25 Best Online Business
1. Start your own clothing line
If you have a passion for fashion and a willingness to navigate supply chains, you can start a clothing company.
Why start a clothing line?
As a clothing designer, you create products people use every day.
Focus on your favorite garments, such as t-shirts.
As soon as you build your Shopify store, you can start selling instantly. Thanks to print-on-demand apps, the process of designing and delivering your own custom-made clothing is streamlined and simple.
The Shopify App Store is stocked with numerous product sourcing apps, including Printify and Printful. These apps connect you to apparel printers and clothing manufacturers—perfect for clothing entrepreneurs who want to oversee design but not manufacturing.
2.Launch a dropshipping business
Think you need a warehouse full of inventory to run your own business? Think again! Dropshipping is a great way to start a business on a budget. You can hit the ground running by sourcing a pre-existing product from a supplier and having them take care of things like packaging and fulfillment.
With Shopify, it’s easy to start a dropshipping business and begin selling without the hassle of managing inventory, packaging, or shipping. Orders are sent directly from your wholesaler to your customers, so you can focus on what matters.
Why choose dropshipping?
You don’t need to stock products in a physical location, meaning your cash flow won’t get tied up in inventory. There’s less of an upfront cash risk.
Whenever a purchase is made, you place an order with a third party that handles the rest of the process for you. Since you don’t have to deal with things like tracking inventory or mailing packages, dropshipping eliminates a lot of headaches for budding entrepreneurs.
No warehouse means you can run your business from anywhere. Whether it’s your living room or the café down the street, you decide where you want to work from.
If you don’t have any online store ideas, here are some resources for narrowing down the perfect product:
Find products to sell on DSers.
Read our guide on how to find a product to sell.
Check out these places ecommerce entrepreneurs go to find profitable products.
Find out how one entrepreneur went from watching dropshipping YouTube videos to posting $3 million in revenue.
Free Webinar: The Right Way to Start a Profitable Dropshipping Store
3.Sell your art online
Whether you’re a painter, photographer, or musician, there are plenty of online business ideas and ways to turn your latest masterpiece into a source of revenue with a beautifully designed ecommerce website.
If painting or photography is your forte, you can sell your art as prints, canvases, and framed posters, even using a print-on-demand service. This is a fantastic way to turn your art into something tangible that people can take home and integrate into their space. You can also sell your work as digital downloads.
Why sell your art?
You’ll be part of people’s lives by getting your work into customers’ homes.
You’ll create a platform for showcasing your work by setting up shop online.
As an artist, creating art isn’t just a hobby—it’s a way of life. This is your chance to turn your passion into an income stream and potentially do what you love for a living.
Looking for inspiration? Learn how artist Sarah Andersen went from viral comics to a creative franchise.
4. Become a freelance writer, designer, or developer
Writers, graphic designers, and developers can start low-cost businesses based on their talents. As a freelancer, you’ll get to hop between different companies, taking on different projects at different scales. Some writing or design gigs might require only an afternoon’s work. Other projects can last for months. Freelancers can create their own schedules and accept only the projects they want, at a pace that fits their schedule.
To find people that need your skills, try freelancing marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr.
It’s worth noting that Fiverr is a little different from a traditional job board. As the name suggests, a lot of the posted jobs pay $5. The key to making big money on Fiverr is carefully setting up your offers so you can easily upsell the client.
For instance, you could offer to write a 150-word introduction for a blog post as your initial $5 service. As an upsell, you could charge another $10 for every additional 150 words. You can tweak your services until you’ve found a combo that makes it worth your while.
If you want to run your own freelance operation you can set up your own website and use apps like BTA: Appointment Booking App and Events Calendar to help your customers schedule appointments.
Why freelance?
When you freelance, you choose which projects you want to work on and set your own schedule and workplace.
Getting paid to do something you’re good at is a rewarding feeling, whether you’re looking to strike out on your own or just want to make some extra cash on the weekend.
If you’re new to writing, designing, or developing, freelancing is an excellent way to build your portfolio and get some real experience in a wide range of industries. You might discover that you have a knack or passion for something you never expected.
If freelancing sounds like it might be a good online business idea for your lifestyle, we’ve put together some great articles that can help you make the most of your time:
Ways to Work from Home (+ 9 Productivity Tips)
What Is a Lifestyle Business and How to Start One
The Best Productivity Apps
5.Teach an online course
Teaching an online course is a low-investment online business idea for generating passive income. Your online course can be as simple as a video walkthrough that you host on your own personal website. From there, you can go much deeper, creating multi-level courses with a combination of pre-recorded video and live class interactions.
Although it requires effort upfront, a popular, high-value video tutorial series can generate passive income as people continue to enroll in your course.
To start creating your first online course, brainstorm a topic you know well enough to teach someone how to do from scratch. This can be anything—music production, social media marketing, web development, you name it.
Next, you’ll want to grab a screencasting app, such as ScreenFlow, to record your screen and voice while you walk your students through your tutorial. ScreenFlow also comes with a built-in video editing suite, so you can shoot and cut your videos all on the same platform.
Why teach an online course?
Your initial efforts will go a long way. Once you’ve created your online course, you can monetize it for years, drawing in new students and passive income.
You already have the knowledge, you just need to share it. Focus on teaching something you’re already an expert at and the rest will come naturally, whether it’s building iOS apps, creating monthly budgets, or running Facebook ad campaigns.
Teaching someone a new skill is its own reward. While there’s definitely money to be made teaching online courses, helping other people is always a satisfying experience in itself.
6.Flip your thrift store finds
If you love hitting up thrift stores and hunting down great deals, then one great online business idea is selling your second-hand treasures online.
Your potential customers want to buy cool stuff, but they don’t want to dig through old soccer jerseys and braided belts to get their hands on that one amazing find. Take advantage of this by positioning yourself as a trustworthy curator who can go out and uncover those great vintage pieces for others. You can sell these items on popular marketplaces like Etsy and eBay, or you can build your own online store and sell them directly, with no third party taking a cut of sales.
Why sell your thrift store finds?
If you’re combing through thrift store racks anyway, you might as well make some money while you do it.
The margins are huge. That $2 ball cap you found? With the right buyer, you might turn it into a $40 vintage hat.
You’re selling something unique. Your exact catalog of vintage treasures won’t be duplicated by any other seller.
Make sure your offerings appear as alluring as possible. Take a look at these guides to making your products look great in photos