What are the most lucrative small businesses? Any small business can be lucrative. But what stops a business from expanding and scaling up? Local stores and ‘shop front’ businesses are limited by their location and size. They can grow over time and expand but if a business is physical, it’s growth is expensive, particularly if the business premesis needs to expand. This involves relocating or rebuilding on an existing premesis.
An online business has no such problems. If a business is based solely online, it is inexpensive and convenient to start too.
Most Lucrative Small Businesses To Start
An online business is probably one of the most lucrative small businesses to start. You don’t need any products or even a business of your own either. You can use a pre-existing business model. Starting an online business is much cheaper too, than starting a franchise or a small physical business, for example. With an online business you simply need a range of digital products to promote. You can do this through a website and a sales funnel. See ready made sales funnel.
Most Lucrative Small Businesses – An Online Business
An online business offers flexibility of working hours, location and the ability to scale. Many businesses can scale up with advertising, staff recruitment and physical expansion. However, it is much easier to scale an online business for several reasons:
- Product payment and delivery are automated (with digital products)
- Advertising can be easily scaled
- Email marketing lets you communicate with customers automatically
- There’s no extra staff or larger business premesis needed to expand
Because products are sold through websites, landing pages and emails, scaling up isn’t a problem. In fact scaling an internet based business is simply a matter of changing you advertising budget to reach more people. Once the systems are in place to cater to product delivery on autopilot (see autopilot money making system), you can simply scale up your advertising campaign.
The Right Business Model
Not all online businesses are the same. For example, you can promote physical products and only earn 10% of the sale value. Or you can promote digital products and earn 40%. Even better is to promote subscription products where you are monthly income from single sales. With the right business model your online business can be much more lucrative. Here’s a few other things to consider when looking at an online business model:
- Do you earn for up-sells made later on by the company to your referred customers?
Up-sells can account for a large portion of your online sales revenue. But only if you choose a model which rewards you for them.
- Are the products you choose membership products with regular subscriptions attached?
Subscription products can be much more lucrative. The most lucrative small businesses online pay you for subscription products and up-sells made to your referrals later on. There are a few other considerations too which you should look for when choosing a good business model. Learn more here.
The Affiliate Marketing Model
Affiliate marketing is the promotion of products and services online through referrals. If you recommend a friend to a nice restaurant which you went to, they might go there. You don’t receive a commission though and the restaurant benefits from your referral.
With affilaite marketing your referrals are tracked and by recommending products and services online, you earn commissions. You don’t need to personally own any of the products you promote either. You’re simply the referrer of the customer to the product.
Affiliate marketing is a greta model because it can be done entirely online. You can promote any product you like online and scale up your sales over time. You can do this either with paid advertising or through content generation.
The Power Of Direct Response Marketing For Small Businesses
All small businesses can benefit from the power of direct response marketing. For an online business with automated systems in place and products which can be accessed over the internet, all the more so. Direct response marketing allows anyone to benefit from a larger online presence. Advertising platforms like Facebook, Bing, Yahoo and Adwords all have the ability to target customers who are perfectly suited to your business and products.
What’s even better is that you can decide who to show your adverts to by using certain criteria. For example, with Adwords you can target people who are actively searching for products like your on Google’s search engine. Design your advert to attract only those people who are most likey to purchase and become a customer. Facebook advertising lets you find people by their age, sex, interests and geographical location too. These are just a few of the demographics which let you super target your advertising.
Scaling Your Business With Online Advertising
The most lucrative small businesses can be scaled up with advertising. If a certain business has a limiting factor which means it can only serve a small number of people, then it’s not the most lucrative business. The most lucrative small businesses can be scaled up globally. An online business fits this criteria perfectly.
Scaling up a business is simple once you have set up a profitable campaign. This is done by testing and measuring all aspects of your advertising campaign. Initially you should start with a small budget and cross test your adverts against another one with a tiny difference. Only by testing and measuring adverts against each other can you determine which ones work the best. There are several elements of an advertising campaign which you can test.
Elements Of A Direct Response Campaign
- The landing page – With an online business you can send people to a landing page which collects their email address. This gives you a longer term to build their confidence and trust, provide some value and perhaps talk about how you can serve them with your products and services.
- The advert copy – Headings and advert copy will have a dfferent effect on your traffic. By trying different styles, colours and copy you can determine which works best.
- Target audience – Using the advertising methods described above you can target various different demographics according to what your business does. By testing different cross sections of people according to their interests, age, sex etc. you can determine which target audience best fits your products.
- Email series – With an online business you can set up a pre-made email series. This is a series of emails which goes out on autopilot to your list of subscribers.
Cross testing small changes one at a time (and accross multiple clicks) is the best way to determine which performs the best. See my guide: The Ultimate Guide To Online Marketing.
