Making money online can be quite easy. Indeed, millions of people worldwide are making money online.
While some earn small amounts- just enough to defray costs of household needs, others are earning extremely high. You can earn some money online by completing paid surveys and testing stuff for money. But this will not make you rich.
To make considerable money online, you require an excellent business model. Classic examples of high earners are Amazon and Airbnb, which started as small ventures but burgeoned into global brands. Their founders had exceptional vision to make lives easier for people.
Here we list seven different business models that can help you make money online. Before you embark on any of these ventures, it is highly advisable to take inventory of your own skills and business acumen.
Though some of these ventures are relatively economical to launch, maintaining them over some span of time to make considerable profits can prove cumbersome.
Top 7 Online Business Models
1) News Website
Launching a website that provides latest news can be simple or complex, depending upon your skills. First, you will need a catchy and unique name for your website that explicitly conveys the message that it provides latest news.
Secondly, you can subscribe to newswire services offered by various providers. Depending upon your budget and type of news you wish to offer, select the subscription, since these can be fairly pricey. Subscribing to a newswire offers the benefit of getting images and pictures along with news articles. Sort the news according to relevance to your area, edit it where required and upload supporting pictures.
News websites earn in two ways- through conventional advertizing and from Google AdSense.
2) Online Store
An online store that sells products peculiar to your geographical area is a sure way to make money online. Since every place has something unique to offer, such an online store can be fairly easy to set up. Instead of stocking products for shipping to customers, you can enter into tie-ups with their manufacturers. Once you receive a confirmed order and payment, pass it on to the manufacturer- who can be anyone from a housewife making traditional jams and sauces to a small business producing high quality electronic goods. Agree beforehand on the margins which you get for promoting and selling these products. Also, finalize a returns policy, since it is vital to maintain your reputation in the highly competitive e-commerce market. You can also register your online store as a seller on major e-commerce websites including Amazon and eBay, among others. This increases your chances of attracting more customers for your products.
3) Blog
Starting a blog can be very easy, provided you are well versed with a particular topic that is widely read. To create a great blog, you require excellent research, analytical and writing skills. Additionally, you will need some understanding on how search engine optimization works. This means, you need astute knowledge about keywords and search words that people use when looking for something related to your field. There are many ways in which bloggers earn money. They subscribe to Google AdSense and other supplementary services that offer ‘pay per click’ revenue. Meaning, every advertisement on which your reader clicks fetches you a fixed amount of money. Earnings also depend upon the time a surfer spent on the advertisement and other parameters. Additionally, you get some money for affiliate marketing and providing back-links to other bloggers.
4) Stock Pictures
Business establishments, educational institutes, advertizing companies, travel service providers and almost every business look for excellent pictures of various things. You can launch a website that sells picture stocks. This means, you register users on your website and allow them to post pictures of places, sceneries, nature, food, people, celebrities and motley other themes. These pictures are displayed on Google every time someone searches for such images. However, they carry a watermark that states the website that holds its rights. Anyone wanting to buy the pictures has to pay you to get the rights. Part of the earning goes to the photographer while you retain a small portion and service fee. Currently, Shutterstock and Getty Images are leaders in stock picture trade. Competition is fast emerging in this lucrative online business.
5) Crypto-currency Mining
Thousands of people across the globe have amassed fortunes by opening businesses that mine one or more crypto-currencies. This business can be done singly or by hiring other people who have sufficient IT skills to monitor blockchains over which crypto-currencies, especially the Bitcoin is traded.
Other than Bitcoin, there are myriad other crypto-currencies that are fast gaining ground, including Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero, to name a few. You will need a very high powered computer with excellent quality graphic cards to mine crypto-currencies. Currently, all crypto-currencies are witnessing an upward swing in prices.
The largest crypto-currency, Bitcoin, trades at around $11,000 currently. As crypto-currency miner, you can also join pools of other miners. For every block of transactions you make, you are paid in the crypto-currency automatically generated over the blockchain.
6) Online Financial Consultancy
People with spare income have no clue about how and where to invest their money. Often, they end up stockpiling their hard earned cash in traditional savings schemes, retirement plans and other financial products that offer low returns.
You can start a financial advisory service online. To enter this business, you require sound market of how stock and commodities markets, derivatives and bonds function. Also you need to remain updated about the various offerings by banks and other financial institutions, regulatory policies and other related rules.
In this business, you have two avenues for earnings. Firstly, charge a nominal consultancy fee from your customer for the investment advice you will provide.
Secondly, you also get some commissions from financial institutions for promoting and selling their investment products to customers.
7) Apps Designing
A majority of people in the world now access the Internet over their smart-phones. Consequently, businesses, healthcare providers, educational institutions are making beeline to cash in on the mobile Internet access boom. They try and reach out to customers as well as potential clients through on or more apps that operate on Android and iOS based smart phones. Creating apps, having them tested and previewed to fix any glitches and launching them on Google Play for an organization is an excellent business that is in great demand nowadays.
To design apps, you need to possess the required IT skills as well as excellent creativity. Include entertainment and information on your apps that make them enjoyable to use.
In Conclusion
Understandably, these are many more business models for making money online. However, the businesses we mention can be opened with reasonably moderate investments. You need not seek venture capital, crowdfunding, bank loans or dig into personal savings to launch. Possessing skills for these businesses is a prerequisite.
Finally, it is worth remembering, no business- whether online or brick-and-mortar succeeds overnight. It takes months and sometimes years of painstaking efforts to make your business exceptional and stand out among other competitors. Despite, with some extra efforts, timely innovation and proper utilization of funds and skills, you can have a great business model for making money online.