Many people spend their entire lives waiting for that perfect opportunity to present itself in which they can better their financial well-being by creating a business. Thanks to the Internet, the wait is over. Creating your own business is now something that can be done in as little as 1 to 3 days.
If you’re ready to get started with your own online business, continue reading for three great business opportunities that you can get started with in as little as 24 hours.
Online Business #1 – Affiliate Marketing
What if I told you that you could make money selling products that you don’t even own? Even better, you can get started for less than the price you’d pay for a cheap cup of gas station coffee per day. It sounds like something that is far too good to be true, right? Well, this is exactly what happens when you create your own affiliate marketing business online.
Companies will happily pay you a commission when you send people over to their websites who purchase products or services. This is exactly how many large online retailers like Amazon have been able to build massive businesses selling goods and services.
How You Can Get Started with Affiliate Marketing
Running your own affiliate marketing business online may sound challenging but it really isn’t. The important thing is that your following a proven method that teaches you crucial skills like:
- How to build your site
- How to get accepted into affiliate programs
- How to get traffic to your site from search engines
- How to get traffic from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
- How to turn that traffic into paying customers …
- … and ultimately how to make money from your customers purchases
Thankfully, there is a program out there that will not only teach you all the skills that you need to know to successfully make money online with affiliate marketing, but also provide you with a community of like-minded individuals that can help you every step of the way.
Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing
Running an affiliate marketing business online is an amazing opportunity to better yourself financially, but there are a few pitfalls that you should be aware of. Below are just a few pros and cons to running your own affiliate website.
Affilaite Marketing Pros:
Low Entry Cost
There are few online business opportunities that have the potential to earn as much money as you can with affiliate marketing for the small investment that you’ll make. For less than $2 per day, you can have your own business that can potentially earn a full-time income for you.
Zero Product Cost
Unlike some of the other methods mentioned in this list, affiliate marketing allows you to get started without having to purchase any products whatsoever. Best of all, you can try affiliate marketing out for free before deciding if it’s the right business opportunity for you.
Low Customer Service Requirements
Having to provide customer service frequently is something that many new online entrepreneurs simply don’t have the time to do. With affiliate marketing, your customer service interactions are very few and far between.
Passive Income
While you will have to invest a significant amount of time upfront to get your business off the ground, ultimately an affiliate marketing website will run itself for the most part once everything is established.
Affiliate Marketing Cons:
Significant Time Investment Upfront
Many people go into affiliate marketing expecting to earn money in a day or two. This isn’t the case.
It will take anywhere from four weeks to six months before you begin to see a return on your time investment. Thankfully, since the costs associated with affiliate marketing are so low, you won’t break the bank while you’re getting to profitability.
There is No Easy Button
There are thousands of courses online that promises to teach you how to make commissions with affiliate marketing as little as a day. Unfortunately, the majority of these are products that are designed to do nothing more than separate you from your hard-earned money. This is why it’s so important to find a quality training group to involve yourself with so that you are able to avoid potential scams while you learn the skills necessary to run a successful business online.
Start Your Affiliate Business Today
Does affiliate marketing sound like a great fit for you? Are you ready to get started with learning the skills that you’re going to need to succeed with your new online business? If you are, you can check out my top recommended resource and have your own online affiliate marketing business created in as little as 30 minutes.
Online Business #2 – eCommerce with Shopify
You’ve more than likely made a purchase at some point in time from an online retailer like Amazon or Newegg.
Imagine just for a moment what could be possible if you had your own store on the Internet that sold products just like large retailers, and you didn’t have to pay for the products you’re selling until after they’ve sold. This is exactly what happens when you’re running your own eCommerce drop shipping store online. Best of all, you can get started with this kind of store for free by taking advantage of free trial offers available at Shopify.
While you do have the ability to start this business for free potentially, it is important that you take the time to learn a few skills before signing up for your free trial.
Things that you’re going to want to have a little bit of knowledge about include:
- How to build an ecommerce store
- How to get traffic through ecommerce search engine optimization
- How to determine what kind of products people are wanting to buy
- Where you can find products to sell to customers
- How products will be delivered to your customers
- How to market your store on social media sites
- And how to make the most money possible by recommending similar products to your existing customers
Pros and Cons of Running an eCommerce Business
Just like affiliate marketing, running an eCommerce business online is an amazing opportunity. However, there are a few more risks associated with it than there is with affiliate marketing. Below are just a few of the pros and cons to running your own online e-commerce store.
eCommerce Pros:
High Profit Margins
You can often earn more money per transaction with e-commerce store than you can with affiliate marketing. However, it is often much more difficult to get visitors over to an e-commerce store than it is to an affiliate marketing website.
Global Audience
Unlike brick-and-mortar retail stores, running your own eCommerce store allows you to have access to a worldwide audience. Once you understand the skills necessary to bring people to your site, you have billions of possible customers to sell to.
Can be Run without Inventory
Thanks to something known as drop shipping, you can sell products that you do not even have in inventory. The downside to this is that it often takes weeks for customers to get products that they’ve ordered, and many people can become frustrated because they’re used to receiving products from retailers like Amazon in just a couple of days.
eCommerce Cons:
Expensive to Operate
Unlike an affiliate marketing website, the costs associated with running an e-commerce store can be quite substantial. This is largely because you will be spending money on paid advertisements to attract customers to your store. If done the wrong way, you can invest thousands of dollars without seeing a single sale.
More Customer Service
When you’re running your own store online, you must have someone there to provide customer service should something go wrong. This means that either you must be available or hire someone to be available to answer customer emails, live chats and direct messages so that your store is able to maintain a solid reputation and attract more business in the future.
Difficult to Find Quality Products
Unless you’re creating your own product line, it can often be difficult to identify exactly what people will be interested in buying. If you are investing in inventory instead of drop-shipping, you could find yourself holding hundreds or thousands of units of a product that people simply do not want.
Returns Can Kill Your Business
When you’re first getting started with running an online eCommerce business, profitability is very low. When customers want to return items, it can be challenging to return them to the companies that are drop shipping them to your customers. Because of this, you will often find yourself at a loss when customers receive items that they simply do not want.
My Recommendation for Running an E-commerce Business
As I’m sure you noticed above, many of the skills that are required to successfully run an online eCommerce business are the same ones that are required to run an affiliate marketing business. Things such as search engine optimization and social media advertising are crucial skills that are important to learn the right way, the first time. For that reason, I personally recommend that you learn the ropes of online business through affiliate marketing before jumping into eCommerce.
By taking the time to learn how to attract an audience to a website before trying to sell your own products or services, when it comes time to launch an ecommerce platform you will have a far greater chance of success.
Online Business #3 – Selling Homemade Products and Crafts
Are you a creative person who enjoys making items at home such as jewelry, baskets or wall decorations? Do you have skills in design or photography? If this sounds like you, then something you may want to consider doing is creating your own online store selling handmade items over at Etsy.
There are hundreds of thousands of people every month to visit the site looking for unique handmade items to give away as gifts or to purchase for themselves. Best of all, the costs of running an Etsy store are very low compared to many other platforms where you can sell goods at online.
Some of the skills that you’re going to want to know to run a successful Etsy store online are:
- How to do basic search engine optimization for e-commerce
- How to build your Etsy store
- How to advertise your products on social media
- How to sell more items by recommending products
- How to identify what products customers will want to buy
- And how to successfully advertise your goods with paid ads on Google and other search engines
Pros and Cons of Running an Etsy Store
Just like the other businesses on this list, running in Etsy store can be a great way to supplement your income or even replace your existing job. However, there are a few things that you need to consider before getting started.
Craft Business Pros:
Existing Traffic
More than 200 million people visit Etsy every month. This gives you a very large audience to potentially sell to organically like you do with running your own eCommerce store.
Low Fees
The fees associated with transactions on the Etsy platform are very reasonable when compared to other similar sites such as Amazon and eBay.cTo list an item, you only have to pay $0.20 and the transaction fees once items sell are significantly lower than other online platforms.
Growth Opportunity
Once you identify a product line that people want to buy, you can quickly and easily add numerous other products that are like the first one to increase your bottom line.
Craft Business Cons:
Can be Challenging to Identify Products
Just like with eCommerce, if you don’t understand how to identify products that people want to purchase, you’re going to have a hard time running your Etsy store.
Customer Service Requirements
Also just like with eCommerce, you must have someone available to provide customer service to people who have purchased items or have questions about your products on Etsy. Once again, this means that you need to have availability to answer these questions and serve your customers to ensure that your business succeeds in the future.
Significant Time Investment
Unlike the other online business options listed above, Etsy requires a significant time investment as you must create your own products to sell. If you aren’t careful, you can find yourself earning less than minimum wage when you factor in the time it takes you to set up your store, provide customer service, and create the product you’re selling.
My Recommendation for Running an Etsy Store
Just like with eCommerce, I personally recommend that you start out with affiliate marketing. This is because the skills that you acquire while learning to run a successful affiliate marketing website will allow you to start an Etsy store and be far more successful. Skills such as basic search engine optimization and successful product identification are necessary to succeed with the Etsy platform, and they’re both skills that you will learn while creating your own affiliate marketing business.
Best of all, when you start with affiliate marketing, you don’t have to invest any additional time into creating products yourself. Since you’re selling goods created by others and earning a commission while doing so, you free up a significant amount of time that can be invested in learning additional skills and finding more methods to generate traffic to your online businesses.
Final Thoughts
As you can see from the three businesses listed above, there has never been a better opportunity to get started with your own online business. As I’ve mentioned several times above, starting out with affiliate marketing just makes sense. You can learn skills such as customer acquisition, good product identification, and how to convert website visitors into buying customers that love your brand and your products.
So, what are you waiting for? Get started with your own online affiliate marketing business today, and I look forward to hearing about your online business success in the future.
