Quick wins, safe leap
There are four steps to test, validate, and launch a profitable side business.
- Step 1: Get your business idea inspiration from this website.
- Step 2: Develop your minimum viable product based on researched assumptions.
- Step 3: Test and validate your minimum viable product with your customers in established marketplaces.
- Step 4: Scale-up, find new ideas or ditch your idea or business plan.
Step 1: Get your business idea inspiration from this website
Get your creative juices flowing by browsing the comprehensive list of money-making ideas from this website.
Brainstorm different ideas that excite you. Push the boundaries of your imagination. There are so many creative things you can do to make money. It’s just whether you want to or not.
Whatever your reasons are for really wanting to leave your 9-to-5 job, the key is to carve out a niche that makes sense for you, where you can give people value, and solving their problems and pain points.
Here’s the kicker. You have access to a list of great ideas. But if you don’t know what to do with the information, it’s totally useless to you. Knowing what to do with the information and using a proven but safe strategy is vital to turn your business idea into profit quickly.
Step 2: Develop your minimum viable product based on researched assumptions
Just like Google is the place you first go to for performing Internet searches, there similar websites like Amazon, eBay, Udemy, and Fiverr where people will first go to search online for products or services to buy. This includes searching for your product or service assumption.
For any online business, Internet traffic is the key to making money. If people don’t know about your website, and your product or service, there will not be any sales.
No traffic, no sales.
Unlike traditional bricks and mortar businesses where you can drive pass them and take notice, driving Internet traffic to a website can be very difficult and challenging. For the Internet, traffic can only be derived from organic searches, social media, referrals, and direct.
There’re countless techniques, tactics and Internet strategies you can use to drive traffic to your website. There’s no shortage of people trying to sell you solutions and tactics to drive Internet traffic to your website.
But if you are starting out, these tactics can be very overwhelming and costly, especially in terms of time or money.
Apart from Internet traffic, you need time and money to set-up your own website. You need a web hosting, a domain name, a content management system like WordPress, and you need lots of time and technical expertise to put them all together. Or you can pay someone else to do it for you. It’s just too hard, too overwhelming, too costly, and too time-consuming, especially when you first start out.
That’s where established marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Udemy, and Fiverr comes in handy. These websites are already well known. There’s a good amount of Internet traffic going to these established websites. People who visit these websites are your potential leads. People go to these websites as visitors wanting to buy something. Chances are, these visitors are already motivated to buy, which is good news for you.
All you need to do now is to divert a fraction of the visitors to an established website into your ‘store’ and convert them into paying customers. The main headache of driving Internet traffic to your own website has now been taken away from you should you adopt this strategy.
All you need to passionately do now is to put up a great offer that passersby will stop by your ‘store’ and make a purchase. You need to concentrate on giving the best offer to your customers.
That’s why it’s absolutely vital for you to know your customers well and get your services or products good enough for them before spending time building your own website. It’s the last thing you should do.
Here’s the deal.
If you love to write, go to marketplaces like Medium, and Ezine Articles.
If you have creative skills to sell, go to marketplaces like 99Designs, Behance, Coroflot, CrowdSpring, DesignCrowd, Dribbble, Fiverr, and UpWork
If you have technical skills to sell, go to marketplaces like Envato Studio, Fiverr, Freelancer, Guru, Project4Hire, Toptal, and UpWork
If you want to sell courses and education online, go to marketplaces like Codecademy, SkillShare, Teachable, Treehouse, Udacity, and Udemy.
If you have digital products to sell (either your own or purchased from third parties), go to marketplaces like Affpaying, Amazon, ClickBank, CJ Affiliate, Gumroad, JV Zoo, Max Bounty, Offervault, PayLoadz, Peer Fly, Warrior Plus, and WeLoveAffiliates.
If you have physical products to sell, go to marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Fancy, Gumtree, Handmade, Newegg, ShareASale, Tophatter, and Wish.
If you have professional services to sell, go to marketplaces like Freelancer, Gigbucks, Guru, and UpWork.
If you are a handy person or like to run errands for people, go to local or geographical marketplaces like Craigslist that advertise micro-jobs to their visitors.
There’s no shortage of YouTube how-to videos to get you started selling your services and products using one of these established marketplaces.
Step 3: Test and validate your minimum viable product with your customers in established marketplaces
When you use an established marketplace, all you need to do is to learn about yourself, business processes, and pinpoint what services or products people are willing and able to pay for.
There’s no cost and time outlay on your part to get Internet traffic and building your own website.
Certainly, there will be some marketing and copywriting to do. But this is not as much as having your own website. There’s not much pressure to spend more of your limited time on your own website.
You learn and grow through testing and validation. You learn from your failures. You also learn from successes with your customers, products, and services, and yourself.
You test and validate until you find the financial sweet spot where your service or product can fully solve your customer’s problems or pain points at an acceptable price in a market or niche where there’s not many options for your customers.
Until you give it a go, you don’t know many things about yourself. You don’t know about your capabilities and interest in sustaining a business and developing and launching products and services. You don’t know whether your services or products will be demanded by people so that you can make a sustainable living from it, perhaps even quitting your day job and going full-time.
By giving it a go, you will not regret the fact that you did try to start a side gig. It’s only when you do try that you will know and appreciate who you are.
Step 4: Scale-up, find new ideas or ditch your idea or business plan
Don’t just suddenly quit your day job to pursue a startup business idea. You need a plan and a steady stream of income first. Don’t take unnecessary risks.
This step is really a decision point for you to make.
Scale-up your product or service if your customer loves what you offered them during the testing and validating stage. Do more of it.
In scaling up, you can now think about having your own website to sell these winning products or services to your customers. You can slowly redirect them from established marketplace ‘store’ to your own website over time. Always capture their email addresses and move them from cold leads to hot leads and ultimately as paying customers.
If your idea has a small glimmer of hope, you could either ditch your plan to start a business or continuously improve and refine your original idea. Ditching your desire to start and own a business is acceptable.
If your idea has a bit more potential, you could continue working on it, testing, refining, and validating until you can scale it up. Speed of implementation is important to ensure that you are not stuck in the testing phase forever.