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Best Online Business to Start in 2023
Scam Risk is here to help you protect yourself and fight back
By: Scam Risk - Expert Reviewer
Looking for some real online businesses that can ACTUALLY make you REAL MONEY?
Or maybe you’re looking for a side business to start online that will allow you to get the hell out of your 9-5…
Today, we’re going to talk about 11 different online business models. Our goal is to answer all the main questions about these models and tell you how to make money with them.
BUT BEFORE WE GET INTO THAT…
To save you some time, we’ll tell you right now that 9 of these models are neither the fastest nor the most guaranteed path to building wealth at home.
So, if you’re serious about building a passive income with a home-based business…
Just look at these results!
Still here huh?
Well congrats! You made it through 2020!
What a shitty year right?
Well at least one good thing has come out of this, and that is you probably know that you can actually make a good chunk of change starting a profitable online business!
But what kind of businesses can you start? Isn’t everything too saturated already?
There are plenty of options that you can get started on today! And no, not everything is saturated yet, there is more than enough money to be made right now!
You probably know that starting your own internet business is a great idea, but you probably just don’t know where to start. Don’t worry we’ll get you started on the right path.
If you already have some high income skills, that’s awesome! But maybe you just don’t know how to turn those skills into a lot of money…
Or maybe you have some knowledge about what kind of online businesses are out there like dropshipping or affiliate marketing because some of your friends do it on the side.
Either way, you’re looking to get started now and just need to be pointed down the right path.
We’ve got your back!
We’re going to walk you through a number of online businesses and find out which online business idea is right for you!
Table of Contents
11 Online Business Ideas You Can Start Today!
In this article we are going to list off several different businesses that perfect to be ran from the comfort of your home.
Our team has been full time in this internet entrepreneur stuff since 2008 when the last economic downturn occurred. So you can take heart in the fact you’re getting advice from people who successfully started multiple online businesses.
So not only is this internet stuff a viable business option, but we hope that by the end of reading this you’ll be well equipped to get started with your very own online business.
Want a little sneak peak of things to come?
Digital Real Estate (Our #1 Pick)
This future business idea is literally life changing, and we say this from experience.
We all got our start in this industry as far back as 2008, when the first world wide recession hit, and we’re still going strong well into 2021.
We’ve all made money with Amazon FBA, Real Estate, PPE, even our own brick and mortar businesses!
But digital real estate has been the only one that is both lucrative AND stress free long term.
In the video above, one of our team members explains why it’s just so damn easy to get mailbox money month after month with this business. Providing results in advance like this is what separates this model from every other form of digital marketing. (especially social media marketing…our #2 pick)
And guess what…
Once you understand the model and master the skillset…
You’ll never have a reason to ever have money problems again.
Despite all the fear mongering…small business aren’t going anywhere.
Neither is the internet.
It’s no secret that from 2020 to 2030, digital marketing (especial organic traffic from the top spots in Google) will be the life blood for small business owners going forward.
Unfortunately…they don’t have time for any of it themselves.
Ready for the kicker? There’s over 30 million small businesses in the US!
You found our site because we all know what it takes to rank in Google.
Not many people have this type of skillset…
And having valuable skills like these are the types of skills that set you apart and raise the value of your time.
There are over 1,000 elite students in the online education we recommend.
Here’s Facebook testimonials of 1,000 students doing Digital Real Estate:
Opt-in to the right to watch a video and we’ll show you exactly how this business model works.
The model has been successful since 2008 and has only steam rolled going into the pandemic. Not only is this model just great for making money…but it’s future oriented. Think about it, the only way this dies is if the lights go out…and if the lights go out…we all have much bigger problems to deal with.
But hey, if you think you have a better model you’d like to share, drop a comment below. You don’t know how interested we’d be to take a look at it ourselves!
Now that you know why it’s realistic to successfully operate a online business, let’s take a look at the top 11 online businesses to start in 2022!
11: App Developer
It probably isn’t all that shocking to you that in 2020 the tech jobs were among the first to go fully remote. That’s because they are literally perfect for working from home!
Now we know that some of you coders out there really have some amazing skills and have been developing your own apps for a while now.
Some of you have probably even sold a few small projects on the side before.
Did you know that you could actually make a years worth of salary by owning your own app developer business?
How do you make so much money with it?
People are coming up with new business ideas every single day. Unfortunately, they just don’t have the know how to actually create the program itself.
That’s when they turn to people like you who know how to code.
Payment options vary and it really depends on the scope of work of the project.
Some projects could be a quick little $500 program or as large as 15% recurring in the application itself if it’s used for certain transactions.
However, if you don’t already know coding it can be pretty difficult to learn and not be the right fit for you. Luckily Khan Academy offers some really good coding courses. It might be worth a look if you’re determined!
Pros:
- Can make yearly salaries in one month
- Perfect for working from
- Most likely already have experience
Cons:
- Difficult to learn coding later in life
- Requires business experience
- Requires outsourcing as more projects come in
10: Affiliate Marketing Business
Affiliate marketing can be really tough to succeed in, but you can do it!
What usually attracts people to this business model is the fact that they don’t have to worry about buying inventory or dealing with the headache of shipping.
You can make a decent amount of money doing affiliate marketing the free way, but to make some of the big bucks, you gotta spend the big bucks…
Anyone who knows affiliate marketing knows that the lions share of conversion traffic is generated by blogs that are riddled with affiliate links.
The thing is though, these sites have to get massive traffic and that’s hard to do.
You see, PPC has never really worked well when driving traffic to blog to then hope people click on your affiliate links in the post.
No, the blogs that rake in a lot of money are ranked organically on page one of google for several different keywords.
You don’t make a killing by just throwing your links out on the web randomly. People honestly hate that.
Barrier Of Entry
Affiliate marketing is easy as hell to enter. Which is great if this is what you want to get started in.
We’re talking about maybe paying $25 to get an affiliate link to start placing around the web.
Unfortunately, these are links to products or programs people really aren’t all that interested in which is why the commissions are so small.
But there are literally hundreds of thousands of affiliate marketers out there and it’s hard as hell to compete with that which is the next thing we’ll be talking about.
Competition
Competition is literally insane. Thousands of people are in this business and it’s kind of given it a dirty name.
Why?
Everyone has started just placing their affiliate links everywhere unsolicited. Platforms like reddit even ban users who drop an unsolicited affiliate link.
People hate seeing spam everywhere which is what affiliate marketing has really turned into.
Have you been in any groups on Facebook where people just dump their links everywhere?
Pretty annoying huh?
We agree.
Ok, but you’re not a spammer, and you really have products to promote…how do you make money as an affiliate marketer?
The way would be through a blog, which we’ll talk more about later.
You would need to put out consistent content that actually brings value to people and helps them find what they are are looking for.
This takes a lot of money however. You will likely need to invest heavily into outsourcing SEO while you are busy on the creative aspect of things.
And depending on how much content you need to be pushing out…you might need to hire out more writers and good writers are expensive!
Payouts
One thing that you’ll find that sucks about affiliate marketing is that the companies that you market for are extremely stingey when it comes to payouts generally.
What we mean by that is you really have to read the fine print on their terms. If they can get away with taking your traffic and making a sale and not paying you…they’re going to do it.
Now not all of these affiliate programs are like this…but typically your free or really cheap ones to join.
It usually costs quite a bit to get into a great affiliate program that makes their payout process really easy.
The caveat to that however is that those really good affiliate programs are just as competitive and they deal with people that have much higher budgets who use all sorts of SEO tactics to dominate a lot of the traffic.
But hey, you’ve got 10,000 to invest right? Out of everything we’ve mentioned so far this might be the one opportunity where your money might go the furthest.
Pros:
- One of the cheapest ways to get started making money online.
- Can get started in just a few hours.
- Won’t be placed in any credit card debt.
Cons:
- So much competition.
- Companies make it extremely difficult to get your commission into your checking account.
- Need to know SEO at a high level.
9: E commerce Business
A lot of people think that starting an ecommerce business would be a great idea! And they would be right to think so.
Millions of transactions occur every single day online.
You could definitely jump in and start earning some of your piece of the pie if you do it right!
So is this online business idea worth it?
Let’s take a look at some of the factors you’ll have to deal with if you want to make sure you’ll six figures with this online business.
Startup Costs
This model really makes you put startup costs into perspective.
It’s not hard to imagine why most people can’t hang long in ecommerce, they don’t have the capital to keep it going.
It takes a lot of money to keep up with some of these wholesalers and big e commerce retailers.
That brings up the next issue, competition.
Competition And Margins
Ecommerce is super competitive. There are thousands of Amazon stores and there are thousands of ecom stores on shopify and other platforms world wide.
Do you know how hard it’s going to be to get on page one with all the free traffic when there are 1000’s of other guys out there with huge budgets and very elite knowledge of SEO?
Pretty freaking hard!
That’s why many people who start ecommerce businesses with $10,000 never get out of the paid traffic arena. They have no time to learn SEO.
And what about margins?
Thanks to Chinese wholesalers now entering the ecommerce game, it is becoming extremely difficult for other businesses to successfully make arbitrage happen.
That’s because they come in and sell for exactly what they sell to us for. In a sense it’s cutting the middle man out.
Think we’re over exaggerating the issue?
Just for a second try to remember the last time you saw any of these major ecom gurus promote their courses on Facebook or YouTube.
It’s hard to put your finger on it isn’t it?
This is a trend our team has began to notice with any e commerce related online course…their “fearless” leaders are backpedaling on getting sales of the course and are transitioning to other industries altogether.
One has to ask themselves: why?
Simply put, this pandemic has absolutely crushed certain types of industries. To an extent, we believe that online commerce is one of them.
We’re not saying that online commerce is going away, but merely that the average joe who wants to run a profitable online business like this is going to have a harder time because he can’t live with the fractionalized profits.
If anything, this pandemic has made it easier for the bigger retailers and even more difficult for the smaller ones.
So Can You Make It As An Ecommerce Business Owner?
If you have your heart set to start an online store in the ecommerce industry you can definitely make it to the big leagues and earn the big bucks.
One of our teams writers actually has an aunt who is raking over six figures a year in profit with her e commerce store.
However, it took her a solid 2 years to build up to that point and she had to spend a lot of money on SEO.
Simply put, if you are determined to make money with this business model, you will. As long as put in all the time, money, and effort that is needed.
Pros:
- People are increasingly buying products online.
- Several people have made 6-figures a year from their ecommerce business.
- No investment experience required.
Cons:
- Margins are continuously shrinking
- You need a hefty minimum investment
- You need to stick it out at least six months to see any sort of results.
8: Amazon FBA
Stupid Rules
Amazon used to be an absolute gold mine.
There weren’t too many rules and most people, if they started a store, would have a really high yield.
Unfortunately, when rules start becoming ever so increasing, the opportunities for a certain investment plan like this will begin to dwindle.
At this point in time Amazon has so many rules for their sellers it’s really hard to keep track. Especially when it seems like they are coming out with new rules every single day!
Now just think about how bad that sucks for a moment…
You take your start up capital and build up a really profitable Amazon business.
And let’s say you have a few different products and they are dominating each of the markets they are geared towards.
Literally out of nowhere, Amazon can come in and shut you down for seemingly no rhyme or reason.
A great way to describe this is sort of like an illusion. Amazon gives you the illusion of owning and controlling your own store and business, all while also profiting off of you too, yet they can come in at any moment and take you out.
But hey, maybe you’ll get lucky and make just as much as these small business owners who threw a $10,000 investment into an Amazon store.
Competition
If all the rules and constant commission cuts weren’t enough to get you second guessing about other ways to invest $10,000 then maybe this will.
It’s not difficult to set up your Amazon store. In fact, most online courses will show you how to set one up in just a matter of a few hours!
Unfortunately because of how easy it is, there is a lot of competition. There are thousands of people on Amazon who are trying to sell the exact same products you are and get that 6 figure rate of return.
These people dumped there whole entire savings accounts into their stores just to get a hope of profitability.
It takes a lot to run an Amazon business and it’s really hard to rank a product organically in search. You can thank some of the new rules thanks to that.
Can You Have A Successful Online Business With Amazon?
If you’re willing to pay with a lot of startup capital and time, you can be successful in this business venture.
Lot’s of people earn money with Amazon consistently. You’ll just have to accept the fact that you won’t really ever “own” this business because Amazon reserves the right to shut you down whenever they deem worthy.
Pros:
- You can make 6-figures per year with Amazon with a $10,000 investment.
- Setting up a store on Amazon does not take long.
- Amazon’s platform is great way to enter ecommerce because they have the most sales.
- No credit score required.
Cons:
- Amazon is cash intensive.
- PPC is difficult and can be a headache to constantly track.
- It can take well over six months to rank an Amazon product organically
Our opinion?
This business model is for people well versed in the online business game and for those who can afford to live off small profit margins. If HUGE profit margins is something you’re after…
7: Ebook Publishing
So is it true that everyone has a book in them as the saying goes?
Even though the saying is true, traditional publishers don’t really feel that way. In fact, especially in 2021 as they are making sure only certain people get to actually publish books now…
However, thanks to the internet of things and increasing digitalization…people are able to bypass the traditional publishing companies all together.
Amazon is one of the companies that you can thank with that. Thanks to the kindle, digital books / ebooks have started to become normalized and the ability to publish has been made much easier.
So what do the startup costs look like?
Just ask Barnes & Noble, they’ve crunched all the numbers for us.
COSTS AND POTENTIAL OF PUBLISHING BOOKS ONLINE
- Startup costs: Pretty much zero. Ideally though you’d want to invest at least $100 for a solid book cover, $100 for a decent editor, and $100 for some marketing. You’re looking at $300ish total with the possibility of making 10-20 times that back!
- Income potential: Part of what makes this great is the income potential. The average book could make anywhere from $100-$500 per month. If you have 10 of these books, that’s some nice passive income.
- Success story: One successful publisher we can look to is Dave Chesson. He has sold many different books and consistently blogs about tips for self-publishing books. He also has created a course of sorts that helps you find a great book idea!
Pros:
- Cheap to start
- Recurring monthly income
Cons:
- Marketing can be difficult
6: Flipping Websites
What if you have money to invest in a business, but don’t want to do Amazon FBA or E commerce? What do you do?
You could make some quick cash by buying and flipping websites of course!
Just like brick and mortar businesses, there are several different online business owners who are looking to sell their digital properties.
But some people like the idea of buying a site cheap, fixing it up, and selling it. Just like people do with physical real estate.
Odds are you’ll be able to find a site in which the owner is just missing out on a few key SEO tactics that’s keeping them .
So for sake of an example, you could buy a site for about $5,000 put $1,000-$2,000 of high quality SEO into it and turn around and sell the site for $10,000-$15,000
That means you could profit $4,000-$9,000 with virtually no grunt work on your end.
Running an internet business like this can be extremely easy because not too many people are familiar with the digital real estate flipping game.
Pros:
- Easy to jump into if you have a couple grand and little time
- Can easily outsource SEO and flip to profit
Cons:
- Some sites might not be worth investing in
- Not too feasible without capital
5: SEO Business
Starting a search engine optimization business can be very, very profitable.
The simple fact of the matter is that all advertising is moving online. Contractors can say that they’re doing find with word of mouth advertising all they want, but the simple fact of the matter is that people are choosing who does all their service work based off of what the search engines recommend them.
A professional in the SEO business is easily raking in over six figures a year and some are even close to 7 figures.
Why?
For one there are high profit margins. Most SEO businesses operate on 50-60% margins because there is a lot of value in what they’re doing.
On top of that, they can easily do most of the work themselves without spending too much time in their day.
SEO is about consistency, and if you pick the right local market and small business to do SEO for, all you might have to do is ad 2-3 backlinks a day to get them ranked.
If you had 10 clients all paying you $2,500 a month, all you have to do is place 20-30 backlinks a day which doesn’t take long at all.
This is another reason why so many people are starting an online business, your time just gets freed up that much more!
The only issue with the SEO business model is that it is fairly common for clients to want to stop paying you once you’ve ranked their site.
That can really suck, especially if they were one of those $5,000-$10,000 a month clients.
Another option with skills like these is running an SEO consulting business. As an SEO consultant, you can block out an hour or two a week with a client and go over exactly what they need to do to rank their site!
However, there is a much better way to capitalize on your SEO skills with this business model…you should check it out!
Pros:
- Easy to rank websites locally
- High profit margins
- Valuable service to small businesses
Cons:
- Clients often leave after you rank them
- Can be hard to acquire clients as a newbie
4: Flipping Shoes
Are you a professional hustler?
No, not one of those New York street hustlers…one of those good ole’ fashioned nose to the grind stone kind of hustlers.
Or maybe you’re a college student who’s looking to earn money pretty quick…
This online business might just be for you!
Contrary to popular opinion there is a huge market in selling shoes online, especially special kinds of shoes.
You see, most people have no idea what kind of shoes they have most times and their rarity.
You can make some serious dough by going to a garage sale and picking up some shoes for $20 and selling it online for $100+.
No joke!
In fact, this is what a guy on our team did themselves back in their college days. He would go around garage sales during the summer, fall, and spring to pick up some good deals and turn it around for a profit.
As a college student he was bringing in about $3,000 a month in profit and he was just doing it part time.
Imagine what you could do do full time!
After cleaning up the shoes real nice, uploading the listing, and throwing a couple google ads at it until you show up in the search engine, you could be off to the races!
Pros:
- Easy to find deals for cheap
- Big market for clean rare shoes
Cons:
- Very fast paced
- Need to move inventory quickly for profit
3: Start A Blog
At this point you probably understand how profitable an internet business can be and how you can make a lot of money just by showing up high in the search engine…
So how do you make BIG money with it?
One of the ways through becoming an affiliate marketer or influencer with it.
Basically promoting other peoples products that you trust and have vetted yourself.
The only tough part is that generally speaking, you have to be a pro writer who can crank out several words of content a day.
At least at first, because it’ll be hard to do everything you need to on a shoe string budget, and odds are you might not have enough money to hire a decent writer for this immediately.
Having a blog is one of the greatest digital assets that you can have. Several people who own blogs are raking in more than $50,000 a month from them, more than any other everyday online store we’re aware of!
You might have heard of Adam Enfroy, he is making over $80,000 a month with is blog and operates at a 90%+ profit margin each month!
What’s awesome about owning blogs is that after you rank a post and land on the first page of search results, you instantly become an expert in the viewers eyes because people view those on the first page as authoritative.
Not to mention that there are several website themes that can make you look like an expert on the information even if your site is brand new.
So, what’s the catch?
Unfortunately having a strong content game is not all it takes anymore. Yes, having long form content and keyword optimization is always key, but now you also need to have a strong backlinking strategy.
Depending on the type of blog you are creating, that could mean thousands of dollars that you’ll need to invest into SEO so you can start to make money by generating all that traffic.
Also it takes quite a bit of time for a blog to rank…
Depending on the type of blog or niche you’re targeting, it can take anywhere from 6-12 months to rank for the high search volume keywords you’re going after.
Pros:
- Great online business idea
- Can be found easy if you’re a good writer
- Asset based with recurring income
- Influencer marketing
Cons:
- Will need to hire a virtual assistant at some point
- Need to promote a product or service that’s trusted
- Hard to find a trusted affiliate business
2: Social Media Agency
You can’t make a list of the best online business ideas and not include social media marketing! One of the easiest ways to start an online business can be through social media ads.
That’s because most courses have ad swipes that can get you started literally today.
If you start a business you are going to need advertising and fast. Social media marketing often through Facebook ads can be very beneficial.
Some business owners run their advertising entirely off of Facebook and have had some pretty good results. All they do is point the ad back to their website.
Facebook ads are definitely great when you first start a business too, you can look like you’ve been around for a while with some fancy ad work.
However, running a social media agency can have its downsides.
Let’s use that Facebook example again…
Mr. Zucc reserves the right to lockdown your ad account at any time. Very similar to how Bezos reserves the right to shut down your Amazon account…
Many people have encountered this issue unfortunately.
And that can really suck!
Especially when you have a winning ad campaign where you’re profiting thousands!
Yep, Facebook can shut you down at any time with no explanation. Even if you reach out to them and ask for an explanation, they are unlikely to respond with anything helpful…if they even respond at all.
Having a Social Media Marketing Agency can be quite a roll of the dice…but you’re an entrepreneur right? Something tells us you like to gamble a little bit!
Pros:
- Can get started today
- Can profit thousands
Cons:
- Can be shut down at any time
- Competition is everywhere thanks to the same ad swipes
- No support from Facebook
FAQ'S
Now before we get to our #1 Best Online Business To Start In 2021, we want to answer a couple of the most frequently asked questions we receive about starting an online business. Hope these help!
What Kind Of Online Business Is Most Profitable?
Well it’s certainly not going to be data entry or writing cover letters. No, you’re going to need to provide a highly valuable service and be able to scale that big time.
Some people sell digital products on sites like Shopify or some sell physical products on an e commerce site platform like Shopify.
In our opinion though, one of the best ways to make money is by helping small businesses grow. They are constantly getting stomped on by the big guy and it’s valuable to help bring them more customers.
Tips On How To Start A Successful Online Business
The most important part of doing business online is serving your customers to the best of your ability and standing out from the competition in doing so.
Another tip we have is to not be afraid to work more than 8 hours a day. When you start an e commerce site, sites like blogs, or a social media business you are going to have to put in a lot of time to be successful.
Thankfully it really doesn’t feel like “work” when you’re working for yourself. Entrepreneurs like Dan Pena and Grant Cardone will be the first ones to tell you that they still work 50-60 hours a week…Elon Musk has even stated he works 100 work weeks.
And yet they still live pretty awesome lifestyles!
So without further ado…
Our #1 Recommended Way Of Making Money Online
It’s pretty much exactly as it sounds. You get the equivalent of rent payments for websites.
Here’s how it works.
Find a local owned service based business and decide to build a website and rank for it.
When the leads start coming in, pass them off to a business owner and start collecting the checks.
Is it really that simple?
Yessir!
You see compared to ecommerce, you don’t have to run any paid ads to a site. So, you’re only out of pocket like $8 a month for hosting and $11.99 a year for your domain.
And if you can’t afford that, well maybe we have other issues we need to talk about.
But seriously, lead generation sites make bank and they’re extremely passive.
Once you have them ranked, you don’t have to touch them again because they run on autopilot.
But what about the competition you ask?
Virtually nonexistent compared to affiliate marketing.
With ecommerce you’re competing with literally millions of people globally.
With lead generation we’re talking maybe 20 of the same type of business in an area. Most of which don’t know anything about ranking a site.
It legitimately couldn’t be any easier.
The best part?