Are you looking for the best online businesses to start? Entrepreneurship and side hustles have definitely become a lot more popular over the last decade. Regardless of who you are, you’re always going to be looking for a better life. To achieve a better life, you can improve your skills and provide more value to the marketplace.
Up until recently, the school system has had a monopoly on providing those skills. The internet changed that. Since we can interact with anyone from all over the world, we can provide skills and add value to the marketplace from anywhere in the world. And this is where the concept of side hustles comes in.
Before you get into starting a side hustle, you want to ask yourself, “WHY”? Why exactly do you want to do this thing? What is the outcome you’re trying to get? Especially online, influencers paint entrepreneurship as this pretty, beautiful, sunshine and rainbows thing. But it’s really far from the truth.
Because let’s face it, you are going against the status quo. Starting a business is non-conventional. You’re going to have a lot of obstacles being thrown in your path. So, you must establish a strong drive within yourself, which comes from a strong WHY. Your WHY will help you go forward, regardless of what’s being thrown at you.
So, with that said, here are three things that I want you to consider:
1) What is the exact goal and target that you want to accomplish?
That could be making a hundred thousand dollars. That could be making a million dollars. Whatever it is for you, just be clear. The more specific you are, the better.
2) At what timeline do you want to accomplish this goal?
In the next two months, six months, 12 months, five years? Regardless of what it is for you, just be sure that you come up with that number.
3) What is your WHY?
Why is it that you want to make a hundred thousand dollars in the next 12 months? Is it because you want to retire your parents? Is it because you want to marry the love of your life? Is it because you want to take your kids on a trip to Disneyland more than once every five years?
Come up with a list of at least five to ten strong WHYs that will drive you every single morning, regardless of what is going on in your life.
Having a clear target gives you a clear thing that you are moving towards. Having that timeline is going to create urgency. And having the WHY is going to give you that determination and that drive, regardless of what happens.
Another thing to consider before you start a side hustle is your background. Do you have a job right now that is at least covering your basic expenses?
If you don’t, that’s the first thing that you want to start with. Regardless of what side hustle you start, it’s going to take some time until you actually get it going. Some of these side hustles might actually need some capital to be invested in them. So if you have a job that’s paying for your basic expenses, that gives you some mental clarity. You’re not struggling to survive, so you can focus on building your side hustle.
And here’s a word of caution. These five side hustles that we’re about to share with you are very unsexy. They’re not the things that you see out there like e-commerce, crypto, and NFTs. They’re the unconventional things that no one else is talking about. So let’s dive right in.
The first thing is something that no one really talks about is being a broker or a middleman. Being someone who facilitates deals between buyers and sellers. You see, commerce happens all around us, anywhere in the world, and with all kinds of things.
Buyers are always buying things, and sellers are always selling things. But sometimes buyers and sellers cannot find each other or can’t start and transact the deal. That’s where a broker can help. The beautiful thing is, that being a broker can actually work in any industry.
You can broker deals to buy and sell cars, residential properties, or commercial units such as buildings. It could be to buy and sell businesses. It can literally be anything and everything that you can think of. And the beautiful thing about being a broker is that there is zero capital coming out of your pocket.
All you invest is the time to take the buyer to shop around and take the seller and make sure that you put them together. Depending on what deal you are brokering, you can make anywhere between 2-15% of the sale price. The percentage is going to vary depending on the industry.
The second thing is being a personal assistant. Now, you might have heard of virtual assistants. However, there is a big difference between virtual assistants and personal assistants. When people hear about virtual assistants, they think of someone from a developing country who’s making 2-5 dollars an hour.
But a personal assistant is someone who assists a busy professional. These busy professionals have a lot happening in their lives. When you are operating at that capacity, you have a million things happening and you actually need some organization in your life.
A personal assistant will take on tasks such as:
A personal assistant could be getting paid at least $5,000 to $10,000 per month.
Regardless of who you are, or where you live, there are local businesses all around you. And many of them are by baby boomers and people just a little bit older in their age. A lot of these people did not grow up with the internet.
They can boost their business by bringing it online. Whether that is going on social media and building a brand, or paying for actual ads to drive to their businesses, you can create all kinds of bundles. I have seen people charge anywhere between $ 1,000 to $5,000 per month per client for such services.
Now, what if you don’t know how to run ads? Well, there is someone out there who has done it before you and is willing to teach you. All you have to do is go online and search for the thing that you’re trying to do.
Even if you don’t have that much experience, you can go to a couple businesses and arrange a deal. For example, they pay for the ads and you do the work for free for the first three months. After you make them X, you get Y%, instead of charging them a flat fee.
The fourth thing is to try to find things that people can get for free. Here’s a very simple example. Have you ever had to go to the DMV, which is the Department of Motor Vehicles? In the United States, it is the place where you can go and get your driver’s license.
Going there is a nightmare. After you have talked to about half a dozen pissed-off government employees, you’ll have wasted at least four to six hours just so they can change the address on your driver’s license.
Now, did you know there are actually offices you can go to and simply sign a small paper that says someone can actually go to the DMV on your behalf? They charge you about four to five times what the DMV charges for the same service. But you have no wait time. You just drop off your paperwork, you pay them, and you come back whenever it’s ready.
So, what you want to do is look for different services that the government offers for free or nearly free. Then, you can provide the same service to your potential customers but make it more convenient and faster. For half of the time, you can simply charge them three to five times more than the actual service costs. Because saving the time and hassle is worth it.
This one skill is going to probably be extinct in a few years. But right now, you can actually take advantage of it and make a boatload of money. You see, we produce about 10 to 15 different pieces of content every single day.
And with that, our internal marketing team used to be over 15 people. But today, we’re able to produce the same amount of content, if not more, with only five. You might be asking, how are we able to do that? Well, very simple. The power of AI. So some of the skills that you can actually utilize for your own advantage.
By using the power of AI in copywriting and video editing. Videos used to usually take us about one to two hours to edit. But now there are AI tools that edit the same video within 30 seconds.
To write an email, it used to sometimes take us about 30 – 45 minutes. Now with ChatGPT, it takes us less than three minutes. You can use these tools to provide a service for businesses for a fee. How you structure these fees with these businesses is all dependent on you.
You could either do a monthly flat fee. Or you start working with these businesses completely free for 1-3 months. After you have provided them a tremendous amount of value, you want to actually go on a profit share. Ask them to take a percentage of the additional revenue that you’re making their business.
That way, you know that you always have to produce for you to get paid. And the business owner knows that if for whatever reason, one month they don’t produce any money, they don’t have to pay you. It removes the ceiling from how much you can earn.
The more value you add to the business and the more the business grows, the more your income continues to grow as well.
There is a big variety of online businesses and side hustles that no one talks about. These businesses are not easy and even a bit boring but you can actually start them as a beginner.
Once your beginner business makes enough, you can look into the next thing. Be it Amazon FBA, or anything else you like. For more tips and hacks for beginner entrepreneurs, check out this article.
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