There’s never been a better time to start an online business than today. We are living in a world with almost unlimited opportunities to create wealth and grow a business. And with the huge advancements in mobile technology, it is even easier to target customers and increase sales.
Unless you are online, you will fall behind your competitors. Every traditional retail store will now have a website in order to compete. While this means it’s harder to stand out, there is no reason that online businesses cannot be a success.
Behemoths like Amazon may take the majority of online sales, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t reap the rewards of the eCommerce boom that’s happening right now.
So with all this in mind, here are a few online businesses that are raking in big money this year that you should consider starting for yourself.
Chatbots
Chatbot businesses have exploded. People are so used to using chat applications like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp that they’ve become entwined into everyday communication. This has presented a huge opportunity for chatbots, like LiveChat, to help online businesses streamline their customer service and remove the man-power usually required to deal with general queries.
One of the most popular ways that online businesses are using chatbots right now is for automating sales and marketing efforts. Most people often have the same initial questions about a product or service so instead of them having to read the FAQs, they can get the answers they need quickly.
At the end of the day, marketers and business owners want to make the buyer’s journey as easy and comfortable as possible. If you can create a chatbot that fulfils the need of a customer that also gives marketers the insights they need to improve their funnels, you can make a lot of money.
Ad Management
For startup companies, paid traffic is one of the most important ways to drive visitors to a website and optimize conversions. However, if you don’t understand how it works, it can be very confusing. From retargeting campaigns to creating a custom audience, there is a lot to do, so it’s important to know ads fit into the overall sales and marketing funnel.
On the other hand, if you understand how paid advertising works and how to implement it into any niche, you should start your own ad management business. The biggest companies in the world like Facebook and Google run ads to fuel their growth, so it’s clear that they work. If you know what you’re doing, your ad management business will rake in a lot of money.
Here are some numbers to back this up:
A report by eMarketer showed that digital ad spending will increase traditional ad spending in 2019. Furthermore, digital ad spending will increase beyond total media spending by 2023. In monetary terms, total digital ad spend is expected to hit $129 billion this year.
This all points to the huge growth of paid online advertising. The scary part is that we are only in its infancy. The quicker you can capitalize on ads, the faster you can build a profitable online business.
To get yourself started, start studying the basics of advertising on Facebook and Google using videos and courses.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for getting an online business to appear in the top few results from a search engine like Google. As the marketplace gets more competitive, the need for SEO increases as more and more companies are vying for the top spot.
This means that SEO businesses can make a lot of money.
A third of all clicks on Google click on the first result, while 91% of the search share belongs to the first page of those results. The goal of an SEO is to get a page or website ranking at number one for their target keywords. The closer to the top they get, the more traffic and sales that company will get, making their service in more valuable.
The internet is showing no signs of slowing down in terms of expansion anytime soon, making the SEO business a very lucrative industry. If you have the expertise, your online SEO business stands to make a lot of money.
Plus, these skills are transferable to your own business. After all, if you can rank your own website to the top result for your own target keyword, you have credibility to show clients and also a website that will likely sell for a lot of money.
Affiliate Marketing
On the back of SEO, another very profitable online business is affiliate marketing. There are tonnes of ways you can become an affiliate, such as inviting your friends to sign up for a product or service, or having your own links that once a visitor clicks, they get the promotion and you get the affiliate reward (great example of a site I recently used is onlinecasinogems.com).
As explained by Neil Patel, affiliate marketing can make you a lot of money but only if it’s done the right way:
“The idea behind it is that you promote other people’s products, often through an affiliate network, earning a commission if people actually end up buying, thanks to your marketing.
It’s based on revenue sharing. If you have a product and want to sell more, you can offer promoters a financial incentive through an affiliate program. If you have no product and want to make money, then you can promote a product that you feel has value and earn an income from it as an affiliate marketer.”
“There are 2 sides of an affiliate equation: the product creator and seller and the affiliate marketer.
Therefore, affiliate marketing can be seen as the process of spreading product creation and product marketing across different parties, where each party receives a share of the revenue, according to their contribution.
It’s not just the promotion or just the product creation that define who you are as an affiliate marketer. You can be both the creator and the marketer and still profit from the underlying idea of sharing revenue.”
Business coaching
Aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners are always on the lookout for new ways to improve their methods. If you are an expert at business, know what makes them tick and understand how to make sales, you could start a business in coaching. Because this is a skill that a lot of business owners are looking for, it is making big money.
There are a few business coaches that instantly come to mind, such as Tony Robbins and Frank Kern. They have dominated the business coaching industry for years but that doesn’t mean that they are the only people that can make money.
Provide value upfront to your clients and then let them pay you for implementing the strategy for them. It’s important that you understand where their business is right now so the tactics can be tailored to their business specifically. From here, create a plan that will get them to where they want to be.
Now, in order to convince clients that your execution is worth their money, you need to prove that your strategies have merit. This requires social proof in the form of testimonials or case studies. If you have to lower prices to get initial clients then do it; their testimonials are worth a lot.
Russel Brunson, one of the founders of ClickFunnels, did this when he helped Drew Canole successfully launch Organifi.
Webinars
The final online business that is making a lot of money this year are webinars. They are one of the most powerful ways to sell products and services online. Even if you don’t have a product of your own, you can still sell with webinars. For example, Jason Fladlien, co-founder of Rapid Crush, has grossed more than $100 million using webinars.
Webinars work well as a sales medium because they engage with an audience that is already willing to purchase your offer. If you wanted to start your own webinar business, find a product that you think you can promote well and really get behind it. Once you have this, you can start to build the ultimate webinar.
We mentioned Russell Brunson in the previous business type that rakes in big money but he has also mastered the webinar business. The ClickFunnels product offers to help you build your webinar as well as the copy for ads and swipes. Automated webinar software will then allow you to make your webinar evergreen.
Webinars can also be used in conjunction with other business models listed on this list to make your business even more money. For example, you can create webinars that sell products as part of an affiliate program.
Conclusion
All these online businesses are killing it this year. The internet will continue to play a major role in making money for a long time, creating more opportunities each and every day. If you’re in doubt about what business types can make you the most money, these ideas are the best places to start. The sooner you start creating your own, the quicker you can achieve financial freedom.
