...With None of the Huge Upfront Costs!
The reason I write this blog is essentially the same reason I, somewhat unintentionally, created this website. This takes me back to 2018, when I decided to take a year off. At the time, I was self-employed so able to do this and I was able to support myself with a moderate income from renting out my property in the UK, supplemented by my savings.
While in Southeast Asia—where I ended up staying throughout COVID—I became completely captivated by its culture and lifestyle. (In fact, it’s where I’m writing this now.) I soon realized I wanted to prolong my stay indefinitely. Seeing the many Westerners living here, I became intrigued and eager to find out how I, too, could make it work. So, I began exploring my options.
figuring out the best way to create an income online
The Least Ideal Way to Make Money Online (In My Opinion)
During my travels, I discovered that while many people earned their income online, they often lacked control over the most important aspect of their lives: their work schedule. Most of them were either teaching English or working remotely for a Western employer. Neither of these options appealed to me because having some control over when I work is essential to me.
One significant issue I have with these setups is time zones. Dealing with different zones—sometimes as much as a 12-hour difference, depending on where your employer is based—can be particularly challenging. However, I could consider these types of employment as a short-term solution, only for as long as it would take to establish a more suitable alternative means of making an income.
Learning With Less Risks
It’s worth noting that when starting an online business with the goal of generating extra income or creating full time earnings, it essential to minimise financial risks. You don’t want to invest large sums of money only to later discover little to no returns. Having explored various online business models and worked alongside experienced online entrepreneurs, I share key learnings and potential pitfalls to help you make informed decisions.
…Some business models aren’t ideal for online beginners—however, there’s a starting point for everyone online. It’s just a matter of finding the right one for you, and that’s what 1stOnlineBiz101 aims to demonstrate.
The following is a reflection of my findings plus your guide to the various online business models highly suitable for beginners.
It’s important to note that the options outlined here do not specifically prioritise geographically independent business models. If this is one of your objectives, you need to consider how geography or time zones might impact your ability to communicate effectively with your customer base or maintain a sufficiently high-quality service.
Here are the results of my study on The Best Online Businesses for Beginners
In this blog you will learn the fundamentals – or the baseline – of what makes up about 80% of all online businesses today. As mentioned previously, when your primary objective in creating an online business is to generate an extra income or create a full-time income, we believe there’s little point in reinventing the wheel. Whether you want to work firmly within your home country or be geographically independent is up to you, though the latter will limit your options to some degree.
C O N T E N T
- Drop Shipping & E-commerce
- Affiliate Marketing
- Components of the Most Common Online Businesses
- Blogging
- Opportunities for Making Money via Blogging
- Other Types of Website-Based Businesses
When Drop Shipping or E-commerce is Not an Answer
I start with what is probably the most known, recommended and talked about, models of an online business. It is, perhaps surprisingly, also one that I do not recommend for a complete beginner – unless you have your own product line in mind and it has low/moderate competition.
Let me outline why…
For those who don’t know, drop shipping is a business model where, as the business owner, you generate customers for a products manufacturer/supplier. Your success is measured by your skills in careful product selection and marketing. In most cases, you get to price the product, and the margin from each sale is kept by you. Once an order is placed, the supplier handles sourcing, packing, and delivery, so you don’t hold any inventory.
These models have the potential to achieve exceedingly high profits; however, this is not recommended for the typical beginner unless you have knowledge in sales and digital marketing or are a specialist in the niche product being sold.
I find that this model requires the highest skill set and poses the greatest risks. These risks stem from the competitive nature of the market, which can result in low returns after accounting for marketing costs—costs that are often very necessary. Additionally, most platforms (with Shopify being the best for beginners) have a fixed monthly charge to host your store, as well as charging a percentage-based commission on all sales. For novices in this marketplace, there is a lot to learn and master in a relatively short period.
For example:
With drop shipping, if your chosen supplier performs poorly, it can reflect badly on your brand. If you would like to learn more about drop shipping platforms to sell your own product, please consider subscribing to receive updates and the lates information from my forthcoming blogs.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is somewhat like drop shipping, with the main difference being that you make your earnings through commission from the sales you make. Your brand is distinct from your supplier: You act as a middle person, promoting their products or service. Like drop shipping, your success is also measured by your skills in careful product selection and marketing. The foundation of this business lies in careful keyword research to drive customers to your sales page if organic traffic is desired.
This model is far simpler. You can set up on your own domain and webpage, which costs far less than any drop shipping platform. Just like drop shipping, once a visitor clicks on the affiliate link on your site, your responsibility ends. However, it’s easier to nurture a community with your visitors so they return to your site repeatedly which holds great benefits to a business’ ongoing success.
Affiliate marketing is one of the cheapest ways to start, particularly if you can avoid ad spend, and it is a relatively simple business model. The most important factor for your success is selecting the right product or service and ensuring you identify with your niche.
Affiliate marketing is easier to learn compared to drop shipping. Many affiliate programs provide tried and tested widgets that help display their products on your webpage, and there’s a lot of free online material to help you gain more knowledge.
We started the discussion on business models that are most commonly started by beginners, now let’s move on to the best business models for beginners. First…
Components of the Most Common Online Businesses
- Domain name
- Sales page (including a commerce element), and
- Professional Email Address
In many cases, these are the minimal requirements. The first two elements are acquired once you’ve decided on the type of business model you’ll be moving forward with, although the domain name often comes with a free email address.
As addressed under drop shipping, whatever business you plan to set up – attracting customers is essential for achieving success in the online marketplace. This is closely followed by your ability to persuade customers to exchange their money for your offering. Customer confidence is key for this to occur and this is where a website (or your webpage) is essential. It is a common practice for a customer to reach for social media to check out a business; it’s part of building that confidence. Ultimately, an online presence is crucial to your success online.
Given this, two of the earliest questions any aspiring entrepreneur should focus on are:
⦁ What topic to focus on for my business?
⦁ What business model?
Given that 80% of businesses leverage blogs for marketing to attach customers, and 77% of internet users frequently read blog posts, it’s clear that having a blog is essential. Whether your webpage is an affiliate site, drop shipping platform, or something else, visitors expect a high standard. Incorporating a blog as part of your model can help meet these expectations.
Blogging
Building a blog website lets you share information and updates about your topic with your targeted audience. It’s one model that give you the opportunity to nurture a long-term relationship; your customer comes to you primarily for information, selling is secondary. It’s a way to connect with your existing visitors or customers and attract new ones by posting engaging content. The objective is to boost business through content creation that includes targeted keyword optimisation by posting articles, stories or update on your chosen topic.
Additionally, a blog website provides the bases of many options for a business (detailed below) as well as numerous ways to monetising it, however, since some of these methods are impractical for new websites, I introduce these strategies in order of relevance. These are strategic choices that can be incorporated at a later date so it’s important to know about each of them while deciding on your business choice.
Opportunities for Making Money via Blogs are Limitless
Here are some of the most common methods for monetising a blog however if blogging is not your first choice, see alternatives below: (Other Types of Website-based businesses) below:
Primarily, your level of success will depend on your chosen niche and how knowledgeable, or how broadly, you are able to deliver content on this choice. These abilities will improve your chances of producing valuable, relevant and engaging content.
Select a product or service that is relatable to your niche so you can be the best at promotion. This item must be of great interest to your target audience. More on this later.
Each newly released blog posts should be viewed like a shop window. The content needs to lead with an objective that incentivised your visitors to click, this will ensure they ‘stick’ with your webpage (this helps with your Google ratings). The content for each page created will be highly relevant to the ‘click’ and deliver highly valuable content to the reader. If this is successfully achieved, the visitor will likely become a returning customer and hopefully make a purchase(s) immediately too, which gives authority to your website.
Offer paid subscriptions. You can create premium content that only your subscribers can access and charge them a monthly or yearly fee.
Building an email list. This is a crucial step in connecting with visitors who are interested in your niche. These individuals are often eager to receive valuable updates and information directly in their inbox. By collecting their email addresses, you create a direct line of communication to share news, updates, and exclusive offerings—ensuring they stay engaged and informed. Unlike relying solely on website visits, an email list allows you to proactively reach out to your audience, so they never miss out on what you have to offer.”
Selling you own products. This is very much like the affiliate marketing model however you keep all the profits. And, as mentioned above, blogs are an informational based platform. Your target audience might share an interest in a product, for instance, if you’re sharing something to do with photography, a page where you compare the latest cameras or accessories, can have affiliate links. Products that can be create and sold are courses and digital items, such as eBooks. This works best once you’ve built up some loyalty with your customer base.
Writing sponsored content. You can partner with brands or companies that closely relate to your blog niche and target audience. Writing a blog post that features or reviews their products or services which might attract new customers to your site (or in some circumstances, you could write for a fee).
Selling advertising space on your website. This is a strategy that works once your site is properly established. It’s crucial that your site first attracts a high level of quality traffic before advertisers will show interest. Advertisers will base their decision your monthly traffic and page views, making this a strong candidate for a later stage strategy to maintain passive income. If your niche aligns well with a particular industry, consider pivoting your platform by occasionally updating your website with relevant articles and updates very current to the industry.
Other Types of Website-Based Businesses:
Providing Consulting Services
You can use a page within your blog to showcase your expertise and skills and offer your services to your audience or clients. You can get paid by charging these clients an hourly or project-based fee. You can use platforms like Calendly or Zoom to schedule and conduct your consultations.
Creating an Online Course
The optimum time to do this is after you have established a brand, and visitors already know or are familiar with you and your work. This is because online courses are most successful when you can sell directly to your own customers. A blog is a way of creating a following. An email list, as describe previously, will allow you to generate a ready-made audience when your blog aligns with your course.
Freelance
If you are, or can quickly become, skilled on any of the high-valued skills in demand in this digital space (see below), then this may be one for you. On the downside, this option is time consuming: you will be exchanging your time for money the same way you do as an employee, so it is not ideal if you have full-time commitments or anything that already takes up a sizeable portion of your day. On the upside, depending on your skills, you might be able to charge way above the current rate. If you have a true aptitude for the skill, you can look to scale up the business in noticeably brief time.
The Freelance (above) to Agency Proposition
It is possible to scale up from being a Freelancer to becoming an Agency however you will want to be fully accomplished before you do this. You will certainly need to know and trust who you contract your customers’ tasks too and also be very vigilant when reviewing the completed work.
Types of Valuable Online Skills with Wide Appeal
These are just some of the most popular ways to make money but there are many more:
Web Development; Social Media Management; Virtual Assistant; Content Writing; Graphic Design; Digital Marketing and Video Editing.
Whichever option you choose, remember that these are all low-cost options therefore they minimised the financial risks. Embrace the creative process as you navigate your way around the internet. There’s plenty to learn, and none of this learning is ever wasted. If you journey through various online businesses or business models, you’ll find that lessons learned in every stage becomes invaluable.