Shoppers are looking for everything online now—ideas for their parents’ birthday gifts, bank loan schemes, next housing development near their area and even dating sites! If you are considering making your own startup company, why not try starting an online business first? Here are some of the reasons why this activity is a practical idea in this time and era.
Why Should You Start an Online Business?
Did you know that sales via the internet made up about $2.3 trillion dollars in 2017? This number is expected to rise to about $4.5 trillion in 2021 at the rate of technological advancement, according to Disruptive Advertising. More and more customers are expecting to find what they want, whenever and wherever they want to, making the idea of starting an online business an ideal solution. There’s also the 4 additional reasons below that you might be interested in.
An Online Business Has Worldwide Market Opportunity
With our planet populated by 7.6 billion people, and 4.1 billion internet users, internet proves to be a simple and efficient platform for you to reach people around the globe with a single search. Everything on the internet is accessible to anyone who is surfing it. If you are selling certain products, getting onto the right platform such as Amazon.com can easily help. If you are providing business services online such as freelance writing, a strong online presence helps!
Starting an Online Business Is Easy & Affordable
Certain online business types require no starting capital at all. As an example, being a social media consultant or marketer only requires you to have a Facebook account. You can create engaging text copies and its accompanying graphics straight from home or anywhere else at the low, low price of free. Blogging, affiliate marketing, and freelancing also require no start-up costs that a brick-and-mortar store might have.
Businesses & Services Online Are Easily Profitable
Since these enterprises have low or no capitals, any sale that you make is already a profit. This is especially true for service-based online businesses. Coaching or tutoring can take up a few hours of your day, but let’s imagine if you were to publish an ebook or an online course that interested users can purchase. The hours it took you to come up with the content can easily turn into profitable passive income afterward.
Endless Online Business Ideas to Explore
When you have an online business, you can have several roles at the same time. On one end, you can provide your freelance graphic design services. On the other, you can sell your photographs and artwork prints online. You can have multiple tasks ongoing at the same time! Of course, that is as long as you can manage your time well between these jobs.
With the benefits of running an online business out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the online business opportunities that you can explore.
Online Business Ideas You Can Consider
Amazon FBA Business
If you have products that you want to sell, try relying on one of the best international selling platform—Amazon. An Amazon FBA Business refers to ‘Fulfilled by Amazon’, and when you have this online business, you are only required to supply the products. Amazon will warehouse, prepare, deliver and handle the customer service for you! The sales profit after deducting the Amazon FBA charges will be fully yours. It’s like running a shop without any of the headaches!
Online Dating Sites
One of the online business opportunities that are less explored is definitely the online dating sector. You might not consider this to be feasible immediately, but look at how match.com and find-bride.com are doing! This business is especially profitable because of the number of American customers available. Many American men are looking to date and even marry foreign ladies—predominantly Asian, Latin and Russian women!
Remote Technical Support
This idea does not require you to have your own business, although you can also create your own business opportunity. You can join an existing company to work as a remote technical support too! This role only requires you to help the platform users with any inquiries that they might have, and some platforms have its online chat system ready for this purpose.
Freelance Writer / Designer
Being one of the most flexible online businesses that you can have, the job of a freelance writer or freelance designer will require at least the basic skills for you to get started. As you gain more experience and build better portfolios, you’ll be able to charge a higher price, choose your clients, and even start to assign some of your clients’ work to other freelancers working with you. However, this business will require a lot of your time and effort, much like an offline business.
Audio / Video Transcriber
Requiring only good listening skills and a laptop, you can bring this job anywhere you go. Meetings, seminars and many other events will frequently have a video or audio recording that needs to be put into word form later on for reference. This is where a transcriber comes in! Transcriptions are often in high demand even with the low skill set it requires due to the time it takes to complete a transcription file. If you’re at loss of what business to start, you can start with being a transcriber!
How to Start an Online Business
If you are interested in any of the online business ideas that we have presented above, you have already completed step 1. The process of starting and running an online business can be simpler than what you expect, but you will need lots of research to make it successful.
Research Market Needs
You may have identified the type of online business that you want to run, whether it is service- or product-based one. Next, you will need to find out if there is demand for what you are planning to provide. As an example, you can discern what is trending via platforms such as Google Trends. Alternatively, you can look for products and services that are constantly in demand and opt to use them as the focal point for your online business.
Create Engaging Copies
Once you have identified what you want your online business to revolve around, it’s time to create write-ups that describe what you provide. You can utilize search engine optimization to help make your business get found easily through searches and Google rankings.
You will have to think about how to engage with potential clients who want your products and services. Consider what they will want to know.
If your enterprise revolves around selling products, it will include the product descriptions, how you will deliver them to your clients, return policy and product testimonies. Meanwhile, if you are providing your services online, your written copies should include your service scopes, your unique selling point, and your portfolio, as an example.
Create a Responsive Website
The best content will not be useful if you don’t have your own website! Make a user-friendly responsive website that will work well on all types of devices. These websites will not be easy to make, and you may need to hire someone to create a website for you. However, if you know how to utilize platforms such as Shopify, Wix or Duda, you will be able to create your own online shopfront easily.
Be sure to organize your content well, and make sure that your website can load quickly. Every extra second that your website takes to load will cost you precious potential customers, which is why you will want to have a good website.
If you already have your own website, you can check how your website is performing via Google tools such as PageSpeed Insights. Simply insert your website URL and run a test. Afterward, you will receive a report detailing your website’s loading speed and what you can do to improve it. You can always optimize your website from that point forward.
Utilize Search Engines
Even the best website will not do well if you do not utilize search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing. SEO will help your website to rank higher on Google search results organically, but if you have some budgets to play around with, try running Google Ads or Bing Ads.
These pay-per-click (PPC) platforms will make your website stand out at the top of search results via search ads! There are plenty of guides as to how to build an efficient PPC campaign that can give a better return of ad spend so you can read into this topic along the way of building your online business.
Create Consistent Content
Don’t just focus on selling! Create additional content that your audience might be interested in. Try creating a Facebook page where you can consistently share related content with your audience. As an example, if you provide publishing services, why not share some writing tips and links for your fans to check their grammar on?
You can also create a blog on your website where you regularly post similar content. Creating listicles, otherwise known as list-articles, is a great way to get started! Content such as ‘10 Ways to Get Fit Fast’ or ‘5 Mistakes Every Salesperson Should Avoid’ can bring you a lot of traffic into your website. This additional content can help your audiences to find you.
Reach Out to Your Clients
The good old email platform is still a great way for you to reach out to your clients! You can send seasonal newsletters to users who have followed your page or subscribed to your website’s content. Utilize platforms such as MailChimp to send your followers exclusive discounts, voucher codes or any other offers during their birthdays or other special occasions.
Since you can only send these emails to people who have already subscribed to your content, be sure that they are already interested in what you have to offer. Make the most out of this group of the audience by sending them content that they want.
Upsell & Remarket
Your online business requires the same dedicated effort needed to run any other types of businesses! You can do this by cross-selling your other related products and services to existing customers. When you have built some trust with these customers, let them know that you have other complementary products or services that can help them even further.
Existing customers became inactive? Pull them back with an offer that they can’t refuse! As an example, send them a mail to give them a discount for the items currently inside their shopping cart, or a free webinar recording and accompanying PDF guide. That will bring them back!
In Conclusion
While this guide is not a complete guide to online businesses, it should give you a better idea of how they generally work. It’s important to remember that these activities will only generate you a good income if you have given it proper thought and planning. It’s great that you are taking the initiative to look up your own ideas for online businesses, and that’s already a good first step! As for the next step, why not do more research before you select the basis of your online business? Good luck!
