Over the past decade or so, the popularity of the Internet has reached astronomical levels, which doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. As such, now is the perfect time to start an online business. No matter what field you’re interested in entering, there are limitless ideas and resources at your disposal, as well as an available audience and consumer base if you market your online business properly. The following will take an in-depth look at some of the best business ideas for online businesses.
Professional Freelancer
Though it might be difficult to believe, depending on the skills you have acquired over the years, you can be a professional freelancer on the Internet, one that makes good money being hired as a part-time contractor by certain companies, which is becoming more and more prevalent on the Internet. Since these freelance jobs are typically part time and on a limited basis, it’s possible to work for a multitude of companies at one time doing any number of different job duties, including everything from website design and content creation to technical services. You can start your own online freelance business that caters to other businesses that need the skills you offer.
It’s also possible to charge your own rate to clients and actually wait for them to come to you for business instead of having to sell them on an idea you have. Make sure to always be aware of marketing trends for the services you offer. It’s important to never charge too much in comparison to other companies, especially if you have yet to build an online reputation. With that being said, freelancing is one of the best opportunities to build a reputation for yourself and your business online.
Affiliate Marketing
If you’ve taken courses or received a degree in marketing before, or simply understand what it takes to market products and services properly, one of the best business ideas to implement online is that of affiliate marketing. This type of marketing is associated with promoting products of other companies online. The person that markets these products will receive a rather substantial percentage of all products sold because of the advertising. If a product is sold due to the advertising through your blog or website, you will typically receive anywhere from $20 to $50 per sale.
There are two aspects to this online business that you should keep in mind. You will need to first get the customer to your site, which means that you also need to find ways to drive up traffic to your blog or website. Once this is done, you need to place adverts and other marketing materials throughout your site in order to provide customers with a chance to purchase your clients product. One of the best things about this type of marketing is that it requires no additional investment on your part. You just choose a product to advertise and wait for people that visit your site to purchase the product.
Social Media Consultant
There are tons of small to medium sized businesses that understand they need a presence on social media, but can’t afford to hire an entire agency to run these social media accounts. This is where you come in. It’s often up to these businesses to run their social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, by themselves. As small business owners typically spend all their time running the business, it’s difficult for many of them to find the time or the knowledge to properly do so. By working as a social media consultant, you can be hired on a part-time and limited basis by small to medium sized businesses. When working as a consultant, you can directly influence what social media marketing techniques are used, as well as what content is best for the target audience and schedules to follow. If your expertise proves beneficial towards providing a boost to the number of customers visiting the site, this will allow your reputation to flourish.
Resume Writing
Obtaining a job in the work force is becoming increasingly difficult in many fields, as competition can be quite fierce. The key to landing a job is not just in the interview, but also with the first cover letter and resume that is sent to the employer in question. In fact, a well-done resume is essential to even landing an interview. For instance, when listing accomplishments, it’s necessary to do so with a bit of bragging, but while also being humble about it. If you are someone that is good at writing and knows how to spruce up a resume, there is a lot of demand for good resume writers online. This can also extend to LinkedIn profiles.
Specialty Retailer
One of the best business ideas that can be fully implemented online is to start your own specialty retailer that is unique and focuses on one area of products. Whether it’s antiques or furniture, you can use a web hosting service and e-commerce software to create an online storefront that is created quickly and will be easy-to-use by customers. The benefit of creating a retailer and storefront is that a lot of vendors whose products you are selling on your site will ship their products directly to the customer that purchases it off your site, which means that you can get by without having to keep a lot of inventory on hand.
Google Adsense
Google Adsense is similar to affiliate marketing in that it’s up to you to create content for the client that is high quality and will drive traffic to the site. Google supplies the ads, all you have to do is create good content that will drive customers to your site to click on the ads. An additional benefit of this online business idea is that if you reach a daily amount of income from those visiting your site and seeing your ads, you will start to get paid by Google for everyone that simply visits your site. As such, the burden is on you to come up with high quality content that will keep customers interested and returning to your site. Combining this with affiliate marketing is a great and easy way to earn a lot of money in a short amount of time.
Information Marketing
Information marketing is also a huge and potentially massively rewarding business idea that you can begin to implement online. Information marketing requires you to create information on any subject, primarily using sites such as Kindle and Amazon CreateSpace as a means of publishing and earning money from the content that you create. The best aspect of this type of marketing is that there aren’t many skills you need to have in order to implement it. The only thing you need is the ability to produce information products that are relatively high quality.
The best way to do this is by identifying a smaller and somewhat niche market, find out what type of information they need and then sell it at an affordable and competitive price. For instance, you can write a short story about any type of subject you want, whether fiction or non-fiction, place it on the kindle marketplace and price it for a small price that will entice readers to at least check it out. This is just one of the many ways in which information marketing can become very lucrative for you.