Actually, the most difficult part of setting up online businesses that make money without investing a lot, and having success is to find a niche where you can be positioned with your products or services.
One of the most common errors made by businessmen, as founders of a startup, is that they to sell everything. This puts them in competition with others who, perhaps, have been in the market longer or can count on more economic resources. When a businessman does this, his project will very rarely take off quickly. This is why I insist on the value of identifying your niche. It’s not easy to do, but it will be worth it.
Internet has reached the point of completely transforming contemporary companies. These days, Internet’s penetration is world-wide and more than 50% of the people have access to the network. This amount will continue to grow relentlessly, not just because it’s good business for telecommunications companies, but also because governments have promoted a series of public policies that encourage the digitalization of all procedures.
Why create an online business?
The first reason for creating an online business is that you have a potential of billions of people. Also, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated online commerce. Currently, more and more people are becoming familiar with buying products and services online. Fear of scams has lessened while at the same time, security measures have increased.
One of your biggest advantages from creating an online business is that it offers you total flexibility, both in where you work from and in your own time. That oft repeated phrase “be your own boss and manage your calendar” certainly seems more applicable these days.
As the owner of an online business, you can work from anywhere on the planet, and whenever you feel is most appropriate. This way, you can organize your time better.
Another key factor for creating your online business is that it is much cheaper than setting up a brick-and-mortar business. You don’t have to lease a building, or even pay a lot of employees. So, your expenditures will be reduced.
When creating an online business you don’t have to focus on a specific community, because you will have a global reach with your business. You can literally sell, from your home, anywhere in the world. Just focus on your niche.
These are big advantages from creating an online business. However, you have to keep in mind that creating it might be easy and quick; however, you will have to dedicate a lot of time and effort in order to reach success.
How to begin an online business that makes money without a lot of investment
To begin your online business, the first thing to determine what product and/or service you want to offer. To do this, it’s essential that you are very clear about your abilities and skills are for giving a service. Remember that you are going to be hired by someone, so you will have to convince them that you are good at what you promise to do.
If you are going to offer products, then you have to be very sure that you can count on the components for making them or that you are in contact with the businesses that furnish them.
Closely studying the market you’re aiming for is the second step. This way you will know if there is a demand for the products or services you’re thinking of offering. You can do this study yourself or hire the service of professionals.
If you opt to do it yourself, to optimize your expenses, in the first place I suggest reviewing search trends, to know if it’s popular. You can visit sites like Google Trends and Trend Hunter.
Study your possible competition by visiting their websites to see which products and services are sold the most. You can turn to sites like Owler, where you can get data about brands that commercialize products or services similar to yours.
The essential thing in this study is that you find the gaps in your sector. Knowing these gaps, you will know where you can fit in, to offer something different from other brands and professions.
What online business that makes money without investing a lot can I open?
We’re offering you some ideas here for business niches that you can set up without a lot of money and with the assistance of the Caporaso & Partners law firm. We’ll help you with both the technical and the legal parts, so that you can obtain licenses, agreements, form your company, obtain a bank account and a payment gateway to begin your business.
1.- Online travel Agency
An online travel agency is a good business. Tourism has fallen during the pandemic, but it’s only a question of time before the third largest industry in the world returns to occupy its position of privilege. Plus, after so much confinement, people are anxious to travel.
You must always take into account that the online travel agency area is very competitive. Therefore, it’s essential that you find your niche. It will be a very costly error to want to sell everything.
You have to know very well what you can offer that’s different. Your niche can be a country, or the region of a country, or aim for a type of traveler. For example, you could focus on backpackers, or those looking for cultural experiences, or extreme sports.
It’s not enough to just identify the niche to be successful, but also you must establish a good business plan, where you set your objectives and the money that you need.
Don’t worry about renting a locale. Actually, most sales these days are made through Internet. Although it was important for travel agencies in the past to have a good geographical location in the city, today you don’t have to spend even a dollar for getting a well-positioned locale. Your focus must be on reaching a good position in the search engines, so it’s better to invest your money in a professional SEO.
Depending on the financing you can count on, you could dedicate a budget to advertising on the social media or even pay Google Ads. In any case, all this will be cheaper and give better results than paying thousands to rent a physical office.
2.- creating mobile apps for businessmen
In an increasingly connected world, mobile apps have become an essential tool for any company. If you don’t know how to create apps, you can look for designers in developing countries, at very competitive prices. Then, you can offer these apps in industrialized countries.
There are diverse advantages offered by an app. For example, you’ll notice that your online traffic will increase, because people will have a new way to reach your products and services. So, you’ll be earning potential customers.
Further, your brand’s image will improve with an app. Remember that every time they open their device they will have a view of your app. With it, you can create income. Some apps are free and they seek to attract the user so they can then offer them other services. Meanwhile, other apps let you obtain additional income just by downloading them.
We can get to know our customers better through apps. With them, we receive data like gender, geographical location and other metrics that allow us to have a more complete idea of what the users do with the app. This way, you can better evaluate what works and what doesn’t.
While knowing our customers better, we can adopt a series of actions that help build their loyalty. Plus, the apps become an immediate means of communication with our customers and we can use them to promote all of our services and products within them.
An important detail is that it’s not just having an app, but positioning them well inside the main shops, like Google Play and Apple Store.
3.- Sell travel insurance or guarantees for obtaining visas.
These days, almost no one travels without an insurance to protect them against situations of different character. An accident, stomach problems, emergency surgery are all problems that affect travelers.
We can offer you a White Label mutual (with your brand) and you can affiliate a travel agency and begin selling, from the comfort of your home, insurance packets from which you can obtain an income for each sale you complete.
Use your influence between friends, work companions and acquaintances to present them with all the advantages they’d obtain by acquiring these insurance packets. For this, you can turn to a direct communication, by e-mail or instant messaging platforms like WhatsApp or Telegram or use your social networks.
You can sell travel insurance directly and automatically and set your own price for each policy. Plans for single trips and yearly plans for multiple destinations appear the options.
Selling travel insurance, guarantee of economic solvency policies and other mutual services are a possibility for diversifying your income portfolio. The travel market and applications for travel visas is ample and is recovering quickly.
4.- Teaching online language classes
If you have mastered more than language, use this knowledge and earn money from any part of the world by teaching online language classes.
The Covid-19 pandemic has influenced consistently more people to access online courses, free or paid, to receive every type of knowledge. Therefore, we are in the most favorable scenario to begin teaching the language(s) you know online. This is an easy way to generate income since these classes pay well. Meanwhile, the more hours you teach, the greater your dividends will be.
You don’t have to be a specialized professor to give these classes. Just by being a native speaker of a language and have a good methodology for teaching will be sufficient to attract students and through them, generate income.
There are two ways to give online language classes: through your own website or affiliating with several specialized platforms, like Itaki or Verbling. The main advantage of giving online language classes from your website is that you can set the prices and times, whereas, on the platforms, you would be competing with dozens of professors who will also attempt to captivate students, since starting with this is how you receive your paycheck.
At the same time, placing your own website is a process that can take time and effort, whereas online teaching platforms, although they charge monthly fees for you to stay enrolled, show your curriculum to thousands of students who go all the way there because they want to learn something.
5. Begin an online consulting business
If you have advanced knowledge in a specific area and can count on your experience, You can make the best out of this and begin an online business that brings in money without investing a lot by offering consultancy. This consists in advising people and businesses in facing particular problems that can pop up. This is one of the online businesses that requires less investment to start up.
It's not easy to be successful with this type of business, because the most complicated part is finding customers who trust you and are willing to pay for your advice. To earn credibility, you have to work your professional networks very well, above all LinkedIn, one of the platforms where you can offer your services.
These are some suggestions for beginning an online consultancy business. The first is that you must focus on an area that you like and know about, but there is also a real market need. If there’s not, you will only be wasting your time.
Prepare your own business plan. Set down your objectives there, like receiving income and developing a lasting relationship with your customers. This business plan must lay out everything from a market study carried out beforehand, up to an analysis of the competition, as well as your marketing strategy.
The third piece of advice is to strengthen your personal brand. Remember that on online consultancies you are selling yourself. Therefore, a solid CV isn’t enough, but you will also need to show references from other customers with whom you have worked.
6. Offer Social Media Marketing services
This is a very attractive business for those who have abilities with professional social media jobs. Currently, more than just a few small and medium-sized businesses are looking for advice from experts on digital marketing for introducing their products and services to the younger generations.
Your job would be to put this business’s trademark on different social networks , to increase the number of followers and to provoke interaction with the contents (products and services) of that business. Everything is quantifiable on the networks, so that before launching yourself into this type of undertaking, make sure that you are building a solid portfolio, where you show prior jobs with other businesses.
Other than your own profiles and pages on social networks, you can also create your website, where you promote your services and set your fees.
If you are good, most likely various job offers will come your way. One of the strategies that digital marketing specialists carry out these days is to make use of bots for publishing a greater amount of content, in different social network groups, especially on Facebook.
7. Develop an online publicity platform for Delivery
These days, delivery is one of the fastest growing industries. Experts hope that the sector continues to strengthen, at an impressive annual rate of 15%, until 2025. This is because the Covid-19 pandemic has caused the vast majority of businesses to offer home delivery service. This interest in delivery and, at the same time, the diffusion of offers represents a big opportunity for you, if you know how to take advantage of it through the Livero.delivery platform.
This platform lets you create your own business within the delivery sector. With a small investment you can acquire the control, within the platform, of a city, region or an entire city. Then comes the most difficult, but fascinating, job which can give you big earnings: attracting for the business you’ve created, publicity announcements for businesses that offer home delivery services.
Remember that today, everyone does delivery, from big businesses up to professional workers, like plumbers, electricians, computer experts. However, there’s no space to unite all these offers and where customers can find the best proposal from the convenience of their own home.
Livero.delivery offers you the platform, and for a small commission, the business is yours. Your job will be to contact small, medium and big businesses so that they can show, in your space, the services they offer and their prices. Then do the same with private workers. How do you earn money? You charge them for publishing these ads and position, so you can generate recurring monthly income.
Livero.delivery is an excellent option for those without technical knowledge, because it is a “turnkey” business. Which, depending on the size of your area, allows you to earn thousands of dollars each month. Visit the livero.delivery site for more information.
What to do once you’ve identified one or several online businesses that make money without much investment
Simple, load up the shop:
- Incorporate a preferential taxation company
- Design or program a website
- Create strategic alliances and a marketing plan
- Implement the website’s SEO and marketing
- Begin earning!
The Caporaso & Partners law firm has a long experience in facilitating startup development. Many of our customers can seriously collaborate with you, at competitive prices, in developing your activity. Creating online businesses that make money without investing a lot can be easier if you let experts guide you. And if you want online businesses that make money without a lot of investment or better, with zero investment and that can only give you a salary.
