5 ONLINE BUSINESS IDEAS FOR 2018

That more than half of the world’s business is now done online is a fact that cannot be denied. Both traditional and new business owners have come to recognise the need to have a presence online. With the growth in the number of internet users worldwide it is expected that there will be an increase in income generated from online businesses. That’s why I decided to put up this article now: to first of all, let you know what an online business is, and some easy to set up ones you can go into in 2018.

By definition, online businesses are businesses that rely on the internet for their existence. More and more, online businesses are those businesses that rely on the internet for their growth, have little or no presence offline, and channel all their efforts on growing and retaining customers online.

Online businesses have some major features that make them desirable to the full-time employee looking to set up a side gig, the entrepreneur and those out of formal employment. One of these features is the low set-up cost. A typical online business like affiliate marketing requires between #4,000 — #10,000 to get up and running. This is unlike a traditional business that requires renting an office space, buying equipment and other machinery, having a large number of staff, buying and stocking inventory (if it’s a product based business) etc, which drives up set-up cost.

Another advantage that an online business has is the ease and time required for set-up. Give or take, depending on how motivated the business owner is, an online business can be set up within a week. Most require few hours. Some online businesses are also to some extent low-risk investments.

Now to the five online business ideas that you can and should go into in 2018:

Ø Dropshipping: If you’ve heard of Shopify, then you already have a basic idea of what drop shipping is about. Drop shipping is similar to running an e-commerce store like Jumia or Konga, the only difference being that you don’t have to keep physical inventory. In dropshipping, the dropshipper (i.e. you the business owner) connects the wholesaler or manufacturer to the final buyer or end user, without having to buy and stock the products from the manufacturer. A typical dropshipping store works like this: “seller/drop shipper/business owner finds a number of manufacturers selling different products and lists their products on his/her website or drop shipping store. When a customer orders an item, the seller processes the order, accepts payment, gets customer’s delivery details, then forwards the customer’s details to the manufacturer/wholesaler, pays for the product and shipping, and the manufacturer then ships the item to the customer/buyer”. That’s all. The seller does not handle the product or item at all. There’s no worry about looking for warehouse to keep inventory or tying capital down by stocking inventory for a long time.

This is not to say there are no issues that could come up in the supply-delivery process, like manufacturer mixing up orders, or not shipping items in time, but most of them can be easily addressed.

Ø Affiliate Marketing: This has been around for some time now. Affiliate marketing involves earning by referring customers to buy products and services from another seller. A good example is your favourite restaurant or bookstore offering to give you a discount on your purchases or pay you a particular amount if you get some of your friends to buy from them. Affiliate marketing has taken this one step further by making the entire process of referral, and payment online and you can partner with as many companies as possible.

The process of becoming an affiliate marketer is something like this: you search for companies, mostly look through the websites of different service providers and manufacturers and you would see a “become a partner”, or “become an affiliate” link, or something along that line. When you click on the link you will see the requirements to become an affiliate for the particular company. Most involve filling an online form and having a PayPal account, and that’s all. They then send you a link or code unique to you, which you can then share/publicise however you want to get buyers/customers. Your payment is tracked from your unique link and sent to you based on the agreement you have with them.

You don’t necessarily need a website to become an affiliate marketer, although having one helps. You can also earn more from affiliate marketing if you have an email list of subscribers or are an influencer of sort.

Ø Virtual Assistance: this is a particular favourite of mine because I’ve been doing this for the past six months. Virtual assistance involves providing a range of business support services to entrepreneurs, micro, small and medium enterprises, whose businesses either does not require a full-time hands-on staff, or is not yet able to afford one.

As a VA, you can also work with as many clients as you can comfortably manage, and even have a team of subcontractors that you can share your workload with.

The best part about being a virtual assistant is that you do not require any capital to begin. All you really need is to have a list of skills, knowledge, expertise, and get clients that require those skills and you can start earning money. You may then set up a website, build an email list, and perform other marketing activities to grow your clientele.

Rates for VA services vary depending on the expertise needed, frequency of performance, and tasks involved. Generally you can earn at least #30,000 (i.e. $83) per client on a monthly basis, if you are in Nigeria.

Ø Online Courses/Teaching: We all know the traditional ways of learning anything are to go to school, a tutorial/training centre or a vocational skill centre. Those are gradually fading to be replaced by online learning. There are tonnes of videos, articles, and information online for anybody interested in learning anything. If you have above average knowledge of a particular topic, you can explore the world of creating online courses or teaching online.

Set-up cost for teaching online varies, and depends on the platform you choose. It ranges from #0 to hundreds of thousands naira.

Ø Freelance Writing/Blogging: This is one area I intend to focus on in 2018. If done right income from freelance writing and blogging can be as high as #720,000 ($2,000) monthly. This of course varies and depends on how you are able to grow your writing skill and source for clients.

You don’t have to be a walking, talking dictionary before you can offer writing services. Your writing should however be error-free and fit into the needs of your clients. Some writing tasks include blog posts, creating content for websites, copywriting, white papers, e-books, corporate reports, ghost writing, product reviews, etc.

You can start from anywhere and then specialise in a niche as you grow and know yourself better. Set up cost is also relatively low and it involves mainly setting up your website/blog. You may decide to allow ads run on your site and promote other services and products to bring in extra income.

There you have it folks, five proven and tested ways of growing your income online in 2018. An important requirement for all of the businesses above is a good laptop and reliable internet connection. The list is not in any way exhaustive, it’s just a compendium of the methods I’m familiar with. Feel free to do a further research, explore other online businesses you can do. Just ensure you don’t stop at brainstorming and researching. Commit to one or two ideas and run with it! To a fantastic 2018!

Related posts:

Good thing that I came across a challenge on the MongoDB Advocacy Hub which introduced me to Querydsl ;) Querydsl claims to be “Unified Queries for Java”, “Instead of writing queries as inline…

While we may not know exactly how FinTech will impact our future, we have an idea as to who will be leading the charge. Our latest blog series, “The New Faces of FinTech”, spotlights some of the…

Alliance projects initiated by Facebook are run by dozens of organizations. This project is responsible for coordinating and providing management of network and asset reserves, as well as promoting…