There are various types of online businesses, and you can start your online business right today. Starting an online business is not an easy job. The theory “80% mindset and 20% skill” is applicable here.
You need patience and a strong mindset before starting any online business. The skill and knowledge you can achieve with time.
The most popular online businesses are starting a blog, an affiliate marketing business, providing SAAS services, a drop shipping business, starting your own eCommerce website, starting work as a freelancer, starting a digital marketing agency, and web development, selling online courses, etc.
In today’s article, we will discuss how to start your online business with no audience. We will focus only on two kinds of online business, which are starting a blog and an affiliate marketing business. Why these two? Because these are the easiest ways to start. Also, blogging and affiliate marketing are internally related.
Table of Contents
Start your blog:
By investing a small amount of money you can start your own blog. Even if you use blogger.com you don’t need to purchase a hosting service. But if you are really serious about your online business I will always recommend you to start your blog with WordPress. Because WordPress is easy to customize through plugins and WordPress websites look professional.
So, buy a domain and hosting and design your new blog with WordPress and start writing content. That’s it! Starting a new blog is as easy as 1,2,3. My recommended service provider to purchase hosting is Bluehost, Hostinger, Hostgator, Greengeeks, Dreamhost, etc. The domain you can purchase from any website like Namecheap, Godaddy, etc.
But, before starting a blog you need to do some research on the niche. I read a few articles and also watched youtube videos, they are telling us, that always start with a niche that you have proper knowledge of.
But in my opinion, you don’t need the knowledge to start any particular niche website. Always start with a niche that you have little interest in and there are enough ways of monetizing it.
Let me explain in detail. If you have an interest you can gather knowledge easily. Moreover, if you have an interest in any subject there must be little knowledge.
Do some market research, Are there enough problem-solving products available in that particular niche? For example, if you choose digital marketing or weight loss as your niche, there are lots of products available in both niches.
There are various niches in the field of blogging, where you will get lots of visitors but there are not enough products to sell. By starting these kinds of blogs you can grow easily but you can’t monetize it through affiliate marketing.
Here I am giving you 10 trending niche ideas for your ready reference:
- Traveling.
- Fashion.
- Movies & music.
- Health & fitness.
- Finance & Investment.
- Love & relationship.
- Photography.
- Lifestyle.
- Food & recipes.
- Digital marketing.
Keep in mind, that the above niches are for your ideas only. Choose your own niche with proper market research.
Rather, I will suggest you go with a micro-niche first. Micro-niche is a small topic under a niche. For example, email marketing is a micro-niche under the broad niche of digital marketing. Google prefers a micro-niche website when your blog is very new. After a few days when your website will start getting traffic, then you can start writing articles in your broad niche.
Keep in mind, never write different niche articles on the same website. For example, do not write weight loss articles in your digital marketing niche blog. Just kidding! I know you will not do that.
Drive traffic to your blog:
This is the most important part to drive traffic to your blog. To be very frank, driving traffic to your new blog is not easy.
There are different websites from where you can drive traffic to your new blog. Examples are quora, medium.com, mix.com, Slideshare, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc.
Proper keyword research is also important while writing an article. Always target a low competition and long-tail keyword initially.
There are various methods available to drive traffic to your blog.
Check my recent blog post where I have discussed various sources and methods of driving traffic.
Adsense approval:
Once you start getting traffic slowly, apply for Adsense approval in Google. There are few things you need to keep in mind before applying for AdSense approval. Use a responsive and user-friendly theme in your WordPress website.
There must be proper navigation for all your posts and pages. Give a professional look first. The theme should be lite, SEO friendly, and professional looking. As a new blogger, you can use themes like Generatepress, Newspaper, etc.
As per Google guidelines few pages are mandatory to get Adsense approval. The pages are about us, contact us, privacy policy, terms & conditions, a disclaimer. If you don’t know what to write on those pages, take help from a few free websites.
There are some free websites, they will generate a privacy policy, disclaimer pages for absolutely free. Just go to Google and type privacy policy and disclaimer generator.
Before applying for Adsense approval there must be little traffic on your website. For that, my recommendation is to write at least 15 articles with more than 1000 words first. With this number of articles, you will start getting traffic slowly in your blog.
Follow all the above points and you will easily get approval for Adsense. That’s all about monetizing your new blog. Write more quality articles and grow your website traffic slowly and also grow your Adsense income.
Start affiliate marketing:
Affiliate marketing is promoting and selling someone’s product and earning a commission. You can use your blog for affiliate marketing.
Write some review posts in your blog related to your niche. For example, if you have a blog in digital marketing, you can write review blog posts on a few email marketing software like Getresponse, Aweber, Sendinblue, etc. Also if you started a blog on the weight loss niche, you can write a review post on the Keto diet or similar weight loss products.
There are various other ways of affiliate marketing like creating a review blog, using social media, paid advertisements, etc. For details about affiliate marketing follow my recent blog post “Affiliate marketing strategy”.
Conclusion:
Also, you can try other ways of online income streams like freelancing, e-commerce business, starting your digital marketing agency, etc. For freelancing, you need to grow some specific skills to provide the service. For an e-commerce business, you need your own product to sell.
To run a digital marketing agency you need proper skills and knowledge in digital marketing. But my favorite method of earning online money is blogging and affiliate marketing. So, choose your favorite way and jump into the online business today.