Starting an online business can be daunting if you don’t know where to start. It can also be one of the most rewarding thing you can do.
As someone passionate about entrepreneurship and starting and growing online businesses, I wanted to create this quick guide that can help you to discover which online business model is right for you. The internet has made starting a business easier than ever, but that doesn’t mean it’s a walk in the park.
There will be challenges, setbacks, and failures along the way. But as long as you are willing to weather the storm and the emotional roller coaster, it will definitely be worth it.
What are your reasons for starting an online business?
People start online businesses for different reasons –
- They want the laptop lifestyle – the freedom to be able to work from anywhere
- They are passionate about something and want to share that with the world
- They are talented in a certain area and want to get showcased and earn money from that talent
- They want to quit their 9-5 job and fire their boss
Starting an online business can give you the above mentioned benefits and allow you to live the lifestyle that you want. I myself started in the affiliate marketing space and then also transitioned to eCommerce.
I then started Fullsuite Marketing because I have always been passionate about marketing, sales, psychology, and entrepreneurship, and I wanted to share what I had learned on my own journey.
I also really wanted to fire my boss and escape the dreaded 9-5 rat race! I couldn’t stand commuting an hour to the office, only to be stuck sitting at a desk all day doing something that ultimately wasn’t fulfilling or rewarding. Being my own boss and being in charge of my life was one of the big reasons why I decided to start my own ventures online. It’s important to identify your why – why do you want to start an online business?
The internet has reduced the barriers to entry for starting a business and made it an even playing field. With some of the types of online business opportunities I’m going to share with you, you’ll see the advantages of starting and operating a digital business vs a traditional brick-and-mortar business.
You can now get started for very little money, and in fact, you can even start an online business with no money at all if you know how – I’ll share with you the best way of doing that at the end of this post.
What are the different types of online businesses?
There are several different online business models you can try to get started. Here are four:
- Affiliate marketing – Selling other people’s products
- Creating and selling digital products – Typically educational products that can help others
- Teaching, consulting, & coaching – Sharing your knowledge and expertise
- eCommerce – Selling physical goods
1. Affiliate marketing
What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is the act of promoting another company’s products and services, and getting a commission if you make a sale.
An affiliate essentially acts as a middleman between consumers and companies that sell stuff. An affiliate is someone who recommends a product or service to someone, and if that someone makes a purchase of that product as a direct result of the recommendation, the affiliate gets paid a commission.
For example, lets say you have a website that reviews books. You can sign up to the Amazon affiliate program where you will get your unique affiliate ID or link. You then write a book review and include your affiliate link to the Amazon website so your reader can buy that book if they want to. When your reader clicks on your link and goes to Amazon to buy the book, Amazon knows that the customer was referred by you (via your unique link) and therefore pays you a commission for that sale.
You can join up as an affiliate for different companies, products, or services. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs you can join, from Amazon to Walmart. There are also marketplaces like Clickbank which sell thousands of digital products and courses – all of which you can promote and make money from as an affiliate.
Your job as an affiliate is to provide useful content about the product to your audience – this could be in the form of a review, and you may offer some sort of bonus if they purchase through your affiliate link.
You could start a blog and review affiliate products in a niche that you’re passionate about, or start a YouTube channel where you review or recommend different products that you personally use.
The benefits of affiliate marketing
The benefits of affiliate marketing are that you don’t need to create or own your own products, and you don’t have to deal with the delivery or refund process at all.
It’s one of the best ways to get started in online marketing and creating a business online as the startup costs are low. If you have a blog or YouTube channel and promote your own products, you can also promote affiliate products as a way of generating extra cash.
It’s easy to get started in affiliate marketing, but you do need to know some basic marketing strategies in order to be able to make consistent sales and commissions.
2. Creating and selling digital courses
The online education industry is worth billions…..yes BILLIONS!
By 2025 it is estimated the online education industry will be worth somewhere in the region of $320 Billion (Source: https://letstalkaboutmoney.com/ecommerce-statistics/).
More and more people are turning to the internet and online courses as a means of learning new skills and developing themselves. Digital courses and remote learning make it easier to learn whilst you are working, or being a full-time parent, and whatever it is that you do in your day to day life.
You can learn and study at your own pace and do it all from the comfort of your home If you have a particular skill or are an expert in a certain field, then creating a digital course to teach others is a great way to make money online.
Check out Russell Brunson’s excellent book Expert Secrets where he explains how you can turn your knowledge, hobbies, and interests into a business that can give you the lifestyle you want. It’s a great book and teaches you how to grow your audience, find your voice and package your expertise into a digital product you can sell online.
The best thing about creating digital courses is that you do all the work upfront to create the course. Once it’s completed you then start marketing your product, and if you set up your marketing and sales funnels correctly you can get paid residual passive income from that course for years to come.
This is also one of the most rewarding online business models because you get to share your expertise and thing’s you’re passionate about – and get paid for it!
What sort of course should you create?
Think about the things you love to do – what are your hobbies and interests? What do you do in your spare time? Have you got some sort of talent or expertise that you can share with others? If so, you can turn it into an online course or educational product and start to make money from it.
This also brings me to the next online business opportunity…
3. Teaching, consulting, & coaching
Following on from our last point of sharing your passion through an online course or program, you can also become a consultant in your field. This opportunity is not limited to being an online business model only, you can turn it into an offline opportunity also.
Let’s say your passion is gardening and you happen to have a lot of experience in creating beautiful gardens on a very tight budget. You turn your knowledge into an online course and teach others the same skills. You can then expand the opportunity to offer one to one consulting to people who are interested. You can do this either online via Zoom or Skype, or you can do it in person in a classroom setting or private setting.
By leveraging the internet, you can attract more leads and get more paying customers easier than ever before. You can place ads on Facebook, Google Ads, or YouTube. You can start to attract customers by offering a free ebook, or perhaps creating some free videos on YouTube sharing what you know.
When people like and trust you and are convinced that you know what you’re talking about they will seek you out for your expertise and knowledge…and pay you handsomely for it!
There is something you can do that someone else can’t. It’s your duty to identify what your skill or area of expertise is, and then find the people who are interested in learning that skill and acquiring that expertise.
4. e-Commerce
Everyone has heard of Amazon and eBay. They are two of the giants in the world of online retailing or eCommerce. More and more people are shopping online and there is no sign of it slowing down.
By the year 2021, worldwide retail eCommerce sales will reach $4.9 trillion!(https://letstalkaboutmoney.com/ecommerce-statistics/).
A few years ago if you wanted to sell products online you had to have a website built, payment gateways set up, and a good developer on had to troubleshoot problems. It was a costly affair. Now there are countless options to help people get in on the eCommerce game.
Sites like Shopify and Etsy make it super simple to create an online store in minutes, with little or no technical knowledge, giving you more time to spend on marketing and driving sales. You can also start selling on Ebay or Amazon, and enjoy the benefits of having millions of customers already on those platforms, meaning you’ll have more traffic from day one, and less marketing to do.
What if you don’t have any products of your own or can’t afford to buy and keep stock? If you don’t want to buy and hold loads of stock, deal with postage, delivery or returns then dropshipping is the perfect business model for you.
Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is similar in some ways to affiliate marketing, in that you act as a middle-man and don’t have to deal with the actual delivery or warehousing of the product.
Dropshipping companies hold the products in their own warehouses and delivery them to your customers for you! This means you don’t have to own or buy any stock upfront – you only order once a customer has placed an order with you.
The dropshipping company will handle all of the order fulfillment – from packaging to shipping, and returns.
How does dropshipping work?
Let’s consider the following example:
ABC Dropping Co sells children’s toys. You open a dropshipping account with them which gives you access to their inventory catalog and also a discounted/wholesale rate on their products. They have a dollhouse which they sell to drop shippers for $20.99. You decide you want to sell that in your store. You then mark-up the price to $40.99 and add it to your store (on eBay, Amazon, or Shopify etc.)
A customer visits your online store and buys the dollhouse for $40.99. You then order the dollhouse from the dropshipper for $20.99, give them the customer’s shipping details, and they take of the rest. Hey presto, you’ve just made $20 without having to own a warehouse of dollhouses or pay for the delivery costs, etc!
They’ll send the item to your customer without any of their own branding on the packaging or invoices, so your customer has no idea that it’s come from a third party. You can even give certain drop shipping companies your own invoices and letterheads to include with any orders they send out on your behalf, so your customer receives the item with your own shop name and branding.
Dropshipping is a great way to get started online and is risk-free in the sense that you don’t have to buy any stock upfront or pay for expensive warehousing. Your startup costs will normally include the platform you’re using – eBay, Shopify, Etsy, etc which normally consist of a monthly fee.
Then once your store is set up and populated with products you need to drive traffic to your site. This is normally achieved with paid advertising via Google Ads, Facebook, Google Display Network, shopping ads, etc. You can also create traffic through organic means like SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, YouTube videos, etc
Dropshipping is a great way to get started with business online. The key to long-term dropshipping success is to have a store that is focused on one particular niche rather than a store that sells everything.
I ran a successful dropshipping business online via eBay, and I sold everything from sunglasses to power drills to arts and crafts equipment. There was no synergy between the products at all, and as a result, my eBay store wasn’t one that many customers returned to for repeat purchases. When I started to focus on one niche – sunglasses, it was easier to sell more and I found that more customers returned overtime whenever they wanted sunglasses or summer accessories.
Pick a niche and start to create a store around that niche. You can own a coffee eCom store and sell the best types of coffee beans available. You can also sell decanters, filters, mugs etc.
You can have a camping-themed store that sells everything that someone in the camping niche needs – tents, flashlights, sleeping bags etc. Specialist stores always seem to do better because they attract a focused target market, rather than a general target audience.
Do some keyword research, check out Google Trends, and see what people are searching for. When you find a niche with a decent amount of search activity and not too much competition its normally a good niche to build a store and customer base around.
The best online business to start with no money
In my opinion, the best way to make money online without having to invest any money upfront is affiliate marketing.
I will be writing a more detailed post on how to start affiliate marketing which will detail some of the best affiliate marketing programs for beginners, but for now, here’s a very brief overview of this business model.
The best way to do affiliate marketing
- Pick a niche
- Create interesting and valuable content for that niches audience – find ways to serve and add value to them via your content
- Offer affiliate products and services to that audience once you have built up trust with them.
That’s the model in a nutshell. How can you do this with no money? Affiliate networks like Amazon and Clickbank are free to join and you can start promoting products straightaway. You can start building your audience through a number of free channels. You can start a free YouTube channel or use social media.
If you prefer writing and want to start a blog for your niche then you can use any number of free blog hosting platforms like WordPress.com, Wix, Tumblr, or Blogger. These platforms are completely free and don’t require you to buy a domain name or pay for hosting.
Note: WordPress.com is the free platform, and wordpress.org is a self-hosted platform that will require you t buy a domain name and pay for hosting.
There is a lot more to this affiliate marketing strategy, and once I have written my post on how to do affiliate marketing the right way I’ll post the link here.
Which type of online business is right for you?
The one question you should ask yourself is who do you want to serve? Once you know your target audience then it gets easier to know which model is best for you.
You can actually combine all the business models I’ve mentioned to create different revenue streams for your business. Do you want to share your knowledge or expertise with people? Then start a blog, create a course, start reviewing affiliate products related to your niche, provide consultancy services to your target audience, and start dropshipping products they are interested in.
See how they all blend together? Maybe you don’t want to start a blog or build an audience – then eCommerce or dropshipping may be the best fit for you.
You can sell products you make yourself like t-shirts or ornaments, or you can buy items from wholesalers and sell those. If you don’t want to spend money on stock and order fulfillment then try dropshipping.
Is passion important in business or is it overrated?
Do you need to be passionate about something to make money from it? Absolutely not! You can be successful in any business, but from my own experience, you will tend to do better when you do something you are passionate about.
Starting a business takes time and effort. When the days are long, and you are making sacrifices to get your venture off the ground there will be times when you will want to give up. When you’re putting in the work and not seeing the results you will get discouraged and feel deflated. That’s when having a genuine passion for what you’re doing makes the difference.
Your passion keeps you going – it keeps you motivated and it can give you that extra bit of fuel that will get you over the finish line and move you towards your goals.
However, having passion about something doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll turn your business into a rip-roaring success. There’s no good trying to sell something you’re passionate about if there isn’t a market for it. There has to be some demand for what you’re offering. You need to do your research and understand your target market – be passionate but be practical also!
Get started!
The main thing to do is pick an online business model that appeals to you and just get started. I personally spent a long time going through the different options and not knowing which model to choose. I went from course to course, consumed tons of videos and blog articles, and ended up getting information overload.
The only way you’re going to know what is right for you is to start. You have to try different things and see which one is the right fit for you. You may start a dropshipping business and a few months later discover it’s not for you, that’s fine. Now you know that you can try something else.
Learn from your mistakes and keep moving forward. You are going to make mistakes when you start an online business, or an offline business for that matter. Business is challenging. You will have setbacks and experience failure – but it’s all part of the journey. Embrace it!
In the words of the great motivational speaker Zig Ziglar: “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
