11 Online Business Ideas
Starting an online business does not have to be scary or overwhelming…
You can start an online business as a side hustle or you could make it your full time job!
An online business model is so great for many different reasons, some of which include:
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Time freedom
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Unlimited financial growth opportunities
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Very low overhead costs
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The opportunity to work with people around the world!
I have heard people say they are not creative enough to start an online business. To be honest, there are so many different opportunities that you don’t have to be the most creative person.
Over top of that, I truly believe creativity is created!
Of course there are artists who are extremely talented and creative.
But for regular people who may or may not have a creative bone in their body, I do believe if you continue working at something you will generate more ideas and your creativity will start to flow!
I am going to share with you some online business ideas you can start right away
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Sell clothes online
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Dropshipping
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Copywriter
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Website Designer
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Website Developer
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Launch an online course
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Start a blog
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Virtual Assistant
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Become an affiliate marketer
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Social Media Manager
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Start an online coaching business
Whether this is to start a side hustle to make some extra cash or you want to start something you can scale and do full time, these are all great options to get started with. But remember there are so many more online businesses out there for you to explore as well.
So take your time, look into these, look into some more if these do not resonate.
Think about what you will truly enjoy and how you want to serve people.
Don’t just think about the money! I know we all want to make money but that’s often not enough of a motivator to keep going when things get rough, which they will in any business!
So choose something that provides you with a bigger sense of purpose, something that helps you change other people’s lives… and also something you’re good at and enjoy doing!
11 Online Business Ideas
Sell clothes online
You can either start your own clothing line or resell used clothing.
Online shopping is so huge these days and if you can make a name for your clothing brand or your reselling business then sky is the limit!
If you are wanting to make your own clothing line it doesn’t have to be super complicated to begin with.
Look into purchasing clothes and putting your own logo or quotes on them. Start small and you can always expand!
A great way to do this is to work with a “print on demand” business. These are white label product suppliers who create the products for you using your designs and branding.
You don’t actually pay for the product until it is actually sold. Which means you do not have to make bulk orders and sit on inventory. Everything is handled by the supplier. From the payment to the packaging and shipping.
According to Forbes “online clothing store owners average $48,901 per year in the United States.”
“A dropshipper is a person or business that uses the dropshipping model of buying inventory and fulfillment logistics from a third party, instead of warehousing and shipping the products themselves.”
Quote from Shopify
You are basically operating as the storefront online and working with a supplier behind the scenes. This helps keep your overhead costs low!
The process looks like this:
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You have an online storefront where your customers place their orders
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Your site will automatically send your customers order to your dropshipping supplier
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Your supplier will prepare the order for your customer
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Your order is shipped directly to your customer by the dropshipping supplier
Source: Shopify
This is a great way to make some money online without having to do a lot of the leg work! It’s a lot of work to actually package and ship orders.
Working with a supplier that helps take care of the heavy lifting there is a huge help!
“Dropshippers generally make anywhere between $1000-$50,000 per month (net revenue) or $100-$20,000 net profit, on average. This typically equates to a 10-40% profit margin per sale where between 10-10,000 orders need to be placed and fulfilled each month.”
Source: Unrivaled Review
Copy is the text on your: website, marketing campaigns, social media etc.
Copywriters are people who specialize in strategically writing this text for you.
The job responsibilities of a copywriter can include:
Brainstorming and creating concepts for advertisements and marketing campaigns—often working in partnership with a graphic designer
Writing copy for various formats and media
Pitching ad and marketing campaign concepts to clients or company decision-makers
Researching products, services, customers, website search trends, competitors, and entire industries
Developing brand voices or adapting copy to an established brand voice
Analyzing campaign results to guide future copywriting strategies
Editing and revising—writing means rewriting and copywriters are responsible for taking direction from stakeholders and reworking copy through multiple drafts until it’s on target
Source: The Muse
“In your first year or two, you could work from home for 35 hours per week, bringing in $55,000 in annual revenue. This would mean $50,000 in profit, assuming that 90% margin”
Source: Step by Step Business
What being a website designer entails:
Design and layout websites
Think through the navigation of a site to provide the best user experience
Design sample pages and create mockups
Work in Adobe programs to create visuals, graphics, or animations
Register web domains
Organize files
Collaborate on website updates or “refreshes”
Source: Coursera
“The national average salary for a Freelance Web Designer is $57,852 in Canada.”
Source: Glass Door
Website developers can be narrowed down into three different categories:
Back-end web developers create the website’s structure, write code, and verify the code works. Their responsibilities also may include managing access points for others who need to manage a website’s content.
Front-end web developers work on the visual part of the website—the pages visitors see and interact with (also known as the user interface). They design the physical layout of each page, integrate graphics, and use HTML and JavaScript to enhance the site. You can gain essential front-end web development skills with Meta’s Front-End Developer Professional Certificate.
Full-stack developers do the work of both a back-end and front-end developer. These developers have the knowledge to build a complete website and may work for organizations that don’t have the budget for a large website team. If you’re interested in full-stack web development, consider earning IBM’s Full-Stack Developer Professional Certificate.
Source: Coursera
“ The national average salary for a Freelance Web Developer is $66,722 in Canada.”
Source: Glass Door
Do you have knowledge that you can share with other people?
I feel like we often think “I don’t know anything that people would pay to learn from me”
But I really don’t believe this to be true. I think all of us have skills or life experiences that we can teach to others.
Really think about what you know how to do, can you teach someone else to do that?
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Maybe you play the piano and you can create courses so people can learn piano online.
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Maybe you’re a makeup artist and you can teach others how to do their own makeup at home.
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Maybe you have gone through a divorce and grew from your experience. You can use that experience to help others navigate theirs.
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Or you have a really healthy relationship and you can teach other couples how to have a healthy relationship too!
The things you know, the experiences you have had in your life are valuable. Someone else can learn from them as well.
Don’t underestimate how you can help others!
“Short answer: you can make anywhere between $0 – $50k+ per month selling online courses, while most successful course creators earn $1k – $10k per month.”
Source: Sell Courses Online
I know those numbers are all over the place. But it is accurate to what is possible and what isn’t.
It takes work and strategy to sell courses. You have to build an audience and a community who wants to buy from you which takes time.
People have launched online courses and made zero sales. While others have made upwards of $200,000 within an hour launching an online course.
The potential is truly unlimited! However, the best thing to do would be to hire a mentor who could help walk you through how to build and launch an online course.
You know you need a website for your business but you have no idea where to start?
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Start a blog
“Blogging is dead” they said…
Let me break that myth by saying, no – blogging is not dead! It is very alive and here to stay!
Think about any time you look something up on Google and a link takes you to a web page. That’s a blog you’re heading over to!
And as long as Google is alive and kicking so are blogs!
Different ways to make money through blogging are:
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Publishing sponsored posts
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Affiliate marketing
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Selling products
You want to make sure you are super consistent with blogging. If you choose this online business you want to make sure you’re in it for the long run.
You can’t expect to see results in 3-4 months even. It can take upwards of 6 months to a year to see results from your blogging efforts!
Once you start a blog with a loyal following and build community – you can do sooo much from there!
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You can create an online course
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Launch an e-comm and sell products
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Start coaching
You can really turn your blog into most other online businesses! Since the key to successful online business is having a community who trusts you and is going to buy from you, a blog is a great place to start!
“On average, bloggers make around $45,000—with most bloggers earning somewhere between $38,440 to $51,906.”
Source: RYROB
Virtual Assistants are not only hugely necessary to support other online businesses, it’s a growing business on it’s own!
Online business owners need virtual assistants as their own businesses start to grow!
VA’s help entrepreneurs organize their businesses and their work. You can either specialize in particular areas or you can offer a number of services.
Virtual Assistants are a huge asset as they help other entrepreneurs stay on top of their tasks or help them build up their backend and streamline their businesses. You could offer one off services or you can offer monthly retainer based services.
I have seen many VA’s scale their businesses by either creating an agency where they hire on more VA’s or start offering coaching or courses to people who want to follow in their steps.
Again, the sky is the limit here!
Some VA tasks include:
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Responding to emails
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Organizing calendar
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Setting up the back end of businesses (CRM or Project management systems, Email Marketing)
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Edit marketing content
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Create marketing content
“While ZipRecruiter is seeing annual salaries as high as $107,000 and as low as $13,500, the majority of Freelance Virtual Assistant salaries currently range between $31,500 (25th percentile) to $57,500 (75th percentile) with top earners (90th percentile) making $81,500 annually across the United States.”
Source: Zip Recruiter
Affiliate marketers are essentially marketing and promoting another businesses products or services.
This can look like sharing about these products/services on their blog or on their social media platforms.
They can set up an email list where they can connect with their community and sell for these businesses through their email list.
They basically earn commission every time someone purchases through a unique referral link or code they have provided their audience.
This is a great way to make some extra cash! Even if you have another online business you can always add on affiliate marketing.
Make sure you are selling products or services your truly believe it and you know will help your audience.
“Compensation software company Payscale reports that the average annual salary of an affiliate marketer is over $53,000, based on over 7,000 salary profiles, with many affiliate marketers earning significantly more.”
Source: Shopify
Social media managers do just that!
They manage and grow social media platforms for their clients.
Some specialize in specific platforms like Instagram or Pinterest while others offer these services for multiple platforms.
You’d be responsible for maintaining a company’s social presence online, developing its social marketing strategy, managing campaigns, and other related tasks. It’s a solid online business idea with plenty of demand, with jobs in social media expected to grow by 10% through 2030, and it doesn’t take that much startup capital to begin.
Source: Shopify
A day in the life of a social media manager would typically include:
Planning and developing social media campaigns
Crafting compelling content or getting it developed
Posting content across social media accounts
Engaging with customers on different channels
Analyzing running campaigns
Being on top of the latest social media trends
Source: Forbes
“As of Dec 29, 2022, the average annual pay for a Freelance Social Media Marketing Manager in the United States is $52,647 a year.”
Source: Zip Recruiter
This one is quite similar to building an online course. It’s just offering your services in a different way.
So instead of putting your knowledge/skills/experience into a course you would offer it as a coaching service
You can either coach clients one on one or you can offer group coaching.
Oftentimes online coaches will offer both types of services with the 1:1 coaching behind a larger investment for the client and the group coaching being a lesser investment while still being impactful!
“According to ZipRecruiter, business coaches’ average annual salaries are around $74k but can reach over $160k with more expertise.”
Source: Kajabi
Every single one of these online business ideas are going to take work! None of them are a get rich quick scheme.
You can see the average pay of a lot of these is similar to other industries and jobs.
However, there truly is unlimited potential in the online world. But it does take a lot of work and dedication!
