Running an online business definitely has its appeal, but it also comes with its own set of challenges. The truth is, starting a business of any kind is hard work.
In reality, “online” is just a channel that connects businesses to people. It’s a powerful tool that lets you reach anyone from anywhere in the world. But creating a business with it is still about connecting the right customers with the right offering.
Countless people have already made the leap into entrepreneurship. And with the right ideas and plenty of sweat equity, you can too.
Excited about starting a business, but not sure where to start? This free, comprehensive guide will teach you how to find great, newly trending products with high sales potential.
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This isn’t about one simple life-changing trick. Starting a business doesn’t work that way. Instead, to help you find a product idea or business model that fits your lifestyle, we’ve put together a collection of simple ways to start a business without quitting your day job.
If you have some designs in mind and a little bit of time on your hands, you can get your clothing company off the ground.
If you already own a Shopify store, you can set up your own clothing line using Oberlo, Printify, Printful, or a similar product sourcing app. Each automatically links your store to apparel printers and clothing manufacturers. They also handle every step of the retail fulfillment process for you, giving you the freedom to design and ship a wide range of pieces right out of the gate.
We used Printful to create THINK PUP, an apparel store for dog owners, and ended up making over $1,200 in just three weeks. With some time and research, you could be well on your way to building a successful t-shirt company, too.
We’ve curated some handy resources that will help grow your apparel business at every stage, from crafting your brand’s story to promoting your products with influencer marketing :
Free Course: Build a Print-on-Demand Business
Learn how to easily create and sell your own custom-branded products. Ecommerce expert Adrian Morrison shares his framework for launching a successful print-on-demand shop in our free video course.
You don’t need a warehouse full of inventory to run your own business. Dropshipping is a great way to start a business on a budget. You can hit the ground running by sourcing a pre-existing product from a supplier and having them take care of things like packaging and fulfillment.
This process lets you skip over a lot of obstacles that might be standing in the way of you starting your own business. More importantly, a dropshipping business eliminates the risk of finding out there’s no market for your product after placing a huge order with a manufacturer or supplier.
If you’re interested in dropshipping, read our Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping to help you get started.
If you don’t have any online shop ideas, here are some strategies for narrowing down the perfect product:
Free Webinar: The Right Way to Start a Profitable Dropshipping Store
Learn how to find high-margin products, import them into your store, and start selling — fast.
Whether you’re a painter, photographer, or musician, there are plenty of ways to start an online store and turn your latest masterpiece into a source of revenue with a beautifully designed ecommerce website.
If painting or photography is your forte, you can sell your work as prints, canvases, and framed posters using Printify or Printful. This is a fantastic way to turn your art into something tangible that people can take home and integrate into their space. Is music your thing? You can sell your beats, songs, samples, and more as digital downloads.
Just take a look at The Drum Broker, the largest online drum sample business in the world. It created a successful and sustainable business model with the help of apps like FetchApp and ShipStation.
Ready to bring your art shop ideas to life? Get started with these resources:
Excited about starting a business, but not sure where to start? This free, comprehensive guide will teach you how to find great, newly trending products with high sales potential.
Almost there: please enter your email below to gain instant access.
We’ll also send you updates on new educational guides and success stories from the Shopify newsletter. We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe.
Writers, developers, and graphic designers can start a business based on their talents. As a freelancer, you’ll be able to put your skills to good use by helping people across the world with their projects (while making some money yourself, of course).
Freelancing doesn’t mean committing to months-long projects that eat away at your free time. You can easily pick up bite-sized tasks that fit your schedule.
To find people that need your help, try freelancing marketplaces, like Upwork and Fiverr.
It’s worth noting that Fiverr is a little different from a traditional job board. As the name suggests, all the posted jobs cost five dollars. The key to making big money on Fiverr is carefully setting up your offers so you can easily upsell the client for more money.
For instance, you could offer to write a 150-word introduction for a blog post as your initial five-dollar service. As an upsell, you could charge another $10 for every additional 150 words. You can tweak your services until you’ve found a combo that makes it worth your while.
If you want total control over how much you charge, create a Shopify store. You can list your services as products and disable shipping, since you won’t actually be physically delivering anything to your customers. You can even use apps like BookThatApp and Events Calendar to give your customers the option to schedule appointments.
If freelancing sounds like it might be a good money-making website idea for your lifestyle, we’ve put together some great articles that can help you make the most of your time:
Teaching an online course is a low-investment business idea for generating passive income. All you need to do is put together a video walkthrough explaining a subject you’re familiar with and then host it on your own personal website.
Although it requires effort up front, if you manage to design a popular, high-value video tutorial series, you would make money on an ongoing basis as people continue to enroll in your course.
To start creating your first online course, brainstorm a topic that you know well enough to teach someone how to do from scratch. This can be literally anything—music production, social media marketing, web development, you name it.
Next, you’ll want to grab a screencasting app, like ScreenFlow, to record your screen and voice while you walk your students through your tutorial. ScreenFlow also comes with a built-in video-editing suite, letting you shoot and cut your videos all on the same platform.
If you love hitting up thrift stores and hunting down great deals, then one great shop idea is to sell your second-hand treasures online.
Your potential customers want to buy cool stuff, but they don’t want to dig through old soccer jerseys and braided belts to get their hands on that one amazing find. Take advantage of this by positioning yourself as a trustworthy curator who can go out and uncover those great vintage pieces for others.
Sometimes a passion for second-hand curiosities is all it takes to kickstart a business. Windy Gaming, an online store dedicated to selling vintage video games, started when its owner received a box of old Japanese games from a friend and wanted to sell them online. Now, Windy Gaming generates $1,000 per week selling retro gaming gear around the world.
Want to turn your cool stuff into pizza money? Take a look at these guides to making your products look great in photos:
It’s OK to admit it: you’ve thought about publishing your own book someday. While seeing your name on a list of bestsellers might seem like a pipe dream, it’s actually not that far out of reach.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a science-fiction novel, a marketing guide, or a children’s picture book, there are now plenty of options for successfully self-publishing your work. These include releasing your writing as an ebook with the Digital Downloads app to on-demand printing services like Blurb and CreateSpace.
To sell ebooks through your online store, install the Digital Downloads app and you’ll instantly be able to stock digital files as products. Once purchased, your ebooks will be sent to your customers via email or as a direct download link.
If you choose to sell physical copies of your book, you’ll just need to place an order with Blurb or CreateSpace whenever your work is purchased. They’ll custom print your book and handle the entire storage and fulfillment process.
Ready to live out your dreams of being a published author? These resources will help you on your way to the top:
Blogging has come a long way since its inception. What was once a virtual journal has now turned into a marketing and even monetization tool.
Whether you make money from publishing sponsored posts, hosting third-party ads, or selling your products, a blog is a great online business idea.
The key to starting a successful blog is to focus on building an engaged, loyal audience. When you start with an audience-centric approach, you’ll cultivate a community that trusts you. And when you can earn trust, you can start to drive revenue.
That’s how Mr. Money Mustache started his popular personal finance blog. What began as a movement has turned into a successful business that’s earned national media coverage.
For more information on getting started, check out these articles:
Are you super organized and love working behind the scenes? If so, you might be the perfect candidate to start a virtual assistant (VA) business.
A VA helps entrepreneurs, businesses, and executives organize their personal and professional lives. There’s a broad spectrum of duties, ranging from appointment scheduling to basic marketing management and everything in between. And everything is done online.
Influencer marketing has exploded on the marketing scene, and though consumers are becoming more savvy, there are still plenty of opportunities to be had.
Because influencers have gotten in hot water for dishonest practices, there’s been a movement toward micro-influencers—profiles with smaller but more engaged followings. Good news: you don’t need millions of followers to earn money on Instagram.
Here are our inspiring tips and stories to get you started as an influencer:
If you’re tech savvy, acquire some coding skills and start building. Whether it’s mobile apps, Shopify apps, or websites, you can create digital products for purchase or as a service provider.
For example, you can create a custom Shopify theme template and sell it to merchants looking for an affordable DIY approach to designing their website. Or work with clients directly to build websites and apps tailored to their specific needs.
For more information on building apps, check out these articles from Shopify Partners:
If you like the sound of your own voice, consider recording it for a podcast. Podcasts are a great online business idea with multiple monetization options, similar to starting a blog.
Here’s what you need to start your podcast:
To promote your podcast, consider collaborating with prominent figures as guests on your show. Encourage listeners to leave reviews and share your podcast with their friends and family.
Affiliate marketing is when you recommend a product or service by sharing it on a blog or social media, to your email list, on your website, or on other channels. You earn a commission each time someone converts through your unique referral link or code.
Find an affiliate program that suits your interests, personal brand, and target audience. Affiliate Future, ShareASale, and FlexOffers are a few examples. Amazon has its own affiliate program, and you can also check out the Shopify Affiliate Program.
Once you’ve signed up, start sharing. Create social media posts, blog articles, emails, and other content about how great the product or service you’re promoting is. Don’t oversaturate your audience with ads, otherwise you risk coming across as spammy or inauthentic.
Subscription boxes are themed packages of various products. There are subscription boxes in pretty much every industry, from meal-prep kits and craft snacks to fitness products and makeup. You can curate subscription boxes around virtually any theme of your choice.
Bokksu, for example, curates Japanese snacks and sends them to customers each month.
When you curate subscription boxes, you work with brands and artisans to purchase and resell their products in a bundled offering. Typically, consumers expect to be surprised by what’s in the box, though there are some (like meal prep kits) where the customer chooses what they receive.
Interested in finding out how to start your subscription box business? Learn from these resources:
If you recognize an opportunity in a certain niche, you might be on to your next successful online business idea. Niche products cater to a unique audience. When done well, they serve a specific community.
Niches could be based on industry, demographic, price point, geography, values, product attributes, and more. Really, a niche could be anything specific enough to target a small group of potential customers. For example:
If you’re particularly crafty, you can try your hand at selling handmade products. Whether you make jewelry, picture frames, or furniture, one business idea is to monetize your craft skills and sell your creations online.
While you can use platforms like Craigslist or Etsy, your own online store will give you more control and make it easier to track and fulfill orders.
Ready to find new homes for your handcrafts? Get started here:
Once you’ve decided on an online business idea, you’ll want to do your due diligence and, eventually, give it life. Here’s how to start a business, step-by-step:
Shopify Academy Course: Sell Your Homemade Goods Online
Have a product you’re ready to sell? The Kular family shares their experience building a business around mom’s recipe book. From selling one-on-one to reaching the aisles of Whole Foods.
It might sound harsh, but it’s true: just because you think you have a great idea, that doesn’t mean there’s a market for it. Before investing your time and energy into starting your business, research how feasible it is and whether there’s any potential buyer interest. You can hire an agency to conduct market research for you, but if you’re on a shoestring budget, you can also take the DIY approach:
You’ve validated your idea, now it’s time to turn it into a reality. Whether you’re selling a product or service, you need to create it. Find a manufacturer to bring your product to life, create packages of your service offerings, or write your book and identify a self-publishing option to bring it to fruition.
If you go the dropshipping route, the product has already been developed for you. It’s up to you to choose the products you’re passionate about or that you’ve identified a hot market for. To help you, we’ve put together a guide to finding the best products to dropship.
Exchange Marketplace: Buy a Business
Exchange is the marketplace to kickstart your entrepreneurial dreams and buy a business. Browse thousands of stores for sale.
“How do I open a business bank account?” is a common question for many new entrepreneurs. After you’ve officially registered your business with your local government, you should have the tax identification numbers and other information required to open a business bank account.
As you grow, you might need funding for future endeavors, be it a new product launch or marketing and advertising spend. Having business bank accounts makes it easier for you to manage that capital, as well as track your revenue and expenses.
Having a bank account is also helpful when it comes to tax preparation, since your business-related transactions will be in a single place. As your business finances get more complicated, hiring a professional accountant or tax professional could be a viable option.
Further reading:
Product-based online businesses, in particular, may require lots of business relationships. For example: a manufacturer, a dropshipper, or a third-party logistics coordinator. When identifying which partnerships you want to move forward with, it’s best to shop around and compare your options to make sure you’re getting the best solution for your needs.
Other online businesses may require different relationships or contractors. If you’re writing a book, for example, you may want to hire a professional editor and book designer.
If you want to start a business online, you need to have a website. And to generate online sales, you’ll need to incorporate payment processing functionality. First, choose a domain name and verify that it’s available. You can purchase a domain name for less than $20 a year in some cases. From there, you can build your own store on a platform like Shopify and start accepting payments from customers right away.
Here are a few other resources to help you get started with your ecommerce site:
If you’ve been thinking about ways to start a business, it’s time to get out there and create an online money-making business in your spare time. You don’t have to go all in. Start small with a side hustle and scale from there. Or, keep things small. The beauty of starting your own online business is that it’s all up to you.
Have questions about setting up your first online business? Let us know in the comments below.
Illustration by Eugenia Mello
This article originally appeared in the Shopify blog and has been published here with permission.
