A number of reasons might exist as to why you would want to start your side business in 2022. Financial independence and the ever-growing passion for having a business being the most common aspects, people also need to understand the enormous effort required for setting up a business. However, the internet and its rapid adaptation in the last decade has made things quite easier. You can now start selling your products and services from the comfort of home and still make decent money.
If you’re wondering how that is possible and what the possible paths could be, you are at the right place. Let’s move on to discuss the top twelve online businesses you can start on the side.
Table of Contents
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing refers to the promotion of a product that another merchant sells – using advertising, social media, blogging and more. An affiliate marketer can basically attract customers to their landing page.
When customers click on a link to buy the product, they will be directed to the e-commerce store to purchase the product. As an online business idea, this can be fruitful for anyone without any previous experience.
SEO Expert
One of the world’s hottest online professions at the moment, this business is a gold mine for tech-savvy entrepreneurs. While everyone’s way obsessed with getting their sites SEO optimised, not everyone can actually wrap their heads around this topic.
Whether it is through curating metadata tags, consistently editing the website blog or researching for optimal keywords to improve ranking on, a prominent SEO consultant working with a solid SEO strategy could transform how a website appears to search engine users. Additionally, improving just a few positions on Google could make a considerable difference in the amount of traffic. Overall, you could have a big impact on a business’s bottom line, and hence this online business idea is always in high demand.
Freelance Graphic Designing
Got an eye for aesthetics? Did you go to art school or try your hands at designing posters in software like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator?
If your answer is yes, and if you have a knack for designing, then freelance designing would definitely be an optimal path. Reach out and book clients at your own pace, establish a good personal brand online and utilize word of mouth marketing. Work on projects that you find worth working on, freelancing has a plethora of perks.
You could check out sites like Upwork and Behance to find the right gigs to enjoy the freedom of a freelancer.
Freelance Writing
If you’re skilled in writing good informative articles instead, you can opt for freelance writing. So long as you have an internet connection and a keyboard, you can draft interesting blog posts.
It helps if you have a special area of interest or expertise, so your employers would know you’ve enough knowledge to write on certain subjects. However, the most important factor would always be your writing. Are you able to write a concise and engaging piece of content? Do you put the required effort and time consistently to understand what you’re talking about? Does your writing appeal to the readers? If you’re confident with your way of writing, then freelance writing is ideal for you.
Blogging
Blogging in 2022 might well feel to be an outdated content marketing strategy as most of the companies have one, but the competition should not overwhelm you from the beginning of your online business. If you have a bond with writing as an activity or hobby, or even if you have some important information to share, blogging could be a great path of business.
Starting a blog on your website is not difficult at all. However, the primary key to success is researching and producing quality content consistently. To establish a relevant audience and to attract their interest, you need to add value to the readers’ lives by consistently writing and publishing quality articles. Educational and informative blogs compel the readers gives to follow your website and buy from you, as you establish an expert position online.
Once you’ve gained considerable experience in the creation of consistent content, the doors to making money online through blogs will be easier. You can scale your business by selling info-products like online courses, digital coaching, webinars and e-books. If you have your own domain and it has a good volume of visitors, you could also earn by selling ad space or sponsored collaborations. This side business will take a little more time and a lot of effort as compared to others to monetise, but it can prove incredibly profitable in the end.
Virtual Assistant
Are you organized, flexible as per the work assigned to you and love to to live life on your own terms?
If the answer to these things is a yes, then think about becoming a virtual assistant. What you shall do depends on your skills, experience and personal network online, but you could expect basic tasks like data entry, customer support, management, research, scheduling meetings and more. You could provide virtual assistance as a service remotely from anywhere.
Video Producing
YouTube gets the second-largest volume of visitors among all the websites in the world so there’s no surprise that videos are the primary information-sharing medium for businesses and people globally. If you possess skills in video production, video editing, it won’t take you much time to get initial clients and start serving them. Video production video editing services are immensely appealing to the business world. So producing along with editing videos might be one of the most exciting online business ideas with truckloads of creativity and challenges.
Software and App Development
Do you have a knack for converting ideas into full-fledged products through software development? Working as a freelance developer is fine and profitable too, but instead of helping clients, if you could plan and execute your own applications, APIs, add-ons and other pieces of valuable software – it can take you to places. There are a plenty of options, you could sell your work on the App Stores – Play Store and iOS both. You could monetize your app through advertising, or if your app is so useful, you’re in the long haul and hope to get bought by a bigger company — in this case, the amount you make would be huge and worth your efforts and time.
Unlike typical freelancing though, this is a completely different world. It can be easy for some but out of sense for others to not have a predictable channel of revenue until your app is up and selling. People usually want immediate monetization benefits for their time and efforts. Therefore, prior to you being into a financial blunder, it’s obvious that you would first find the revenue model out there for the product you’re creating, and if people are ready to actually pay for it.
Become an Influencer
Influencers are getting all the hype in modern times. Someone is usually considered as an influencer when with a huge social media following and is an expert in a certain niche like fitness, lifestyle, nutrition, travel, makeup and hundreds of others. Influencers are priorly content creators, so they consistently engage with their audience by posting about their lives and promoting products that they find good to have.
What is so fascinating about influencer marketing is that you could get paid to simply do what you already do while promoting a business to your following. It is a bit similar to affiliate marketing but once you have an established audience, the efforts required are relatively less than someone with less audience. Influencer marketing is nowadays a huge online business trend and content creators are leveraging their creativity well. Maybe you can start by Vlogging or an Audio/Video Podcast, as these are pretty under-discovered channels of communication for influencers right now.
Social Media Manager
Social media is dominating the virtual space for a decade now. For any business, regardless of their target customers, building social media presence is a must. However, it’s quite time-consuming and dynamic, trends are always coming up – so one needs to be quick and really sharp about social media. Numerous businesses look to outsource this time-intensive task so that it can be taken care of efficiently. Hence, it’s a great opportunity for social media fanatics (which most of us are). Start freelance social media management by packaging together with a few offers that may be interesting and cover everything from graphics requirements to analytics reports and serving smooth experience to clients could bring you more business.
Nutritionist
Healthy eating did hit its peak during the pandemic as people suddenly realised th importance of having good immunity. However, the trend is here to stay. Internet is flooded with boring articles telling us what’s healthy for us and what’s not. Now with the social media influencer industry booming, more people are seeking professional nutritionists for specialist tips and guidance. You could easily find free online courses to learn the fundamentals of nutrition and start offering personalised nutrition plans online.
Dropshipping Business
Dropshipping is one of the easiest options to start an e-commerce business without having to buy any products in advance. Choose your products to sell online and find suppliers to source from. Then start selling to people globally while establishing and marketing your own brand. You could do all of this without any need to invest capital in manufacturing or storage costs. The best thing among all is you actually don’t need to buy inventory until it’s sold to an actual customer. From online apparel to customised boutique and jewellery stores to niched-product stores, dropshipping works for most online store ideas.
Steps to Start a Dropshipping Business
- Choose your ideal niche of products
- Find out the right suppliers
- Set up your online store
- Market your dropshipping business
How can Bikayi help in setting up your Dropshipping business?
If you’re an aspiring drop shipper and wish to take your store online looking at the consumer shopping trends after COVID-19, Bikayi can be just the right partner for your business. Here are the steps you can execute within a couple of minutes to set up your basic online store for free.
- Download the Bikayi app on your phone – It’s available on both Google Play Store and iOS App Store.
- Sign-up for an account
- Create your online store – Add name, details, brand logo and more
- Start adding the products you want to sell, create shareable product catalogues/collections which you can send to people through WhatsApp.
- Choose your add-ons if you require any – such as customised themes, your own executive mobile app, Facebook marketing services, SEO services, etc. You have a plethora of additional features to choose from.
- Enable online payments on your store – Bikayi allows you to choose from payment gateways like Razorpay, Paytm and UPI.
- Launch your online store with Bikayi; you also get a website for your business with it.
- Bikayi also provides you with an add-on option of an exclusive mobile app for your online store which can be deployed through the Play Store.
- Market your products/services and grow your business.
The online business ideas discussed above are not just ideas to escape normalcy. Instead, they work well for thousands of people who have gained a kind of freedom that most people do not have ever experienced. Some things you need to be responsible for are managing yourself, keeping up with your goals, measuring your work and giving meaning to everything that you do. Therefore, although starting an online business might give you unique flexibility, it also means working extremely hard to find clients and market your services in order to maintain a steady revenue. You need to work harder than you do in a day job, there’s no other option!
If you are considering any of the items on this list of online business ideas for beginners, there’s no better time to get started than now. By wandering around for different possibilities, finding an online business idea that might work well for you, researching as much as you can and implementing a business plan, you’ll be on your path to a flexible and successful lifestyle that a majority of people only dream about.
