Low Cost Business Ideas : iPhone and iPad Apps – The New Low Cost Business Ideas

The iPhone is still a very young device, only about 3 years old, and the iPad even younger, less than a year old. However the market opportunities, in terms of low cost business ideas, that these two platforms provide are immense.

With the launch of the iPhone and iPad a completely new category of devices has taken off with immense returns to anyone who has been able to capitalize on these opportunities.

If you are already a Mac user than you are halfway there to capitalizing on these opportunities already. All you need to do now is sign up for the developer program from Apple and start making your own applications. It really is that simple. However, if you are unsure of how to develop, program and market your application you can always look towards iTunes U Stanford to get all the programming classes for free.

Here I share with you some simple, low cost iphone application ideas that you can take and make them your own and create an excellent income opportunity for yourselves.

1. Validation App

This is an idea that I got from the viral youtube video ‘Validation’. If you haven’t seen it yet, you must immediately watch it. It is one of those videos that makes you really feel good immediately, and thus the idea of the Validation App. When you are feeling down, depressed or a little low, you just load up the Validation app and get some positive validation about yourself and how great you really are.

Every one could use more validation.

2. Interactive Life Wheel

If you are into personal development as much as I am you already know what I am talking about. Essentially this is an application that lets you monitor different aspects of your life e.g. money, health, marriage, fun, career, family, spiritual,  etc. typically eight slices of your life and see how you perceive each of your slices. You then assign a number to each slice and then work towards improving that number, and consequently improving your life all around.

3. Success / Life Coach

This is a sister application of the one mentioned in point 2 above. The key difference here is that you have a resource pool of qualified coaches who are consistently helping you monitor your progress through sending you personalized emails, text messages and occasional phone call where necessary. Ideally this application would be part of a bigger package where you are working with a life coach to improve and enhance your life overall.

4. Exam Tips

This is certainly something that I could use growing up through school and university. Just a comprehensive web2.0 style application where teachers and students can submit exam tips for upcoming exams. This is a two-fold application – 1) Teachers providing tips about which are more important topics for the upcoming exams and 2) students providing tips about what specific routine works best for them when preparing for exams.

5. Business Set Up Steps / Guide

As I was developing my business I always needed a guide or resource to look at what the next step should be. Sometimes I’d call up my mentor, sometimes I would have to refer to books and other times I would have to do further online research. With this application you would have a detailed step by step guide on what to do next to setup a successful online business with different model business modes including e-commerce website setup, ebook business setup, membership website setup etc.

6. Tax Calculator

This is by far the biggest no-brainer. Everyone has to file taxes and most everyone hates filing taxes. The best way to bring this to market is to take the IRS form and convert it into an easy to fill information gathering tool where you just input a few answers based on specific questions and the app calculates everything, translates everything to goto the right columns in the form and then syncs or prints it for you.

7. Business Plan Creator

Business plans are another one of those documents that everyone needs to have yet no one seems to understand the right process and how to come up with this. This application would also be a text box input type application where you just answer basic questions and the application gives you a complete business plan, nicely formatted and with the numbers for you.

8. Jar System Implementor

A method of saving money over the long term while still being able to enjoy good dining, buying things and having fun. This is by far the best saving system that I have ever come across and works great – when it works. If you’ve been to Harv. Ecker’s Secrets of the Millionaire Mind you know what I’m talking about – if not, then you should. What I found problematic with this system was keeping track of how much money I had in each of the Jars. I used an excel file for the longest time (including the physical jars) However after a while that would become cumbersome updating all the formulas each time. This application would keep that for me without me having to worry about any formulae errors.

9. Ideas

This application would again be a web2.0 type application where users of the application would submit their ideas for the world to share and network with other like minded people. This would enable more ideas to be shared across the board and also enable the users to find people with similar ideas to partner up with to launch their products.

10. Accounting Terms

I’ve always found the terms used in the accounting sphere to be confusing and designed to baffle the layman. It would be great to have an application which would explain accounting terms in to the layman and give practical implications of where these are implemented and how a regular person can implement them. E.g. the impact of depreciation on the life of an asset and how this can actually save you boat-loads in tax.

Certainly all these application can be on the computer as well as these platforms, however the beauty of having them on the iOS devices (the software that iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad use) comes with an easy to use method of promoting, delivering, taking payments and reviewing the application – this platform ‘The App Store’ makes this the best place for developer and marketers to earn a substantial income.

From here on we will go in-depth with the ideas mentioned and look at how to really bring them to market, providing some tools, research and technology to use.

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