Many business opportunities arise out of a personal problem or adversity. When Kate Arian was hospitalised in New York  due to needing a double lung transplant, one of the surprising things that bothered her was the inability to get her regular beauty treatments done. It was at that point that she came up with the idea of  Manicare, a Manhattan based mobile nail service  that caters to people who are either hospitalised of housebound. A year after launch, the service is generating $5,000 a month in sales.

If this can work in Manhattan, there’s no reason why it can’t work in other urban areas. Thinking more widely, what other service could you bring to the hospitalised or housebound?

The desire to learn something new is a strong one, and there are thousands of people out there with the knowledge and ability to teach new skills. That’s the premise behind Dabble.com a site that allows users to either find or teach a class. Venue owners can also sign up to promote their shop, café, restaurant, hotel or function room as a suitable venue for classes.

The site handles bookings, payments and promotion of the class leaving the teacher free to focus on planning and delivering their class. No teaching qualifications are needed to get involved, and the revenue is split down the middle between company and tutor.

At the moment this is confined to the US, but two things to take from it:

1. Could a similar site be successful in the UK? I think it could.
2. Do you have knowledge or skills you could pass on through a class?

A lot of businesses face a difficulty which is often overlooked – the better they are at their job, the faster they lose their customers! A customer comes to them with a problem, they solve the problem, and the customer doesn’t need them anymore. That was the situation faced by HowAboutWe, an online dating service. The more successful they were, the faster they lost their customers.

The solution to this anomaly can often be found by asking the following question… “What will the customer need next?” That’s what HowAboutWe did and they realised that people new to a relationship may need help and support in building and developing the relationship over the long haul. That’s a new side to the business they’re now developing.

If you’re in a ‘problem solving’ business – and most of us are – giving some thought to what products or services your customers will need once you’ve solved their initial problem, may well lead you into new and lucrative areas. Someone will make money fulfilling those needs, so why not you? You solved their first problem so you already have a strong relationship to build upon.

If you’re looking for profitable business opportunities, in any market niche, there’s a simple two-question process you can use to unearth them. Simply approach people operating businesses in the niche you’re interested in, and ask them two questions:

1.What is the most important activity in your business?

2.Do you have any pain associated with that activity?

Can you see why this is so powerful? It lays bear the key problems which companies have – the ones they will most likely pay to find a solution for. If you can come up with a way to eliminate or reduce the pain, you have a ready made business opportunity, which is almost guaranteed to be profitable.

Social media is becoming increasingly important to businesses, but many of them simply aren’t up to speed and have no strategy in place. There’s money to be made by providing them with one. You could do it yourself, or you could take a look at something like SocialOwl, a  turnkey social media business.

SocialOwl provides  entrepreneurs with all of the tools necessary to offer small businesses  a comprehensive social media strategy. In essence, they’ve built a platform for creating and implementing these strategies which you can tap into and utlise.

To work with SocialOwl, you pay a  flat monthly fee to use their service, along with a nominal fee for each business that you sign up. The company provide you with a website and the back up and support you need.  If you want to learn more about whether this might work out for you, just visit their website.

www.SocialOwl.com