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Starting a business for the first time looks stressful and a high amount of work. There are numerous things involved when starting a business: idea, money and time. The amount of risk involved, on the other hand, depends on your idea.
Luckily, there are low investment business ideas that are a great entry point for bootstrappers, beginners, and busy schedules. You can pick these opportunities as a side business, and you won't drop everything else.
But before everything, you need to have a solid idea, put more effort into your marketing, build a brand and provide customers with excellent services to succeed. For instance, if your idea has anything to do with music you need to choose a platform for advertising and creating your brand. Choose the most popular ones such as Spotify. Then do the marketing by accumulating lots of Spotify followers.
Additionally, you can easily bypass traditional startup costs such as warehousing, initial inventory and retail space when establishing an online business.
If you're looking for the best online business opportunities, consider these:
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Partnering with Dropshippers
One of the business opportunities is to partner with Dropshippers. Here, you need to buy stock, store, pack and ship it. However, it will require a big commitment when you start to run a business.
A third party supplier should store and ship the inventory to your customers on your behalf in this kind of business. However, you have to make sales and then pass your orders to the supplier. So, that ensures you will not handle these products yourself.
An advantage, you can cumulate the products you want from more than one supplier to sell in your online store. However, you need to have these focusing on a specific niche such as electronic gadgets. If a customer buys the product from you, his/her order will be sent directly to the supplier who will fulfil on your behalf. But remember that, for your marketing and customer service, you are responsible.
The good thing is, there are various local and overseas suppliers that you can work together with. You only need to establish a healthy relationship because unreliable suppliers reflect poorly on your brand.
Uniquely, dropshipping is a low investment option for you to test the best market for a specific product before launching on your original products. Ensure you have ordered samples to be sure you're dealing with a reliable supplier. That would also help you sell reliable products to your customers.
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Printed T-Shirts
You can design and sell printed t-shirts online as another online business idea. This acts like dropshipping models. Print on demand will need inventory, shipping and fulfilment from a third party supplier. However, this isn't like dropshipping because you need to customize the t-shirts using your design to have an original product.
You can choose to customize other things, including hoodies, phone cases, hats, tote bags, skirts, and more. Your success depends on your creativity. Perhaps you're not a designer. You don't have to worry. Look for a designer you can work with from freelance sites such as 99designs, Dribble, Upwork or Fiverr.
Luckily, there is a high demand for printed items. If you get bulk, it will be cheap for you and allow you to create more profit.
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Launch a Book
If you love to write, there is an opportunity for you to make money selling books online. Books have become products to think about. Create one and serve the market demand of books.
It depends on the topic you write about. Some common and successful books include comic books, picture books, cookbooks, poetry books, coffee table books, novels and more. So, you need to have the creativity to produce original books.
The good thing is, there are popular platforms you can publish and launch your books. These platforms allow you to create, order and even distribute these books as physical or digital products.
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Create Courses & Products
The other online business opportunity is to create online courses and sell them. You can also choose to create digital products such as music and templates.
Unlike other products, these are not tangible products. So, they don't cost you shipping or manufacturing recurring costs that make your margins high.
Here, you need to figure out things that make an excellent digital product. Something useful such that people are willing to download or pay for it.
Perhaps you have talent. You can turn it into a digital product. So, think of how to package it to form a new stream of income. If you look at Shopify, it provides you free digital download apps, thus allowing you to store these digital products like physical products.
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Sell Services
If you want to sell services, time will be your biggest inventory and investment. Perhaps, you don't have enough free time during 1the day. So, it will be easier for you to run something, as long as you've the skills.
Some of the services you can offer online include writing, designing, developing, photography, fitness trainer, house cleaners and more.
You can use any of the ideas to expand your business. That would help you create additional revenue streams. Depending on what you plan to focus on, research to ensure you do things right.
Remember the example we have mentioned earlier? About Spotify followers. Starting a third party platform that offers such services is also an idea to consider.