We’re living in a time of heightened financial fear. And I’m sure many of you are struggling with insecurities about employment. As the pandemic and automation are pushing people out of the workforce.
More so, we’re seeing inflation rates skyrocket and wages aren’t adjusting in proportion. These are scary times, indeed.
This is why it’s more important than ever for you to start developing methods to generate your own income. You can’t depend on a “steady job” anymore (there’s no such thing).
You need to get out there into the marketplace, sharpen your content marketing and copywriting skills, and create an online business for yourself. It’s a necessity.
How to come up with online business ideas
Ready to get to work?
One of the most common pitfalls for new content entrepreneurs is that they don’t know how to come up with online business ideas.
It’s not enough to say you want to start a business, you must also have a plan.
In this article, I’m going to share seven online business ideas, and I’ll detail the pros and cons of each method to help you shape your plan.
1. Freelancing
Freelancing is one of the best online business ideas.
Offering a service doesn’t require you to build a fancy website, invest money into marketing, or raise capital to build your product.
As a freelancer, your first and only priority is to get a client. At most, you need a laptop, some storytelling skills, and a willingness to get started.
2. Paid newsletter
I love paid newsletters, and I think they’re one of the best options to get started.
Paid newsletters are great because they’re straightforward. They’re one of the only online business ideas that don’t have a separation between the content you create to market the product and the product itself
This makes it much easier for you to stay focused on your writing. You can put your full focus on creating the best newsletter possible without having to get into the weeds with other management tasks.
One of the most exciting aspects of starting a paid newsletter is the monthly recurring revenue or MRR.
Any online business idea that monetizes with MRR is worth considering because consistent cash flow will generate.
3. Membership communities
Membership communities can be extremely profitable and fun, and you have an opportunity to deliver amazing value to your community members.
Similar to newsletters, membership communities have great scalability because you can add more members to your community without having to increase your expenses.
In addition, you can typically charge much more money for access to a paid membership community than you can for access to a subscription.
Typically, paid newsletters can range anywhere from $5 to $15 a month.
But membership communities can range anywhere from $15 a month all the way up to $500 a month (and sometimes even more).
4. Digital products
There’s a huge demand for digital products. Especially information products that teach your customers new skills that they can use to advance their own lives.
Typically, one of these online business ideas comes in the form of a course or ebook.
What’s so great about these products is how easily this business model can be automated.
Once you create your product, you don’t have to continuously spend time improving it in the same way you would for a membership community.
5. eCommerce online business ideas
Selling physical products used to require an unreasonable amount of resources.
It’s now easier than ever to build your own eCommerce business, and platforms like Shopify make it simple to get your business off the ground.
Also, there are lots of applications that make it easy to create products, store them, and ship them without ever needing to process the product orders yourself.
For example, if you’re starting a t-shirt business, Printful provides a solution that allows you to design an entire clothing line that’s stored and shipped for you.
6. SaaS
SaaS is an acronym. It stands for “Software as a Service.”
Most of the online products we use today are SaaS companies. For example, FreshBooks is an invoicing software that is considered a SaaS.
At one point, invoice management would have been a service that you had to either hire an employee for or hire a contractor to manage for you. Now, the software can facilitate the service for you.
SaaS businesses usually bill customers on a monthly basis.
Just like membership communities. SaaS businesses have a great deal of scalability because once you build the product, more members don’t. Require you to spend more money.
However, building a successful SaaS company is very difficult because of the resources needed to design. Code and engineering a high-level software product is extensive.