In a day and age where technology lets us be anywhere and everywhere, it’s never been easier to find an online startup idea. Most of today’s startups are in fact entirely digital, allowing them to have far reaching influence with the people they serve. All at the same time, online businesses are saving money because they don’t have the expenses that go hand in hand with brick and mortar.
Starting an online business is all about effort and focusing your abilities in what you do best. Here are some business ideas that you can start out in 2018.
Online Business Startup Ideas
Become a Niche Blogger
There’s riches in niches if you know a lot about a particular topic. Making money by talking about stuff you already know, it’s a win-win scenario. These days, there are so many general blogs that it’s not difficult to jump into the market and compete by holding focus on a specific niche.
Your due diligence is required to be successful. Don’t start a blog which would compete against a saturated market (unless you have a strong audience to begin with, and know a lot on the stuff you’re talking about). Start small, think sub-niches and work your way up to the grand niche you’d like to build around. When you have your ideas, start writing your articles. Yes, even before you start building your website. You need content after all.
Here’s a checklist to get started.
- Find a web host
- Pick a domain name
- Choose a platform (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and so on)
- Build y our website, and go live
When you’re online with several published articles, start capitalizing on your work and find an ad provider like Google Adsense. You can even sell ad space directly, but be careful and do not sell links. You can read about that in our Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Some bloggers make tens of thousands of dollars online. If you write entertaining and educational articles, you’re sure to capture interested audiences. Check back later and we’ll have some great starter niches for you to write about!
Affiliate Marketing
Earn money by promoting products and services from other people. Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative if done properly, and in many cases you may not even need a website.
What happens in this model is for every sale made through your referral, you’ll earn a small commission. Earnings could be one-time, or recurring. There are many thousands of affiliate networks available, so you’ll be hard pressed not to find something you’d have fun selling.
Here are some great networks you could start off with.
- Earn money by promoting Amazon’s store with Amazon Associates
- Become an affiliate marketer with CJ Affiliate.
- Rack up commissions with Click Bank’s affiliate program.
- Refer sales and support the little guy on eBay with the eBay Partner Network.
- Help people find what they’re looking for with ShareASale.
In addition to the networks above, there are countless others which may suit you better. Perhaps there’s a local referral program in town and you’re within a decent community while holding a leading role.
Persistence is the secret to every sale, but don’t push it.
Sell Stuff on eBay
In the early days of The Internet, people sold stuff on eBay. It was a gem of it’s time, and resulted in many businesses to gain success. These days, it’s not as effective with so much competition and millions of listings. There are however still potential opportunities on the platform.
To be successful on eBay, you need to track down what’s in demand, and if that market is being satisfied. A couple searches, and you’re in business if it’s a product or service you could offer.
Here are some examples of what you could sell on eBay. Search examples are provided in bold.
- Web Hosting Services will bring up less than 900 results.
- Searching for PLR Content is surprisingly at 20 results.
- eBooks of varying genres. No examples here, do some due diligence and search.
- Domain Name(s) will land you 10k results, get creative on this one.
- Niche Website(s) (a.k.a. pre-made websites) will yield less than 250 results.
- Anything containing Royalty Free will land less than 2k results.
Search examples are valid as of May 21st, 2018. There are literally thousands of digital goods you could sell online without ever having to hold inventory. The only problem these days is finding a buyer, but opening up as many venues to make money will only increase your odds of a successful online business startup.
Support Another Online Business Startup
You don’t have to start your own online business. Supporting someone else’s great idea is enough to put you in an ideal position to be part of something. Perhaps you’d like to go into a trade that demands more than one persons talents, that’s enough reason to change course. If going it alone in itself would pose a great challenge, then why not team up?
The difficulty here is finding new startups and convincing them of your value. You’ll find websites such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter great resources for up and coming startups; and although it’ll likely be a trial and error operation, it’s possible that you may end up helping such startups require less funding if you join in.