Business has changed today and many more players have come to the area. Not just firms or well-established agencies, but people interested in making some money online or develop a side income.
In the digital market, everyone with good ideas and limited resources can make a difference and become known without too much effort.
Today, more than ever, it simpler to establish a home based business and start making some money online!
To do so, though, you need to select your niche market carefully, to put some time and effort to realize your ideas and to select the right business model to work with.
There are many business models, which can bring some (or more) revenue. Other are more suitable to some people than others (due to the knowledge required – like developing software – or are depended on your network’s strength, like the affiliate marketing is), while the most can provide results if you work with them consistently.
Below you can find some proven business models which can help you to start your own business, but first, I’d like to review some numbers.
What the Numbers Suggest (or Why Should I Care?)
What the numbers suggest about earning money online? Here some figures:
- 8% of affiliate marketers earn 50K-100K
- 12% of affiliate marketers earn over $100K
- Many affiliate products offer up to 75% commission!
- Over one-third of businesses are introducing a ‘digital transformation program’ buying into the promise of earning money online
- Another third have already put such a program in place!
- In 2015, content marketing generating 3 times as many leads for businesses as traditional marketing
- 73% of B2B organizations use video marketing
- 78% of companies have dedicated social media departments
- 91% of all consumers check their e-mail daily
- 66% of US customers over 15 have purchased a product via an email ad campaign
- Email advertising has an ROI of 4,300%!
- One in five Americans now work from home (thanks to the internet)
- That totals 53 million freelance Americans
- 54% of marketers believe SEO will be more in demand
- 96% of marketers rely on search engine optimization
- Ironically, search engine optimization is the most popular search term on Google relating to marketing
- Search ads accounted for $9.1 billion of advertising spend during the first half of 2017
No, I need to go on to prove you that online business can be a big business today?
What Need To Have To Start My Own Business?
You do not need too many things in order to start a business today. You need energy, time, focus, good ideas and specialized knowledge/skills you can use to launch your own business, agency, product or service.
To start with you need to reflect on your strength and weaknesses and decide what exactly you want to do! You need to find your purpose in life!
You need to decide specifically:
- What you love doing,
- What you are good at,
- What you can do you can be paid for, and
- What the world needs!
If you decide and make a decision for all the above you have a good chance to make an educated decision about your business.
Furthermore, when you reach this stage you need to qualify and quantify your desired outputs in a format that will lead you towards its achievement. Specifically, you need to set SMART goals.
Beside the above prerequisites, you also need to:
- Know your market (and the competition)
- Know what you want to sale and how
- Have some knowledge/skill/experience about what you want to do
- Select the business model with you will use.
Other than that, the infrastructure you will need is limited to a laptop or a PC with internet connection and some social media accounts to help you promote your messages.
It would be great to have a site or a blog along to the above but they are not necessary.
What Are The Best Business Models Around?
Before you even start to develop your ideas and business, you need to select your business model or the way with which you will start earning some money online.
There are many proven business models around but the best are the following:
- Consulting / Coaching. Consulting and coaching are two of the most widespread business models around since they provide huge results in a limited time. If you are an expert on something or you have specialized knowledge, competencies and skills people are in demand, you can exchange your knowledge and your time for an income. This is a great way to help people find their way and achieve great results in the area of their field. To do so you can set up your own blog or site with subjects of your expertise or make a free account to a specialized site like Clarity.fm or a site like Fiverr and start working (btw, here my account at Clarity.fm for anyone wants more information!)
- Blogging. Blogging is an excellent way to start a business and make some money online. First, it demonstrates your expertise and second can support a side income via advertisement, sponsored posts, product reviews, etc. Many ways about making a living from blogging you can find in Smart Passive Income blog and Side Hustler Nation (among many other similar blogs)
- Podcasting. Podcasting as blogging is an excellent way to make money online via sponsorship and advertising. Podcasters with great influence and excellent content make a serious income with their broadcasts and some of them have abandoned their job to focus exclusively on podcasting. The equipment to start podcasting is not too expensive and you can consult many resources around the web (more information for starting a podcast you can find here, here, and here ). My podcast is an excellent example of such an approach, while there are many top podcasts to listen to and learn from (more info here and here).
- Books development and Selling. You can filter your knowledge and package it in the form of a book in order to make it accessible to many people may require it! Writing and selling books can be a full-time job and an excellent source of income via online shops and bookstores. Sites like Amazon, Apple marketplace, Barnes& Noble, etc. can become the source of serious income if with your books you provide quality and value to your audience. To start with take a look here, here, and here!
- Course Development. People are in constant need for the development of new knowledge and skills and course development is one of the largest niche markets today! You can help people by packaging required knowledge or developing the required skills in the form of a course which would help people achieve their learning objective (more information here). To start with this niche market you should take a look at udemy, Thinkific, Teachable, Skillshare, and CreativeLive (to mention only a few), in order to see what other people doing for developing successful courses.
- Development of Information Products. Information products or info-products are always in demand in our new digital market since are digital products focused basically on knowledge and information. An info-product can be anything actually: an eBook, a course, a webinar, a whitepaper which provide value to a specific audience! For its development, there are not too great requirements but you need to have a clear ideal on what you want to develop and for whom (more information you can find here.) To start with you need a good verified idea (i.e. something you know people going to buy) and a lot of experts to help you realize it (if you don’t have the necessary skills to develop your own product), You can find help on sites like Fiverr or UpWork.
- Affiliate Marketing. You do not actually need to have a product in order to make a profit. You decide to promote the products of other people that really can make a difference to your audience. To start with, you need, first to find products that worth promote and second to develop your own affiliate network. For the first part, to find valuable products you need the aid of specialized services like JVZoo, Commission Junction, ClicBank, WSOPro and others. For the second part, you need to find ways to build your own mailing list in order to have a way of communicating with people interesting to your messages and on the products you promote!
- CPA Marketing. An alternative way of affiliate marketing is the CPA marketing. CPA stands for ‘Cost Per Action’ and simply means that you get paid when someone use your link to do something. This something might be selling a product (in which case CPA marketing becomes and affiliate marketing) or subscribing to a list, join in a membership site, taking a course, etc. To start with, you need to start studying the operation of networks like the Max Bounty, PeerFly or the Clickbooth.
- Software or SaaS Development. One of the best business models around is the development of specialized software or of Software as a Service (Saas)! You can sell your software, application, tool, of SaaS application to everyone interested and make a profit out of it! To start with you need some basic programming and coding skills but other than that it is a business model can support a comfort lifestyle, especially if combined with other entrepreneurship skills. Typical representatives of this model is the DropBox, the Drag and the Evernote to mention only a few.
- Membership Model. This is one of the most widespread business models today especially so because it combines the advantages of specialized and in-depth or inside knowledge with a monthly (usually) – recurring- fee. In its basic form provides specialized access in online resources (in the form of a blog or a site with password protection) for a recurring fee. You can build such membership sites with WordPress and specialized plugins or with other technologies. The main thing is to have something you can provide to your subscribers and a content that can be updated and current. Typical sites of this form is LongeCity and [Lynda.com]www.lynda.com).
- Drop Shipping. This business model, in essence, make you a reseller for the big e-shops (like the Amazon, the AliExpress, the eBay, the Best Buy, and the WalMart). Most top e-shop provide opportunities for drop shipping ventures and you need to make a small initial investment in order to start selling products (for a profit.) You usually need to launch an e-shop and start to attract clients. You can find many information for Drop Shipping here.
There are many more models around but these are the most profitable ones! You can select any one of these (or a combination of these) in order to start making a business today!
In Conlusuion
Any business model is as good as the person realize it! This means that you need to select carefully which model would be best for you considering your knowledge, skills, and the value you want to offer to the people you want to serve.
After all, everything is about providing value, and online business is a type of business based on originality, good and solid ideas, technology, imagination, creativity and trust!
The choice is yours!