There are many ways to start an online business, and the truth is that each one of them tends to have its own definition of what online business means. Today, I will be sharing with you some profitable business ideas that will help you get started if you are thinking about establishing an online business.
Profitable business ideas
I think that it’s necessary to clarify some terms and define them very clearly before we start to think about how to carry out those ideas of Internet business that you have in mind.
So, let’s get started…
Table of Contents:
What is an online business?
What Are Some Profitable Business Ideas to Start an Online Business
The Benefits of Passive Income
Now is the time: Let’s start to generate passive income
What is an online business?
In general, every business has its own characteristics. Indeed, there are several characteristics to mention, but I like to look at a business as an assembled system that can work on its own. Either because you have the personnel to take care of the day to day activities or because you have created an automated system for sales and the distribution of your products/services.
Let’s say for instance that you have an online store of digital products (music, for example).
In other words, in a successful business, the entrepreneur’s mission is to take himself out of the equation as soon as possible. I mean, who wouldn’t love to have a business that can make money for them, while they are on vacations to the Bahamas?
What Are Some Profitable Business Ideas to Start an Online Business
If you are thinking about running an online business, I believe that your online business project should comply with a series of very specific criteria:
Profitable online businesses tend to be scalable businesses. Try to take advantage of the Internet and distribute your knowledge through selling digital products. Doing this reduces to the minimum the cost of the sales of your products (it’s produced only one time and it sells thousands of units without over expenditures) and then forget about any kind of headaches due to logistics, including funds management, its maneuver, and difficult treasury.
Good online businesses are low-investment businesses. And this is very positive. With your willingness to work and your idea, you can get started with less than $200/year (with this you can buy a domain and hosting plan, and a premium template). Delay the formalization of business activity as much as you can.
More than ever, profitable online businesses are based on developing a system that can work on its own.
Although reaching the objective of getting some passive income is not so easy, I believe that is vital that your business can target all possible ways of sales without your direct involvement in the operations of the business. And I am not talking about hiring employees, although it’s possible after you establish some fixed income.
I think that big online businesses can be started all alone, without any investors or employees. Once you have validated your business model, in a second phase, then you can wonder how to speed up and leverage your business model, with or without employees and investors.
Well, after reviewing the theory, let’s try to apply these profitable business ideas in the form of some online businesses.
I always like to take examples of the kind of business that can be established by one single person or offering services. So if you’re a designer, programmer, interpreter, writer, accountant, etc… read this carefully, because I’m going to list 7 very specific profitable business ideas to get passive and recurrent income:
Sell your own ebook: 100% digital product, sale online 24 / 7, 365 days a year. This would be the perfect compliment to an online business that offers services. What do the great chefs in the culinary field do? Write a book right? Why don’t you copy that,? write your own eBook.
Sell Templates/Tools: If you are a designer, you can easily recycle designs for a client, and changing the Look & Feel, you can just sell it as a template in online markets devoted to the topic. That is called Leveraged Income.
Sell your own developments as a product: This model is very similar to the previous one, but it’s more appropriate for a developer. There are many CMS or content managers with enough communities to sell products. Begin with WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. You only need to develop a plugin or module and offer it to the community. You can charge for support or documentation, or have a more advanced version of payment also receive revenue for more advanced personalization services. Again, in many cases, if you start a project for a client with the idea of leveraging your work, it will be much easier to get something out of this strategy. You have thousands of examples on Themeforest.
Online Training and Education: This is another leveraged product 100% automated. There are many people willing to buy an online training if you provide immediate value. The fact of being able to study anything you want, whenever you want is a very tangible benefit. Harsh Agrawal and his Shout University are a really good example.
Start a new online directory: Although it seems like currently, all large directories are somewhat obsolete, there are still many poorly covered niches where a directory of supply/demand and employment ads will continue to have great value.
Sell your podcasts: This is indeed an ideal complement to the point No. 1(Sell your eBook). You can just leverage the same contents and format (mp3) and sell it to other channels (iTunes / Podcasts directories). The Podcasts are exploiting around the internet for last few years, PAT FLYNN and Smart Passive Income are a very good example. Taking extra advantage of the time while driving the car or doing sports at the gym is becoming very popular.
Any of these items mentioned above are profitable business ideas that you can start building today or it can also help you generate other ideas for your business.
The Benefits of Passive Income
Well, what is good about passive income? Why are there so many people trying to learn about it, and what is the reason why attracts bloggers? There are three simple reasons:
You make more money while working less: No one wants to work 40 hours a day throughout their whole life. If there is a way of making the same while just working half, that’s something we will want to. And that’s exactly what you obtain when you have a passive income: Generate income even if you are sitting on the couch at home watching TV.
Opportunity to create your own lifestyle: Whether you are self-employed or freelancer if you offer services, you will be “tied” to schedules, deadlines, and customers. With a passive income, if you have created it properly, you can choose how to live, where to live and what to do with your life.
Freedom: Rather than creating your own lifestyle, creating a passive income gives you freedom of not having to respond to others except your own clients.
These three benefits are closely related to living with “freedom” and living the life you really want to. There is more. Although you will not just sit and look at how your bank account grows, if you implement any of the above-mentioned profitable business ideas, yes you can get a freedom that no employee or self-employed can have.
Now is the time: Let’s start to generate passive income
If you want to earn more money, work less and find a good way to retirement, then it is a good time for you to start creating new ways of income that don’t require you a great dedication of time.
Now it’s your turn. You have to sit down and begin to investigate what is the profitable business idea that will help you get a passive income that will allow you to spend more time with your family, take holidays when you want, live in Japan if you want or just sit down and generate revenue from home without doing “almost” anything.
Do you want to abandon the classic working 40 hours a week? “Only”, you have the ability to change that. Start a business with future or create a product that generates passive income for you.
The more you delay in creating it, more money will be lost or earned by others. Forget about being a slave to the clock and your schedule and just see how money comes into your Pocket without having to work all the time.
You have the answer to how to get extra income, now it’s your turn you decide if continue working on behalf of others or selling your hours is the solution. What are you going to decide?