Taking the leap and going full-time on your own business is tough!

I started my online business part-time before going full-time a year after starting.

There’s no reason that you have to take the huge plunge into entrepreneurship all at once. First, I’d actually recommend dipping your toes in the water with a sustainable part-time business.

With the start of the new year, I thought I’d outline some of the part time business ideas that I’ve had recently, and a few that you can steal for yourself!

Online Businesses

1. Set up an ecommerce store. If you’re passionate about making clothing items, design-related products, or other products, you can sell them through an ecommerce store. I’d recommend setting up a store with Shopify, which is a pretty easy to use site builder.

The reason why this can be a part time business is that you don’t have to physically be there to take orders! Your website will accept them automatically.

The challenge with this business will be shipping your products around the world. Depending on your volume, you could use a fulfillment house to make life easier.

2. Use drop shipping and white label products. If you’re not a creative type, but still want to explore ecommerce, you could consider using drop shipping and selling white label products. Drop shipping is when the manufacturer will ship the goods directly to your customers on your behalf (learn more).

There are some great podcasts out there on this topic, like Ecommerce Fuel and My Wife Quit Her Job. Believe it or not, Neil Patel is using this approach with his “$100,000 blog challenge.”

3. Start a blog and monetize. Blogging is how I started my part time business! I just started writing about a topic that I was passionate about and an audience that I wanted to serve. This approach is now known as “content marketing” or building a relationship with your customers before you bring up any kind of sales pitch.

You can create a blog pretty easily using WordPress and Bluehost, which is how I’ve set up multiple blogs. Once it’s set up and you’ve chosen your niche, have started producing content, and begun to collect email addresses, it’s time to consider different monetization possibilities.

You can:

• Use advertising programs like Adsense or BuySellAds
• Offer native ads, like BuzzFeed
• Sell digital products or services
• Become the affiliate for a product owned by another company and get a commission on sales.

I’ve tried all of these! Each blog is different and it takes a little bit of time to figure out which is a best fit for yours. I’ve grown my blog to 1 million visits in 2015 (not this one).

4. Launch a YouTube channel. I am in the beginning stages of experimenting with YouTube, but from what I’ve read, I know that it’s unwise to rely on advertising revenue on YouTube. Creators are paid pennies on the dollar.

I would focus on either creating a channel that is entertaining OR informative. If you can do both, more power to you, but it does take a long time to create and edit videos for YouTube. Oy!

From what I’ve read and my experience thus far, it makes the most sense to use your YouTube channel to develop a relationship with your viewers and then use bonuses as incentives to get them on your email list, where you can them interact with them and introduce them to your products or services, which solve concrete problems.

You can also monetize by joining a YouTube network or using Patreon (Here’s a Guide to Patreon).

5. Offer services and virtual consulting. Ultimately, this is probably the fastest way to set up an online business. Why?

Because customers are far more likely to purchase your time than your products initially, particularly if you have years of experience in a particular industry.

This part time business really depends on your skill set and knowledge base. The question is…how can you help others? How will your experience benefit their business or their life? You could offer consulting services via Skype, phone call, or even do group mentoring.

I know that the idea of working more even after your full time job isn’t appealing, but offering services and virtual consulting can be a great way to get to know your customer base and begin to establish relationships in your industry.

You can easily set up a website using SquareSpace, Wix, or WordPress + Bluehost. I also offer virtual services/mentorship.

6. Start a podcast, like me! Believe it or not, but I’ve outlined exactly how I got over 20k podcast downloads and 10k+ views on a new blog in 2015 (see my podcasting guide).

A podcast, like a YouTube channel, is a great way to develop a relationship with a set of customers and entice them onto your email list before you introduce them to quality products or services.

Since podcasting is a rich and younger medium, RPM (revenue per 1,000 downloads) is still high and you can get a quality sponsor for your show, if you have the numbers.

The other reason why I think that podcasting could be the start of a great part-time business is because you can record a bunch of episodes in bulk and play them later!

This means that you can spend a whole two days of a weekend recording podcast episodes and have them go out over the next month. Be sure to check out these podcast storage sites, as you’re going to need a company to host the media files for your podcast.

7. Make a course on Udemy, Lynda, or your own website. If you’d like to share your knowledge in a scalable way and don’t have your own website, you can always put up training videos on websites like Udemy or Lynda.

This can be a great way to establish authority in a niche, get feedback on your content, and make some money at the same time, which can be used to expand your part-time business.

I do think that the majority of meaningful income would come from hosting your own course on your own website, because you can more easily be in charge of the pricing and layout. You are also going to be more motivated to market the course if you know that it’s all dependent on your efforts.

I have experience creating courses on my own website, but I have not yet put a course on Udemy.

8. Create a membership website or forum. While I have not yet created a paid membership website, I’m thinking about it and I’ve already built a successful forum (one of the largest in the industry) with 5k+ members.

The benefit of having a membership website is that users must pay a monthly recurring amount in order to gain access to the interaction and content. The downside is that you must continually be creating new content and spurring engagement.

The benefit of having a forum is that you can sell advertising and services or products through the forum. But, it takes a lot of work to set up and get a community going. I put together a guide on how I built my forum community (learn how I built up my forum here).

I’ll have to let you know if I decide to create a paid membership website. There are a lot of successful ones out there like Fizzle and even the Suitcase Entrepreneur’s Freedom Collective.

9. Code software or templates. This one is a tricky subject! I also would NOT recommend going full-time on a software startup unless you have funding or your company is ramen profitable. Otherwise, you’re probably going to be burning through your savings until (or if) you get product-market fit.

The key here is your ability to crank out code regularly and iterate on your software product until you have something that users want and are willing to pay for, or use on a consistent basis.

You can use your full time job to finance offshoring or outsourcing, but I’d recommend having very detailed wireframes for your developers to work off of, or at the very least some coding knowledge so that you can supervise them. Otherwise, it will be a mess!

If you’re going to be doing your own coding, just make sure that you don’t work on your project at all during the time you’re at the company, and to review your work agreement to make sure that you’re not breaching any elements of your contract, or your employer could end up owning the source code.

Note: I have tried and failed at several software startups haha.

10. Freelance on Elance, Upwork, or Freelancer. Alongside service-based businesses, this is probably the easiest way to get up and running with a part time online business. You can use sites like Elance, Upwork, or Freelancer to find work and to generate a bit of a side income before going full-time on your business.

Offline Businesses

11. Real estate or rental properties. If you have enough saved, you could look into making real estate, specifically rental properties your part-time business.

12. Offering physical services. By this I mean that you could set up a cleaning service, baking service, catering service, offer dog walking, snow blowing, gardening, a moving service, handy man services, and more. Just go on Craigslist and check out some of the gigs or offer one and see what happens.

13. Coordinate the services of others. Although this is kind of a web-based idea, you can also do it as a physical business. All you need is a telephone.

To give you a bit of a background, I was reading this thread on Reddit one day which details the story of how a man made over $2 million by coordinating services like Lawntribe, Wet Shave Club, and Maids in Black.

If you’re good at marketing or selling, you can get work for others and profit from a commission or fee on top of the service.

Where should you begin?

Great question! First, begin by subscribing to this blog ;).

That way, you can share your journey with me and receive weekly helpful emails about building up your own business!

Next, take action in a small way! Whether that’s deciding on a domain name, setting up the website, telling your friend about your idea, or talking to potential customers. Just DO something.

Great things come when you take action!