How To Find The Best Online Business For Your Skillset

The digital world is a powerful and ever-changing landscape. Every age group spends a ton of time online, young and old alike.

With the right online business, you can tap into this massive pool of potential customers and make a great income online.

With so many online opportunities, it can seem overwhelming to determine the best business for your distinct skill set, but it doesn’t have to be!

This article will provide strategies to find the best online business that fits your personality, profession, and goal, as well as seven potential business ideas to help you get started.

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How To Find The Best Online Business For Your Personality

Before diving into business ideas that fit your personality and skillset, you must first understand what type of business suits you best. Here are a few ways to narrow down your options so that you can find the right online business for yourself.

Understand Your Goals

Before you start searching for the best online business, you must understand what your goals are. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to:

• work anywhere
• spend more time with family or friends
• create extra income in addition to your current job
• crave total freedom with passive income

Understanding the goals you want to achieve will be a critical factor in determining the best online business for you.

For example, if you want to spend more time with family or friends, you wouldn’t want to create an online business that requires hours of work every day.

Consider Your Hobbies

Finding an online business that you are passionate about will help ensure success. Think of the activities and hobbies you already enjoy and use those as inspiration for potential companies.

For instance, some popular hobbies may include:

• Writing
• Dancing
• Cooking
• Makeup
• Investing
• Sports

Write down all the hobbies and activities you enjoy, then research how to make money with those skills.

Use Your Current Skill Set

In addition to hobbies, consider the professional skills you have developed over time, either from your profession or knowledge gained from courses. These can all be used to start a business online, such as:

• Web design
• Graphic design
• Copywriting
• Accounting or bookkeeping
• Social media management
• Engineering
• Public speaking and coaching
• Photography
• Content creation and marketing

What Are You Willing To Try?

Next, if you are still looking for opportunities that match your current skillset, consider trying something new. Are there any skills or activities you are interested in learning? Make a list of these and research each to see if they have business potential.

Some examples might include the following:

• Making videos of you doing something
• Writing about your hobby/profession
• Talking and interviewing people
• Becoming a freelancer and making money with skills you already have

Define Your Target Audience

Finally, after you’ve decided on a business idea, determine your target audience and how you will reach them. Knowing this ahead of time can help you figure out the best ways to get your business off the ground by marketing it to the right people

For example, if you’re good at cooking and what to start a cooking blog, what type of cuisine or recipes do you plan to focus on? Who will be your target audience, and where can you find them online?

If you are good at marketing, which industry do you want to work in? For example, would you prefer to focus on small business owners, coaches, or authors? Knowing your target audience can help market your services better and garner success.

Consider these questions and come up with a few hobbies that people would like to learn from you.

How To Make Money Online: 7 Ideas For 2024

Now, let’s talk about different ways to make money online. The most straightforward online job is replacing your current job with a remote one.

You can use a platform like Flexjobs to find a remote job that you would enjoy doing. With this, you could be working from home or an Airbnb in Hawaii, which doesn’t sound too bad!

Other types of online business require more patience, but it will be worth it once you can get up and running. However, before starting an online business, consider setting up an LLC or corporation. This will provide you with liability protection from your personal assets and tax benefits. Use ZenBusiness to learn more about the process and costs to form your LLC.

Without further ado, let’s jump into the top 7 online businesses that you can start today.

Become A High-Earning Freelancer

When you have a talent that you can sell, you should consider becoming a freelancer. There are hundreds of gigs you can offer such as website design, copywriting, virtual assistance, coaching, and more.

• To get started, decide on the things you know well and can sell as a service. You can offer hundreds of different services through online freelancing platforms.
• Next, gather work samples, get reviews from people who have used your services, and create a portfolio. This will help build your credibility and attract more customers.
• Create an account on Fiverr, Upwork, or Freelancer.com and create a profile that showcases your skills.
• Use Canva for free to design eye-catching graphics to attract business.
• Drop your prices low to get stellar reviews and increase the number of gigs. Don’t be afraid to negotiate on rates, and always deliver quality work!
• Ask family and friends to order from you to help you build up your 5-star reviews and portfolio. This can go a long way in helping you land more clients and build your reputation.

Freelancing Potential

The potential to make a living from freelancing is enormous. Not only will you be able to work from anywhere, but with as few as 5-10 good clients, you can earn more than $100k a year.

Success Story

Laura had to adapt quickly when the pandemic hit in 2020 and her full-time job slowed down. She found Fiverr as a way to create a dependable part-time income, offering her knowledge of content writing and editing services while also providing top notch customer service. Through extensive networking, quality control, and carefully branding herself through her Fiverr profile, she created a successful business on the popular freelancing platform that now provides her with a fulfilling full-time job.

Start A Successful Podcast

You probably have noticed that the podcast section on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Amazon Prime has become very popular. With so many podcasts launching every day, it’s not too late to join the podcasting space.

If you have something to say, you can become a podcaster. A study done by Convinceandconvert shows that over 40% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly.

That’s close to the percentage of people who have Amazon Prime in America. It is a huge potential audience for your podcast.

By creating your own podcast, you get to discuss topics that interest you and your audience and potentially monetize your show with ads and sponsorships.

How To Get Started

• First and foremost, you need to decide on a topic and format. Your topic should be something that people can find useful or entertaining.
• You also need to create an intro and outro for the show, which will help you stand out from other podcasts in your genre.
• Consider investing in podcasting equipment like a microphone and recording software like Audacity.
• Next, sign up for a podcast-hosting website. Buzzsprout is the best podcase hosting and learning website. They’ll even give you a $20 Amazon gift just for signing up.
• Using Buzzsprout or any other podcast hosting platform, you can publish your podcast. Once your podcast is live on all of the top podcast directories, you need to focus on building an audience.
• Share your show on social media, create a website for your podcast, and reach out to influencers in your niche to help build up your listenership.

Podcast Potential

Podcasting can be a great source of passive income. With enough subscribers and high-quality content, you can make a full-time living from podcasting.

Sponsorships alone can make $20 – $40 CPM (per hundred thousand listeners). For example, your podcast has 150,000 listeners, and an advertiser pays $30 CPM. You will make $4,500 per episode, which is pretty incredible money.

There is also the potential to build an audience and eventually launch courses or create your own products related to your niche. You can even find other ways to monetize your podcast, such as affiliate sales or offering one-on-one consulting.

Success Story

Max Heaney founded Max Options Trading in 2020. He uses podcasts to educate and generate leads for his website and community. The podcast has achieved an impressive $24,000/month in revenue with over 400 active monthly members. Check out his website if you would like to start a podcast in the investing niche.

Start a Blog And Earn Affiliate Commission

It’s no surprise that the internet is the go-to for the best information. Millions of people search every day for the best coffee, restaurants, Christmas gift guide, how-to guides, and more. People are always looking for advice, and blog posts can provide valuable information and save readers time.

You can create your own blog, share helpful information about a specific topic, and make money from it through affiliate commissions, Google Adsense ads, sponsored posts, and more. Owning a high-traffic website is like having an evergreen income stream that is passive. The best kind!

How To Get Started

• Pick a niche that fits your interests or expertise. It could be anything like travel tips, finance advice, beauty hacks, gluten-free recipes, or DIY projects.
• Use SEO keyword search tools such as Ahrefs to find words to use in your blog. For example, if you are writing about gluten-free recipes, you’ll want keywords like “gluten-free,” “celiac disease,” and so on.
• Find affiliate programs in your niche. Amazon Associates, ShareASale, and ClickBank are some examples of affiliate networks you can use to earn money from ads and offers on your blog.
• Register your domain and find a web hosting program. I recommend Bluehost for hosting and domain registration
• Create content consistently. The more content you produce, the higher chance you have of ranking in search engines. Content should be high-quality and meaningful.
• Share your blog posts on social media and other websites for maximum exposure.
• Build backlinks to increase domain authority which will you rank higher on Google search.

Blogging Potential

Many successful full-time bloggers are able to make over $200,000 per year. However, building up your blog’s readership will take time and dedication.

You can also make money through sponsored posts, affiliate sales, selling e-books, or offering services such as freelance writing, editing, and web design.

The potential is there to earn a lucrative income from blogging. All it takes is an idea and a commitment to creating high-quality content.

Success Story

In 2011, Michelle Gardner started Making Sense of Cents, a blog focused around being frugal and learning to save for a better life. Michelle was able to pay off nearly $40,000 in student loan debt in just seven months and now travels full-time with her family on sailboat. Her blog has become a huge success, earning her over $4,000,000 gross revenue in the last five years. She has 110,000 followers on Facebook, 161,000 followers on Pinterest, and over 130,000 email subscribers. Her blog has three main passive income drivers: affiliate marketing, course sales, and display advertising. Michelle has been able to live her ideal lifestyle, working only 10 hours per week and having plenty of time to spend with her daughter.

Become A Video Content Creator

Tiktok and Reels are becoming more popular than anyone can imagine. With more than one billion active users on TikTok and two billion active users on Instagram, the potential to become a successful video content creator is there for anyone with an idea.

You could create cooking videos, makeup tutorials, dance videos, vlogs, and more. Just like blogging or podcasting, you can monetize your channel through sponsorships and affiliate sales. I know a home cook who consistently posts cooking videos for two years and makes over $500k a year. It can be you too.

How To Get Started

• Follow 5-10 successful TikTok and Reel accounts in your niche and identify a few common properties that make a video popular. Things you can look for include the type of music, type of content, length of videos, and more.
• Brainstorm content ideas, whether it’s a unique take on a current trend or a fun challenge.
• Film your videos with the best quality equipment you can afford. You don’t need an expensive camera or microphone, but make sure it’s good enough to capture a clear image and sound.
• Tiktok and Reels both have pretty good video editing tools, but it would be a good idea to look at others to use fancy features to get more views. We recommend Movavi. They have more fonts and editing features than the native Tiktok and Reels editing tools.
• Optimize SEO in your video title, descriptions, and account bio. As your followers grow, brands can find you through in-app searches. This is why SEO keywords are also essential for video content creators.

Video Content Creator Potential

You can earn $500 to over $50,000 per video from brand deals depending on the number of your followers. From there, you can also start a YouTube channel where you can make more money from ads.

Success Story

Khaby Lame is a Senegalese-born Italian social media personality who started posting on TikTok in March 2020. His silent comedy videos went viral, and in June 2022, he surpassed Charli D’Amelio to become the most-followed user on the platform. His videos feature him silently mocking overly complicated life hacks, and his deadpan expressions have made him a meme star. He has achieved an estimated annual income of $5 million in 2022 from his social media work.

Rent out your stuff

We live in a new kind of economy: the sharing economy. Everywhere we look, we can find opportunities to share goods or services for mutual benefit. With home-sharing platforms like Airbnb, exercising skills through platforms like Fiverr and TaskRabbit, acting as delivery drivers for companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats, or even renting out our clothing through services such as Rent the Runway – these are just a few examples of how we’re able to share anything from cooking meals to hosting rooms.

Turo is a great app to rent out your cars if you have an unused vehicle at home. Speaking from my own experience, I received four bookings within the first 8 hours after I listed my car on Turo, which was 50% of the first two months. I make about $1000 a month from renting out my car.

If you live near a big transit hub like an airport or train station, you will be getting a lot of bookings. You can also rent out parking space using JustPark.

How To Get Started

• Brainstorm what assets you have that can be rented out: a spare room, furniture, appliances, or even a car.
• Figure out the price of your asset and set up an account with apps like Airbnb, Turo, and JustPark.
• You will need to upload pictures of the items you want to rent out and create descriptions to attract potential customers. Use trending keywords to increase visibility on the app.
• Research the best times to rent out your assets and the most profitable rental periods.
• Make sure you have everything in order regarding insurance, taxes, liability releases, and any other legal documents that need to be signed.
• Advertise your services using social media, local newsletters, and word of mouth.

Renting Out Your Stuff Potential

The amount you can make renting out your stuff depends on the type of asset and what people are willing to pay. You could earn anywhere from a few hundred dollars per month to several thousand dollars per month, depending on the size and quality of your asset.

Success Story

Aubrey Janik is a successful entrepreneur who has used Turo, car sharing platform, to create a six-figure semi-passive income stream. she has over 1300 trips on Turo and has an average rating of 4.9 stars. Because it is semi-passive, she has extra time to create a Car Sharing Masterclass that takes people through the steps of setting up a car sharing business and how to maximize profits. She also runs Deal School 3.0 which helps people save money when buying cars.

Share your knowledge and skills with your audience by creating online courses.

There are two ways to create and offer online courses. 1. Use public online platforms like Skillshare or Udemy where anyone can buy your course for a low price. 2. Create a private online course and offer it to your existing audience. This option provides a much higher value to your audience and you can charge a higher price. In this section, we will be discussing the second option.

If you are a coach, teacher, entrepreneur, or artist who has an audience, creating an online course is an effective way to share your expertise, build your brand and reputation, and even turn your passion into a profitable business. Online courses are becoming increasingly popular, and if you have the knowledge and skillset to create one, it can be a great way to make passive income.

Not only will it provide you with an additional income stream, but it’s a passive income that doesn’t require you to be physically present. There are many platforms like Teachable that allow you to create and sell your own courses or partner with other content creators to generate more revenue.

How To Get Started

• Consider your current audience and what kind of skills or knowledge you can provide that would be valuable to them.
• Look at courses with similar topics on Udemy, SkillShare or YouTube and learn how public courses are made.
• Popular platforms like Teachable, Thinkific,Skool, and Learnworlds that allow you to create and sell private courses also offer great resources that will help you get started.
• Decide if you want to create a free course or a paid one, and also decide how long it should be.
• Promote your course through social media channels, YouTube videos, or by partnering with influencers.
• Create a marketing plan and start promoting your course using social media and email campaigns to your existing audience.

Online Course Potential

The amount you can make from your online course depends on how much effort and time you put into it. If you create a high-quality course that caters to the needs of your target audience, then there is no limit to how much money you can make.

However, expect to make $1k – $10k per month on average. You can increase your earnings by creating multiple courses and partnering with other influencers or content creators.

Success Story

Jonathan Levi is a serial entrepreneur who has been involved in a variety of business ventures over the past 10 years. Some of these ventures have been successful while others were not, but they have all helped him acquire the skills and knowledge needed to build a successful online course business. He runs the SuperLearner Academy, an online school where he teaches speed reading and memory skills to thousands of students from all over the world. Since launching his own online course on Thinkific in 2016, he has generated over $1.5 million in revenue. He is considered as a successful online course creator and has been interviewed to share some tips and insights on his journey.

Start An Amazon FBA Business

Selling products online seems easy at first. Compared with brick-and-mortar, you don’t need to worry about leasing a retail space, hiring store staff, or break-ins. Plus, your business is independent of the weather or location.

However, managing a successful online store is more complex than it looks. One of the most popular ways to succeed in e-commerce is by leveraging Amazon’s Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) service. It takes care of storage, packing, and shipping so you can focus on growing your business.

Plus, with millions of people buying on Amazon every day, your products are automatically in front of millions of potential customers, saving you a ton of money on marketing and running ads.

How To Get Started

• Determine what you want to sell by researching the most popular products on Amazon and other e-commerce sites.
• Ensure that your product is of high quality, not easily available in your local area, and can be sold at a competitive price.
• Source reliable suppliers that offer quality products at a good price.
• Create a profile on Amazon Seller Central and start adding products to your store.
• If you’re new to the process, consider using the Amazon beginners guide.
• Set prices and adjust them according to market trends. Utilize tools like ZonGuru, JungleScout, Seller App, or AZM Scout to help analyze products, pricing, and competitors.
• Utilize your descriptions and keywords to make sure customers can find your products easily.

Amazon FBA Potential

The success of an Amazon FBA business largely depends on the products that you sell and how well you market them.

Generally speaking, you should focus on niche markets with fewer competitors and higher profits. If done correctly, Amazon FBA businesses earn average monthly sales of $1,000 to $25,000.

Success Story

Ryan Grant is a successful Amazon FBA seller who started his business in 2015 selling health and wellness products. With just a small investment, Ryan focused on building a strong brand and creating high-quality products. To scale his business quickly, he leveraged Amazon’s fulfillment network (FBA) which handled storage, shipping, and customer service. As a result, Ryan was able to reach a wider customer base. In just two years, Ryan’s business was generating over $1 million in annual sales and was ranked among the top Amazon sellers in his category. This success was due to his focus on customer satisfaction, continuous product improvement, and effective marketing strategies. Ryan utilized Amazon’s advertising and promotional tools to drive traffic and sales, and continues to grow his Amazon FBA business to this day, inspiring other entrepreneurs to start their own businesses on the platform.

Wrapping It Up

When it comes to finding a passive income stream, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on your skills and interests, you may have better luck with one method than another.

Ultimately, it’s important to research the different options available and ensure that the approach you take has the potential for success. With the right strategy in place, you can earn a steady income without much effort. Good luck!