First of all, I want to apologize since I'm late for this posting. A new job combined with the Olympics being hosted by my city and jobs interviews have kept me busy and sleep deprived. But here is Idea #15!
Idea #15 Ecommerce product availability checker & push notifications thru email, phone, Social Media, etc
I currently work for the official Olympic online store and one thing we cannot do and that annoys customers is back orders. The system just doesn't support that feature and we end up advising customers to go back online on a regular basis. Most customers don't complain too much even though they wish they could place back orders. My idea is to build an app or a website on which users could set watchers/alerts for their products and would be automatically notified by email, phone, twitter, facebook, [enter your favorite communication tool here], etc. For some open source platforms, the website could even order for you since it'd be possible to automate the task. For the proprietary platforms, the user would get an alert to let them know their product is now available on the website. This service could be seen as a kind of Google Alert on steroids.
Idea #3 Social Media consulting firm for SMBs. Offer training, reports, action plan, viral marketing
This one can be risky since so many people are self-acclaimed Social Media gurus or Social Media experts only because they have 10,000 followers on Twitter or a facebook account. What I'm thinking of here, is a real business set up by people with real experience with using Social Media in a business context, and with tangible results. There is a hype around Social Media and that strangely reminds me of the heydays when all businesses were setting up websites and suddenly, average Joes became professional webmasters overnight. The hype will die down one day or another, but just like websites, the idea of Social Media will stick around. Real Social Media experts seem to focus mainly on big firms in an international context, I say go local, target the small and medium firms. SMBs are easy to access, they're already looking for your help, you can have many contracts at once, you can make your own experiments and mistakes since you haven't much to lose and everything to gain. If you do fail, then make sure you don't risk your customer's reputation and compensate them for screwing up!
Idea #2 Middle-man/transit between North American e-stores and international undeliverable locations
I'm currently working for the e-store department of an e-commerce solutions provider in Vancouver, British Columbia. One thing that's really annoying when you shop online, is when the store doesn't deliver to wherever you live. We advise our customers to ship the items to someone local, if they know anyone, and then ask that local person to ship the items to them. So the idea is to be the middle-man so anyone from anywhere in the world have their items delivered to you, and then you charge them the shipping cost plus a premium and reship their package to them.
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