4 Business You Can Start Online For 2020

There’s no better time than now to start planning your future and with 2020 around the corner, there’s an even greater sense of motivation.  By planning now, you can start to put everything into place for an early 2020 start. But if you are still in the early stages of developing your idea, what kind of businesses can you start online for 2020?

Use your existing skills to work online

Perhaps the easiest type of business to start is one that makes use of your existing skills to offer them online.    Some of the most popular examples of online services you can offer include:

• Content writing such as blog posts
• Copywriting such as sales pages
• Virtual assistant service
• Bookkeeping and accounting services
• Legal services for other businesses

For example, let’s say you have been working as a personal assistant in a big company for the last few years but want to start your own company.  Then you could offer virtual assistant services that are similar to what you did before but done online. This can be all kinds of tasks such as calendar organisation, proofing notes from meetings, email management and more.

Once you have started your business, you can look to fine-tune the services you offer or who you work with.  Or you can bring others on board to handle services you don’t personally offer. The ability to scale and grow is massive and entirely up to you how you do it.

Get into dropshipping

If you like the idea of selling products but don’t have space for a large inventory, then dropshipping is the answer for you.  This is a method of retail fulfilment where you have a store filled with products without actually having them in stock somewhere.  Instead, when someone buys from your store, you order this item from a third party who then send it directly to the customer. You, the shop owner, never actually handle the product.

One of the big benefits of this kind of retail model is that you don’t need a large amount of capital to get started because you aren’t stocking a shop.  You will need to create an online shop but that can be done for a relatively reasonable investment, especially if you use something like Shopify to get started.  Then you need to work on marketing your shop before looking at widening your product range or other ways to scale.

Start a furniture company (turn your hobby into a business)

Alongside using skills you have to start a business, a popular business idea is to turn your hobby into a business.  In this example, let’s say you make handmade furniture – then you could start your own furniture company.

Because you are selling online, you don’t need a physical store to sell your products or a warehouse to keep them.  You could set up a system where people order what they want and then you make it. This saves having to have loads of stock and the risk of things not selling.  At a later date, you could look to have stock and a physical shop or sell pre-made items.

Subscription box services

It is impossible to avoid subscription box services if you are online for more than 10 minutes and for good reason – people love them!  From collections of recipes to boxes containing makeup, gin or stationery, there are already lots of ideas out there and no reason why you can’t create something unique yourself.

This model will need a little capital to get going and a system for creating the boxes.  But using the dropshipping model could also work for this type of idea. By having a system where people order ahead of dispatch dates, you know exactly how many you need in stock.

Start your business in 2020

These are just four ideas of the types of business you could start online with not too much capital in 2020.  By finding the balance between what you love and what people will pay for, you can find your niche and create your own empire!