For a long time I was searching for the best autopilot business ideas. I wanted a business which could sell products online over the internet. I first noticed this type of business model on ebay. I was looking to buy an ebay business model and found one with a quick search.
I then bought a model which taught a clever method of buying and selling on the auction website itself. Check it out in my article how to start a profitable ebay business.
I bought an ebook from ebay which explained how to use the above method. What struck me was the simplicity of selling a digital product. You list a product and then sell it over and over again through the same listing. This led me to research autopilot business ideas which allow you to work from your laptop from anywhere and effectively build an autopilot money making system.
Autopilot Business Ideas – Drop Shipping
Drop shipping is a similar kind of model. You simply act as the go-between for drop shipping companies. You advertise on the internet and send people to products and services around the globe. You don’t personally have to own any products or services, you simply supply the customer and collect a commission when you make a sale.
Products are delivered directly by the drop shipping companies. They even deal with customers. This can be automated by selling online and setting up automated emails and websites directing customers to the drop shipping companies.
Autopilot Business Ideas – Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a similar concept except you sell products directly over the internet. Anyone can become an affiliate marketer and again you act as a go-between for the owners of an affiliate programs. Affiliate programs can sell anything.
Amazon and Ebay have their own affiliate programs and you can simply send customers to these websites to earn commissions on sales generated. The best commissions can be made by selling digital products over the internet. Digital products typically pay you 40% of the value of any sale you make. Whereas the mark-up for physical products is much less.
Affiliate marketing uses the same model I discovered on ebay many years earlier. However, instead of creating your own products you can use someone else’s.
Autopilot Business Ideas – Creating Your Own Products
You can also create your own products and sell them over the internet through a website. Either create a unique physical product which you own or create digital products as in the case of the ebay “how to” guide I bought from the auction website. However, there is a strict limitation to creating your own products. It is much easier and can be far more profitable to use other people’s products to sell online for a number of reasons:
- Choosing products which are already selling can save you heaps of time and market research. Instead of trying to sell an unknown quantity, ‘piggy back’ off someone else’s proven product range.
- If you choose the right products you can make larger gains on higher value items.
- It’s much more difficult to create your own high value items which have a large audience.
- Creating and selling your own products is much more difficult – especially if you don’t know how to.
- It’s easier to use someone else’s monthly membership products than to create your own – membership products give you monthly commissions and make an online business much more viable and stable.
- You can pick products which pay you for up-sells (seminars and events which offer more value to existing customers.
Autopilot Business Ideas – The Basic Method
The basic method of selling a product online is to create a website or advert and send people into a sales funnel. A sales funnel offers pre-made products and services which are of value to your subscribers. Ideally your products should offer a range of services which increase in value starting with an ‘entry level product’. This means you can offer more value to people if they want further services.
Take the initial example of my purchase from ebay. I bought a “how to” guide for around £10. The seller could sell this guie again and again through the same listing to earn £10 for each sale. If the costs only include listing the item on ebay, (and assuming a digital download is possible), there are no postage or storage costs involved. This means most of the cost is profit. With a small item like this ebook which I purchased, there is only a small profit per item. However, if you choose to sell high ticket products you stand to make more profit for each sale. Also, as mentioned above, if you choose to sell high ticket items which also have:
- Built in up-sells
- Built in sales team
- Membership products
- Multi-tier sales commissions
You can make more per sale through multiple income streams. Each customer can potentially become a lifetime customer and you can earn an income from a sale, rather than just a small commission. This is how to build a viable and stable income from the internet. What’s even better is that this can be run from anywhere from a laptop. There’s no stock to hold and no customers to personally deal with.
This is my favourite of the autopilit business ideas mentioned here. Not only do you earn income from an initial sale, but you also earn from monthly memberships, up-sells (closed by a built in sales team) and from your team (in the case of joining multi-tier commission program).
Learn more about this kind of online business here.
Autopilot Your Business
You can also autopilot your business by using online marketing strategies which run 24 hours a day 7 days a week. See my ebook The Ultimate Guide To Online Marketing in which I share some free and some paid for advertising methods which you can use to scale up your business.