Small Business reports that, by the year 2020, one-half of the entire UK workforce will likely be working remotely. This trend has helped employers increase the productivity, morale, and retention of their employees, while also decreasing their levels of stress.
But what if your goal is to work remotely for yourself? What if your goal is to join the world of entrepreneurship and create your own online business, yet you have no idea what you’d sell because you haven’t developed a great new product or created the next best gadget?
While it may seem like you’d be out of the game, you’re not. Here are three options that can help you make money online with no actual product of your own.
#1: Offer Your Services
The first is to offer your services. If you have skills that would enable you to work online from home, this is a great way to earn a living by growing your clientele.
Jobs that fit into this category often include writing, graphic design, digital marketing, coding, and website development. If you have skills related to bookkeeping or scheduling, you could also offer services as a virtual assistant, taking care of administrative details for other busy professionals from across town or across the world.
There are a few freelance platforms that can connect you with individuals and companies who are looking for the services and skills you have to offer. Upwork and Fiverr are two of the most well-known.
#2: eCommerce with Dropshipping
Another option is to sell other people’s products in your own online store. This is called eCommerce and you see it every day on big-name sites like Amazon, Shopify, and eBay. Simply pick the niche market you want to be in and work with product wholesalers and manufacturers to get the best prices possible, increasing your profit margins.
Add dropshipping to the mix and now, not only do you not need your own products to make money, but you also don’t need to purchase them beforehand or store them. With dropshipping, your customer places an order and the item is shipped from the wholesaler or manufacturer directly to them. It’s a super easy (and much less expensive) way to do business.
#3: Affiliate Marketing
A third way to make money online with no product is affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you refer people to other company’s products in return for a portion of the sale.
This option works great for those with larger social media followings, or those who are influencers in their field. You just take the products and services you know and love and share them with your followers in exchange for a commission.
For example, are you a Pinterest maestro with a lot of followers? Learn how to make money on Pinterest by creating pins to affiliate products.
If you’re not quite at the level where you have a huge social media presence, therefore unable to earn a decent income off affiliate marketing alone, there are some things you can do to build one. These include seeking relationships versus followers, showing your human side, posting regularly, and focusing on helping instead of selling.
Of course, you can also use affiliate marketing through your own blog or website. If you don’t already have one, here’s my step-by-step guide to launching a blog.
Getting Started
Regardless of which option you choose, the first step to making money is to create your own business and build your own brand. Though this may seem like a costly move, the reality is that there are plenty of free tools to get started. Tools that can help you generate your business name, slogan, and logo, for instance. And tools that can help you better understand how much traffic your online business needs to get the results you want.
The reality is, you can make money online even if you have no products to sell. People do it all the time. Why shouldn’t you?
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