If you have decided to take the “build your own business” path, I’m guessing you’re ready for a new challenge. You may just be wondering what are the options when it comes to having your own online business. That’s okay too.Â
If you’re starting out as a digital nomad, you should try to keep it simple at first. There are several ways to make money online but it honestly all depends on your skillset.
Before we start diving into online business ideas for beginners, we are going to take a moment to think about what skills you have and what are the ones you can potentially monetize.
If you’re just looking for quick online business ideas for beginners, you can also just scroll to the next section.
Making money off the internet requires some kind of investment. Even if some will tend to say you don’t need to invest anything – it’s untrue. Whether you’re investing time or money, you’re definitely investing in a project.
I’d like you to take a moment to think about what you are passionate about. If you’re going to invest time and/or money into a project, you might as well love it. It’s going to be easier to stay motivated if it’s a passion project.
Once you have a few ideas, I’d suggest you write them down. It’s easy to forget wonderful ideas.
Now, take time to think about the current skills you have. You might have developed skills while learning about the digital nomad life, or you may have learned something from a previous job.
Imagine what are these important skills you enjoy doing and think about ways to monetize them.
Here, the idea is to think outside the box.
Throughout this article, I’ll give you concrete examples from my own story as well as from friends. I’ve been meeting many digital nomads over the years and it always blows my mind to find out more about what people do. There are really no limits when it comes to online work.
Let’s start with the best realistic ways to make money online nowadays. These are ideal for beginners or for people who are thinking about starting their first online business.
Disclaimer: note that some of these links include affiliate links. If you make a purchase, you won’t get any extra costs.
Blogging
If I had to describe blogging in a sentence, I’d say it’s something like “online content about a topic”.Â
You basically write content about a topic whether it’s a general one or a specific one (what we also call a “niche”).
How do you monetize a blog?
There are several ways to monetize a blog. Think about advertising, sponsorship, brand ambassadorship, affiliate marketing, selling your own products, etc.
I, myself, own a few blogs and I know a lot of bloggers too.Â
What’s the biggest challenge when it comes to blogging?
The biggest challenge when you first start blogging is to grow your traffic, your authority. It can take quite a while before the blog is monetized so you surely have to be prepared for a lot of unpaid work at first. You will be investing a lot of time for little results, but eventually, if you do it right and you are persistent, it should work.
How to get started?
You can check this step by step guide here. If I had to do a quick summary, I’d say, you first need to pick a topic or a niche, look at the competition, buy a domain, get hosting, build the website, create the content and grow your traffic. A great way to get more readers is to use SEO strategies.
It might seem easy at first, but there’s a lot of work that goes behind a blog. It can be quite overwhelming especially if you never had a website before. I personally LOVE blogging (which is why I own multiple blogs).
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is the idea of promoting a product and then receiving a percentage of the sale from the company.Â
This is commonly how influencers and bloggers create an income by advertising throughout their Instagram feeds or affiliate links on their posts.Â
How to make money with affiliate marketing?
Affiliate programs can be via a third-party company or directly with the merchant. The merchandisers either pay-per-click to their product or after a purchase is made by the customer depending on their goals. This market strategy is often beneficial to the merchant as it is a result-based model, which means they don’t have to expend their marketing budget unless they make a sale.
That said, for the publisher, you need to bring traffic to convert and make sales.
How to get started?
To get started with affiliate marketing, you need either your own website, social media channels, Facebook groups or some kind of platform where you can use your affiliate links and make sales.
You will also have to join affiliate programs. I personally use many of them including the popular ones such as Amazon, Skimlink or travel booking platforms.
E-commerce
E-commerce describes the act of buying and selling commodities and services strictly through an online platform.Â
When you are participating in any sort of transaction of products for monetary value over the internet, you are forming an e-commerce exchange.Â
A familiar example is purchasing goods off of Amazon; regardless if you are ordering an item to be shipped to your home or downloading an e-book or movie from one of their services.Â
How to make money with E-commerce?
E-commerce has become a common practice in most people’s lives as it allows us to make grand purchases such as booking flights and hotels easily at our fingertips or simple tasks like ordering dinner from our phones.
It’s pretty common to see online shops that sell clothing, hair care products or camping equipment. These are usually online shops. If you can drive traffic to your online shop, you may be able to make sales and earn a living this way.
How to get started?
The easiest way to get started is to get on Shopify to create your shop. This way you won’t have to take care of the shipping. Although, you need to pay a fee to use the platform.
If you prefer to take care of your own shipping, then you can set up your own online store.
Learn more about Dropshipping
Dropshipping is a popular stock management option for online retailers. It enlists the assistance of a separate supplier to generate, store, and ship out products to the consumer.
This is favored by online e-commerce businesses as it doesn’t require the owner to have large storage space and also simplifies shipping to the buyers.
The front-end side of the business is all taken care of by the seller; this includes the consumer-facing website, customer service, and marketing.
This supply method is also used frequently by brands that create custom merchandise such as clothing, but don’t have the means to produce the products themselves.
e-Book
Writing e-Books is a popular way to make money online, although, to be successful, you need to make a lot of sales, a bunch of great reviews and marketing skills. An e-book is basically an online book.Â
Most of the time, these books are shorter and can sometimes have less than a hundred pages. If you’re an expert on a topic, then, writing an e-book can be a great alternative when it comes to earning money online.
How to make money with e-Book?
The best way would be to have several online books where the competition is low. Think of Amazon as a keyword place.
If the competition is high, it’s going to be harder to sell your book unless you already have platforms to advertise the book. You can also organize a pre-sale to see if people are interested in the book before you get started.
How to get started?
Make a research on the competition and find the gap. Once the book is published, you can advertise it on your different channels and platforms, give it away for free so you can get reviews and hope for the best.
Online course
Think of Udemy or Teachable – creating online courses is a great way to make money online. If you’re an expert about a topic, why not create a course about it.
Nowadays, a lot of people prefer to study and learn online at their own rhythm.
How to make money with online courses?
Once the online course is created you can either sell it via Udemy which means you won’t have to market it as much as you would have to do if you are going to sell the course via Teachable.Â
Udemy is a course market place where you can find a bunch of different online courses.
Teachable is a platform that hosts your online course, but you will have to bring your own traffic to the course.
When you get students, you get the money.Â
How to get started?
Before you start creating the course, you must look for the competition out there. Then, you can see how you can make a better course and how you’re planning on selling the course. After you decided on a strategy, you can create the course and market it.
Vlogging
Think of blogging… with a camera. If you’re good at making videos and you are comfortable in front of the camera, you might want to try vlogging. Whether you use Youtube, Facebook, or Instagram, videos are becoming bigger every year.
How to make money with Vlogging?
If you are using platforms such as Youtube or Facebook, you could make money with ads once you reach a certain minimum with watch time. Then, you can also use your influence and partner up with brands.
How to get started?
Pick a platform and create your account/channel. Make sure you get a beautiful cover photo that is engaging and that supports your brand ideas. Then, start filming and editing. It’s going to take a while before this idea becomes monetizable, but it’s not impossible.
Marketing
Online marketing is a wide topic. Whether you do ads, email marketing, or social media marketing, there’s so much to learn and do. Ideally, you would want to become an expert in one field.
How to make money with marketing?
As many people don’t know about marketing, if you are very good at what you do, you should have no problems selling your skills to those who don’t know how to market their services or products. It’s pretty common that people will hire marketers to help them.
How to get started?
First, you will have to learn about marketing. You can educate yourself here. There’s a lot of content about online marketing here. Then, you can pick a specific field and become an expert.
SEO
SEO refers to Search Engine Optimisation. It’s basically optimizing the content on a website so it appears on Google. This way the organic traffic can increase.
How to make money with SEO?
When you become good with SEO, you can sell your skills to websites with poor rankings. You can outreach to other websites to create backlink strategies. Many people don’t understand SEO and they are happy to outsource this task. In fact, many people are on the hunt for a good SEO editor/manager.
How to get started?
Learn about SEO and try it for yourself. Once you manage to understand the basics of SEO and you can showcase results, it’s going to be easier to get clients.
Online coaching
Nowadays, a lot of things can be done online, and so is mentoring/coaching. It’s becoming pretty common to see entrepreneurs, virtual assistants, and freelancers with a coach. It helps people to get the right mindset and to be held accountable for their projects.
How to make money with online coaching?
First, you need social proof and experience like what you are good at what you do and that you have what it takes to share this experience with people. Coaches can do 1:1 sessions or group sessions.
How to get started?
Once you are an expert about a topic and you have some kind of social proof or online presence, you can sell your expertise by coaching people. You will likely need a website to advertise your packages and a strong presence on social media.
Podcast
A podcast is basically an audio file that covers a topic. You usually find a lot of interviews with experts on a topic and it provides a lot of value.
How to make money with a podcast?
You can advertise products on the podcast or even have sponsors. Most podcasts come with a website or a blog too.
How to get started?
You will need the right equipment so you can record some high-quality audio files. Ideally, you also want to have a voice that is fun to listen to, ha. You can outreach to people to get interviews and market it on your website and social media channels.
Graphic design
Graphic design is basically designing a visual concept. Whether you design a logo, a website, posters or social media graphics, there are a lot of options for graphic designers.
How to make money with graphic design?
Graphic designers make money with projects. They can be paid per project or per hour depending on clients or packages offered.
How to get started?
To get started, you will have to develop your design skills. You can take courses or watch tutorials online to learn platform such as Adobe Photoshop. You will have to master your design skills before you can land your first client.
Web development
Whether you want to create a website or an app, you need to learn to code. There are several ways to code and you can specialize in the back end or in the front end.
The back end refers to the programming behind the scene while the front end is how the data is presented for the users.Â
It’s a very complicated topic and I’m not that good with coding.
How to make money with web development?
Well, the truth is that many people are like me – they can’t code so they use templates to get their website started. When you need a special tool or advanced skills to fix a problem on your website, then you need to hire someone. And if that’s someone is you – you will make money surely.
How to get started?
To get started as a web developer, you will need to learn the skills required for the job. You can decide to specialize in the back end or the front end, or you can also learn a special coding language.
Many people decide to join a coding boot camp, but you can also learn on your own with online courses or tutorials.
Final Thoughts On Online Business Ideas
Nowadays, many people love the idea of working remotely and online. If you haven’t started yet, it’s time to take the leap!
Want to learn more about business? Check out one of the following blog posts:
