3 Online Business Ideas You Can Start With Low Investment

In this post, I am going to share with you the 3 online business ideas that you can start with a very little investment and can be turned into large community-driven businesses.

The good thing is that you do not need to create content, users create content for you.

Yes!

There are some social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where the content is user-generated / community-driven.

You create tweets for Twitter and post images and videos on Facebook or Instagram. These platforms use your content for engagement and eventually build a large community that has the power to run large businesses.

Right?

And you can have the same business model where you use community-driven content to build a business.

The only thing you need to do is ‘manage and store user-generated or community-driven content to engage more people.’

I am not going to tell you how to start a social media platform, instead, start a sustainable online business platform that can gather more people around your business and earn you good money that you never thought you can earn with a regular job.

So here I will show you 3 online business ideas to start your online business.

Let’s get started…

 

1. Micro Job/Freelance Marketplace  

If you ever think of starting a gig business platform to help people get their small tasks done in time, then starting a Micro Job OR Freelance marketplace could be a great idea.

It’s a platform where customers are the companies, individuals, and businesses who hire experts in their field to get their work done in time.

There are three steps in this business…

• Experts or freelancer post their expertise to get hired
• Businesses/individuals are the customers who hire experts/freelancers
• Business Platform: A platform where these businesses or individuals find experts to get their micro job done.

The business model is pretty much similar to Fiverr.com but you can make it more specific to keep the quality top-notch.

Fiverr is the most popular platform enabling people to make money from their skills. But the only downside is that it’s not specific and this is why gig quality is not what is expected.

But you can improve these two things in your model to build a solid business to provide top-notch services.

Now let me tell you what steps you need to take to start a micro-niche platform to build a big online business from home.

• First of all, you need a domain name for your business. [How to pick & buy a domain name wisely]
• Once you have a domain name, you need to buy a hosting server. Initially, you can try a baby plan of HostGator and later migrate to the VPS or dedicated server to handle database & high traffic.
• The process is quite similar to starting a blog.
• The next thing is to design your business platforms. You can either hire a professional or buy an affordable theme with all the essential features.
• Once everything is ready, it’s time to make a financial plan for business promotion. It includes blueprints of how to encourage experts to join your platform and how to get more eyeballs on your business.

This is how you can start a micro job marketplace.

No business can survive without profit. So it’s time to grow your business so that you can make a good profit. 

For this, you need experts who want to sell their services on your platform and customers who can buy these services to get their job done in time remotely.

It’s a win-2 situation for both. But the question comes about how you make money out of it.

Simple…

Here are a few ways you can make money with your micro job marketplace…

#1. Service charges:

You can always take 1% as a service charge (and min $1) from your customers.

For example, if an expert sells a service of logo designing for $5, you can charge an additional $1 to your customers. It means the customer has to pay $6 for the same service.

This is how you can make $1 or more depending on how big the plan is and how many customers reach out to your business.

#2. Promoting other’s services:

Another way to make money is to ask your gig publishers (experts or service providers) to promote their gigs.

It’s very similar to advertising services on your platform to get more customers to a gig.

In this way, you’ll make money from advertising.

This is how you grow your platform.

 

You can use these themes to start a MICROjob Marketplace Business

 

 

 

 

 

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2. Q&A / Forum

Do you Remember Quora? I hope you do…

It’s the world’s largest Q&A platform having over 300M active users monthly.

What is the QUORA business model?

It’s “Advertising”… similar to Google ads / Facebook Ads.

(Similarly, you can talk about the warrior forum, if you’re about to start a Forum site.)

Quora has now become one of the most popular platforms that drive over 500M page views every month.

The best thing is that all content is generated by users. They ask questions on Quora and get answers from other users.

Moreover, it has enabled the monetization of valuable questions to attract more people to engage with the platform.

Quora makes money with advertising and you can do the same.

Let me tell you how you can start a Q&A site and turn it into a profitable home business.

For this, again you have to buy a powerful hosting and domain name.

Once you have both, it’s time to design your Q&A site.

Either you can hire a web developer to make a custom design or buy a premium WordPress theme.

It’s your choice. But you can always try the Q&A Engine theme to start a Q&A site or try the forum engine theme to start a forum site.

So far, you have a fully designed site and now it’s time to turn it into an active business.

Steps you can take to start a Q&A site and earn money with community-driven content…

• First, allow users to ask questions and get valuable answers. It may take 1 -2 years to have a great collection of questions and answers. This is all about user engagement.
• As time passes, the number of users will be increased. Which means more content and more traffic.
• Once you start driving decent traffic, you’re ready to place the advertisement. This is the first monetization process to start making money initially.
• Here you are the manager of community-driven content. All you need is to manage your database and also follow the best SEO practices to drive organic traffic.
• To grow your platform, you can offer referral rewards to users for promotion. For example, a referral program and free giveaways can encourage users to invite new users.
• As your business grows, you can contact companies to serve direct ads on your site. These could be big-money opportunities for your business. 
• As your platforms help people to get their problems solved, you can have great opportunities to make more money online including displaying ads, direct advertising, selling digital products, and more.

This is how you can make money with community-driven content on Q&A or forum community sites.

You can use these themes to start your Q&A sites…

 

 

 

 

 

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3. Job Portal

The 3rd online business idea is a “JOB PORTAL”. It’s a job marketplace where people can find the latest job opportunities.

You might underestimate the power of Job portals but the online recruitment industry is valued at over $30 billion. And you can start your job portal business to take one slice away from it.

It could take a lot more time to create a job portal and grow it into a profitable online business.

But there are third-party job search engine platforms offering an API to have the job database to have your own job portal site.

You can search for a keyword like “job portal API” on Google to find the best Job API.

Once you have the database, you’re in the position to start your own job portal.  

 

Take the following steps to start your business…

• Find a niche: It’s important to find what type of job you are going to post on your job portal. It could be a remote job, a work-from-home job, or maybe other job listings based on your interest or popularity.
• After that, it’s time to buy a powerful hosting and domain name.
• The next step is to design a custom job portal. (You can hire a web designer or use a premium job portal WordPress theme ).
• The most important thing you need to do is to set up a job portal API to get the latest job openings.
• Once you set up your business, it’s time to grow your business. For this, promote this job engine on social media platforms; especially on LinkedIn.
• As traffic grows, you can monetize it using AdSense or other third-party ad networks. You can also charge a fixed price if any company, individual, or business asks you to post their job ads.

This is how you can start a job portal and make money.

 

You can use these themes to start a JOB Portal

 

 

 

 

Over To You

Here I have shared with you the 3 online business ideas that you can start from home with a very low investment.

Either you start a job portal or a Q&A site, you are helping users find jobs and answering their questions.

The cool thing is that you don’t need to create content. Everything is community-driven. You just need to represent things in a different manner.

These are not theoretical business models, every one of these businesses is established already. So learn from those businesses and make your business model more powerful.

In the end, I just want to ask you to choose one business model you want to work on.

Love this guide, please share it on social media platforms sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit to help people find business opportunities.