to 1 year to get traffic to a strong level through SEO and other non-paid strategies, you can start offering courses, services, and other content to your community to start making money. (I obviously love this idea because I run this blog :))

6. SEO Agency

SEO is a science and it takes a SEO crazy scientist to really drive traffic to your website. If this is one of your strengths, you need to be offering it to other companies or you need to be building your own site where you can offer your services. When you’re great at SEO, you have a leg up when it comes to building your site 😉

7. Web Development Shop

Have you been building web development projects in your professional career. There’s a huge demand for top talent web developers because it’s a skill set that has a steep learning curve. You can’t just start developing overnight like you could, let’s say, running a social media channel. Because of its high demand, it’s a great business to get into.

8. WordPress Site Building Business

Have you built website before using WordPress? WordPress is a great tool for entrepreneurs as they get off the ground. If you have the ability to build WordPress sites quickly and design them to modern standards, there will be people out there looking to hire you. As you take on more projects, use some of the money to hire other WordPress devs part time to take some of the work off your plate so you can keep getting customers.

9. Translation Consulting

Can you speak multiple languages? Believe it or not, that is super valuable to many large companies who conduct business overseas regularly. Put together a professional portfolio, create a strong personal brand, and network with large businesses. Present your services and find customers who are in need of translation. It could even be useful for companies attempting to expand their content into a foreign country.

10. Email Marketing Agency

Are you well versed in one of the email marketing platforms? InfusionSoft, Aweber, Mailchimp? Email marketing is one of the highest levels of conversion potential across your business. As businesses get their subscribers to a certain level, they need someone that can ensure they are optimizing their conversions. You can be that person!

11. Photography

Are you a passionate photographer outside of your 9 to 5? Why not leverage those skills to help businesses create better content for their customers? Choose specific businesses that need photography done for them, offer your services, and start to build a portfolio of clients.

12. Videography

Do you have the skills and passion for recording, editing, and touching up videos? Product videos can be extremely helpful in the sales process for businesses. Spin up a portfolio with your work, start to interact in places online where your customers could be frequenting, and get your videography business off the ground.

13. Law Firm

Did you trudge through the sleepless nights of law school, but are not sick and tired of the firm that you’re working for? If you’re passionate about a certain aspect of law, but are hating your entry level position, get out there and start to offer your expertise to businesses or individuals. Sure, it will be an upward battle at first as you gain reputation and hone your skills, but you’ll be much better off 10 years down the line.

14. Financial Advisor Firm

Do you love managing your money and seeking out new, intelligent investments? There are millions of people that have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to managing finances. Build a business offering specific financial services and build a portfolio of clients who depend upon you to help them run their finances. As your firm gets larger, bring on other financial advisors and interns to keep your operations flowing.

15. Accounting Firm

Have experience in accounting, but want more freedom in your life? If you know how to do the work, why not start your own business? Spin up a website offering the specialties that you have, start to reach out to potential businesses about handling their accounting, and slowly build up a portfolio of customers that become dependent upon you.

16. Real Estate Company

Have you been in the real estate game for years? Do you love the industry? If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to both of those questions, building a real estate business is an amazing option for you. Take the skills you’ve learned, package it together into a sexy brand for your local area, and start to speak with potential buyers. Similar to any of these ideas, make your first customers happy and incentivize them to refer you to their friends. Once you have too much work on your plate, hire an assistant to help with the showings and management.

17. Landscaping Business

Have you been landscaping lawns for years for someone else’s company? If you know how to mow, weed wack, trim hedges, and build simple retainer walls, why aren’t you running the operation on your own? There will be a small investment to buy the equipment and get a truck, but then as you mow more lawns, you level up instead of staying in the same position in your current company.

18. Cleaning Service

Everyone needs their house cleaned, right? Do you find the process of cleaning to be relaxing? Toss in a pair of headphones and clean it up. Put together a package of your cleaning that is organized, competitively priced, and offers great customer service. Get the word out locally to home owners and pick up your first customers. Impress your first customers and give them a discount to recommend it to their friends. Before you know it, you’ll have so much work you won’t know what to do. At that point, hire more people!

19. Dog Walking Business

Do you absolutely adore dogs? Do you catch yourself saying ‘ohhhhhhh’ every time that you see a new dog while out? There’s a business in that passion. If you’re located in a metro area, there are hundreds of people around you who own dogs and who work full time jobs. Hop on an app like Rover to get your dog walking reputation built up and then start to offer your services on your own site.

eCommerce

20. Amazon Store

Have you heard of or know people that have made a lot of money selling on Amazon? There is definitely a learning curve involved to learn the intricacies of selling on Amazon (maybe 3-6 months, depending on your commitment to learning), but it’s absolutely possible. Amazon is the #1 marketplace for buying online…you can build a business selling on the site without the worry of marketing. They take care of it for you!

21. eBay Store

Have you always been a passionate shopper of eBay since it started? You wouldn’t be the only one. eBay offers an amazing opportunity for anyone to start selling unique products online with a massive market of loyal buyers. Similar to Amazon, there will be a learning curve, but there are hundreds of resources out there that can teach you if you really want to. Find the products, spin up the store, start selling, and tweak as you go along.

22. Shopify Store

Do you see a niche for an online store that doesn’t exist yet? I was speaking with a friend who is interested in starting his own eCommerce store on Shopify and he was frustrated that there wasn’t a store geared towards urban dwellers passionate about spending their time in nature. That’s a frustration near and dear to his heart giving him the passion to start up his own Shopify store. It’s an involved business getting it off the ground, but can become extremely lucrative once up and running.

23. eCommerce Consultancy

Have you been in eCommerce for years working for a handful of companies? If you’re still passionate about it, but want to do your own thing, you are in an amazing place. The eCommerce industry is continuing to grow at record paces bringing flocks of people to the industry. If you have the skills to teach others how to start up, you have a business opportunity. Join sites like Clarity.fm where you can display your expertise and talk to startups about eCommerce. Who knows where those relationships will lead.

24. Store Building Agency

Have you been building online stores for the past 5 to 10 years? Like I said, thousands flocking to eCommerce. Why aren’t you taking your knowledge, packaging it into a specialized service, and offering it to new business owners? I see these types of companies pop up all of the time and the greater majority of them find super success. Build the stores on your own at first then hire other store builders to take on projects while you still make a profit off them from the clients. You could easily have 5-10 stores being built each month with a strong team.

25. eCommerce Software or Apps

Because eCommerce is growing so fast, there is always a new need for new technology…inventory, orders, shipping logistics, customer service, etc. Look at the Shopify App store and you’ll see the potential that web developers have to create simple programs that make online store owners’ life easier. If you have experience with eCommerce and web dev, there is a huge opportunity to build apps, sell them, and take on special projects for larger companies.

 

Do You Have Other Ideas?

Please share them in the comments.

I hope that this article gave you some inspiration surrounding starting your first business and which idea to start up with. I made this list of 25 business ideas for beginners to open people’s eyes to the fact that they can start a business at any time, as long as they have a special skill set that they are passionate about.

You also need to be prepared for hard work, downs, and times when it doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out. I’ve been at it for 7+ years now and there are plenty of tough times. With the right mindset and passion though, those down points become learning experiences that you never forget and that make you a stronger person. It molds you into a smart business owner who knows the steps to take to repeat success.

Did this list help you in understanding how you could start a business? Let me and the other readers know in the comments so we can all support each other’s efforts.