Latest News Editor's Choice


Business / Your Money

5 Alternative business investment ideas other than stocks

by Staff Reporter
18 May 2018 at 18:21hrs | Views
Have you been thinking of some alternative way to make money to supplement your daily job and want to look at other ideas that are not so main stream? It is easy to think about investing money in the stock exchange but that is also too unpredictable as there are many factors involved in stock valuation right?

Here is a list of good investment ideas that do not depend on stocks

Self-vending products or services

Self-vending businesses are a nice way to get the money from impulse buys without constantly having to be there to manage how they are being run. A lot of them just need some restocking, maintenance, reprogramming and regular but not constant attention to the machines. Some of the vending machine ideas include candy bars, chips and other machines that will give toys as prizes in case someone wins a certain challenge. The logic is to place them in venues or streets that will have enough traffic to attract impulse spenders. For example, the candy machine can be placed in a busy office or hospital lobby for people to spend while they wait.

One interesting and similar business is the unattended car wash business. All that these need is space, a pressure jet and the machines that operate the system once someone pays for the service. The over-head costs needed to run the businesses that are based on machine operation worthy alternative investment ideas. They should however be situated at places where there is adequate traffic, ease of reach, convenience, safety and all the legal requirements in check. The good thing about them is that they just need a substantial amount of money upfront to have them designed and installed in different parts of the city. Once that is sorted the rest works pretty straight forward.

Get into forex trading or have an automated service do it for you

The forex market is worth billions of dollars if not in the trillions and you can be part of it today. People make tidy sums of money simple trading currencies and other related instruments such as CFDs and Binary options. It just needs some good understanding of the market and some capital to start up. However, not everybody gets a smooth ride as forex trading has many pitfalls which unfortunately wear people out before they even start making profits. Some innovative services have lately bridged that gap in an interesting way.

There are services that let people simply invest money with them and they will do all the expert trading on their own. Each of these services has their own unique offers and operation models but some of automated online robots performes the best because they provide loss coverage and have no withdrawal fee.

App development and selling

As the world moves digital and almost all services are going electronic, creating application and selling them will sure give you good money back after a while. As people get to accept an application and the crowds start to get drawn in, there is plenty of money to be made from selling the apps themselves. Furthermore, there are more opportunities to be made from advertising income and in-app purchases made through your platform if your idea is successful. You do not have to build a very complicated app that is akin to the stuff that you would only see on Star Trek. Most apps that generate some slow steady income are just simple, light and easy to use but solve a great inconvenience to the user.

There are always some venture capitalists who are looking for good investment ideas and that gives you more leeway in raising capital if you have a good app that can fetch many downloads. The most common App platforms are on Android and Apple. Get some people who can help you code the apps better if you have the idea in general but do not know the technical details that go into development, testing and debugging. Think of teaming up with someone if you do not mind as there are some people who have the brains to get it running but do not have all the skills that you may have to push it to the public domain. Look out for the failed projects that you can also improve and commercialize with very little effort if you localize them to a certain target audience.

Blockchain backed Peer-to-peer lending

Cryptocurrencies are creating a buzz in the financial world today. The good thing is that with that buzz, there has also been a new business investment ideas have risen for people to lend money to others without going through the traditional banking methods. You can now lend money to people who have joined the cryptocurrency marketplace with relative ease and without the fear that a lot of your interest income will be going to other financial services and taxes that are almost a right for traditional lenders. One thing about lending is that there is always someone who is in need of some extra funds or emergency funds for the short term and will be willing to pay a reasonable ‘thank you' to anyone who offers the service.

At the turn of 2018, there were already a handful of trustworthy crypto-backed lending channels for anyone willing. Since all the borrowers and lenders are already on one blockchain platform, offering and paying back loans is quicker and easier with adequate ability to trace back the transactions to both parties. The interest is also tied to a certain token and that makes it easier to handle the whole transaction without the need to keep complex accounting calculations with you.

Vlogging and earning brand endorsement deals

There is plenty of money that comes from getting many people to hear about a product. Blogging or reviewing has upgraded to Vlogging lately. You can literally start a Vlog on any topic of your interest and let your mastery and enjoyment take over. Vlogs are quick but entertaining and informative video recordings that are regularly posted online and in some cases vloggers just upload some fun activity that they did during the day including touring a local park or some abandoned structures in the locality. You can be as creative as you want and flow freely with your content but where the money comes in is through the things that you have visible in your Vlog or the things that you mention plainly. Some people will pay good money for a simple mention of a new product that they have. It gets interesting if people actually get to see you use it albeit if done tactfully.

The funny thing about vlogging is that you are never sure at first about which brand will come calling but once you have a regular following and many subscribers who view your videos a lot, you are bound to get something big in no time. Other than brand endorsements, your Vlog can also attract affiliate income simply based on links and referrals that come from your page. This highly depends on what kind of page you have. Like some smart investment ideas, some caution is advised as you need to focus first on having the attractive content and remaining consistent. You will not make much money if you get many subscribers from your first few videos and then go underground for a prolonged spell. The online community can be unforgiving enough to unsubscribe from your pages if they feel some hint of low appreciation.


Source - Agencies