Launch a Profitable Side Business Using Nothing More Than Your Skills y Ryan Robinson Updated August 22, 2016 One of t...
Launch a Profitable Side Business Using Nothing More Than Your Skills
Updated
August 22, 2016
One
of the best ways to increase your income and give yourself a solid
foundation by which to grow into self-employment in the future, is
to start a side business of your own.
If
you choose the right business opportunity, there's room for you to
keep growing your customer base on the side, while keeping your day
job. From there, if you take the right steps, you'll be able to grow
your side income beyond that of your day job—and launch into the
world of self-employment.
However,
before you get started, you'll need to first understand the
different ways you'll be going about discovering and validating your
ideal side
business idea.
From
my conversations with aspiring entrepreneurs, one of the most common
mistakes I see being made over and over again when people are
looking for the right side business opportunity, is that they
completely overlook their single best resource: their
existing skill sets.
As
a writer and marketer by trade, I know that with any business I get
into, I'll need to engage my core strengths of crafting compelling
content and getting it in front of a large online audience, in order
to have a chance of being successful and competing with others in my
space.
If
you want to become a successful entrepreneur within your field,
you'll need to engage your strengths. If you're still unsure about
which skills you'll be able to monetize with a side business, take
the Entrepreneur's
Skill Assessment today.
Once
you've determined which strengths you'll plan on leveraging, here
are five ways to turn those skills into a side business.
1. Freelancing
If
you've built up a set of marketable skills throughout your career
and at your day job, you should consider the idea of starting a
freelance business on the side.
There's
a rapidly expanding demand for talented freelance help, especially
in the US with over
54 million freelancers in 2015.
If
your skills include writing, designing, developing, marketing,
social media management, or another high-demand digital skill, then
you're in a great position to start bringing on freelance clients.
Start with building a high
quality portfolio website to
list your skills, showcase examples of your best work, and display
reviews from past co-workers or bosses as you get up and running.
Create a very clear picture of who your target freelance client is
going to be, and make sure you're tailoring your website and reach
out experience to what that person is going to expect.
2. Blogging
One
of my favorite side businesses, albeit a very long term investment
in my future, has been starting a blog and building up a loyal
audience of regular readers. If you're comfortable with the
potential that it may very well take you years to start earning a
decent income from one of the various
ways to monetize a blog,
and you have a knack for building connections with people through
you're writing, then this may be for you.
Be
sure to start with a niche topic that'll give you the opportunity to
become well-respected within a close knit community, before you set
your sights on expanding into a very large market. Your credibility
platform will be of great importance moving forward.
3. Online Coaching
If
you have a marketable skill that others want to possess or get
better at, then there's a market for being paid to coach people,
one-on-one, into an accelerated learning experience. The emergence
of easy-to-use online coaching websites
like Savvy and Clarity.fm already
provide you with a built-in community of people looking to work on
various different types of skills. The most exciting thing about
starting an online coaching business on the side, is that once
you've perfected your teaching experience, you'll be able to easily
package it into a more scalable version--an online course.
4. Online Courses
As
with online coaching, when there's a growing demand for a skill that
you possess, one of the best ways to monetize that ability of yours,
is by creating a genuinely helpful online course for others to go
through at their own leisure. While the set up time and upfront
investments are huge (in terms of your time) with this business
model, it's one of the most scalable online businesses out there
today. Teachable has
become one of the best resources on learning how to launch an online
course business, as well as being the premier online course platform
to power your course content once you have it built.
5. Physical Products
Whether
you have an idea for a new-to-the-world invention, a new spin on an
existing product, or nothing more than selling a product in a new
way or to a new market, there are countless ways to make money
selling physical products on the side. For example, take Neil Patel,
an online marketer who last year launched a challenge for himself
to create
an online business from scratch,
in an industry he knows nothing about (a nutrition blog). Just last
month, he cleared over $22,000 in sales of a product that he white
labels and sells on Amazon.
If
you're willing to get creative, there are a nearly unlimited number
of ways to use your skills and start a side business that'll have
the potential to launch you into a career of self-employment. Check
out the Launch
While Working Formula for
more on how to start and grow a side business while keeping your day
job.
COMMENTS