Small Online Service Based Businesses – Earning Method 5

What are Small Online Service Based Businesses?

It is a business type where a service provider present anywhere in the world can deliver work through the internet to a client who is anywhere in the world.

Small business just means the business is at a small scale, mostly one to few employees in the company.

These business types are popular recently because of their low investment and high profit margins.

Requirement, Investment

These businesses cost very less to start and require a particular or a bunch of skill sets to conduct the business.

The initial investments typically are internet connection, computer, any software related costs, etc. These service based businesses don’t have to worry about rent or inventory space because they are simply not present in these business types.

One can just get started with skills and few clients and get the business running.

Word of mouth is one of the main drivers for acquisition of clients to these types of businesses because often clients trust others’ advice when choosing a service based business to work with more than outbound marketing or cold calling.

Types of online service businesses

Any skill that is in demand in the market can be turned into a small business.

For example, content creation for brands is one of the most demanded services now.

So it evolves with technology too. Clients’ requirements keep changing and therefore businesses should always be updated and innovated.

Types of Services businesses

1. Freelancing (Writing, coding, designing)
2. Agency (taking on clients)
3. Consulting (sharing your expertise)
4. Website and App building services.
5. Building SaaS products.
6. Commision based sales/Affiliate marketing.

Anywhere you find a demand/gap in the market which you can provide a solution for is an opportunity.

For example, let’s take copywriting. Businesses need copywriters for effective ad campaigns.

So an individual can approach a business for offering his services at a low price in a certain niche.

Like these, we can come up with many service based businesses with USP that have demand in the market.

Pros and Cons of Small Service Based Businesses Online

Pros

1. Reach: You can reach a wide range of audience across the globe. That’s powerful.
2. Low upfront cost to get started: It takes a minimal amount of money to get started with these types of businesses. All you need is skill sets and basic equipment to get started.
3. Hire more employees at low cost: Since it’s a remote job, you can scale it when needed by easily hiring remote workers at low prices all over the world.
4. Flexibility: You choose your working hours which can be a great advantage for people who like freedom.

Cons

1. Competition: Finding clients and convincing them is getting harder day by day as many people start these types of businesses.
2. Trust factor: Since people don’t meet each other, the chances of non payment, abuse can happen.

How to get started?

Let’s say you have a skill, lets say instagram posts creation for businesses.Second, let’s see what exactly that you offer.

Let’s say you offer creation of single post images in the main feed, carousels in the feed, single image story posts and strictly no video content in feed and reels.

Now this is great. You have a certain skill, which is you can create content on Instagram and you know the vibe, and culture of the platform, you know what makes people keep scrolling and whatnot.

Now we have to find a client who can pay us for the skill we know. This is where it gets interesting.

How do I find clients?

1. There are two ways we can go about this. One is the client finding you, and the other one is you reaching to the client.
2. Both have positives and negatives, but when the client reaches you it’s obviously easier to close the deal because there is a strong demand from the client side.
3. Now how will you find the client? Or how will the client find you? That’s the question.
4. There are few ways this can happen. One is it could work like a marketplace like freelance websites, etc where the client posts a work and people bid on it to take it. This one is kind of random, because it’s on a first come first serve basis, luck plays a role here majorly and if you have done enough market research you’d know the demand likely for the service you are providing. This method will yield you positive results when you act fast and when there is less competition.
5. The other method is the client reaching out to you by seeing your content online on different platforms like linkedIn, website, etc.
6. The second method is easier to close the deal because the client trusts you more because of your consistency in your content and sees you as an expert which makes everything easier.
7. Whereas, bidding in the posts of the client in the marketplace has lower rate of success but let’s not forget the trade off is you can get clients much faster MAYBE in marketplaces if there’s LUCK versus creating content and gaining trust both of them takes a substantial amount of time.

What are the other options available other than clients?

1. You can try affiliate marketing as a service based business because here you won’t be taking any clients or orders but you will take up a product and you’ll market it and sell it, which is kind of like half of job, less weight on you, and whenever you make a sale, you get a percentage of a sale, and the percentages can go from 4-80% depending on the product and platform.
2. It looks more like selling products, but there is a slight variation to this. Because it offers all the advantages of service business without a client intervening and there is commision part which compensates for your sales.
3. Consulting is also taking on clients. So the method we discussed above will apply to that.

Is it worth the time and effort?

YES. The initial stage may be difficult because creating consistent content, finding the right clients and gaining their trust could take some time but these can be recurring revenue.

Once you get a client, he may stay with you for a long time and also refer you to his other friends which gets you more clients.

And you also enjoy working from anywhere, getting regular payments, etc. So it’s totally worth it.

And if you don’t want to deal with the clients, you can go for affiliate marketing, which has its own dynamics, pros and cons to it but affiliate marketing is a special one because it’s a blend of already built product, you have the freedom of working anytime anywhere, you know exactly how much sales you made, all you need to do is just market and sell the product to the right people.