8 Profitable Micro-Businesses You Can Launch to Boost Your Income
This is a contributed article.
Profit isn’t the only motivation factor when launching a small business, but it is among the most important considerations. Whether your business fails or succeeds depends on its potential to make profits.
Most aspiring business owners shy away from starting potentially lucrative businesses due to capital requirements. From rent, equipment, and operating expenses, business costs can be scary. However, some high-profit businesses don’t have restrictive upfront investments. Regardless of passion and skills, the following list has potential ideas to get your micro-business running.
1. Ecommerce Business
More than 265 million people in the US shop online, which is expected to grow over the years. Similarly, there are millions of ecommerce websites, and the number keeps rising. With some sellers making significant margins, this business is fairly competitive but offers invaluable opportunities to experiment with your product line.
Whether you are a seasoned investor or new to the business world, ecommerce is among the most lucrative businesses you can launch. However, you’ll need a great strategy, ecommerce tools, and zeal to make your business succeed.
2. Print on Demand(POD) Business
Print-on-demand is a brilliant micro-business model with minimal capital investment and zero inventory management. You can sell the products through established marketplaces or develop a custom website. As the business grows, the sales volume increases to help maintain consistent income.
When starting a POD micro business, it’s prudent first to identify a reliable print-on-demand vendor for a successful partnership. This eliminates unsustainable bottlenecks and ensures a seamless delivery process. Depending on your target customer, you can sell various products. As long as there’s an opportunity to customize an item, there’s probably someone willing to pay for the service.
3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a profitable business, with consumers spending about $8.2 billion annually. To start your affiliate marketing business, you need a blog, social media, and staunch followers who value your recommendations.
Typically, you will partner with brands to promote their inventory and get commissions whenever your followers buy. This business is perfect for anyone with significant online following since you can promote business and service you believe in. Affiliate marketing is a passive income business since your audience will still use your links even when you stop promoting the products.
4. Home, Swimming Pool, or Car Rentals
The things you’re accustomed to and probably take for granted may hold the potential to multiply your income. Home, car, and pool rentals can help you generate a consistent income and boost your net worth. While some people can live without these amenities, there’s a lucrative market segment for these services. For instance, people prefer renting cars for short-term leases, while swimming instructors seek options for private classes.
While you may still need to capitalize on word of mouth and local adverts to win local customers, there are specific tools for this business model. You can rent your car on Getaround whenever your schedule allows. In addition, Swimply lets you rent your swimming pool, and Airbnb helps you find clients for extra living space or home.
5. Toy Library
A toy library can be casual, small, or event-specific. This is a thrilling business you can launch from a small commercial space or your home. Depending on your specialization, your library can have closed and open collections. Customers can peruse your online catalog in closed collections and book the item for a specified period. On the other hand, open collections allow children to feel and touch available inventory and decide what they want from the shelf.
Besides sufficient storage space, you will need a reliable inventory system to manage and track items. When your library is still small, you can easily operate the business on your own and hire additional workforce as the company expands.
As with any new business, promotion and advertising are essential for toy library startups. Regardless of your marketing medium and platforms, focus on efforts on parents with your children. For instance, you can distribute fliers in spots near daycare facilities and pre-schools.
6. Box Subscription Startup
The box subscription business model is gaining more traction. While the concept is nothing new, the increasing global connectivity has transformed the business idea. Most box subscription business models have a basic level of items you can buy. However, the sales landing page is directed to a funnel with valuable upsells that are hard to ignore. This makes the box subscription one of the businesses with a massive potential for explosive growth.
However, you don’t have to be an icon to succeed in a box subscription business. Some platforms can help position your brand in front of an enthusiastic audience. With creativity, consistent marketing, and customer satisfaction, you can bank on user reviews to get the word out about your brand.
There are more than 21 million box subscription websites, making the competition fierce and expensive. Nevertheless, an average box subscription website user is middle-aged and earns about $78,000 annually. This means the market segment is likelier to subscribe and grab attractive upsells.
7. Social Media Consultant
Almost everyone spends a lot of time on social media. Instead of doing it for fun, why not leverage the skill and generate income doing what you already enjoy? If you have polished expertise in social media marketing, you can commercialize the skills and enjoy lucrative returns. Most businesses lack the skills and time to manage social media pages, so they contract independent social media managers to handle the task.
You can create professional social media accounts and post about your services and results. This multiplies the opportunities to get noticed and contacted by individual clients and businesses. However, you can maximize your lead conversion rates by aligning your brand with companies that sell products or services in a specific vertical.
8. Online Education and Courses
Providing online education and courses is an effective strategy to generate passive income. E-learning is in high demand since it’s flexible and cheaper. In fact, the online education market is poised to cross the $374 billion mark in a couple of years.
Online education can yield handsome profits if you have unique expertise and a creative way to pass on knowledge. Since you already have the knowledge, all you need to do is organize the information and market your services to potential customers.
You can create a series of courses around either your professional skills or personal passions. However, it’s critical to develop a comprehensive online course covering a potential client’s most pressing questions. Also, most online course marketplaces provide access to a customer base for a percentage of your sales.
You can sit back and enjoy passive income once you upload the course material on the right platform. However, some advanced courses like Master of Business Administration may need regular updates to maintain relevance. Also, you may need to implement a tested marketing campaign to create awareness and onboard the first batch of clients.
Endnote
Starting a small business, regardless of size, can be an exciting and lucrative experience. It provides financial freedom, personal fulfillment, and career growth. Launching a business in the modern economy dominated by innovative technologies has never been easier.
With the right information, resources, and tools, almost everyone can flex their entrepreneurial muscle and generate wealth while solving real issues in society.
