More and more people are becoming interested in becoming entrepreneurs in the online business world.  Online businesses offer a number of advantages over traditional businesses, mainly due to the fact that the startup costs are much lower.  There’s no overhead for a brick-and-mortar store, and if you handle your online business in your own home, your costs are even lower.  Let’s check out some of the most popular online businesses today.

12 Online Businesses Gaining Popularity and Demand

1. Business Coach

A business coach is someone who can mentor new or potential business owners in how to start their businesses.  The business coach can offer suggestions on where to locate a business, how to handle the hiring process, how much cash is required to get the business started, and resources available to new businesses.  The business coach can also walk an entrepreneur through the process of setting up a business, such as proper licensing.

2. Business Plan Service

This is closely related to a business coach but focuses only on one aspect – helping a client start a business.  A business plan service can map out a business and its goals. Generally, they offer financial predictions for the next 3-5 years.  A business plan is a must for every business, as it puts down the goals in writing with a plan for achieving them.

3. Specialized Retailer

While there are countless numbers of online retailers, there is significantly less competition among specialized retailers.  Specialized retailers meet certain, special needs of consumers by selling a single type of product or service within a specific category.  An example of a very successful specialized retailer is Ties.com, which, as the name suggests, sells only quality ties.

4. Social Media Consultant

With the added importance of social media to businesses in today’s world, you can turn your social media skills into their own business.  A social media consultant teaches other business owners how to best utilize social media to benefit their businesses.  For example, status updates, photos, and blogging are all now standard parts of business marketing.  This job involves teaching business owners how to handle that aspect. In addition, the social media consultant may simply handle those duties on contract.

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing as a concept has been around for a while, but it’s been getting increasingly popular over the last couple of years. This is the process of earning a commission by promoting the products of other businesses.  There are four main players involved in affiliate marketing. There’s the merchant (the retailer), the network (which holds offers for the affiliate to choose from), the publisher (the actual affiliate), and the customer.  Most affiliate programs use revenue sharing, pay per sale (PPS), or cost per action (CPA) for compensation, and this is definitely one of the most complex online businesses.

6. SEO Consultant

Search engine optimization is the process of making a business website more friendly to both users and search engines, so that the website will appear higher in search engine results.  An SEO consultant advises businesses on how to design their websites for these higher rankings in search results.

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7. Remote Technical Support

Remote Technical Support is probably one of the most popular career choices for online businesses and almost everyone has had some kind of interaction with remote technical support.  A technician connects to a remote computer from his/her own consoles via the internet and works directly on the remote system.  This relies on a combination of live chat, VoIP, and desktop sharing, which enables long-distance troubleshooting. This way, customers don’t have to actually send the item in question back to the manufacturer.

8. App Development

With the ever-increasing popularity of cell phones and tablets, app development is one of the fastest growing business fields.  There are two main fields of apps: those marketed by Apple, and those marketed by Google.   Apple must approve all Apple apps, whereas the Google apps have virtually no restrictions on them, and anyone can upload their own app to Google Play.

9. Editorial Services

A good portion of editorial services in today’s market don’t require ever setting foot into a physical office.  Editorial services include ghostwriting, copywriting and copyediting, magazine article and book writing, web content writer, proofreading, and indexing.  These services are all vitally important to published articles and books, and most of these services easily conducted over the internet.

10. Desktop Publishing

This is another field closely related to editorial services and refers to the process of designing layouts for books, newspapers, and other published items. Desktop publishers use software to create documents, putting their page layout skills to use on a computer. Again, this is a process that is conducted entirely online and vitally important to all published articles and books.

11. Buying and Selling Domains

This is another online business that is relatively new in its popularity.  No one ever thinks about how domain names come about, but in this business, people speculate on which domain names will be profitable. The old adage, “buy low and sell high,” is the goal.  The profitability of domains depends on their memorability and how suited they are to search engine optimization. People in this business field are constantly trying to analyze domains that they can buy cheaply and sell at a profit.

12. Teaching Online

The internet is full of people trying to figure out how to do something. They need people who can teach them how to do things.  This can include everything from tutoring and how-to videos to demonstrations and lectures, to webinars and tutoring.  More and more colleges are offering online courses, and the rest of the world is catching on. The internet is a great source for learning about topics or how to do various things.

This is really only the tip of the iceberg with how many different kinds of online businesses are possible. Of course, there are some businesses that simply are not possible to be completely online businesses, but there are countless possibilities for ones that can be.