6 Ways to Decide What Type of Online Business to Start
How to find your place under the digital sun
The lure of online business has never been more compelling.
Possibilities are endless, and the promise of flexible self-employment now pushes millions of bored office workers into seeking their online fortune.
Many would-be entrepreneurs, however, wonder where to start.
How can I enter this mystical cosmos of location independence and personal schedule dictation?
There are many ways to begin an online career and people often hop around different sectors in the early stages of their route.
Failures aren’t fatal, but the right starting position can help you advance with more purpose and tenacity.
After more than 5 years of working in the online ecosystem, I’ve concluded that the right choice of career boils down to 6 personal attributes.
On this basis, here are the 6 qualities to consider when deciding what type of online business to start.
1. Your character
Are you an introvert? Do you enjoy the spotlight? Are you comfortable in front of a camera or do you prefer performing HTML magic in a dark basement?
When deciding what type of online business to start, you should first and foremost take a good look at yourself.
If you are serious about online entrepreneurship, your character will ultimately determine your venture’s course.
As an example, if you are humble and timid, vlogging might not be the best option.
Yes, some successful Youtubers started their craft specifically to overcome their introvert nature.
Throughout my travels, I’ve come across a handful of people who succeeded in front of a camera despite their initial timorousness. This is, however, the exception, not the norm.
If you are a pensive introspect with a myriad of sophisticated ideas looming in your head, writing might be a better alternative.
In this context, many famous authors are terrible public speakers and not the most confident socialites.
As an example, J.K Rowling is known for being shy and keeping to herself as much as possible. This didn’t prevent her from leaving her mark on British literary history for centuries to come.
Consequently, every type of personality can prosper in the online world. The challenge resides in identifying your decisive traits and choosing your path accordingly.
2. Your talent to market yourself
Depending on the sector you’re in, your ability to market yourself will have a major impact on your growth and earnings.
Influencers are a classic case in point.
Let’s take a quick look at how Instagram works. The top Instagrammers — that is, people with thousands or even millions of followers — are perceived as celebrities by their fans who follow their every move, like their pictures, watch their stories, and buy their merchandise.
In return, the creators share their life on social media. Every activity, every outfit, and every restaurant meal ends up on their profile.
So far so good. Now, companies naturally want their piece of the pie. Subject to size, financial resources, and stature, a brand will contact certain influencers to promote its product.
A well-known travel influencer will stay in a certain hotel chain to receive compensation. A fashion model will post a picture wearing a branded dress and a fitness influencer will consume a certain brand of protein.
In short, an influencer gets paid to share his or her usage of a particular product on a certain platform. The company hopes that this promotion will influence the behavior of a large number of followers.
So, how do influencers attain the required status to command high paychecks?
By marketing themselves.
If you are inspired by your favorite travel influencer, Instagram model, or fitness guru, you have to find a way to market yourself.
Influencer qualities generally require a special skill, unique experiences to share, model looks, or a way of reaching vast numbers of people.
As such, the ability to become a top dog in the world of influencing ultimately stems from the possibility to affect millions of engaged followers.
This, in turn, is usually the result of outstanding self-marketing.
3. Your technical knowledge
When launching an online project, your technical knowledge of the subject plays a major role.
Don’t get me wrong. It is nowadays possible to learn almost anything in a matter of years or even months.
The question is whether you are willing to invest time, energy, and resources into building a new skill instead of utilizing a talent you already have.
As an example, I built my first website in 2016. I had no prior technical skills and no background in IT or web development. In simple terms, I had no idea what I was doing.
It took me more than 6 months to understand Wordpress, SEO, and affiliate marketing. Acquiring basic web design skills took even longer.
This journey of trial and error seemed inevitable at the time. Today, I realize that I could have sped up the website’s growth if I had learned the boring technical stuff before starting.
As such, a lack of technical knowledge in your desired online field is not a deal-breaker, but it will lengthen the route to success.
This is why you should take your level of know-how and education in your respective sector into consideration before starting. After all, college must be useful for something.
If you have formal writing competency — as in legal careers or journalism — you can learn the ins and outs of content writing much more quickly than someone who studied biology.
In that same vein, people with an IT-related degree will feel more at home in the cryptic world of coding than in the glittering bubble of influencing.
All of these factors should have a significant impact on your choice of online career, but they shouldn’t decide for you.
I never had any academic training in photography. I simply loved aesthetic pictures and collected design-related coffee table books. I also took thousands of awful pictures on my travels.
In 2018, I decided to boost my photography skills. I wanted to turn it into a side hustle.
Several online courses and a lot of investment later, I managed to master my camera and to become a passable photographer. Photography now accounts for a significant chunk of my online income.
4. Your skills as a salesman/saleswoman
“I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.” — Estée Lauder
Aside from your ability to market yourself, your talent to promote and sell a certain product could also determine your choice of online endeavor.
A couple of years ago, I tried my hand at dropshipping. Even though I made regular sales, I didn’t attain the levels I desired.
To get to the root of my deficiencies, I contacted a friend who makes 7 figures in e-commerce. Your read that right. He makes more than 1 million dollars every year.
You are much better at deciphering complex topics in writing. Your analysis of products is too philosophical — just tell people why they should buy them.
His assessment of my relative failure was clear: I wasn’t marketing the products properly — I was using my writer’s mindset in the wrong context.
My dropshipping career ended a couple of months later and I decided to focus on my real strengths.
My failure shouldn’t discourage you. There is a lot of money in e-commerce.
If you can identify a product that is expensive and scarce in your geographical region but cheap and readily available somewhere else, you can make fast bucks.
As an example, certain retro gaming consoles with original stickers are often relatively easy to find in Japan but very rare in Europe.
You could easily order them in Japan and sell them in Europe through your dropshipping site. The challenge would consist in convincing people to buy them in your online store.
The same applies to affiliate marketing.
All of these activities are heavily reliant on your marketing skills. You might not be the best writer, photographer, or fashion promoter — but an excellent salesman.
Away from the overhyped world of content creation, an old-fashioned merchant’s eye might help you thrive in a different online business sector.
5. Your current wealth
You might own a casino and employ Robert de Niro as manager. You might have inherited a penthouse condo in Manhattan. Or you may simply have worked your ass off in a corporate job for the past 20 years.
In short, you may already be wealthy.
This will naturally have an impact on your online career pick. The higher your budget, the more you can invest in equipment, staff, and high-risk projects.
I’ve met people who bought real estate in Colombia and now travel full-time. The rental income pays for everything.
Is that an online venture? Well, as most of their revenue comes from Airbnb and Booking.com, it certainly ticks the boxes of an online business.
Other people simply invest in online businesses and enjoy the fruits without being at the helm. As with physical businesses, there are lots of ways to make your money work for you in the online world.
If you already have millions of dollars, you might not want to start a small venture like a blog or Youtube channel from scratch.
Your current wealth could, in this scenario, dictate what kind of online business you want to launch.
6. Your tolerance for pain, patience, and uncertainty
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” — Steve Jobs
Online business is an emotional roller coaster ride. Having been on this road for quite a while now, I can safely say that there are 3 main emotions you’ll have to overcome. These 3 will shape your online destiny.
The first emotion is pain.
If you cannot stand the pain of failure, the pain of working endless hours without tangible results, and the pain of lacking social confirmation, some online careers are better left alone.
Writing is painful. Not the process, but the environment.
I had been blogging for over a year before scoring my first ever freelance client. Prior to that, I got rejected at least 50 times.
Photography is equally arduous. The competition is stiff, the equipment is expensive, and the rejection rate is high.
Blogging, videography, and influencing all have similar downsides. If my experience taught me anything, it’s that content creation is much more painful than your average corporate job.
Secondly, you’ll need to be patient.
Many online ventures require huge time investments before making money.
Consequently, if you are impatient, you should eschew the following activities: blogging, freelance writing, Youtube, and Medium.
I’ve seen impatient people succeed in the online world, but most of them were highly skilled coding nerds who already had the necessary connections through university.
Finally, your ability to live and thrive in uncertainty will also be a decisive factor for your choice of online career.
I know, uncertainty exists in any business, but online ventures take it to another level.
The world of online money changes so fast that businesses can rise and fall within a few months.
If you want to succeed as a content creator, writer, or old-fashioned investor, uncertainty will be your most common state of mind.
In this context, business uncertainty goes hand in hand with financial uncertainty. Are you ready to become a financial minimalist and to adopt stringent spending rules?
Your ability to deal with uncertainty will also keep your online business afloat during times of crisis. Aside from spending cuts, this requires a willingness to learn new skills and to adapt to changing environments.
If this uncertainty doesn’t tempt you, you may want to enter a more stable online career like performing remote activities in a corporate job or teaching online.
I am not saying that there is no uncertainty in these jobs — because there is. They nonetheless offer a bit more security than most creative careers.
