Entrepreneur Magazine recently identified three trends which new businesses would do well to consider…

1. The affordable splurge. While consumers still want designer brands, they are demanding deals. In the past five years, 73 new sample sale websites — like Gilt.com and HauteLook.com — have launched, selling luxury goods at a discount.

2. Personalised options. Consumers are more likely to spend if what they are buying has been tailored specifically for them.

3. Health and Eco- credentials. Consumers are increasingly willing to spend more money on their health and the environment, according to IBIS World data.

People are lazy. I know this because I am a person – and lazy! While price and quality are two key reasons why we choose one product or service over another, convenience is important for a lot of us. It explains why home shopping deliveries are becoming increasingly popular, and services like hairdressing, beauty therapy and tutoring have a large number of ‘we-come-to-you’ mobile operators making a good living. But here’s the question – might there be an opportunity for someone in your market to gain a competitive advantage by visiting customers in their homes?

Servemehere.com is a website which showcases dozens of different products and services which are available on a home visit basis – many of which you perhaps wouldn’t normally associate with this sort of delivery. Take a look. It could give you some inspiration.

The craze for selfies, which every self-respecting child and teenager is currently participating in, has created an unusual and unexpected side-effect – head lice are spreading at an alarming rate. The lice spread by contact – contact which is more prevalent than ever as kids squeeze together to get in the latest at-arms-length shot.

Now here’s the thing – treatments and remedies are unregulated and desperate parents will happily hand over large quantities of their hard earned money in exchange for a solution. The Lice Centre, based in Connecticut in the US charge $200-$500 for a house call. They now have 10 employees in 14 states. Turnover is in the millions.

Is this something you could do here in the UK? It’s not the most glamorous business in the world, but those yielding the biggest profits rarely are.

Before the internet came along, opportunities to work in journalism were limited. The only way to find an audience for your words was via mainstream media. The online arena has opened up a whole new world for would-be journalists with myriad opportunities. One such opportunity is being exploited by Tennessee-based Thomas Scott, whose company Brand Journalists provides online blogs and content for local companies.

Brand Journalists offers blog and web content, ghostwriting services and reporting on the human stories that make companies interesting to their customers. For example, for an insurance broker, Scott’s team blogs about issues related to city life, such as what to do if the bath in the apartment upstairs overflows through your ceiling. “If you try to sell renter’s insurance as an agent, people tune out,” he says. “But when you talk about the coffee they drink and neighbourhoods they like, and how important it is to have renter’s insurance as part of that story, it connects with people.”

Every company, these days, has a website; many have blogs and social media interaction with their customers. The majority are boring. Is this an area you could specialise in – providing interesting content for companies in your area, who have neither the time nor inclination to do it themselves?