SAND DIAL wrote:
I am not sure if you are thinking about starting a business. Are you?

With both China and the Web, Id be careful starting any small business.

' If you think most of them are dealing in products, would you be inclined to start a product type business (maybe you have a better idea than most if only in your own mind)?'....No, no products. Not for me. Not anytime soon.

I'm always thinking of starting a business. The questions that always stop me are what products am I going to sell and/or how will I get people to use my services? 

The answers are there are billions of products to sell. Whether anyone will buy them or not and if I can get them at a price where I can sell them and make a buck is another story. There are probably billions of services out there, too. Whether anyone wants or needs them or not and if they'll pay for them are other stories, too.

For instance: photography. I know there are some who make a decent living doing it. It's hard for me to give my photographic services away free of charge. If I tell them it's free, they'll always say no. After the fact, they'll almost always say they should've hired me because they've got really crappy pictures now. Photography is something I do and enjoy so I'll keep doing it. I may never make a living being that the cost of entry is relatively low, everyone has an iPhone, iPad, cell phone or a camera that "takes good pictures" so they "don't need a photographer".

Well, anyone can press the shutter button (at least seemingly) but not everyone can capture a quality image. There is a learning curve and most people won't bother learning. It's irrelevant, though, if they won't hire someone to do "what they can do themselves" even if they find out they can't.

So ... I'm more or less thinking out loud with input from whoever chooses to chime in on the subject.

House of Thailand wrote:
I started our small business almost 10 years ago. (www.houseofthailand.com) It took a couple years to start turning a profit. Now I sell so much it's hard to keep our inventory and I've been raising prices for the last couple years to slow sales. I went for the high-end market. (We make the finest traditional Thai massage mats available.) I lost count years ago of all the high end spas/resorts that use our products. Yes, I'm bragging. Try starting your own micro-label and see how tough it is.  But I would absolutely encourage you to start your own business. Spend a year thinking about your product line and write up a good business plan. You need enough investment capital to get you through the first years. My business needs models and product photos. That's the only reason I'm on MM. If you're successful, you'll quickly realize that you will make more money from a product photo than the photographer that took the shot.

I don't think bragging is always a terrible thing. It all depends on how and why. In this case, I think of it as your saying "I did it, so maybe you can, too". 

There are many businesses one could start. Most of them will get people to say "that will *never* work". No matter how carefully one plans, executes the plan and other things, it can still fail though either some unforeseen circumstance or a fatal flaw in the plan that was unaccounted. I realize there is no security. There are only degrees of risk. I'm just trying to keep the risk manageable (not necessarily to a minimum because with great risk should come great reward).