Finding great online business ideas that actually make money is harder than making money online. For a beginner, it’s very hard to figure out how to start a business based on a unique idea.
But what do you know? We already have you taken care of.
This post will tell you about all the different ways people make money online, including some very unique ways that most people don’t know about.
So, let’s get started.
Best Business Ideas To Start A Business Online (2023)
Selling Ebooks Online
One of the best ways to make money online is to sell e-books.
You just need to find a problem and make an ebook to help solve it. You can make the e-course yourself, or you can hire someone else to do it.
Problogger and Upwork are two of the best places to look for a good ebook writer. After you make the ebook, you’ll need to make a cover for it.
But you don’t have to hire a second freelancer to do this. If you use a free platform like Canva or a paid ebook designer like Sqribble, you can use pre-built templates to make a beautiful e-book cover.
You can start selling the finished e-course on sites like Amazon or work with an influencer in your niche to promote it for you. Paid advertising can also be done on targeted blogs.
Marketing for affiliates
Becoming an affiliate marketer is another popular way to make money online.
You can make a video or write an article with affiliate links. Here are the three steps to earning money as an affiliate:
- Find keywords with a lot of power. You can use tools like KWFinder or Google Planner to find keywords that are profitable and have less competition.
- Get a place to sell online. You can set up your own website or use YouTube videos to get people to visit your site from other places.
- Find an affiliate program with good commissions. Promote services or products that fit your niche and have good commissions. Amazon is one of the best places to use for affiliate marketing.
One of our readers started an affiliate-based website through the Amazon marketplace and made $184 in the first two months.
How to Become a Web Tester
Try becoming a tester if you want to make money quickly in your spare time.
User experience is one of Google’s top ranking factors, and companies often need testers to help them improve how easy it is to use their websites.
You can use platforms like Userfeel to find a product or watch a video, among other things. This won’t take more than 15 to 20 minutes, and you can get $10 to $20 for it.
Reselling Domain Names
Getting a domain name is the first step for anyone who wants to put their business online.
In the marketplace, there are many domains to choose from. You can just find some really good names and list them on flippa.com.
Here, the best thing to do is look for expired domains that have a lot of backlinks or have the potential to become a big brand.
Open a dropshipping store.
This one is perfect if you want to start an online store but don’t have enough money to keep an inventory.
The dropshipping model lets the store owner ship products directly from a wholesaler to customers. This means that you don’t have to make any investments until a customer places an order, and you also don’t have to set up a place to store your inventory.
As a bonus, a dropshipping business requires much less paperwork from you than keeping inventory.
Social Media Influencer
One of the best online business ideas that haven’t been used yet is to become a social media influencer.
Choose a specific niche to build your audience around. Once you have enough followers, you will start getting emails about products and services that you can promote. With social advertising and paid promotion, you can quickly get a lot of people to follow you.
Instagram is the best place to do this, but you can also do it on Facebook and/or Twitter.
Social Media Management
If you use social media enough, you probably already know how things work.
Social media marketing is another good business idea for someone who is just starting out. Many businesses hire people to run their social media pages, post updates regularly, start conversations in social forums, pages, and groups, and so on.
SEO isn’t complete without social media management. Google likes it when people interact on social media, so almost every big brand hires a social media manager.
Graphic Artist
You only need design skills at the beginning level to start making money right away. Infographics and logos for new websites can be made by you. There are many places to look for this kind of work.
PeoplePerhour is one of these sites.
As a beginner, if you know the basics of design, it’s easy to make $100 to $200. You could get some ideas from tools like Canva.
Freelance Writing
You can start writing online if you are a native English speaker and know how to write well in English. If you are new to making money online, Upwork is the best place to start.
You can take some writing tests to prove your skills, add your qualifications and a basic portfolio, and then start bidding on projects. After the first month, you can start getting jobs. On your profile, you can see what you’ve earned and what people have said about the work you’ve done.
You can work as a content writer on literally dozens of different platforms.
Bid on anything you want, from sales copy to essays. But make sure that the job posting is for a beginner and that you have the skills needed.
Designing T-shirts
To come up with great products, you need to be creative and have some design skills. If this describes you, go to Teespring. Users can make their own T-shirts, mugs, and more on this platform.
You can promote the product if you want after you’ve sent it in. Teespring gives you a cut of the sale every time someone buys your product.
You can also open your own boutique store and sell t-shirts that way.
Online Picture Sales
Stock photography is still a great way to make money online, especially if you are just starting out.
Take some really good photos and use them to build a business. When someone buys a license for a photo on many stock photo sites, the site owner gets a cut.
You can also put together a photography portfolio in a specific area and reach out to a website in that area. For example, big food blogs like The Kitchn need food photography on a regular basis.
Consultancy for SEO
Optimization for search engines is an important part of every website. You can start an SEO consulting business or help people with SEO as a freelancer.
Semrush is just one of many great SEO tools that can help you with SEO analysis.
Services of Translation
If you speak more than one language well, you could try your hand at translating.
Many business websites want their content to be available in more than one language. You can help these sites get their pages translated into other languages. You can get started in the field of translation by using an online platform like Acclaro, Upwork, or Problogger.
WordPress Maintenance
WordPress is a free content management system that makes it easy to set up a website. WP directory has tens of thousands of plugins that make it work better.
You can help people improve their WordPress sites, fix HTML mistakes, and get quick questions answered.
This is especially helpful if you like to use WordPress. You could also provide support for CMSes like Drupal and Joomla. But to use those platforms, you need to know a little bit more about web development than you do to use WordPress.
Designer of WordPress Themes
WordPress is used by more than 53% of the top million websites. If you understand visual hierarchy and have good design skills, you can start making money by designing WP themes.
You can make a theme yourself, or you can pay someone else to do it. When the theme is ready, you can sell it on the Envato Marketplace. You can start selling your theme for $50 and charge extra for extra features.
Start your own blog.
If you are just starting out, starting a personal blog is one of the best online business ideas.
Choose a niche to get started. Find something you’re interested in writing about and start putting posts out. It could be about food, traveling, science, or anything else.
Once you’re well-known enough, you’ll start getting emails about sponsored posts and paid ads. This idea for a business is more for the long run. It will take a few months to start making money, but it will be a source of income for a long time.
Watch my most recent YouTube video here to learn more about how to make a blog.
Business Cryptocurrency
Bitcoin is one of the most popular digital currencies right now. Before 2022, you could get a bitcoin for less than $400. Now, the same bitcoin costs more than $4,000.
Users have been able to start businesses in cryptocurrency because of this rise. You can make some good money by exchanging crypto, making wallets for people to store their money, or mining.
Website Management
There are more new people on the internet than you might think. People who are new to making money online can be the focus of your business.
Most people need help with running their website. You would be in charge of the speed of the website, SEO, quick errors, content, and so on. You don’t have to be an expert on websites to do this. All you need are some basic management skills.
How to Become a Mentor
It’s not easy to become an online mentor, but if you’re good at something, you can share it online. Find out what you are good at. It could be digital marketing, managing a new business, or running a small business.
For this business idea to work well, you need to have some experience and know-how.
English Tutor
All over the world, people speak English. But it’s not easy to find an online English teacher.
This is a good way to start a business. There are a lot of websites like Udemy where you can start teaching English to people who don’t speak it as their first language.
Web Development
Web development is a good way to make money if you know how to code and can fix bugs in code in a few minutes. You can build websites online.
You can join a development support team and help people build plugins, write code for new themes, fix broken scripts, and so on.
Video Editing
It’s not a secret that visual content engages people much more than just text-heavy pages. To improve the quality of their video files, all business owners hire a video editor.
If you don’t have much experience in this field, look for quick ways to edit videos that are easy to learn, like changing the color, mixing the sound, and so on.
As it happens
Streaming video is another way to make money online. You can use a platform for livestreaming or start with YouTube.
You can make money by showing ads, getting donations from fans, or doing affiliate marketing or paid promotion. Livestreaming is one of the most popular things to do online right now, and it’s also one of the best ways to start a business.
It’s less competitive than other fields, and you can start making money in just a few months.
Become An Email Outreach Expert
Almost everyone needs someone to take care of their emails.
The goal of this campaign of emails is to reach certain goals. You could write an email to get more sales, to ask someone to write a guest post, or just to share with a larger audience.
As long as you have a good internet connection and can write well in English, it’s easy to become an expert at email outreach.
Tell us about your travels.
If you are not a professional writer but love to travel, this list might be for you. You can use Upwork to find a cheap editor to help you write about your travels.
Send the final draft to websites that publish travel stories and other similar articles. This is one of the best ways to make money online while traveling the world.
But keep in mind that you’ll need your own pictures to go with your stories.
Participating In Writing Stories
Write stories, both fiction and nonfiction, for magazines and newspapers. You can write short or long stories, and every time a publication accepts one of your stories, you get paid. First, choose the types of writing you want to do.
Next, look for publications that have a lot of readers and will pay for a unique short story. You can do this by typing “Get paid for story writing” into Google.
Become A Virtual Assistant
VAs are hired by everyone, from individuals to businesses, to help them handle their digital work. Virtual assistants help keep things organized and make management easier all around.
You think you can finish some random tasks in the time you have left? Go ahead with this idea for a business.
How to Start a Podcast
Have you done work outside of the Internet that you can share there? Then you can start a podcast. You can start a podcasting series and fill it with interesting, powerful content.
Once you have a big enough following, you can start taking sponsorships, paid promotions, and recommendations for services.
Build an app
On our list of online business ideas, making an app is one that is both unique and useful.
Think about a problem you see around you often and an app that could help solve it. Find a new, original idea that will help. Hire an app developer to make software for your website.
Everyone has a smartphone, so all you have to do is make a cool app.
Make landing pages for websites that use WordPress.
Your reader has to go through three steps to convert a product. Land on your site, learn how useful your products are, and click “buy.”
All of these steps are set by the landing page. Landing pages are very important to marketers. To make a landing page, you don’t have to be a professional designer.
You can design unique landing pages for different products on WordPress. There are plugins that make it easy to put together each page. Gutenberg, Thrive Architect, and Divi builder are three of the most-used plugins.
Proofread to make money.
Every piece of content needs some finishing touches, and you could help with that. Check the content for errors in sentence structure, grammar, and so on.
You can make a lot of money by editing ebooks, long guides, essays, and other long pieces of writing. Large-scale proofreading is also possible. Set up a website to sell your services and start doing so.
Don’t forget to add a portfolio page to your site so that your clients can see what you’ve done.
Getting help with content
One of the best ways to make money online with less work is still to outsource. Reach out to different websites to start. You can find a good writer on sites like Upwork and Freelancer. You can make money if you outsource the content.
At first, you won’t make much money, but once you’ve made an online profile to show off your work, you can raise your rates.
Turn into Chat Support
Becoming a chatbot is another clever way to make money. Some websites give you a ping message in the right corner of the screen when you land on them.
Chatbots are often used by companies to help with pre-sales support. Every day, you would have to answer questions about sales.
Amazon Seller
Ecommerce business is a place where everyone can make money. Online shopping is getting bigger and bigger all the time.
You can use an eCommerce market that is already set up to sell your products. Sellers can sell almost any kind of item on Amazon. You need to find products that sell well and make you money.
Next, make sure your product descriptions are good for SEO. Put up images that are clean and start selling. You can also look through the Alibaba store for unique items and sell them on Amazon.
Get paid to review products
There are so many companies that will pay you to write an honest review of their product that it’s hard to keep track. You will not only get to keep the product, but if your review is really helpful, the company will pay you a review fee.
There are many websites that will pay you to write reviews about the products they sell. Here are a few places to start looking.
Make videos and GIFs that move.
Companies want to market their products with content that looks good. The most important thing to promote is still animated video, but many startups use GIFs in between articles.
This actually makes people more interested. GIFs with cartoons help companies connect with their audience on a more personal level. Most of the time, marketing companies and design studios use GIFS. Use these sites to show off your GIFs.
On the other hand, an animated video is usually between one and two minutes long and is meant to make sales. This includes things like videos that explain how different products can help people.
Guest Posting
Dropshipping would have to be the best idea for an online business. But it’s cool to post as a guest!
Guest posting is an important part of SEO and is likely to stay that way for a long time. Companies pay writers to write about their brands on big websites and magazines like Forbes, Huffingtonpost, Lifehacker, CNN, and others.
Choose a niche that you know something about and can write about. Then, post as a guest on sites that make it easy to submit articles.
Start reaching out to bigger brands once you’ve gotten some good exposure. Getting published on these sites isn’t easy, but it can be done.
Just make sure that the content you write is of very high quality. Also, read the specific rules for guest posting before you send in your ideas.
Final Verdict
It’s not as hard as you think to make money online. All you have to do is make sure you have at least one skill. If you are good at writing, you can start writing or editing for different publications.
You can sell a lot of things on Amazon. You can also make money online with Amazon affiliate commission. Most ideas for starting an online business are simple. You just have to find one that is easy for you to do.
If you’re passionate about photography, you can send in stock photos or click on images for magazines that fit a certain niche. Have a unique idea for an online business you’d like to share? Tell us what you think in the comments.
