business with good cashflow

Thanks for the info re. laundries Islandgirl, will look into it, an issue for me is that I live amongst small towns and most of them have a laundry, so would have to compete for business with existing ones (with limited population), but still, worth checking into more.

Also interesting what you say about Ebay fees, good advice.

I'm only at the start re. online business and have attended a seminar to get general overview... certainly they didn't mention the fees that erode profit. They did mention things though... such as trying to market topics that people are searching for, there are tools that record search criteria and you can get access to that, then try to target what people are searching for. Also, they talked about paying for Google Adwords (I think that's the term) so get picked up in searches. Even structure of the site and order of product offers... offer something free to begin (to show good faith), then offer something costing a little, then something costing a little more, then a little more, then at end, if they are declining and leaving site, offer something very cheap as parting opportunity... so get several goes to sell to them. There is a logic to the pricing and the order of the offers to maximise chances of getting the sales.

Certainly though, I'm sure it's not as easy as they make it sound, but they are some of the things they talk about :-)

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Another totally different idea that has crossed my mind... is something that targets people experiencing financial stress due to loans, credit cards, rising interest etc. Seems more and more I hear of people under great stress... needing to get food from shelters; selling their homes in distress etc. Wonder if some of these people could be helped by reviewing/managing/budgeting finances. I don't have statistics, but seems to me there are huge numbers of people doing it really hard and they are all possible clients in a win/win business.

You mean a financial planner?

Legally to give "financial advice" you need a financial planning licence ("AFSL"). Whether setting budgets etc constitutes advice, I dunno.

setting household budgets would not be giving financial advice. Your not recommending a financial product.

However, recommending a particular deposit account, share, real estate or managed fund to put surplus money from the budget into would be considered financial advice as they are financial products.