2. Start a newsletter for role playing game enthusiasts. In each issue, give subscribers: tips about how to win games, review new games, act as a forum of discussion about games, sell space to classified advertisers, etc.
3. Produce a series of whodunit audio cassettes. Get your cassettes stocked at book shops and build up a reputation of producing the best whodunit cassettes. Alternatively, produce a series of X-rated whodunit cassettes. These X-rated cassettes can be sold by mail order.
4. Publish a booklet which provides a lengthy list of mottoes for use by: societies, clubs, institutions, families and individuals. Get the booklet stocked at shops. Also start a postal service which devises mottoes. Use a page in the booklet to advertise your postal service.
5. Provide yourself with a regular income by selling odd and unusual facts to all kinds or publications. For example, sell financial facts to financial magazines; football facts to football program publishers; photography facts to photography magazines, etc.
6. Bring out a series of booklets or cassettes about how to get rid of, or escape from, various types of people, such as unsatisfactory employees, salesmen, bores, fools, ugly admirers, officials, etc. Sell the booklets or cassettes as complete sets by mail order or through book shops.
7. Produce and distribute an audio cassette library of fairy tales. Put together a comprehensive collection of fairy tales. Sell these cassettes by post as a complete library or start a monthly club.
8. Make, from either leather or fabrics, kitchen wall pouches. Each pouch is for holding 'money off' coupons, shopping lists, or other bits of paper which are worth keeping. Find retailers to stock your wall pouches.
9. Start a universal correspondence club. This club should be able to boast that it can find someone to correspond about any subject. Produce a leaflet about your club and list many subjects. Recruit club members by placing classified ads in a diversity of publications at home and abroad.
10. Set up a service for newsletter publishers. Your service might include: handling back issues, enveloping and mailing issues to subscribers, and selling advertising space. Sell your service to newsletter publishers.
11. Begin a postal business which hires out and sells Welsh or Gaelic spoken word cassettes and videos. If you have a knowledge of either language, produce many of the cassettes yourself.
12. Publish a newsletter about the changing English language. The contents would include information about new words and meanings. Sell subscriptions to writers, academics, and advertising agencies, and others who might be interested in new words.
13. Give tuition in your own home to those who want to improve their spoken English. Almost everyone is a potential student because most people would like to be more articulate. Use local advertising to attract students.
14. Publish a newsletter for separated and divorced people. In the newsletter discuss issues relevant to being separated or divorced. Also include classified listings of people who are looking for partners.
15. Commission an artist to do a contemporary map of your town or region in the style of maps from antiquity. Produce and frame prints of this map. Distribute these to shops throughout your town or region.
16. Invest in a course of singing lessons. If others find your voice pleasing to listen to, earn money from singing in pubs and clubs.
17. Begin a mail order business which sells stencil craft. Make stencils which can be used by woodworkers. For example, to add an attractive design to their work. A stencil might depict flowers, and a woodworker would use paint or ink to imprint the design on to an artifact.
18. Become a street or market craft worker. Sit at a stall in a market making, for example, ornaments from wire or shells. Display the goods you make on your stall. The act of making the ornaments attracts the curiosity of passers by. This should result in a respectable level of sales.
19. Make football rosettes in a variety of sizes. Sell these rosettes outside football grounds on match days.
20. Start a general problem solving service for personal affairs. This service acts as a private agony aunt. An expert is provided to deal with the problem a client is trying to solve. The expert might give advice by post, telephone, or in person.
21. Learn the art of making stained glass windows. Use your newly acquired skills to earn money, from: 1) teaching people in your own home, 2) holding courses at bed and breakfast houses out of season, or 3) holding classes in a quiet corner of art and craft shops, 4) making windows to order.
22. Start an agency which supplies entertainers to pubs, restaurants and wine bars. The entertainers might include, disc jockeys, musicians, or striptease artists. Visit a lawyer to see what legal requirements you must comply with, then advertise for entertainers to add to your books.
23. Make low budget promotional videos for pop groups and solo artists who are just starting out. Advertise your service at music shops and in the music press. Once you receive an enquiry about your service, give the potential client a persuasive sales presentation.
24. Design Christmas sleigh bells for cars. These bells are attached to the exterior of a car. The motion of the car causes the bells to ring like sleigh bells. During the Christmas period these bells should add a pleasant seasonal flavor to cars.
25. Bring out a correspondence course which teaches people how to be a consultant. This course should deal with every aspect of setting up a successful consultancy.
26. Put together a mail order catalogue of spoken word audio cassettes. Canvass audio cassette publishers to see how they can help you. Place as many audio cassettes in this catalogue as possible, to give potential customers the widest possible choice.
27. Begin a business which hires out second hand pinball machines and computer arcade games to householders. These machines might also be hired out by the night to private parties. At a party, these machines provide some real fun.
28. Start a children's record or audio cassette of the month or quarter club. The records or cassettes sold by the club might be educational, story, or music.
29. Begin a service which produces newsletters for pop group fan clubs. Devise a method for producing a reasonable newsletter at low cost. Sell your service to fan clubs. An important part of this business is that it gives a lot of scope for the selling of advertising space.
30. Produce vanity poetry cassettes or videos. Pay a celebrity to read a poet's work to a video camera, or make a recording on audio tape or CD. Your service might also include producing copies of the recording on audio or video cassettes.
31. Write booklets or produce audio cassettes about different aspects of making a career in the music business. For example, 'How to be an Independent Record Producer', 'How to Get a Recording Contract', 'How to Form Your Own Group', etc. Use small ads in the music press to attract buyers.
32. Stain sawdust with different colors of ink. Fill clear bottles and jars with the colored sawdust so that attractive patterns are made. Also, pictures can be built up on the sides of the bottles if different colors are carefully arranged. Sell the bottled sawdust as souvenirs or ornaments.
33. Open a television and video school. Organize practical courses in television and video production. Buy a second hand closed circuit television system. Rent, or gain the lease of a hall and use this as the premises for the school.
34. Start a music tuition agency. Offer potential students tutors for the popular musical instruments. Call your agency a school of music. Start by using advertising to recruit both part time tutors and pupils.
35. Begin a business which organizes trips to pop and rock concerts, or football and rugby matches. Your service obtains the tickets and provides a coach or mini bus to take fans to the venue.
36. Design and make fashionable clothes for children. You might, for example, sell the clothes you make by party plan.
37. Use soft toy materials to make a puppet like toy which gives children their medicine. A small soft toy, or glove puppet, has a clip attached to one hand. A parent puts a spoon of medicine into the clip and controls the hand so it appears that the puppet is giving the medicine.
38. Make household hall letter boards. A board is criss-crossed with colored elastic. Letters are slipped into this elastic and thus are easily displayed. Get these boards stocked at stationers or gift shops.
39. Use wood to make desktop stands for holding reference books such as dictionaries, trade directories, map books and telephone directories. Get these desktop stands stocked at book shops and stationers.
40. Learn machine knitting. Once your skill has reached a high standard, earn money from teaching others to use knitting machines. Teach people in your own home or the homes of students.
41. Make energy saving sausages. Fill a slim, sausage shaped bag with sand so it can be placed against a drafty door or window. These sausages can be sold door to door, or get them stocked at hardware shops.
42. Design and make old fashioned country curtains. Display your curtains on a roadside stall near a busy shopping center in a similar fashion to the way double glazing or shower firms sometimes display their products.
43. Set up a mail order business which serves the gay community. In your catalogue include suitable: books, audio cassettes, videos, novelty products, posters. etc.
44. Begin a service which organizes the production of wall hanging tapestries to commission. Sell your service to businesses which might want a tapestry of their logo. For example, hanging in a reception area. Or, do 1066 style tapestry representations of business achievements.
45. Manufacture Australian cork hats. These hats might be a cheap, novelty version of the real thing. Sell these cork hats through shops which sell novelties, souvenirs or gifts. Or, import real cork hats from Australia and use ads in magazines to sell these by mail order.
46. Bring out a range of T-shirts and distribute to book shops, record shops, computer shops, gift shops, or newsagents. The designs on the T-shirts might be aimed at the customers of the shops they appear in. For example, a literary theme for book shops.
47. Have an undergarment market stall and sell: men's underwear, socks, tights, stockings, fancy lingerie, and long johns.
48. Bring out magnetic perpetual calendars. A strip of metal is printed with day numbers and the names of months. Two magnetic markers are used to indicate the exact date.
49. Design and manufacture kits for making clothes. The kits might be aimed at those who have basic sewing skills, but need a kit if they want to make something a bit more complex. Produce a catalogue about your kits and advertise it in women's magazines.
50. Start a scarf club. Each month or quarterly, club members automatically receive one of the latest fashionable scarves selected by the club. Your club might have a single annual membership charge. This charge would make an ideal gift.
I hope that these small business ideas have inspired you to consider starting a small business of your own.