Some of the biggest companies in the world sell their products online. Think of Amazon, Netflix, and eBay. They make millions of dollars each year while having almost zero physical retail stores.
Luckily, it’s not just the big businesses that make money online. Thousands of students, stay-at-home moms, and retirees are making decent incomes working from home. And what kinds of businesses do they run?
An Affiliate Marketing Website
Affiliate marketing is a straightforward business. You promote a company’s products on your website and get commissions for each item you help sell. Let’s say you decide to market gaming laptops on Amazon.
Amazon could give you a 5% commission for each laptop you help sell. Assuming each laptop costs $1000, you could earn $50 for every new customer you recommend to Amazon.
The secret of affiliate marketing is to find as many customers as possible. And in doing so, you could easily earn $1000-$10,000 each month. Some people earn more, especially experienced marketers.
Is affiliate marketing a lot of work? Yes, you must work hard to drive traffic to your website. That means you need to know how to write content that sells, SEO and marketing. Otherwise, you’ll never make money if no one visits your site.
A Tutorial Business
Are you an expert at something? And by something we mean anything that people find value in, from dancing and knitting to programming and writing. In today’s world of the Internet everywhere, more and more people are learning new skills online.
So, if you have a skill you can teach people through the Internet, it could turn out to be a successful business. There are different platforms for tutoring people:
- YouTube for videos
- Websites for videos and texts
- Social media for small bits
- Twitch for Gaming
- Instagram for visual products
YouTube works best if you are a beginner and you want a platform with an available audience. But it’s not the best place for everything. If you want to teach people how to write well, a website is the best option.
Twitch, on the other end, is a dedicated platform for gamers. So, it’s logically the best place for someone who wants to educate, inform or entertain video gaming fans.
An Online Gaming Platform
Gaming is a huge topic in 2020. Valued at more than $100 billion, it’s bigger than Facebook, Hollywood and the music industry combined. That being said, it comes with plenty of business opportunities
For starters, you could start a site to host browser games from indie developers. Or you could launch an app where people can play casino games for fun. And if you have the capital required, you could launch a subscription platform where people play popular video games.
The best part of gaming platforms is that you don’t need to be a developer. Some great NZ casinos exist with games leased from independent developers. Others have a few games built by an in-house team while the rest come from third-party software providers.
A Blog
Blogging is one of the simplest ways to make money online. All you need is a platform to write content and a way to monetize it. Let’ say you decide to blog about vegan recipes. You could monetize your blog in several ways:
- Adverts
- Affiliate links
- Selling eBooks
- Charging for guest posts
- Coaching people through private webinars
Before you start a blog, though, pick a niche wisely. Don’t rush to write about slot machines because Crickeyslots.com succeeded in doing it. However, you can visit the website to check out how they do it. Henceforth, you can get a good idea of how a successful site looks like.
Blogging also asks for a lot of commitment. You might have the right niche but fail because you don’t write top-notch content or don’t market it as much as you should. In blogging, it’s all about building an audience. Once you have traffic, you can make enough money to turn your blog into a full-time job.
An eBook Business
Who said you must be James Patterson-like to be a successful author? In the world of e-Book writing, anyone can be an author. And depending on how they promote their books, they could earn a lot more than naturally talented authors.
There are two ways to build an eBook business. You can write books in your areas of passion or hire people to write content on a wide range of topics. That way, your primary business will be to sell these books.
The second option is better for people who don’t like to write. It’s also an excellent way to scale your business. James Patterson does it, anyway and so do many award-winning authors.
How do you sell eBooks?
- Amazon
- Book Baby
- E-Junkie
- Seize
- Payhip.com
- Blurb
To increase sales, you can also launch your eBook website. Having your site also ensures you don’t have to split the money with anyone.
E-Commerce Store
Multiple studies show that more and more people are shopping online. That means there’s an increasing demand for e-commerce stores. Companies like Amazon and eBay command significant portions of traffic from shoppers.
However, there’s still room for small retailers who might be targeting a specific locality or sell a niche product. You could also launch a website to sell general merchandise. And depending on how your brand and promote it, you could succeed.
Before you start an e-commerce store, however, consider these questions:
- Is there a demand for what you plan to sell?
- Is it profitable?
- Can you beat the existing competition?
- Does the industry face a unique problem you can solve?
- How will you solve it?
For starters, you need to sell profitable products that people buy regularly. If not purchased frequently, there should be a demand for them. For example, people don’t buy $3000 DSLR cameras weekly. But there’s a demand for them.
Can you beat the existing competition? That’s where your branding comes in. If the industry has a problem, let’s say a customer service issue, you could solve it. And in doing so, you’ll be able to beat rival businesses and scare your store.
