Want to build your own profitable online business but not sure which business model to choose?
There are many business models online that have the potential to generate a lot of revenue and profits, but some business models are more scalable and have a bright future more than the others.
Smart digital marketers and small-business owners always monitor the market for new opportunities, and they’re very careful about where they invest most of their time, money and effort.
Why is that?
Because if you didn’t tap into new emerging markets and opportunities, then your business will not prosper and you’ll be left behind.
Moreover, each business model requires a different type of investment and marketing strategy. This is why you should choose something that you’re comfortable with and knowledgeable about.
Today, I’m going to share with you the 7 best and most profitable online business models in 2017 and a brief insight on how you can get started with each business model.
So let’s get started…
1. E-commerce
A lot of people recently have been talking about e-commerce and it’s huge potential for generating massive profits.
It seems that e-commerce is the hottest new trend in the online marketing world. If you happen to be in the internet marketing space, then I’m sure you’ve heard of people claiming to be crushing it using Shopify dropshipping.
So is e-commerce worth it? should you join the action?
Definitely. There’s a huge potential in the e-commerce space in 2017, millions of people are already buying a lot of products online. So why not offer your product too?!
To get started fast with E-commerce using Shopify (the top e-commerce platform), you should select a niche for your store, purchase a Shopify plan, setup everything, talk to some sellers from China (Aliexpress), and send traffic to your store (preferably using facebook ads). And Boooom… congratulations, you’re officially rich! No really I’m not kidding, that’s close enough to how everything works! I know some friends who make up to 15K per day using Shopify.
Why Shopify and not other e-commerce platforms?
Because Shopify gives you all the necessary tools (themes, plugins, etc) that you need to start a successful online store. Plus with Facebook’s laser ad targeting system, it’s a little bit easier to break even and start getting profitable with Shopify stores.
However, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns, there is a lot of technical skills and work involved with running a successful Shopify store, you’ll need to take care of things like customer service, dealing with sellers who can barely speak English, running advertising campaigns, and a bunch of other stuff. But overall, considering it’s huge potential, it’s totally worth it.
2. Amazon FBA
This is somehow similar to running an e-commerce store, as it also taps into the huge global potential of electronic commerce.
The only difference is that with Amazon FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) you’re tapping into the enormous daily traffic of Amazon.com, the world’s most popular and dominant online marketplace.
Unlike Shopify, with Amazon FBA’s business model – everything is hosted on Amazon.com; order processing and customer service is on them. You send your items to an Amazon warehouse and they take care of the rest, your products are then listed on Amazon’s search results. When someone searches for something, and your product comes up, they’ll probably buy it.
Why?
Because Amazon.com is not like Facebook, YouTube or any other popular site. People go to those sites to be entertained or informed mostly for free. But with Amazon.com, ONLY buyers go there! So it’s a good idea to have your products there.
The best thing about Amazon (FBA) is that you don’t have to buy traffic, or deal with the dreaded customer service.
3. Mobile app development
Mobile usage is growing massively, according to a report; 80% of internet users own a smartphone.
It’s everyone’s best friend, just like Gary Vee once said: ”I’d rather have a thief steal my wallet and stab me in the back with a knife, than steal my phone!”
It’s crazy. Moreover, people are always looking to download interesting apps that can entertain them or fulfill their needs. Everyone wants the latest smartphone that has 256GB, so that they can have space to download plenty of apps. It’s a very lucrative business with great potential.
If you want to get started with mobile apps, you’ll have to sit down and do some real work learning programming languages like C++, java, and Objective-C. It’s no longer possible to just ”reskin the apps”, buy the source code, change some colors with photoshop, and dump it into the app store.
Pro tip: if you don’t have time to learn programming languages, you can outsource the app development work to an experienced application developer from Pakistan or something.
4. CPA Marketing
CPA (Cost per action) marketing is the lesser-known sister of traditional affiliate marketing, it’s one of the best and fastest ways of make money online.
It’s basically a lead-generation system, companies or advertisers pay you for generating leads for their business, they typically ask for simple actions such as, an email sign up, free-trial offer, or an app download/install.
This is how CPA Marketing works…
You sign-up with an affiliate network (also called CPA network), you get access to offers, you choose which offer you’d like to promote and is more likely to convert (you check the EPCs ”earnings-per-click”), you setup a landing page for that offer on your website that should have a fast VPS or dedicated server for the page to load fast so you don’t lose visitors, you setup tracking (such as Voluum) for the ads so you can optimize after you launch the campaign, and then you send traffic (preferably paid traffic) to that offer.
I just saved you thousands of dollars. You’re welcome! 😉
The beautiful thing about (CPA) marketing is that you don’t have to generate a sale in order to get paid, you simply generate an action, which is much easier as conversions tend to be higher.
5. Email marketing
Although email marketing isn’t as profitable as it used to be possibly due to Gmail’s promotion tab. It’s still one of the most profitable marketing channels with the potential to generate massive returns of investment (ROI).
According to statistics, email has an ROI of 3800% which means for every $1 spent you get $38 back.
Email without a doubt is one of the best ways to reach your audience and build long-term relationships with your clients and customers. Everything else fails in comparison.
Every online business needs to have an email marketing strategy, no matter what. Why? Because you can literally market anything under the sun using email. You’ve just developed a fancy app? that’s cool, send it to your email list. You can literally do anything.
Even if you think you don’t need an email marketing strategy (and you’d be wrong!), work on building an email list of potential customers.
6. Coaching/consulting agency
A business owner or an entrepreneur has a problem with his digital marketing strategy. What does he do? he picks up the phone and calls a digital marketing consultant to ask him for his expert advice in that particular area.
That is basically the role of consultants and consulting agencies, which is to help clients solve their business problems, and provide a solution that can help them improve their business strategy and generate more revenue.
Consulting agencies can be a very lucrative business, a lot of professionals end up starting their own consulting business as a means to share their expertise with other people.
However, there is a lot of things involved with starting an online marketing agency, such as the legal work, attracting clients and actually being very knowledgeable about your topic of expertise.
7. Cryptocurrency
You probably didn’t expect this one. I’m sure you don’t know much about cryptocurrencies, other than the fact that Bitcoin is growing massively like there’s no tomorrow, which was created by an anonymous person that refers to himself as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Cryptocurrencies are basically a digital currency designed to secure online transactions with encrypted information and no middle man. No one controls cryptocurrencies, no government, no bank, nobody.
By the time of writing this article, Bitcoin – the most valuable cryptocurrency is worth more than $1,012.09!
The sooner you start investing and trading with cryptocurrencies the better because a lot of experts predict that cryptocurrencies will become the official currencies of the future.
Conclusion
There are a lot of profitable business opportunities online, but it depends on your skills to take advantage of these opportunities.
Whatever business model you choose, you should focus only on that particular business model until you understand the ins and outs of it, this way you get to increase your chances of success and prosperity.
So what about you? what online business model do you prefer?!