Every now and again, I get a question from my readers and students that makes me go “Hmm, I’m getting asked this a lot, and I am tired of writing the same answer”.
Plus, a question such as the one in the title, “I want to start my own business but don’t know what to do” is not something that requires a short answer, at least not one I want to write (and re-write) on an email reply thread.
This post would hopefully provide a great answer to that question and hopefully, save me from typing it all out again, whenever I get that question.
If you are reading, and you want to learn how to start your own business but don’t know how, then this post was written with you in mind.
I’ve been in your shoes, and I’ll be the first to tell you that you do not need to be some gifted business prodigy or a Harvard Business graduated to build yourself a great business – online.
Yes, my business is built online and it’s also what I will be talking about today.
If you’re looking for information on how to start an online business but in the offline world (if there’s still such a thing), then this post might not be the one you are looking for.
Today, I want to teach you, from my experiences (the good and the ugly), how to start a home-business online that will have you earning some money and hopefully even enough for you to be able to build yourself a lifestyle business that you genuinely like and deserve.
I have made money online with four primary business models, and that is what I will be showing you today – for some, this may not be something that they want to do, for others, they can pick a few (or all) ideas to run with it.
These are my experiences building an internet income, if you have any questions about the following four strategies, be sure to leave me a comment down below or send me a message inside Wealthy Affiliate.
Freelancing
My first ever taste of online income came through me doing freelancing on sites such as Fiverr and People Per Hour.
Although I do not do any freelancing works whatsoever these days, since I moved to “bigger” things (I’ll explain below), I still think that freelancing is one of the best ways one can start generating an income online.
Most of the other stuff I will talk about below do require some start-up investment, as with any online (and offline) business do, but with freelancing, you can literally start with $0.
Do you have a special skill that you can sell online?
You don’t need to be an expert; you just need to know how to do something better than the average person.
To people who are interested in blogging and the affiliate marketing as a business model, I often suggest you take up freelance writing online to hone your skills as a writer and see if it’s actually something that you like doing.
Now yes, the content writing freelance industry is pretty saturated, but I do believe there is still a slice of the pie that you can carve out for yourself.
My best tip for starting to make money with freelancing is to start with “low” prices and move forward from there.
With so much competition, you are going to need to get reviews to stand out above the rest so make sure that at first, you keep your prices low and increase slowly as the demand for your work starts rising.
As I said, there still money to be made so do not feel intimidated by it.
My recommendation of where to start freelancing would be Fiverr and People Per Hour although there are many others which are popular.
Sites like UpWork.com and Freelance.com are also great resources for you to check out if you want to take this approach.
But why freelancing?
It gives you a taste of making money online.
As soon as you make your first $$, you’re going to realize how fun and addictive making money online can be. It also gives you some start-up capital for you to move on to bigger, better things.
*When I say better, I don’t mean that freelancing is bad, but the dot-com lifestyle is the dream of no longer trading your time for money, which freelance does require.
With these passive income opportunities, I will tell you about below; you will see that it is possible to make money in your sleep and while you are out enjoying life.
Drop Shipping
Drop shipping is my new love – I’ve been writing extensively about dropshipping on this blog for a while now!
If you’ve never heard of dropshipping, I will give you a brief down below, but I’ll also suggest you see my guide on getting started with drop shipping.
What is Drop Shipping?
Dropshipping is the e-commerce business model that allows you to ship products from your suppliers in Asia, to your customers anywhere in the world with your only job being collecting profits. See how to find suppliers here – it’s not as complicated as you think.
Sounds too good to be true? Think again.
This is a business model that is exploding right now (although it’s been around for a while) with people wanting to start their own business.
All you would need to do is to create a Shopify store and drive traffic to it.
How all this is done is not something that I can explain in this quick blog post, but as I said earlier, I have many guides on how to do dropshipping.
See the linked category for more information.
Affiliate Marketing
The next big thing that I use and to this day is one of the highest earners for me is affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is the idea of selling other people/company’s products for a commission.
What can you sell with affiliate marketing? Anything you’d like!
Amazon alone carries millions of products, and yes, you can sell any product on there for a commission using the Amazon Associates program.
I also have a guide on making money with Amazon so look into that.
I love affiliate marketing, and there are so many opportunities for you there if you manage to find the right niche and the right audience.
Start-up costs are also low (so is the case with drop shipping) so look into affiliate marketing as a way to make money online.
You can also take my free “getting started with affiliate marketing” course.
Crypto Currency Investing
This is relatively new, and I was doubtful of including cryptocurrencies in this post seeing as how I am not qualified to give financial advice and the cryptocurrency market is incredibly volatile.
However, with that said, I can’t deny the fantastic profits I have made trading in currencies such as Bitcoin, IOTA, Ethereum and many others that I see as good investments.
I can not tell you exactly what to invest in, and I also don’t have any courses I can recommend just yet, but I do urge you to look into this and start to understand all about cryptocurrencies and the money-making opportunities that lay there.
One of the tools I use to learn about crypto is YouTube videos so take some time going through the many video tutorials on there.
Again, this is not investment advice so do your own research and always be ready to lose the investment you put in. That’s rule #1 in investing – more so important when investing in cryptocurrencies.
Final Thoughts
So, you want to start your own business but don’t know what do?
This quick-read post hopefully gives you some insights.
I know this doesn’t give much detail, so just take it as an introduction to spark some ideas. Again, here are the recommended books, courses, and resources you can use to learn more about the ideas discussed above:
- How To Start A DropShipping Business.
- Getting Started With Affiliate Marketing.
- YouTube tutorials for cryptocurrency investing.
As always, I am here to help so feel free to ask any questions below in the comment section or on in the membership area of Wealthy Affiliate – where I spend most of my time.
Talk soon.