Building your own online business can be an exciting and rewarding journey. It offers the freedom to work from anywhere and create something of your own. If you are thinking about starting your first online business but don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog post, I’ll share five ideas to help you take the first step and start your online business. Get inspired and find out which idea suits you best!
1. Affiliate Marketing
My journey into the world of online marketing started with affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is also often one of the first methods newcomers try when they first get into online marketing.
The idea behind this business model is very simple and a proven profitable method. First, you must pick a product you want to promote as an affiliate.
You can promote a wide selection of products on Digistore24 or CopeCart.
After you have selected a product, you can start promoting it. You get a commission every time someone buys the product through your affiliate link.
The commissions vary greatly. With some providers, such as Digistore24 and Clickbank, you can receive commissions of up to 90% or even 100%!
As an Amazon affiliate, you get between 1% and 10%, depending on the product. However, Amazon’s advantage is its popularity and the fact that if you make a purchase via your affiliate link, you get the commission for all products.
Not just the ones you advertised. For example, if you advertise a headset and someone decides to buy a TV via your link, you will also receive a commission.
The key to a good income with affiliate marketing is to send a lot of targeted traffic to your website. So, you must find your target audience and advertise your partner products there.
A big advantage of affiliate marketing is that it is very easy to start. You can promote your products anywhere – on your blog, in your guest posts, on forums, on social media, in your emails, and in many other places!
You don’t have to create a product or provide customer support, and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel; you can immediately promote a working product.
You can sign up as an affiliate for a product you like and then promote it using your affiliate link.
However, not all affiliate networks and product owners will initially accept your request.
Most will ask you for your website address and questions about where you want to advertise their products. If you don’t have any proven references or results yet, you won’t be accepted as an affiliate.
Product providers require a solid online presence before they approve your application.
Product suppliers are also scammed, so they carefully approve affiliates.
If you are having trouble getting approved by a network, it is best to build your online presence first by creating your website or blog and letting it mature for a few months before reapplying.
If your application is approved and you create valuable content around the affiliate product, you can make passive affiliate marketing income as long as the affiliate product is available.
2. Sell eCourses and Info Products
If you are an expert in a particular field and want to share your knowledge with the world, you should create courses and information products. If you lack specialized knowledge, that’s not a problem.
It’s not the end of the world. You can still sell e-courses and information products even if you lack experience in a particular field!
I highly recommend the book Experts Secrets by Russell Brunson. You can read my review here.
You have two options.
- First, take the time to learn the subject, research it thoroughly, and then apply what you’ve learned to create your course.
- The second option is to outsource the content creation to someone who knows the subject.
There are many freelancer platforms where you can place an ad and find a qualified freelancer to help you with your project.
The advantage of having your course is that you are independent of other providers.
A partner can always remove a product from the market or exclude you from the affiliate program (if there are too many problems with your referred customers). However, you can keep your own product on the market for as long as you see fit.
You can also set the price yourself. Unlike affiliate marketing, where your commissions are limited to a certain percentage when you sell your products, you can set the price yourself! If you think your course is worth $197, set that price.
Of course, to get the best results, you should research to find the best price for the product you are offering. Look at what similar products in the same niche are selling for.
You can also set up an affiliate program to boost sales and allow others to promote your product. If you offer your affiliates a good share of the profits, you’ll have plenty of applicants knocking at your virtual door.
While you may think sharing your hard-earned profits isn’t a good idea, consider hiring salespeople to promote your product. You get a cut of every sale your affiliates make, so it’s a win-win for everyone!
Your affiliate did all the work of acquiring a paying customer.
3. eCommerce store
E-commerce is all the rage these days. In fact, some of the most popular e-commerce stores probably advertise their products on Facebook and Instagram! Many of these companies promote their products and services in your news feed.
With eCommerce, you can sell anything you want. You can sell your products and services, affiliate products, dropship, and more. You can sell products through your website or use a third-party platform like ClickFunnels to make the business side easier.
You can have a brick-and-mortar store, sell your products on your website, or even list them on eBay and Craigslist. The possibilities for eCommerce are nearly endless.
One major advantage of eCommerce is that your store is open 24/7, and you can sell to anyone in the world.
When you sell physical products, you must factor in production, shipping costs, and delivery times into your price. For digital products, e-commerce provides a platform where sellers get paid immediately and buyers can access their purchase in seconds.
E-commerce stores are also much easier to scale than brick-and-mortar stores. With e-commerce, you can simply list your products on another platform or duplicate your existing site, and you have a new revenue stream.
While e-commerce is a great source of online income, not all e-commerce stores provide a passive income. For most stores, you need someone to take care of orders, ship the products (if you don’t dropship), provide customer support, and more.
Once you reach a certain level of success, you can build a team to manage your business remotely!
You can train your employees to handle all aspects of your business – from sourcing products to fulfillment to customer service. If you take good care of your employees, they will take good care of your business. Once your team has the hang of it, they will work like a well-oiled machine and secure you a passive income!
4. Service businesses
With this type of business model, you can earn passive income from any type of service. This means you must find clients, customers, or buyers and get someone else to do the work. This may not sound like a passive business model, but it can become one if you set it upright.
If you have an agency that offers writing or design services, you can set up a website with your portfolio and promote it to the world. When people buy your services, you subcontract the work to a freelancer.
You can sign up on freelancer marketplaces, bid on jobs, and when you win a project, you hire another freelancer to do the work for you at a much lower price.
Do you see the possibilities? You can have any number of clients, and you don’t have to worry about not being able to fulfill the work because you simply assign someone else to do the actual work. You just pocket the difference between the amount your client pays you and the amount you pay your contractor!
To ensure the quality of the work doesn’t suffer, you’ll need to vet your freelancers thoroughly. This can take time. Many freelancers, especially those from abroad, can afford to work for little, but the quality may not be as good.
You have to sift through a lot of profiles and applicants before you find the right one. You’re in business once you’ve found a qualified freelancer whose rates you can afford (and who still leaves you with a profit).
To maximize profits, you need to win a lot of projects and have a good number of freelancers on your team. The thing about freelancers is that they have the freedom to work with other clients.
If you want to book their time in blocks, such as 40 hours per week, you need to hire them as regular employees, not contractors. Other rules then apply to pay them and provide them with benefits, but by and large, the business model still provides you with a good, regular, passive income.
5. SaaS business
SaaS, or Software as a Service, has become popular recently. Under the SaaS model, you create software or have it developed for you if you are not a programmer and sell the subscription to others. Nowadays, a variety of apps are developed under this model.
Popular examples include Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Google Apps, Dropbox, and Slack.
To build a SaaS business, you need a good and profitable idea and a solid business plan. Rushing to develop a SaaS project will be very costly.
If you hire a developer without being sure that your idea will even work or that there is a market for it, you could lose thousands of dollars in developer fees! If you can afford to lose that, then by all means continue developing your software. Of course, a business plan is the best option for the prudent entrepreneur.
With a business plan, you can determine exactly what makes your software stand out. Testing will be necessary, so you need to take that into account.
Once you’ve found a successful idea, you must find the best developers who share your vision and passion for your software. You’ll also need a marketing team to help you promote your product to your target audience.
Because before your product even hits the market, you need to spend a lot of money! And once it’s on the market, you’ll need to spend even more to market it to the right people!
The good thing is that once you start making a profit, your SaaS business will run on autopilot, and funds will flow regularly into your bank account.
Conclusion
As you can see, many ways exist to build a business and generate a passive income. It has never been easier to build an online business and generate a passive income that allows you to live a life of freedom.
Have you already built your own business? If so, how do you make money online? Let me know by leaving a comment below.