Affluent consumers are becoming increasingly selective about the food they eat, and that’s opening up a huge market for companies like AgLocal based in San Francisco. AgLocal offers a monthly subscription service to consumers, providing meat packages with produce from local farms, together with detailed information about what they’re eating plus recipes.

The success of the service depends on consumers being prepared to pay a premium price for top quality produce while helping local farmers at the same time. It’s not something you’d want to try to copy in a downmarket area then, but could be something to copy in an affluent area of the UK.

The Daily Mail recently reported on Mollie Price, a 6 year old who has supposedly just opened her third confectionery shop in the Welsh market town of Welshpool. Each one is appropriately called, Mollies. As a result, she has been declared one of the youngest entrepreneurs in Britain.

Now I hope I’m not bursting anyone’s bubble when I say that I don’t care how bright a 6 year old is – they can’t open and run one proper shop – let alone three. But as a vehicle for getting some free publicity, they take some beating. Mollies mum or dad obviously realised that a 6 year old with a shop is more interesting than a 36 year old with a shop.

So could you ‘use’ your kids in this way? Don’t feel guilty, they’ll cost you a fortune over their lifetime, so why not get some of it back in advance!

China is now home to over 618 million Internet users, 80 percent of whom access the web via their smartphones. A large proportion of those – something over 30% – are now also shopping online.

It’s so easy to get locked into your own small world, and not even think of the potential elsewhere. But with over half a billion web users in China alone, that seems to be a pretty foolhardy approach.

So do you have a product which would appeal to the Chinese market – or could you create one? If you do or you could, the sales could make what you’re doing here in the UK look pretty pathetic by comparison.

I just came across a business in the United States that rents out fine china for events ranging from wedding to afternoon teas, right through to pig roasts. The owners have built up a collection of thousands of pieces and are now capitalising on it. This seems like a pretty limited market to me, but I could be completely wrong. Maybe there’s an opportunity for someone here in the UK to do something similar. Perhaps there’s a bigger market to be had in renting out antique furniture for events – either private or commercial.

If this interests you, I’d suggest researching the market and then forming an alliance with an established antique furniture dealer. They may welcome the opportunity to make some money from their slow moving stock.

Here’s an approach to aggressive marketing that I don’t recommend, but perhaps there’s something to take from it.

Police in the US said that a woman they dubbed a real-life “cleaning fairy”, broke into a house and a left a bill for the housework she did. According to police, the woman entered the residence while homeowner Mallory Bush slept, did some light cleaning and then left a bill for $75 on a napkin before leaving. Unfortunately for the “cleaning fairy,” crime didn’t pay and she was arrested.

Now obviously you can’t go breaking into houses. Nor can you force work or products on people and then charge them. But if you can find a way to ethically give your potential customers a ‘free sample’ of what you sell or what you do, it could be a great source of new business. I’ve experimented with this by giving away free books, and people really seem to appreciate it and respond well.