Posted by Have you ever think of some online business ideas & how someone can earn cash from the internet? If you have, this detailed article is for you.
Setting up an online business may seem to be difficult at the initial because one has to devote time in learning the skill first before you can begin to monetize it.
But you should have in mind that a patient dog eats the fattest bone! Merits of online business is that you can set it up and use it as a part time business. Since it’s not physical and nobody will ever know if you’re present in your online shop or not.
If you have the talent and the opportunity to set up a standard online shop; it can be a blog etc. it means that you have opened a wide gate that flows in money to your account even when you’re sleeping at your comfort zone.
Below JonakyBlog have listed some of the well-known online business that many individuals have generated huge income from the time they established it.
1. Affiliate marketing as an online business idea
Introduction – What is affiliate marketing? One of the best definition of affiliate marketing can be found in Investopedia which is defined below:
“Affiliate marketing is an advertising model in which a company compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. The third-party publishers are affiliates, and the commission fee incentivizes them to find ways to promote the company.”
How to start affiliate marketing
Before you start an affiliate marketing you need to know the type of product you have in mind to promote. That’s the number one thing you should have in mind. Affiliate marketing includes: physical products, services and information products.
Once you have chosen a particular product you want to promote, the next thing is to know the place you want to place the affiliate products links and pictures.
If you own a website or a blog, you need to know your niche and what you visitors are interested in. you can still promote affiliate links on social media such as: Facebook, Twitter etc.
How can you earn as an affiliate marketer?
You earn as an affiliate marketer when you direct traffic to the company’s product you are promoting. The company pays you either when someone buys a product or view the product using your “affiliate link”.
Depending on the company, you earn commission (in percentage) on each successful purchase that was made through you link. Commission percentage varies on the product sold depending on a particular percentage the company sets for each product.
Some of affiliate marketing websites and programs
- Amazon Associates
- Jumia
- EBay Partners etc.
Amazon pays a commission ranging from 1-10%. Amazon also has the world largest affiliate program. See picture below.
You can register with Amazon Associates here
Jumia
If you are a Nigerian, you can choose to use Jumia affiliate program. Below is step by step guide on how to register with Jumia and get your affiliate link. Click here Jumia affiliate program to start.
Click on “Get started with Banners/ promote with banners” or you can simply click on “Advertising” as shown in the above picture.
Next “Select your country and your category”. I selected “Nigeria” as my country and “Everything on Jumia” as my category. Next you need to select your banner size (I selected 300×250) if you wish to place the affiliate link and picture on your website.
But if are using social media to promote the affiliate link, just copy the “Ad URL”. You can shorten the link if you wish to by using some link shotner like: goo.gl, bit.ly etc.
You can now go ahead to promote the link. Bear in mind that anytime someone purchased any product using your “affiliate link”, you will earn commission.
2. Graphic design as an online business idea
Introduction – What is Graphic Design? Graphic Design as defined by Wikipedia is the process of visual communication and problem-solving through the use of typography, photography, iconography and illustration.
Basic Principles of graphic design
- Rhythm, shape, color, spacing, texture, imagery, working with type etc.
- Rhythm includes the flow, repetition or regularity. If you are working with rhythm, your graphic design will be easy for you.
- Shape involves the appearance of something especially its outline.
- Color is a property of quarks, with three values called red, green, and blue, which can exchange by passing gluons.
- Spacing is a way in which objects are separated by spaces or the space between two objects or people.
- Texture is an image applied to a polygon to create the appearance of a surface.
Some types of graphic design
- Advertising
- Web design
- Product design
Advertising – This involves the advertisement that is mainly used in magazines
Web design – Almost all the websites in the world are design using suitable graphics. Websites are build and designed on graphic elements which include the website layout and the graphics that the website contain.
Product design – This are the graphical design that can be applied on product package. Such product includes: television carton, mobile phone carton etc.
Top graphics design tool
- Myfonts.com
- Procreate
- Clip studio paint
- Adobe Photoshop
3. Digital Marketing as an online business idea
Introduction – What is Digital Marketing? Digital marketing as defined by Marketo refers to advertising delivered through digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps.
Digital marketing involves: blogging, social media marketing, email marketing, pay-per click advertising etc.
How to market products digitally through the above stated means
Blogging: This is one of the online business ideas that pays huge. If you own a blog, you can start advertising different products that includes pictures and text link on your blog and generate income in return.
Social media marketing: This involves using your social media handles to promote different products. You can make use of different Facebook groups to advertise your product or company’s product.
Email marketing: This include advertising through the use of emails. You can forward your products to different emails at once, this can be achieved by encouraging people to “subscribe to your email subscriptions” so that you can have many emails on your email list and make use of it when needed.
4. Business Coaching as an online business idea
Introduction – Business Coaching as defined by Noomii is the process of helping a company or a business team achieve greater clarity, focus and results.
A business coach can be an individual who assist a company, firm or even an individual business. A business coach is someone who has an idea of what s/he can do to improve your business growth and revenue.
For example if you are running a blog as a business, a business coach can give you tips on how you can generate huge traffic to your blog and also maintain your visitors to keep coming back to your blog.
5. Web Design and Development
Introduction – What is Web design? Web design as defined by Wikipedia encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites.
The different areas of web design include web graphic design; interface design; authoring, including standardized code and proprietary software; user experience design; and search engine optimization.
Web design as an online business ideas involves the creation or building of website, this includes: front-end and back-end development. The front end of a website is the part that the user interacts with. The front end includes: the colors, pictures, navigation, drop down menu etc.
They are the combination of HTML, CSS and JAVASCRIPT. The back end of a website consist of a server, an application, and a database.
Some languages used to develop the back end of a website are: PHP, Python, Java, .Net to build a website application, and Oracle, SQL and MySQL work in other to find data, save data or change data and serve it back to the user at the front end code.
Some of the advantages of a web designer are
- There are great employment opportunities as the world is becoming digital on a daily basis.
- Several internet developers are earning huge amount of money monthly.
You can start learning web design and web development for free at W3schools if you are interested.
6. App development as an online business idea
Introduction – Application development as defined by Zoho is the process of creating a computer program or a set of programs to perform the different tasks that a business or firm requires.
Application development grouped as one of the online business ideas can be divided into two: desktop application development and mobile application development.
Desktop applications are applications that can run on desktop computers. Desktop application can be developed for operating systems like: Windows OS, MacOS, Linux. In programming desktop applications, the programmer (or the application developer) can use some programming languages such as: Python, Java, C++, C#, Visual basic etc.
Mobile applications are those applications that run and operate on mobile devices only. Some mobile phone Operating system are: Android OS, iPhone OS/iOS, Blackberry etc.
Java programming language is used to develop most of the Android applications that are being used today.
Some IDE (Integrated Development Environment) used in Application development are
- NetBeans
- Eclipse
- Microsoft Azure
- Atom
NetBeans is an open source and a free software development tool written in Java that develops world-class web, mobile and desktop applications easily and quickly. NetBeans uses programming languages such as Java, PHP, Python, JavaScript, C++ etc. You can download NetBeans IDE here.
Eclipse is one of the most popular IDE that is used by Java developers in computer programming. It is used to develop applications not only in Java but also in other programming languages like, Python, PHP, C++ etc. eclipse IDE can be downloaded from Eclipse website here.
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service that is owned by Microsoft which is used for designing, deploying, testing and managing web applications or hybrid cloud applications through Microsoft’s global network of data centers. You can download Microsoft Azure from their website here.
Atom is an open source and free desktop editor cum source code editor that is up-to-date, friendly and hackable to the core. You can download Atom IDE here.
7. Blogging (Start a blog and monetize it)
Introduction – Blog as defined by Wikipedia is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries.
Blog is also websites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. Some people that own and run a blog usually do it as a part-time business. Today bloggers who discovered blogging as one of the online business ideas and who as well generate huge traffic to their blogs earn from it and this increase their passion in blogging.
How to create a blog
There are many blogging platforms that someone can use to create a blog even if you don’t have much idea in web designing and development. The blogging platforms has nice developed theme or template, all you need is to customize it to your taste.
Some blogging platforms are
- WordPress
- Blogger
- Tumblr
- Wix
WordPress is the world’s most popular platform/software. WordPress powers more than 30% of all the websites on the internet today. It has two categories: WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
In WordPress.org, you have full control of your website. You are free to customize your blog/website to your own taste. With WordPress.org you can build your little website as low as $46 per year.
WordPress.com is a hosting service created by the co-founder of WordPress.org. WordPress.com has free (but highly limited) hosting service and paid hosting service as well. If you wish to own a blog like JonakyBlog at low cost, contact us via contact@jonakyblog.com
Blogger is a free blogging service powered by Google. It offers a quick and easy way to create a blog. If you want to use Blogger hosting service for your blogging carrier, all you need to get started is a Google account. If you discover blogging as one of the online business ideas, you can use blogger to start your blog for free.
Tumblr is a little different from other blogging platforms because it is a micro-blogging platform with social networking features like sharing tools etc. Tumblr is absolutely free with subdomain name.
Wix is a hosted platform to build websites, also it offers a solution for small businesses to build a website using default drag and drop tools that Wix provide for their users.
How to earn money from your blog
Some bloggers in Nigeria like Lindaikeji make money from her blog by displaying advertisements in her blog. She place both company ads (such as Google Adsense, Media.net, etc.), business ads (such as banks advertisement) and individual ads (this includes sponsored post by individuals).
Some company like Google Adsense paid their publishers both when someone click on their advertisement and also when people view their advertisement… so as a blogger the more traffic you generate to your blog, the more money you can make if you place advertisements in your blog/website.
Below is how Linda Ikeji makes money from her blog
From the image above, many companies advertise their products on her blog because she gets huge traffic (visitors/page views) on her blog on a daily basis.
If you want to own a blog like this (Jonaky Blog), contact Admin with your email on contact@jonakyblog.com or on Facebook.com or you can use the “Contact Form” in the website.
8. Freelance jobs as an online business idea
Introduction – Freelance as defined by Yourdictionary is a working arrangement when a person sells their services to individual buyers with whom they are not employed.
Freelance jobs are those jobs that one can be doing without having a shop or an online domain before s/he can start earning from it. Freelance jobs gives users opportunity to engage in other activities that they were already doing.
If you are a freelancer at this present time, many organization/project owners need more than one service from you. Such service could be banner ads design, you may need to create some websites too for a client.
As a freelancer you can earn in different ways like signing up with some websites like fiver.com, freelancer.com and work for the by writing and selling your article or collecting different contracts from people and get paid in return.
Earlier freelancers who discovered freelancing as one of the online business ideas have made thousands of dollars from it.
Some Freelance jobs that one can engage are
- Makeup Artist
- Website design
- Photo editor
- Relationship adviser
- Banner design
- Article writing
- Social media marketer etc.
If you are interested in freelance jobs, below are some freelance job websites in Nigeria
9. E-commerce
Introduction – What is e-commerce? As defined by Shopify E-commerce also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data too execute these transactions.
E-commerce is one of the online business ideas & it’s often used to refer to the sale of physical products online, but it can also describe any kind of commercial transaction that is facilitated through the internet.
In eCommerce an online store serves as a platform that displays your products, and handles payment of products or services purchased. Items purchased are either delivered to your door step if it’s a physical products or downloaded for downloadable products such as eBooks, audio, software and mobile applications.
eCommerce giants like Konga and Jumia offers quality products and great shopping experience to consumers.
Online shopping has become a more preferable alternative to visiting shopping malls and markets place to purchase items, because it provides a more convenient means of shopping, offering a competitive pricing and a variety of products which you can easily order from the comfort of your home.
Things needed to start e-commerce store
- What to sell (Goods to sell)
- Where to sell (A very good website)
- How to sell (Advertising)
- How to deliver the sold goods (Delivery men)
What to sell
As an entrepreneur before you ever think of starting an eCommerce store, you must first of all think on what you are going to sell on that online platform.
By knowing the things you want to sell, you can now know the category of what you can be able to: sell and make gain, how you can advertise such goods and get the attention of people, how you can be able to sell the goods when someone make payment for the goods.
Where to sell
An eCommerce store is a store that operates online. Since you know this, as an entrepreneur you have to design your website in a way that users will find it very easy to search, make payments, navigate through the website and do so many others things on the platform.
Your website will be mobile and desktop friendly. Your website will have standard security to avoid intruders from penetrating and hacking your website.
How to sell
For you to succeed in your eCommerce store, you already know that your goods are based online. So you must invest in using so many platforms to advertise your eCommerce website in order to make it known to people.
The more you run advertisements, the more you are exposing your website to many people who can decide to be buying things from your eCommerce store. You can use platforms like; Facebook, Google, Twitter, blogs etc. to advertise your eCommerce store to reach so many people.
How to deliver the sold goods
Delivery is one of the keys to succeeding in your eCommerce store. If you offer high quality products and you have quick and fast delivery men, people will recommend your store to other people. This is another means of publicity that will boom your eCommerce store.
10. Email Marketing as an online business idea
Introduction – Email marketing as defined by Wikipedia is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.
Email marketing is one of the online business ideas & it’s also called online marketing via websites, social media, blogs, and more.
Advantages of Email Marketing
- Email marketing is an inexpensive way to advertise your company and its products. It is is easy to set up and it cost little money compared to other ways of advertising your product online.
- Email marketing has huge advantage over advertising using social media in the sense that your customers (subscribers) are more likely to see email than just posting or advertising your products on social media platforms.
11. YouTube (Become a You Tuber)
Introduction – YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005.
Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google’s subsidiaries.
Some professional video editors who recommends YouTube as one of the best online business ideas, have earned decent cash from it.
How to make money on YouTube
- Advertising revenue – You can make money on YouTube by Google YouTube ad services and on approval, Google will automatically place advertisements on your videos when people are watching your videos online.
- Channel membership – This is when your members make payments to you monthly in exchange for a special lively videos that you offer to them.
- YouTube Premium Revenue – Get part of a YouTube Premium subscriber’s subscription fee when your subscribers watch your content.
12. Facebook advertising
Introduction – Facebook advertising is a way to promote your already existing business online in order to reach more audience.
Before you start any Facebook ads, you must have created a business that is already selling and your aim to advertise it on Facebook is to increase your sales. The aim of your advert may be – To increase traffic to your website through Facebook.
If you’re good in advertising on Facebook, you will as well recommend Facebook ads as one of the excellent online business ideas.
Steps on how to advertise on Facebook
Step 1.
Go to Facebook.com and create a page for your business. After creating the page, upload your business info where needed in the Facebook page setup. Some of the info are – your business description, business logo, website URL etc.
Step 2.
Choose the reason why you want to run the advert for your business. Facebook has so many marketing objective such as – boost your post, promote your page, get installs of your app, get people to visit your shop, reach people near your business etc.
Step 3.
Describe your audience and target for your business. This includes the location of the people you want to view your advert, the average age range of the audience you are targeting, their languages, interests etc.
Step 4. Time to create your advert for people to see it. After creating your advert always check the statistics of how the advert improves your sales, traffic to your business and others.
13. T-shirt designer as an online business idea
Introduction – Tee shirt design is a popular way to add a creative touch to a t-shirt and it’s one of the most recognized and popular types of clothing designs in the world.
In T-shirt design, the designs can contain images, slogans, arts, words etc. the slogan or logo can be a company’s logo and it’s a way of advertising the company’s name and product.
Some individuals and well known companies have outlined T-shirt design as one of the outstanding online business ideas.
How to design a T-shirt
As a beginner, you can use t-shirt design apps for starting. You can search for popular apps that most t-shirt beginners used before they dive in to creating their own templates.
Tips on how to design a good T-shirt
- Use images of high quality – images of high quality often looks great when printed than images of low quality. Another thing is to check your image file formats.
- Put much interest on your fonts – Use fonts that are awesome to the individuals that will see your design. Nice fonts always catch the attention of people in the streets.
14. Investing your money as an online business idea
Introduction – Warren Buffett defines investing as the process of laying out money now to receive more money in the future. Investing your money is a business that you hope to bring profit to you in the future.
Where to invest your money
- The stock market
- Investment bonds
- Mutual market
15. Logo design as an online business idea
Introduction – A logo design is a design that identifies your business in its simplest form using a logo mark, typographic solution, or it can be the combination of both.
When designing a logo for your business, your logo will be complete when there is nothing left to take away. Not when there is nothing left to add in the design.
How to Design Logos
For you to be able to take logo design as a business, you need to have knowledge of some logo designing tools. Such tools are Corel Draw and Photoshop. If you have knowledge of this tools and you can deliver a standard graphics work to clients, then you can make a huge amount with just logo design.
You Can Make Money Online By Designing Logos
In this modern world it is possible to make money online by designing logos since many jobs can be done online. Some of the jobs today are handled in online platforms. Logo design is among the jobs that can be done online and receive your payment through online transaction process.
If you can design a quality logo, you can earn up to $10-15.
You can also sell your logos online. Below are few websites where you can sell your already designed logo.
- 3docean.net
- grafiport.com
Conclusion
We all know that online business ideas is like every other business just that it’s being done in the internet. In other businesses, you will need to have shop, office etc. but in online business, your shop is the website where your business is hosted or the website that you sell your products.
Online business requires patience, for example if you want to start blogging as a business, you won’t expect to start earning immediately you finish creating your blog. You need to put some contents on your blog and drive traffic before monetizing your blog.
For you to succeed in your online business, you must first of all plan your business, do market research, carry out a survey for that business you’ve choose to do and invest your capital in it.
Remember that consistency and persistence usually bring forth positive results. You must focus and say that this online business must work before you can succeed in the business.
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Nice this is amazing list
I am glad you find it helpful Charmy
Well explained
Thanks for sharing
It’s really help ful,
Samrin Anwar am glad you find it helpful.