Best Online Business to Start at Home – Your 2024 Guide to Success!

Last Updated on February 18, 2024 by Jeremy

With technology advancements in full swing, it seems A.I. (artificial intelligence) is starting to replace digital aged jobs as well as some conventional 9-5 workplace positions. But one thing that’s for certain, is the “best online business to start at home” has never sounded more appealing than before.

In this article, I want to expose 5 of the top online businesses to start at home (or in my case, an RV), plus what you need to know to get started. Beyond that, I would love to give you some insight with the platform that I’ve used to help get my online business started.

Lastly I want to give you an example of what you could do to help you earn a little extra cash on the side, or replace your full-time job with a more flexible career opportunity.

TOP 5 Best Online Business to start at home CHOICES

1) E-commerce

To start, e-commerce is one of the most popular online business models, and for good reason. What e-commerce allows you to do is, sell any product or service online to what is called your “target audience”.

To obtain such an audience the key is to find a brand that resonates with your audience. This brand can be a niche which can range from clothing and electronics to digital downloads and subscription services.

Getting started with an e-commerce business isn’t all that hard either. First, you’ll need to set up an online store and choose a platform to sell your products.

These online stores come in a variety of platforms. Some of the most popular ones are:

~ Shopify – which is a Canadian e-commerce online store with its headquarters in Canada.

~ WooCommerce – which is an open source plugin for WordPress users. WordPress is a platform where you learn to create a website.

~ BigCommerce – which is a platform used to provide software and services to retailers.

Each of these e-commerce platforms offer a range of features and pricing plans that will benefit the businesses you provide to. One thing to consider is creating a sales strategy to generate traffic to your store source (website platform) and convert visitors into customers.

Benefits of an E-commerce Business:

1) Large Outreach: With e-commerce, your business can ideally be one that reaches the entire globe, whereas a brick-and-mortar business is limited to local customers.

2) Low Overhead Costs: Starting an E-commerce business requires operating with low overhead costs compared to that of your physical store. Just think, no rent, utilities, employees or other expenses. 🙂

3) Shopping is Convenient: Online shopping means convenience for customers, as they are on their devices already allowing them to continue to purchase from anywhere at anytime.

4) Targeted Marketing: If you want a specific range of customers, you can hone in them with your products.

5) Lower Prices: Because you have low overhead costs, you can offer pricing of products at a lower price, engaging in customers visiting your business.

Drawbacks of an E-commerce Business:

1) Interaction is limited: If you could offer Zoom purchases, you’d have some sort of presence of personal interaction, but such is not the case. Also, lacking is a more physical interaction with customers.

2) Technology Dependent: An e-commerce business can rely heavily on technology. Drawbacks would include power outages which could result in technical issues or more drastically, security breaches.

3) Shipping and Logistics: Essentially, this is an expensive aspect in this business as sometimes location costs are more than that of a product you are shipping.

4) Competition: Because the online market is highly competitive, e-commerce might be difficult for new businesses to get established. Don’t be too discouraged however, as there are millions of niche’s so finding the right target audience and demographic could result in this being positive.

5) Returns and Refunds: Much like shipping, a return or a refund could be quite the hassle, let alone time-consuming.

Customer Demographics:

E-commerce businesses are more than capable of gaining the following demographics, including millennials, busy professionals, rural customers, international customers, and price-sensitive customers.

2) Affiliate marketing

By now, we should know what affiliate marketing is. In short, it’s a business model based on personal performance, in which you promote other companies’ products and earn a commission for the sales you make. To go more in depth, I propose you read the following articles:

~ How to earn money with affiliate marketing, and

~ Affiliate marketing secrets.

Both articles explain on how to succeed in affiliate marketing, by creation of blogging, creating a website, or promoting through social media and e-mails.

To get started, you could watch the following video to learn more:

The end result is, this online business is rather simple to start and easy to accomplish should you have the right training tools, which you can learn about below.

3) Freelance Services

If you have a skill that you feel is worth marketing, such as writing and editing, graphic design, web development or even resume critiquing, perhaps you can start a freelance business. This allows you to offer your services to clients around the world.

Freelancing makes tasks easy and rewarding work, especially from home, as it gives you more flexibility because you essentially set your own rates, choose your own projects to work on, and set your own schedule.

Starting a freelance business can lead you to platforms such as Upwork, or Fiverr, where you’ll start by identifying your niche and creating a portfolio of your work. Once that is complete, you move on to finding clients and bidding on projects. Building out your reputation and client base will take time, but it allows you to increase your earnings gradually by expanding your services.

You can brush up on freelancing and these platforms a little more by checking out the article: Best money making Apps.

Benefits of becoming a freelancer:

• – Flexibility
• – Autonomy
• – Low overhead costs
• – Access to a wider range of clients
• – Increased earning potential

Some Drawbacks include:

• – Irregular income
• – Self-employment taxes
• – Lack of benefits
• – Need for self-promotion
• – Isolation

Freelancers can work with the following people or businesses as their profiles are built-out on the above platforms:

– Small business owners

– Entrepreneurs and startups

– Creative professionals

– Online businesses

4) Online Courses

Another online business to start at home, especially if you have expertise in a particular area, would be online courses. This is considered to be classified as a “high-margin business model” that can literally be scaled to reach a large audience.

Think of it like this: Choose a topic you’re an expert in like fitness and nutrition, and offer to sell online courses about them. Another example would be business and marketing.

I feel with the online courses, you’ll need to start by identifying your niche, much the same as the above online business ideas, which then you will be able to create a course to provide valuable information to your target audience.

Then you can use online course platforms to create marketing sales and promote courses, such as:

~ Udemy – which is an education technology company which allows users to create learning and teaching.

~ Teachable – Designed for teacher entrepreneurs.

~ Thinkific – Create, market, sell, and teach online courses to host and sell your course.

5) Dropshipping

The best for last online business to start at home is called dropshipping. This is a business model that allows you to sell products online without holding any inventory. Much the same as affiliate marketing, dropshipping means you create an online store, choose products from a supplier, and have the supplier ship the products directly to your customers.

If this suits more like what you’d like to try, you’ll need to again, identify your niche and choose a supplier who can provide high-quality products at a reasonable cost.

From there, you can use a platform that allows you to create the same as above, a sales strategy to drive traffic to your store front. Sometimes, small businesses can reach out to you and offer you to join their drop shipping programs.

Here’s an example screenshot of a dropshipping offer I was proposed:

How I got my Online Business Started using Wealthy Affiliate

When I first started looking for online work, I did some research, much the same you as my reader is doing. After attempting many of the above suggestions, I found wealthy affiliate. It was then and only then that I learned through extensive training on that platform to get me where I am today.

Starting an online business from home can be rather lucrative, as well, a very rewarding career choice if done properly. Some of the best online business ideas have already been mentioned above and I’ve touched on the fact how easy it can be to get you started.

Now, I want to touch base how Wealthy Affiliate can help you achieve success within many of these business ideas, and how choosing a profitable niche is key to your success. My example niche throughout the duration of the remaining article will be about “CB radios for RVs”.

I find that this niche can be a lucrative and profitable market to tap into, should you follow the remaining suggestions. By using the Wealthy Affiliate platform, this can be done with ease.

STEP BY STEP SET UP: Starting an Online Business at Home

Step 1: Choose a profitable niche

The first step to starting your online business is to choose a niche that you are passionate about and knowledgeable in. As we discussed, e-commerce, affiliate marketing, online courses, freelance services and dropshipping all require this step, so finding your specific topic or subject that you can focus on will pave the road on how well your business will do.

I mentioned that the example will be is CB radios in an RV. This niche is specific enough to attract a targeted audience but broad enough to allow for a variety of topics related to CB radios in an RV.

Step 2: Conduct keyword research

Keyword research is where things become more complex, but not all that bad. It involves identifying a “keyword” and certain phrases that your target audience is typing into search engines looking for information related to your niche.

There are many platforms available to use. Free tools like Google Keyword Planner or paid tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs are able to obtain that specific keyword research. I for one use Jaaxy as it’s included with the Wealthy Affiliate platform. You can read more on Jaaxy under my product review page, much the same about my personal review of Wealthy Affiliate.

In the case of our CB radios in an RV niche, let’s say for example we use another Keyword search tool called Alphabet Soup which is available in the Jaaxy platform. Upon searching, we will find that keywords like “best CB radios for RV,” “how to install CB radio in an RV,” are popular search terms.

Step 3: Create quality content

To summarize from my article: Affiliate marketing secrets, this next task in starting your online business after we’ve chosen a niche and researched our keywords, is to create quality content. This can be done in several forms through your online business choice.

The most popular is through YouTube videos, and is extremely competitive with blogging.

In the case of our CB radios in an RV niche, we might create blog posts on topics like “5 best CB radios for RV enthusiasts,” or “how to choose the right CB radio for your RV.”

Your article will be quality enough where your target audience gains knowledge from these blogs and insight to learn from it.

Step 4: Promote your blog

Step 4 is the crucial part of your business, as it means you are trying to attract traffic to your website and build an audience by promoting your blog.

As mentioned above, this can be done through the likes of social media, word-of-mouth, email marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO). Eventually over time, you will get organic traffic.

For what it’s worth, Wealthy Affiliate helps you promote your blog effectively, through the usage of tools, resources, training, and community help.

I’m going to even go as far to say that as a new online entrepreneur, you’ll more than likely appreciate the added benefits of this platform as it’s geared towards that style of advancement and help.

For instance, you can use the “SiteContent” tool to optimize your content for SEO, the Jaaxy keyword research tool to identify relevant keywords, and the Wealthy Affiliate community chat feature to network and collaborate with other bloggers.

Step 5: Monetize your blog

The final step to starting a profitable blog for your online business at home, is to monetize your blog. This can be done in different ways, as mentioned through the utilization of dropshipping, or through e-commerce. This way, you get to market, sponsor, post, advertise and sell the product or service.

Still utilizing the niche of CB radios in an RV, we might consider partnering with affiliate programs as well where you can promote relevant products. Amazon Associates is an extremely popular one, or you can join a more direct affiliate companies such as Cobra electronics.

Wealthy Affiliate can help you every step of the way, from setting up your website to creating marketing and sales materials.

As you can read about on my Wealthy Affiliate review, this platform is designed to truly help you out no-matter what the on-line business is that you look into for that extra income. To summarize here however, let’s break it down for you:

>>Why Wealthy Affiliate is a Great Platform for Online Business – It’s a unique, one-of-a-kind training platform that provides step-by-step guidance on how to build and grow an online business. With a plethora of resources, such as keyword research tools, niche finder tools, website builders and other marketing training, this is truly the platform to use if you want to be a successful entrepreneur.

>> CB Radios for RVs: A Lucrative and Profitable Niche – Sure there are plenty of niche options such as travel photography and small engine repair, but for this example in choosing a niche for an online business is CB radios for RVs. CB radios are a primary communication tool for anyone who owns an RV, because it allows the drivers to stay in touch while on the road and in remote areas. Sometimes cell phones don’t always keep your signal so why not promote CB radios?

>> Setting Up Your Online Business – To start your online business selling CB radios for RVs, we mentioned finding that target audience to build an online presence. Creative ways include building a website or blog focused on RV travel and communication such as Everything RVs and More. From here you can leverage social media accounts like Twitter, Pinterest and FaceBook, or you can choose the email marketing method to reach your audience.

>> Creating Quality Content – Your success in the CB radios for RVs niche requires high-quality content that resonates with your target audience. Perhaps the addition of a YouTube channel to market your blog post and sharing it on social media will not only benefit your material, but educate your RV travelers in looking into CB radios.

>> Leveraging Affiliate Marketing – When you can leverage affiliate marketing to it’s full potential, you can see that the implementation of what you learn through Wealthy Affiliate will help you succeed in other aspects of an online business. The skills you learn for e-commerce, freelancing, online courses, and dropshipping all require the same techniques you would learn through affiliate marketing. Following the above steps and taking into account how Wealthy Affiliate can help you out will steer you to success in no-time.

Conclusion

To re-iterate, this conclusion will be extremely short. The best online business to start at home is one that takes commitment regardless of it being part-time or full time. Doing so, following the techniques, and reading all of my highlighted and mentioned articles should ensure you succeed with the proper tools and platforms.

Each platform is designed to help you the viewer out, to obtain your target audience, find your lucrative niche, or teach your online course. No matter which job you decide on choosing, always know that I’m here to get you the right direction, even if it’s another campground. 😉

Questions? Comments? Feel free to reach out!

Cheers!