Do you want to try your hand at and/or grab online business opportunities?
The spread of the COVID-19 virus has a lot of businesses closing and shutting down worldwide. That also affects workers. Today, 20.5 million Americans are dealing with unemployment caused by COVID-19.
One way people are dealing with this crisis is by venturing into eCommerce. In this guide, we’ll help you by providing 10 great eCommerce business ideas. Keep reading below to see these 10 ideas and how you can develop them to suit your business style.
1. Social Media Consultancy
Do you often spend your day on any of the various social media platforms? Are you great at managing your various social media accounts? Put your time on social media to good and profitable use by becoming a social media consultant.
Note that you’ll need more than 800 hours on social media to become a consultant. A background in social media marketing is a necessity as well. Knowing photography basics is useful when helping clients manage visual platforms like Instagram.
2. Affiliate Seller
Use your love of a certain line or type of product as an eCommerce focus. Become an affiliate seller or marketer. Your job is to help brands sell their products by talking, writing, or making videos about them.
If you like tech or building computers, make a review blog. If you love playing around with makeup, create a YouTube channel, and talk about them there. Sky’s the limit with affiliate marketing.
3. Web Developer & Web Designer
If you have a background on web development, this is your time to shine. If you don’t have any experience in web design, you can learn the trade from online tutorials and classes. Don’t worry because many tools can help with the job.
If you’re more creative than technical, pick to learn the basics of web design. It’s all about making a striking yet functional website for clients.
Many businesses are looking to make their presence known online. Become a freelance web developer or designer now while the market is wide and open. As a tip, practice often.
4. Content Writer
Does your forte lie in writing interesting content? If your answer is yes, create an online store where you can sell your services. As more businesses turn to eCommerce, not all have the skill for making interesting content.
For example, there’s a small business owner with an automotive eCommerce site. He’s good at fixing cars and is passable at website design, but he needs compelling content to get more visits. He’ll want your services to make that possible.
If your writing style is more technical, you can make instruction manuals or transcribe scientific results.
5. Virtual Assistant (VA)
Do you have experience in the administrative department? If you’re great at organizing and task management, this is the perfect eCommerce job for you. As a VA, your work includes tasks like data entry, answering calls, and scheduling meetings.
You can even open an online VA business without previous experience. Offer your services on platforms like TaskRabbit or Zirtual. If it’s your first time, start slow and focus on one client until you get the hang of it.
6. Niche Market eCommerce Dealer
You’ll find that there will always be customers for all kinds of online businesses. Both the audiences and businesses in small niches want to find each other. A niche eCommerce marketer helps those two parties find each other.
Help businesses in a small niche reach their target audiences through your store. Act as the middleman and sell a manufacturer’s products to your customers. Create a small retail store that sells the products in that niche and focus on those products only.
7. Online Tutor
How good are you at explaining things and getting people to understand vague ideas? If you’re awesome at it, why not become an online tutor? You’ll need tools for video chatting, expertise on a subject, and a passion for sharing knowledge.
You can even tutor foreigners who want to learn your mother tongue. You can even share educational content on small niches like farming or e-sports. Don’t forget to set aside a budget for putting up your ads on sites like Craigslist.
8. SEO Consultant
Here’s another eCommerce business idea for those who’re willing to learn a new skill. SEO or search engine optimization is the lifeblood of digital marketing. It’s also easy to learn from free and paid online courses and tutorials.
SEO is manipulating a brand’s content and marketing so it’ll appear first on web search results. It’s using keywords, content structure, and analytics data to understand visitor behavior. It’s an eCommerce business that offers eCommerce services.
Like other skills, note that understanding and mastering SEO takes time.
9. Digital Health Services
Healthcare providers focus on rising coronavirus cases. This means people with less urgent concerns get less attention. You can help mitigate this problem by setting up a digital health service business.
It’s one of many online business ideas that offer life-changing help. Your job is to help patients and healthcare companies find each other online. It’s as simple as selling and marketing healthcare products for patients that need them.
You don’t need to be a doctor, but you’ll need reliable sources for this line of eCommerce. You also need to make sure that the products you’re selling aren’t counterfeit. Remember, you can affect not only the health but also the lives of others.
10. Remote IT Support
For the last of our eCommerce business ideas, we’ll discuss IT and tech support. As we mentioned, more small businesses are creating their websites to get an edge on the competition. However, many small business owners are new to eCommerce.
Your job as freelance remote tech support is to help smoothen out the kinks in their setup. Help small business owners, especially the older ones, become a little more tech-savvy. As a freelancer, your advantage against IT teams is that you have affordable services.
Use These eCommerce Business Ideas Now
The initial expectation for eCommerce is that it’ll represent 12% of total retail sales in 2020. However, when the coronavirus hit the US and other parts of the world, this expectation shifted. We can see that it’ll embody more than 12% of the year’s total retail sales.
That’s it for our list of eCommerce business ideas. We hope you picked up something useful on our list. If you want to know more about eCommerce, check out our other guides.