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If you’re a maker—whether you DIY soap, candles, sauces, or pottery—you’re in a unique position to find an online business idea, because product development and procurement are literally in your hands.
Unlike many of the other ideas on this list, you will need to consider shipping and inventory management, but you can start out simple on a per-order basis or with a small batch until you start generating consistent sales.
In fact, many makers on Shopify started out with a part-time home-based business, selling on Etsy or to friends and family, growing into full-time business owners after establishing demand for their products.
Just be mindful of any regulations in your product category, especially for anything customers will eat, inhale, or put on their skin.
Brooklyn Candle Studio is one of many maker-owned businesses on Shopify that started on Etsy.
And Arounna Khounnoraj and John Booth are a couple who have been operating bookhou, an online and physical shop selling handmade homegoods and functional bags.
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In today’s connected world, the ability to capture and keep the attention of others is an asset. It’s one that many businesses are even willing to pay for, and one that many creators are able to convert into a business with multiple revenue streams.
Whether you choose to grow your following on YouTube, Instagram, or a blog (ideally a combination of different channels), you have many avenues for monetizing your audience:
Taking an audience-first approach to your small business idea means you’re playing the long game (it might be months until you’ve figured it out). But you don’t need millions of followers to do it—Instagrammer Kat Gaskin, for example, pulled off a $10k product launch with only 3,000 followers.
Kat Gaskin's personal Instagram account links to her Shopify store, The Content Planner.
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The pet industry is ripe with opportunity for all kinds of small business ideas. And it’s an industry worth nearly $100 billion, so it’s an easy business to start, with guaranteed demand. Your pet business could be product- or service-based—selling accessories, food, and toys, or offering grooming, walking, or training expertise.
Perkie Prints makes personalized printed pet products—everything from apparel to framed prints and fun projects in between.
On the service side of things, Let the Dog Out offers dog walking and “bathroom breaks” to his customers.
Why put yourself in one box? If you want, make your pet business a combination of both products and services. Vancouver-based company barking babies is a boutique, spa, kennel, pet store, and puppy-training facility rolled into one.
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Online memberships aren’t just a hot new business idea that materialized from people being required to stay home during the COVID-19 crisis. Online memberships are ideal for entrepreneurs with an established active and engaged community. They work much like a subscription-based business—customers make recurring payments in exchange for a virtual product or service.
Memberships are great for managing members-only access to content on a website, and even for physical businesses that offer guided sessions online. Yoga studios, gyms, clubs, and art schools are a few examples of businesses that can easily take advantage of this low-investment business model.
Since this content is behind a gate that only paying subscribers can access through their customer account, you can also host exclusive livestreams in addition to (or instead of) downloadable content.
Regardless of the route you take, be sure to record in a quiet space so the audio is clear and distraction free.
It’s also a good idea to use email marketing to keep your members informed of new content. Emails, video teasers, and customer testimonials are great ways to build excitement for new launches.
And it’s easy to start your membership-based business in Shopify. Set up a new product just like you would for a physical product, but create a name and description that tells people about your membership services.
Make sure to unselect “This is a physical product” to remove shipping options at checkout. (Note: Some of the setup required might change depending on which apps you choose to use later in the process!)
If you want to offer different options for your memberships, create variants. You can set different prices for each option and limit the number of times available, if needed, by editing each variant.
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The small business ideas we’ve covered might be easier to run when it comes to logistics, but that doesn’t make them easy. There are at least three things you should keep in mind as you consider your options, no matter what business you decide to start.
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As with any business, marketing is what unlocks your success. It’s not enough to know that there’s demand for your products—you need to figure out ways to reach the people that are most likely to buy them. You need to get the right visitors to discover your products.
Luckily, marketing is a lot easier when you’re catering to a specific audience or identity (e.g., vegans, board game lovers, photographers in your city). You can produce social media content that resonates with these people or run ads that target their interests. Taking this approach also helps you project a consistent brand because you’ll have a more specific idea of who exactly you’re talking to.
Think about how you can zero in on a specific audience for your products and how the business you build can serve them. If you already have a sizable audience (a blog, a YouTube channel, or an Instagram account), maybe you can even find a way to base your business off of that existing audience.
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Price your products too low and shoppers might assume they’re low quality. Price them too high and you risk scaring some customers off. In any case, you’ll need to find a sweet spot that also lets you factor in the cost to acquire customers and offer discounts, especially if you plan on paying for ads.
With many of the small business ideas we’ll explore in this post, you may not be shipping your products, but you still need to cover the cost of shipping. Consider your shipping costs and how they will vary in the different countries you want to serve.
Many online sellers try to bake their shipping costs into their retail price so they can offer free shipping, or at least a reasonable flat rate. Others focus on encouraging shoppers to add more items to their cart with conditional free shipping (e.g., free shipping on orders over $50) to maximize their profit.
At the end of the day, your prices can be tweaked and you can experiment with a variety of pricing strategies until you find one that works for you.
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The pursuit of perfection can be one of the biggest hurdles in getting a business up and running. Keep in mind that nothing is set in stone.
Products can be swapped in and out fairly easily (especially when you’re not stuck with stock). Your store can be redesigned. Your prices can be adjusted.
You can switch to a better supplier. And you can validate all of these decisions based on the dozens of signals you have at your disposal (traffic, how much time people are spending on your site, reviews, abandoned carts, etc.).
If your idea just isn’t working out the way you planned, think about how you can pivot before you quit.
There are aspects of your business you can always salvage if you try a different product or approach. The brand you invest time into creating and the followers you amass on social media or in your email list can be assets you repurpose for your next business idea.
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Thanks to a combination of technology, third-party suppliers, and the ability to quickly test ideas online, it’s easier than ever to build a business and start making sales without getting caught up in sourcing products, renting space, and managing inventory.
With this approach, you can test ideas before you invest in them, or start making money on the side without all the inventory-related commitments that might stand in your way.
The small business ideas covered above can even be combined in a variety of ways to start a business that’s uniquely yours. If the idea of sourcing, storing, and shipping inventory kept you from starting a business before, begin with an inventory-free, low-investment business model and grow from there.
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To start a business, you need more than just a dream. To put the wheels in motion, you’ll need to:
There are many ways to come up with good business ideas of your own. You or someone you know might have a poor personal experience with a company—and you know you can do better. Or maybe there’s a complete gap in the market: for example, demand for a specific product but no one meeting it. Other ideas come from everyday moments, in the shower or right before you fall asleep.
If you’re feeling stuck for business ideas or want to come up with more, there are a few ways to brainstorm even further. Write down all your ideas. Keep a brainstorming board, be it tactical or digital, and plaster your ideas there whenever they come to mind. Then revisit it with fresh eyes. There’s power in numbers, too. Recruit help from colleagues or friends and family to brainstorm new ideas. Survey your existing customers or audiences and get their ideas. Look at what people are saying on social media or searching for online. Start with lots of ideas and then refine your list to the top ideas to explore further.
Entrepreneurs have a few options when it comes to legal protection of their small business ideas, both now and in the future. The right one depends largely on the types of businesses you’re talking about.
One of the toughest but most important parts of starting a business is finding the money to get your idea off the ground. There are a few ways to get funding for your business idea:
Illustration by Eugenia Mello
Braveen Kumar
Braveen Kumar is part of the content team at Shopify where he develops resources to help aspiring entrepreneurs start and grow their own businesses.
