7 trending online business ideas

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

No queues in the fitting room, shopping at any time of the day, discounts all year round, and not only at the end of the season, all purchases are brought directly to your home. You can still list the delights of online shopping for a long time. However, today you can hardly meet a person who has never ordered anything on the Internet. It seems that even our parents have already mastered online shopping.

And while some are uncontrollably buying everything at the Black Friday sales, others are making good money on it. Tatyana Glazacheva, CEO of Robokassa / Robo. Market, says that it is profitable to sell on the Internet in 2017.

123RF / Olena Yakobchuk

Shopping crisis is not a hindrance

In the US, the largest apparel retailers are losing money and closing stores. Nobody else comes to them. People now buy without leaving the couch. Online shopping is preferred by 51% of Americans. The other half still go to regular stores, you might say. Yes, but the statistics are relentless. Over the past year, they have ordered something online at least once.

Western trends are slowly reaching us. Sociologists estimate that more than half of Russians who regularly use the Internet buy something online.

And most importantly, despite the crisis, online business still looks promising. Over the past three years, sales of online stores in Russia have doubled. Moreover, more and more expensive goods are being bought - the trust in online hypermarkets has also grown.

All the advantages of such a virtual business are obvious: you do not need to pay for renting premises for a store and utilities, you can significantly reduce the number of employees. What is really there, at first you can do it yourself.

123RF / goodluz

How to sell online

The most obvious thing is to create your own website. Today, it is not at all necessary to hire professionals or, God forbid, master a programming language. There are many website builders that will allow you to create a website from scratch for free, even for a "dummy".

However, social networks are gaining more and more popularity. Many companies today start not from a website, but from a group on VKontakte or a page on Facebook. Some of them even successfully sell on Instagram. The secret is simple: nobody else reads long descriptions. No, you can't do without them, of course. But first of all, buyers pay attention to the picture. Therefore, the quality of the photos and how stylish your online store looks like is perhaps the key to success.

However, charming the buyer is already the second question. First you need to attract him. How does a person know that you are the one selling cool designer T-shirts? How will you get to your social media page or website?

Advertising, you say. Yes, you can pay a search engine to have a link to your store drop out at the very top, or post banner ads on a social network. But will these costs pay off, will new customers come to you? There is no 100% guarantee.

This is where aggregators come to the rescue. These are online platforms that collect goods from different stores on their website. They can be filtered by different categories such as price or popularity. As a specialist, I will say that it is precisely access to such sites that gives the fastest result.

There are quite a few such aggregators today, it is not easy to “go” to some of them - the competition is too high. In order not to get lost in the crowd of similar stores, you need to carefully approach the choice of such an Internet site. It is important that it is well suited for small and medium-sized businesses.

What to sell online?

Handmade clothing and jewelry. On the one hand, it is clothes and accessories that are most often bought on the Internet. On the other hand, the market for such online stores is really huge. And it doesn't make much sense to compete with the giants. Therefore, it is better to immediately choose your specialization.

123RF / milkos

For example, handmade is perfect - handmade things are always in price. Can't you do anything with your own hands? Agree on deliveries with several craftswomen. By the way, just hand-made decorative gizmos are also in demand.

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Childen's goods. As you know, they do not save money on children. Therefore, a stable demand can be expected. Both for toys and clothes. On foreign resources, you can search for brands that are not very common in Russia. They will help make your store's assortment more attractive.

Cosmetics. It also occupies the first lines in the ranking of the most popular purchases on the Internet. And it is unlikely to give up positions. Still, this is something that does not need to be measured, which means that the risk that the product will not fit is not so great. Recently, natural and exotic cosmetics are gaining more and more popularity. A good feature of your store can be, for example, Arabic or Korean products.

Online coaching. Do you know exactly how to correctly negotiate? Since childhood, have you played the harmonica best of all? Can you do 15 things in 10 minutes? It's time to teach this to others. In addition, you can make good money on this. A master class in photography and personal growth training - there is a buyer for everything.

123RF / Rommel Canlas

Household products … Pots and pans will never go out of style. Finding a hardware store in the city today can be very difficult. Therefore, many women go shopping on the Internet, and besides, there is always more choice there. In addition to dishes, small household appliances are also sold well: kettles, coffee grinders and mixers.

Home confectionery … Have you mastered all kitchen gadgets a long time ago? And your cookies are out of competition with the purchased ones? Perhaps it's time to turn your hobby into a source of income. Muffins, pastries and custom-made cakes sell great online.

Sporting goods. Even the lazy one goes in for sports today. This is what you should be guided by: a fitness bracelet that will tell you when it's time to get up and take a walk, a convenient bottle for water and sneakers in which it will be a pleasure to run. You never know useful things in your store will be met by those who have embarked on the path of sports! Besides, why not include fishing, for example.

Paradoxically, trying to save money, people start buying more from online stores. The most obese for Russian online hypermarkets so far were 2008 and 2009. Apparently, this is due to psychology. Buying on the Internet is always cheaper, which means that, despite the tight belts, you can afford more. Plus, shoppers don't always perceive online shopping as real. Indeed, often what we cannot literally touch with our hands does not seem to us as such. Although in reality today virtual business has become not only real, but also much more promising.