If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of starting your own online business, but you simply don’t know where to get started, then it’s important to know that you’re far from being alone.
This guide has been put together for you to help you feel less overwhelmed about where to start by giving you a list of tried and tested online business ideas that you can easily start from home without spending a lot of money, and that you can work around your current commitments.
Never has it been so easy to create the life you want, and for many born entrepreneurs, the natural choice is to start a business that allows us the freedom to choose when, how and where we work, while making a massive impact on the world through our gifts, and also supporting our families financially.
The problem is not a lack of resources or time, but merely a belief in ourselves, and the overwhelm that creeps in when there’s information coming at us from all directions.
Freelancing
Although many don’t consider freelancing to be a real business or something that can be financially rewarding, many people would completely disagree.
People run all kinds of successful businesses that they started from zero. Freelancing is consistently found to be one of the easiest, fastest, and best ways to break into an online business and start making money almost right away.
Depending on your skill set, you can start freelancing in many different areas – or even a combination of areas, including copywriting, web design, SEO consultant, and many more.
All you really need to get started with this is a good set of skills, a computer and/or phone. Depending on what you’re doing, you may need a scanner and printer, so be sure to keep plenty of HP ink cartridges to hand.
Virtual Assistant (VA)
With more and more people starting online businesses than ever before, there’s really never been a more perfect time to set up as a VA who can support these businesses with the daily tasks that aren’t exactly within their zone of genius or interest.
For example, as much as some love to design graphics and nice images for their websites, it’s just not where their talents lie, and because it takes them so long to do this, then it’s actually costing them money because they’re not focused on the things that will grow their business – things like creating new content for their clients, marketing, or working on projects.
In this case, they hire a VA to do this because they’re far more talented in this area, can do it quicker than them, and this frees up their time to do the things they’re good at.
Affiliate Marketing
This is a very popular online business model that involves creating a website or blog based around a certain area of interest and then choosing products created by other people that you can sell on your site making a commission on each sale.
You may think that working for a commission doesn’t sound like a great plan, but the thing with digital products is that they often sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and each affiliate sale can generate up to 50% – so, I’ll leave you to do the math on that one.
Of course, not every product you sell will have a higher price tag, but they can certainly add up quickly.
For example, you promote the email marketing service on your website through an affiliate link, and then when someone buys through your link, you make a commission which certainly adds up over time when more people buy through your link – and you don’t even need to do anything for it.
Even if you don’t build a whole business (or multiple businesses) around affiliate marketing, it’s always worth adding to any of the other business ideas in this guide as an additional source of recurring passive income.
Membership Site
Like affiliate marketing, a membership site or program is something that a lot of people add to their main business as just another income stream, but this can also be used as your main business to deliver products and services to your clients and customers.
Think of Netflix as an example of a membership type of business that is highly successful.
Again, there are so many options to go with here, and there’s honestly no right or wrong way to build a membership business.
You can use it to deliver digital products, such as video training, tutorials, or stock photos.
You can deliver services, such as copywriting, marketing, etc.
You can also deliver physical products, such as pamper kits, food, cosmetics, or whatever you can think of, really.
E-Commerce Store
In the past, setting up a shop (even an online one) was not the easiest or cheapest thing to do.
You would be required to order the stock you wanted to sell, and would probably be expected to place quite a large minimum order – with no guarantee that the stuff would even sell, then you would have to take out paid ads to actually drive customers to your store – all before you’d made one single sale.
Today, it’s a lot easier to get started, and you can have an online e-commerce store up and running within a week if you want to and even have products drop-shipped to your customers.
If you’d like to try EKM, get a 28-day trial today and start setting up your online shop straight away!
Online Business Manager (OBM)
As a VA, an OBM helps support business owners with the day-to-running of the business, but unlike a VA, the OBM can be fully responsible for the overall managing of the business.
Generally, the OBM and VA will work together in some respect, and the VA will usually report to the OBM.
If you work as an OBM, you will likely not take on lots of clients, but will instead work with one or two main clients to support them over a longer period of time.
I really hope you found this guide useful, and that it’s given you some great ideas for starting a business.
