What businesses to start in a recession?

• Providing consultancy and training on credit control processes.
• Providing outsourced credit control and debt collection.
• Providing factoring.
• Providing credit insurance.
• Providing company credit checks.
• Insolvency practitioners.
• Private investigators

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Unemployed people need assistance in finding new jobs. You could consider starting an employment agency, a life coaching service, a personal image consultancy, job skills training, or a resume writing service. Helping people become employed is a public service as you help other companies find talented staff people. A job is the best social program in existance, and a potential life saver for the person landing the new position.

Helping companies increase their customer lists and boost their sales success is a powerful form of consulting service. Working with business owners and staff on enhancing sales and marketing skills, improved public relations, and better customer service will boost the organization's bottom line. It will also keep people employed and even add more staff members. Along with sales and marketing advice, new idea brainstorming sessions could be offered to creative minded companies.

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How to earn more money during recession?
1) Search for more money opportunities: I am considering blogging opportunities. All online job opportunities that requires no or very less investments.

2) If you own a blog, think to start another one. This will take some time to see the results but will be helpful to double the income if the recession period is too long.

3) If you are selling 1 ad space on your site, make it 2 or 3 ad spaces. Even if you think ads are distracting to your readers, forget this thought at least for some time i.e. till recession period.

4) Look for more publisher ad opportunities. If you are running Google Adsense on you blog why not think to join any new publisher ad network like CPM ad networks.

5) Approach to more advertisers directly to place ads on your blog. Offer some discount in recession period. Instead of stopping the complete business everyone think to cut the cost in recession. So your discount offer might be appealing to advertisers.

6) Think about freelance writing opportunities. Write some guest paid posts on other blogs. You will get money as well as some exposure to your blog.

7) If required spend some money on online marketing even if you have not spend a dime before. But keep the eye on ROI. If no ROI, stop spending.

8 ) Look for some affiliate deals: Sell some books on your blog niche topic.

9) If you are expert in some topic don’t hesitate to write book on this topic. Keep your books short and cost effective so that people can buy them even in recession. People starve to increase sell in recession period by any means. So your business ideas or expertise can help them in recession.

10) Look for part time job opportunities: If only blogging income is not sufficient for your living, think of some more job opportunities. May be in companies interested in your skills. More part time or contract job opportunities get created in recession period.

There are plenty of online recession proof business opportunities other than blogging. Try them.

Here are some of them:

• Purchase and sell domains (Warning: Requires very good knowledge of domain market)
• Purchase and park the domains. Spend some money on marketing parked domains. Use your existing blog portfolio to get traffic to parked domains

There is no need to tell other common cost saving daily life ideas and habits during recession.

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Jim Surguy, senior partner of Harvest Consulting, said the secret was to remember that, during an economic downturn, consumers will think hard about what products to buy.

“When times are hard people will search for value, so the response should be to make smaller versions of the same things they always buy — drinks in half-sized bottles, or seeds not plants, or holidays lasting five days instead of seven days.”

Another option is to keep everything the same size but “value engineer” products down to get a lower price — in other words, reduce the cost of the elements that go towards making it.

“You can make the packaging cheaper, you can make the plastic thinner, you can perhaps alter the ingredients, but keep it the same size and you can then lower the price,” said Surguy.

One example of value engineering, he said, is Tesco selling unripe fruit that will ripen at home. “That saves Tesco having to store the fruit and ripen it themselves, which costs them money. They are just taking money out of the system.”

Another avenue to explore when considering what products or services to offer in a recession, is the concept of the affordable treat. “When times are hard you have to satisfy people’s emotional needs beyond just value,” said Surguy.

“In the last recession in the early 1990s one of the things that was successful was Häagen-Dazs ice cream. It was luxurious in its sector, but it wasn’t hugely expensive and so was an affordable treat.”

Source: The Times

Can you think of any more?