What Kind of Online Business is Most Profitable? The answer to this question depends on a wide array of factors. While it may seem like there are a limitless number of options, most people eventually agree that two paths are far superior to all others. These involve setting up an ecommerce site to sell products or creating a membership website where you charge a monthly fee for access to your collection of online resources.
The right kind of online business is one that makes you money. Is that all there is to success? Time to set the record straight. Success is not necessarily about making money. The real question, however, is if the business is profitable or not. Now it’s time to reveal the “secret” Well, here it goes…
Training
People are quickly realizing that the things they learn in their universities have nothing to do with their life.
Increasingly, they recognize that training in specific fields of interest gives them a decent living and is superior to traditional education, which has remained unchanged for centuries. Even, the degree for dignity trend is falling.
It’s time for you to dive into an industry of your interest, become an expert in it and be a trainer.
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may know that I’m also a digital marketing trainer (currently doing 1-to-1 mentoring sessions), and I’ll start creating online courses and perhaps membership sites in the future.
People are quickly realizing that life is too short to learn everything on their own. They are willing to shell out a huge amount of money on getting training from someone else’s experience.
Till now, I haven’t seen any business that can offer training better than the internet. Once you know your niche well and have developed a course in it, there will be people from all over the world who will pay for your expertise.
This is the right time for you to gain expertise in a good niche and start your training career.
In early 2016, Inc reported that the eLearning industry is worth $107 billion and still booming. The domain experts have a great scope when it comes to leveraging online courses and membership sites to take a larger pie off the industry.
You can kickstart your training business on platforms like Teachable to host your training courses. Once you set up your training course, marketing is a challenging task.
Here are some of the tips to effectively market your training courses:
- Create a funnel around your training course that consists of free offers, low-risk offers, webinars, etc to warm up your cold audience
- Get some traffic acquisitions to your funnel by creating free content on places where your target audience hang out. Maybe on YouTube, Quora, FB groups, etc.
- Provide continuous value to your course-buyers by giving them access to your member-only forum, groups, so on.
- Create an affiliate program for rewarding people who promote your training courses.
If you are a beginner and want to easily market your training courses with you focusing only on the creation part, you can join as an instructor on Udemy or Skillshare.
These platforms already have hundreds of thousands of highly motivated learners and marketing your product will be very easy – provided you tap into the right niche using their Market Insights tools.
Blogging
I am a professional blogger. I surely love my profession. Blogging is one profession where you earn money for doing what you love.
The best part about blogging is, unlike creating digital products, blogging requires little investment. You just need to get a web hosting account, get a domain and install free WordPress on it. You are good to go.
However, depending upon whether you outsource the content, the investment may differ. If you personally ask me, as I’m running multiple niche blogs I usually outsource all my content to Filipino, US, or Indian writers.
In order to succeed in blogging, you also need some skills like SEO, content creation, and promotion. Although you can learn all these skills by your own, this will take years to learn and implement them.
So, I suggest you take a good training for blogging from an experienced blogger.
When it comes to blogging, there are three main ways by which you can earn money.
- Promoting your own products
- Affiliate marketing
- Advertising or using AdSense
I recommend you either stick to Affiliate Marketing or Advertising. Because success is where the focus is.
In order for blogging to give you sustainable income, patience and consistency matter. Finding a perfect niche that’s a sweet spot between your passion and profit is highly essential.
Amazon FBA
Amazon FBA stands for “Fulfilled by Amazon”. In this industry, you need to buy cheap products from wholesale sellers and list those items at a much higher price on Amazon.
You need to sell white labeled products, and ship them to Amazon Fulfilment centers. Those FBA centers handle the shipping, packaging, and support for the products.
If you outsource the inventory management and keep an accountant for maintaining the Amazon seller account and updating it regularly, this is a lucrative passive business idea.
I think this business is more sustainable than drop shipping. In the case of drop shipping, there are certain risks like product damage issues or shipping issues. In the case of FBA, the challenging part of your business is handled by Amazon.
The shipping, inventory, and also returns will be handled by Amazon themselves. With this, you get plenty of time to focus on the marketing and the creative part of the hustle.
The initial costs include inventory, Amazon account registration, product photography, logos and UPC codes.
You need to find a niche in Amazon FBA too. For that, you can make use of great tools like the JungleScout Product research tool. After finding a niche, you need to find overseas private label product suppliers on sites like Alibaba.
SEO consultant
If you know the ins and outs of search engines and have technical skills in platforms like Google Ads and Google Analytics, becoming an SEO consultant could be a lucrative option for you. Many small business owners don’t realize how much of an impact search engine optimization (SEO) can have on their business. Start your online consulting business by educating those business owners on the power of SEO to help transform their websites and increase their conversion rates.
You could use your marketing skills to show business owners the benefits of using analytics data, strategic keywords and content structure to gain more organic web traffic. If you are unfamiliar with SEO or want to brush up on your digital marketing skills, you can refer to Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
Keep in mind that Google’s algorithms are always changing, so you will need to continue your education on SEO to stay relevant and successful in this field.
Social media consultant
Larger enterprises can hire an agency or full-time staff member to run their social media accounts, but small businesses often have to handle their own social media marketing. With so many responsibilities, business owners are often too busy, overwhelmed or undereducated about the importance of a social media presence to spend time developing and implementing a great social media strategy. As a social media consultant, you can help small businesses determine the best tactics, posting schedules and content for their target audience. As their follower count grows, so will your business.
Facebook and Twitter are still the top business networks, but businesses often tend to struggle with more visual platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and Snapchat. All of these platforms have huge consumer audiences, but many businesses don’t realize how big they are, how effective they can be and how to make them work for their brand. If you have a background in social media marketing and a passion for photography, focusing your consulting business on one specific platform, like Instagram, can be a great way to make money while helping other businesses improve their content and achieve their business goals.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping is one of the best at-home business opportunities there is. Dropshipping is a business model that lets you buy products directly from a supplier or manufacturer and ship them to your customers.
Compared to other ecommerce business opportunities, dropshipping is low cost to start. You don’t have to worry about carrying inventory or buying products in bulk. You don’t even have to worry about shipping products, because your supplier handles that for you.
Since you don’t have to buy the items you sell, you can offer a variety of different products, such as beauty, keto, fashion, home, ice cream, wholesale, and more—dropshipping business opportunities are near endless. If a supplier stocks a product, you can list it on your online store at no additional cost.
Conclusion
For those who want to create a profitable online business, The Experience is the premiere guide for achieving and maintaining online entrepreneurship and wealth. With The Experience, your goal of starting and running a successful online business will be fulfilled.