Online Business Ideas for Beginners

Today, I’m going to give you a couple of online business ideas for beginners and I will show you how to make money with each idea. These are six very specific (and niche) ideas that we researched in-depth for my book about how to find your first business idea. These are real business ideas that we validated and considered pursuing.

This blog will be a little different than the other “online business idea” blogs that you typically see. I’ve seen far too many blogs out there that just give general advice like “start a blog” or “write a course”. Sure, that’s great. But back in 2014 when I was getting started, when I was looking for “online business ideas for beginners”, I was looking for ACTUAL ideas that I could take and run with.

So that’s what I’m going to do, because it’s what I wanted when I was in your shoes. Six real online business ideas, and specifics about how I would make money in each niche.

Finding Your Idea - Logistics

Before I dive into the six online business ideas, let me quickly discuss my preferred business process and how I find and validate a niche.

My process

I’ve started over 7 online businesses. What I’m sharing with you is how I find business opportunities, and how I exploit those opportunities to make money online. Here is a brief outline of how I make money online:

• Find a niche
• Create content and provide value for free
• Capture leads with a free download lead magnet (for email marketing)
• Provide value for free (through your email list)
• Sell your products and services (after your leads know you and trust you)
• Set it and forget it. Let the process sit and bring in passive income without any work from you.

In this process, the process that I’ve used to make money online, you give away a lot for free. You create a bunch of content and provide your prospective customers with lots and lots of value. You are building trust by proving yourself as an expert through blogging, videos, and creating as much content as you can related to your online business idea.

By creating content, and giving away value for free, your target audience will come to know, like, and trust you. THEN they will want to buy your products and services because they trust you.

I promise this process works. This is the same process I used to generate over $26,000 in income from my blogs.

I’m going to assume you are using this process too, this is the most common (and most successful) approach to starting online businesses.

Research process

For research, and to find online business ideas, I use Long Tail Pro (my favorite niche research tool). Using Long Tail Pro, all I do is type in a bunch of seed keywords related to an idea. Like my idea of gardening that I talk about below. I dump a bunch of ideas into this tool, and it returns suggested search terms and an analysis of the niche. It tells me how many people per month are searching for content in that niche, how competitive it is in the niche, and it gives me ideas for blogs/content/products that I can create for that specific business idea.

You will see me reference search volume and keyword competitiveness throughout this blog, that information is aggregated from Long Tail Pro.

For the process I use, I recommend checking out this video of me using Long Tail Pro to find a business idea. You can use this same process to find your own business idea not mentioned in this blog.

Long Tail Pro Free Trial

You can click here for my free trial of Long Tail Pro to do your own research and validate these online business ideas.

Now, let’s get started looking at a couple of online business ideas for beginners.

#1 Online Business Ideas for Beginners – Gardening Tools

Gardening tools. Create an entire business about gardening tools.

There is a TON of opportunity in the gardening space. Watch this example of me using Long Tail Pro to dive into the gardening niche to uncover this gardening tools business idea.

Below, I’ll explain exactly why this is a viable online business idea for beginners.

Why is this a viable online business idea?

I was looking to start an online business in the gardening space, here is what I found.

First of all, 40,500 people per month are searching for “gardening tools”.

Second, there is a TON of content I could create related to gardening tools (with a low Long Tail Pro KC score) including:

• Gardening tool names
• Kids gardening tools
• Tools used for gardening
• Gardening tools for beginners
• Best gardening tools
• Indoor gardening tools
• Garden hoe tool
• Gardening tools for seniors
• Best wheelbarrow
• Best containers for organic gardening

And that’s just the start! I didn’t even dive into each specific tool like wheelbarrows, shovels, and rakes. You can go deep into this niche. There is a ton of content opportunity here, meaning you find the niche and can easily start creating content about each specific gardening tool. This is an easy way to drive traffic to your website, provide value, and become known as the gardening tools expert.

How simple is that? You can be the gardening tool expert. You can create an entire online business creating content and recommending the best gardening tools.

To give you some inspiration, check out what Ryan Levesque is doing with a website about orchids. He’s making $25,000 per month with a website about orchids! If he can make over $25,000 for a website about orchids (using this same process detailed above) you can make $25,000 from a website about gardening and gardening tools.

How will I make money?

You can make a lot of money in this niche. To put this in perspective, I’m making $1,500+ in recurring monthly revenue from my dog blog with affiliate income, a book, and a membership. It’s growing every single month. The gardening niche has even more opportunities. You can make thousands in this one specific niche.

Here are a few ideas to get you started. This is how I would make money with this online business idea:

• Affiliate – this is the easiest way to monetize a gardening tools website. People are searching for very specific terms like “best gardening tools” and “gardening tools for seniors”. Go signup for the amazon affiliates program and write a couple of blogs recommending the best gardening tools that you can buy on Amazon. Earn a commission anytime someone purchases the gardening tools that you recommend.
• Membership – I love the membership model. I can see this being an easy membership site opportunity. You can create a monthly membership box, send a gardening gift box to your members with some gardening supplies and a new garden tool each month.
• Physical product – checkout the Amazon FBA program. This is the perfect niche for selling a physical product on Amazon. You know people are searching for the “best garden hoe tool”, why not go out and create your own garden hoe that meets the needs of your subscribers. Sell it through your website and Amazon’s FBA program.
• Book – you can write a book about gardening. A simple book that you sell through Amazon’s KDP program detailing gardening techniques and solutions to common gardening questions.
• Dropship – you can set up your own online store and dropship gardening tools. You don’t hold any inventory; you just act as a middleman sending gardening tools to the customer when they purchase from your store. You can read all about dropshipping and how to get started here.
• Ads – I hate ads. That’s why I list it last. I don’t use ads (not anymore) in any of my businesses. Google ads, or the other ad platforms, are hard to scale. You make about $1 per click. That being said, you can monetize your gardening tools website with ads.

#2 Online Business Ideas for Beginners – Vegan Breakfast (or any diet)

There is a lot of opportunity in the diet niche. If you are currently on a diet or have certain dietary restrictions that you follow, that can be your business. For example, I talk about the Keto niche in this blog of 25 niche website ideas.

For this online business idea, I want to dive into the vegan breakfast niche. There is seemingly a lot of opportunities for someone to come in and create an online business about vegan breakfast.

Why is this a viable online business idea?

I’m vegan, and one of the members from my build a business program is vegan. So naturally, on our one-on-one coaching call, we looked into the vegan niche. Specifically, we were simply looking into starting a vegan food blog. Possibly in the niche of healthy vegan desserts.

What we found was unexpected. We found over 49,000 people per month are searching for vegan breakfast. How specific is that! It’s a niche within the vegan niche.

We also found people were searching for specifics within the vegan breakfast niche, which we saw as an opportunity for content creation. Here is what we found people were searching for:

• Vegan breakfast meal prep
• Healthy vegan breakfast recipes
• Vegan breakfast muffins
• Vegan breakfast bars
• Vegan breakfast sandwich (1,900 people per month searching for this)

And almost NO ONE had a site dedicated specifically to the vegan breakfast niche. If I chose this niche to start a business, I would be laser-focused on vegan breakfast. I would become the go-to expert on everything vegan breakfast. And I’d probably gain 100 pounds cooking vegan breakfast sandwiches, but it would be totally worth it.

How will I make money?

There is a TON of opportunities to make money in the food niche. Here is how I would make money in the vegan breakfast niche:

• Cookbook – cookbooks make a killing on Amazon. I just counted, I personally have over 20 vegan cookbooks sitting on my bookshelf right now. Check out the image below, it’s a snippet of JungleScout, a tool I use to estimate my competitors’ monthly sales on Amazon. People are making over $10,000 per month just selling a cookbook! This is where I would start. I would write a vegan breakfast cookbook. Just something simple with my top 30 go-to vegan breakfast recipes. I would sell this to my email list and sell it organically on Amazon.
• Coaching – you can be a coach for everything. Especially in the diet niche. Why not be a vegan coach? Help people adopt the vegan diet and live a healthier lifestyle. You don’t have to specifically be a vegan breakfast coach. Vegan breakfast is your means to connect with people in the vegan niche, then you sell them on your vegan diet coaching.
• Group coaching – I LOVE group coaching. It’s a great way to maximize your time and effectiveness as a coach. Similar to the coaching method I mentioned above, you can attract the vegan audience by publishing content about vegan breakfast. Then, sell your group coaching program where you bring together a group of new vegans every week for five weeks to discuss living the vegan lifestyle and cooking healthy vegan food.
• Cooking class (can be virtual) – you are going to learn to cook if you are in the vegan food niche. Host a cooking class! You are going to become known as the cool breakfast vegan cook. People will want to learn from you. So, teach them your magical ways! Host a paid class, people will pay to learn a few recipes from you with step by step live instructions. This can be virtual or in person.
• Sell vegan food – now that you are the vegan breakfast expert, why not sell your own vegan food? Sell your own vegan breakfast burritos. Sell vegan supplements. Just start your own vegan food brand!
• Affiliate – pretty much any website can have an affiliate aspect. Start recommending the best cooking products (pots, pans, spatulas, etc…) and the staple vegan breakfast ingredients that people need to buy. Earn a commission anytime someone uses your affiliate link and purchases your recommended products on Amazon.

#3 Online Business Ideas for Beginners – Six Sigma Certification (or any certification)

I LOVE the study material or certification niche. I call it the “exam prep niche”. On average, I make well over $5k per month in this niche.

In the exam prep niche, we are creating a business by providing study material, guidance, and advice to those pursuing a particular set of exams, designation, certification, or licensing.

Like creating study material and resources for the six-sigma certification.

There are THOUSANDS of niche exams, designations, certifications, and licenses with hundreds of thousands of people taking the exams each month. Off of the top of my head, I think of the CPA, CFA, CNA, Real estate license, underwriter licensing, Fundamentals of Engineering (FE), and CLU. And those are just the big-name designations and licensing that I could think of without doing any research!

I want to show you the research I did into the Six Sigma certification.

Why is this a viable online business idea?

From my experience in this niche creating a business selling study materials for an insurance certification, this is one of the easiest business opportunities. There are four primary reasons why this is my favorite niche side idea, and why I strongly believe you should take advantage of this opportunity:

• Validated Market – With the exam prep niche site idea, the market is validated for you. If people are searching for this designation and studying for these exams, then there is a clear need for study material.
• Easy to Niche Profitably – These sites are easy to niche. There is typically not much competition (depending on the designation that you choose). Even if there is competition, it’s easy to differentiate yourself and find a niche within a niche.
• Easy to Differentiate – Creating a niche site is all about providing a unique product with a unique value proposition that differentiates you from the competition. In the exam prep niche, this is easy. There are a number of ways you can differentiate yourself. Just think about how you can differentiate yourself by offering a different type of study material. You can offer textbooks, online courses, study guides, flashcards, 1×1 coaching, practice exams, etcetera… You can pick one product and become known as the go-to resource for CPA flashcards.
• High Price – Exam prep material is expensive. Just look at the competition. Typically, you can sell study material for around $500 per course or around $200 for practice questions. Some of the bigger courses like Bar exam prep and CPA study materials can go for over $1,000. Personally, I price AssociatePI courses at $425 per course. At $425 per course, with a required eight exams to earn the CPCU® designation, that’s $3,400 from one person if they take all eight exams with my program. Not bad for one lead!

Why is Six Sigma a viable online business idea?

Now, back to the Six Sigma business idea. I found that over 18,000 people per month are searching for “Six Sigma Certification” and “Certified Six Sigma”. That is PLENTY of people searching for this type of certification, that is plenty of volume to create a profitable business teaching people how to earn their Six Sigma certification.

People are also searching for:

• Six Sigma Green belt exam
• Lean Six Sigma Yellow belt
• Six Sigma online
• Six Sigma training
• Six Sigma Black Belt certification cost

Lots of relevant search terms here. It’s clear to see what people are searching for relating to Six Sigma. People want information about each “belt” of the Six Sigma! You can provide that. There are a lot of ways that you can differentiate yourself in this niche, even if there is other competition out there.

How will I make money?

This truly is one of the best online business ideas for beginners. I know because this is the niche I created my first business in. I was making a minimum of $2,000 per month within the first year. I am now generating upwards of $10,000 per month in the “exam prep” niche.

The Six Sigma is the perfect business opportunity, the perfect opportunity to leverage the niche nature of these designations to create your business that generates tens of thousands of dollars in passive income per month. It’s possible. I’m doing it now. Here is how I would do it with the Six Sigma business idea:

• Online courses – this is what I do. I sell study material as an online course on my website. I sell each course for $425, so I just need a couple of sales to make a substantial income. That’s why I recommend selling study material. Online courses are one of the easiest ways to generate income online. I would create a series of online courses to help people earn their Six Sigma certification.
• Other study material – flashcards, study guides, practice exams, audiobooks, eBooks, print books, etcetera… the opportunities are endless. There is an endless number of ways to differentiate yourself with this business idea. For sake of space on this blog, I won’t go into detail for each type of study material you can make. But take this into consideration, if no one is out there selling flashcards for the Six Sigma certification, that can be your differentiator! It is easy to differentiate yourself from the competition with this type of business.
• Coaching or group coaching – I mentioned earlier, you can be a coach for anything. You can be a Six Sigma coach. Either teaching people everything they need to know about Six Sigma, or teaching people how to earn their Six Sigma certification.
• Corporate training – companies will hire you to train their employees. My friend Tom Heffner teaches innovation. He is hired by large corporations, like Starbucks, to come in for two days to host an innovation workshop. He is paid $15,000 per session. $15,000 for two days of work. You can do that! The Six Sigma workshop can be your business. You can sell your product to large companies, show up and host a workshop for two days training employees about how to use Six Sigma or how to pass the Six Sigma exams, and make an easy $15,000.

#5 Online Business Ideas for Beginners – Parakeets (or any pet)

I love the pet niche. It’s one of the easiest ways to niche down and create a profitable website, I talk about the hedgehog niche in my five niche site ideas series. There are thousands of variations of pets out there.

I’m in the pet niche myself with my dog website, and I niched down to a specific type of dog. My Dad is in a similar niche, in the animal niche, he started a business about bluebird predators after I taught him this process. There are a ton of options in the pet/animal niche! 

One that jumped out when we were researching various pets (a pet that my client had in the past) was the parakeet niche. I bet you never would have thought of that niche without reading this blog!

Why is this a viable online business idea?

This is the perfect example of a niche. 110,000 people per month are searching for parakeets. More specifically, thousands of people are searching for specific types of parakeets like monk parakeets, green parakeets, and blue parakeets. More specifically than that, thousands are searching for parakeet care and parakeet training.

That’s the definition of a niche online business opportunity. People buying, training, and caring for parakeets.

Become the go-to expert on parakeets. Learn everything you can about parakeets. And create a website teaching others about parakeets.

How will I make money?

Do exactly what I do with my dog blog niche site which is making $1,500 per month and growing fast:

• Book – start with a book. Write the complete guide to training parakeets. Thousands of people per month are searching for information on how to train a parakeet. Learn how to train a parakeet, interview professional trainers, read all the resources out there, and aggregate the information into one book that teaches your audience how to train a parakeet.
• Membership – create a monthly paid membership for parakeet owners. Give your members access to a membership portal with all the parakeet information that you have compiled, let the parakeet owners communicate with each other in a private group, and send them a quarterly parakeet gift (treats or whatever parakeets eat). This is exactly what I do with my dog niche website.
• Affiliate – I think I’ve mentioned affiliate for every single online business idea in this blog. Well, here we go again. Add an affiliate aspect to your blog. People are searching for parakeet care tips, so go out there and create a bunch of content on how to care for a parakeet! In this content include affiliate links to let your readers purchase the cages, food, and care products that you recommend for parakeets.

#6 Online Business Ideas for Beginners – Pit Bikes

Our last online business idea for beginners is the bit bike niche. One of the members in my build a business program strongly considered creating a business in this niche.

There is a lot of opportunities here.

Why is this a viable online business idea?

Over 40,000 people are searching for pit bikes (with very low competition). Not to mention, there is a lot of “niche within a niche” opportunities here. People are specifically searching for:

• 110cc pit bikes
• 125cc pit bikes
• Pit bikes for sale
• Pit bikes for adults
• Used pit bikes for sale

You could go even more niche and create an entire website about 110cc pit bikes (6,600 people searching for this).

There is a ton of opportunity here, and based on my niche research in Long Tail Pro there is very little competition. Someone needs to become the go-to resource for everyone out there riding pit bikes

How will I make money?

This one is similar to the golf cart niche that we talked about earlier in this blog. Similar to the golf cart niche, there is a lot of opportunities to make money building a business about pit bikes. Here is how I would make money:

• Affiliate – the easiest way to make money is to create an affiliate site. People are selling pit bikes on eBay, you can earn a commission by referring people to eBay to buy a pit bike. Similar to my golf cart suggestion, I would start this website as an affiliate site. Once a week, I would go in and update my website (and send an email out to my subscribers) with the best pit bike deals on eBay. I would take a cut every time someone purchases a pit bike through my website. The same goes for pit bike accessories like helmets, gloves, and bike parts. I would recommend the best accessories to buy on Amazon for your pit bike.
• Digital products – thinking outside the box, you can sell a digital product. Maybe an online course or book about how to build a pit bike track in your back yard. Or maybe an online course teaching people to buy, fix, and re-sell pit bikes. This depends on what your customers want. You will need to go out and talk to the people that are searching for pit bikes and pit bike accessories, figure out what type of digital product they want, and build it!

How to Find Your Business Idea

Before I wrap up here, I want to repurpose part of an article that I wrote for Career Metis discussing how to find your own online business idea.

Most people get stuck waiting for the perfect idea. The perfect million-dollar idea, making sure everything is thought through before even considering getting started. Those people never launch their business. It never gets past the first spark of an idea.

Don’t wait for that million-dollar idea. It will come, but you can’t force it to come right now. Instead, start with your first business. Start with something simple and learn the ropes. That way, when the million-dollar idea strikes, you will already know everything about marketing, website design, and how to get sales.

To find an idea, just one idea to start with, I always recommend starting with a brain dump or using some type of mind mapping tool. This is simply a brainstorming process to get a bunch of potential business ideas.

Here’s what I recommend. For each of the eight questions below, list five to ten answers. This should be quick, don’t spend more than a few minutes on each question. Don’t spend more than 30 minutes on this exercise. If you are stuck, skip to the next question. Sit in a quiet place and jot down any thought that is provoked by each question. The goal here is quantity, not quality.

Answer these eight questions:

• Make a list of everything you did this week. What did you do and touch? What did you talk about?
• What questions or topics did you search on Google recently?
• What groups or communities do you subscribe to on Facebook, Reddit, or LinkedIn?
• What do people ask you about?
• What do you do on a day to day basis?
• What are you naturally good at?
• What qualifications or certifications do you have?
• What do you do in your day job?

The goal here is ideas. Ideas to find a niche or a topic to start your first online business.

For example, do you follow a strict vegetarian diet? Great, you can start an online business in the vegetarian niche. Do you love to oil paint? Great, you can teach people how to oil paint online. Do you have your CPA Certification? There’s a niche, you can create your own CPA flashcards and sell them online.

Answer the above questions to get a list of business ideas for yourself.

Conclusion

In conclusion, finding an online business idea is easy. Go out there and dig into some niches, you will find plenty of online business ideas for beginners.

To recap, these are the six online bounciness ideas that I’ve researched and validated:

• Gardening tools (in the garden niche)
• Vegan breakfast (in the diet niche)
• Six Sigma Certification (in the exam prep niche)
• Golf carts (in the golf niche)
• Parakeets (in the pet niche)
• Pit bikes (in the dirt biking niche)

I strongly encourage you to take one of these ideas and run with it. You will be making thousands in recurring passive income in no time.

 Good luck!

My Five Favorite Niche Site Ideas

We covered a TON in this blog. This thing just keeps growing as I build my own niche sites and come across new niche sites and small profitable business ideas.

This can be overwhelming. I know. And once you choose a niche, it can be even more overwhelming getting started! To help, I simplified things. I put together one free resource covering my favorite niches. These are the once that I would create today if I had more time.

I highly recommend you download this free resource. It’s the five niche sites I would create today (and why I would choose each niche). Plus, I’ll tell you exactly what to do to get started with each of these five niche site ideas.