It’s approaching the time of year when children write to Santa but he doesn’t have time to send a personal reply to everyone. I just read about a man in the United States who realised this, and also that as he had a nice fountain pen and some good stationery he could help out with the correspondence. He got started by contacting parents in his local community who also knew other people with parents. Word of the service quickly spread and at $25 a letter it proved to be a lucrative, if temporary business.

Is there any reason why you can’t do this near where you live? Santa needs help everywhere.

There are over 800,000 empty homes in the UK. That’s the situation behind www.youspotproperty.com a company that pays members of the public for alerting them to empty properties with potential. Over the past 5 years, the company have bought and re-commissioned over 100 properties, mainly after receiving a tip-off from the public. The company give property spotters a £20 M&S or iTunes voucher for alerting them to a relevant property and then 1% of the selling price if they’re able to track down the owner and negotiate a deal.

If you’re based in London (that’s where the company operate) this could be a no-risk and no-hassle source of a second income for doing nothing more than keeping your eyes open. Thinking a bit bigger, could you partner with property investors to copy the concept in other parts of the country?

We’ve covered myriad dating concepts over the past couple of years and I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone turned to science.

Singldout is a San Diego-based company that has devised an algorithm that matches single people based partly on DNA compatibility and partly on the results from a psychological questionnaire. The company claim they can determine chemistry between two people based on their genes. Singldout works with Instant Chemistry, a Toronto-based lab services company that administers the DNA testing and determines the basic genetic profiles of members.

Subscriptions cost $149 for three months and $199 for six months, but the company have wider plans. They are investigating the possibility of companies using genetic profiling for everything from putting together work teams to creating the office seating chart.

I’ve no idea how successful this is likely to be for the end user, but it’s an angle. And in a crowded market that’s what you need. There’s certainly a lot of interest in DNA and genetic profiling so any service that uses them should certainly get attention.