The working world has changed drastically due to the 2020 pandemic. As a result, you might be in a position where working a traditional 9-5 isn’t possible, or perhaps you’ve realized how unreliable these “reliable” jobs can be. One way to take control of your career and lifestyle is to start your own business and begin building a life on your own terms.
Another effect of the pandemic is that it has opened up a few different business avenues and opportunities that may not have been viable in the past. Guest author Klay Pineda will explore some of these pandemic-friendly business ideas that you could start in 2021.
Become an online freelancer
Freelancers have been making a living online for several years, but the opportunities in 2021 could be greater than ever. More companies are moving their operations online to get around COVID restrictions, which means there is more work for all kinds of freelancers.
In addition, companies have been forced to have their employees work remotely instead of the usual office set up. The exposure to a remote way of working has opened many business owners’ eyes to the possibilities of employing people no matter where in the world they reside. To take advantage of the opportunities, you can offer various services to companies on a freelance basis. Writing, design, accounts, and search engine optimization are just a few examples of the services you can offer.
A great place to find work is a freelance job board like Upwork. You could even take things a step further and build an entire agency where you could use Upwork yourself to employ others’ services to work for you. If you’re going down the agency route, having a professional website can help drum up business. To get started quickly, use a service like Wix.com for building a site and design applications like Logo Creator to help with your branding.
Create online courses
For similar reasons to the previous point, people have been forced to turn to online resources for educating themselves. Even though online courses have been a proven business model for a long time, They will almost certainly grow during 2021. Not only are many people limited by where they can travel to learn new skills, but a lot of people are also spending more time at home and are using this time to learn some new things. So, if you feel like you have a set of skills or some knowledge people would like to learn, you might have a suitable topic for an online course.
Building a high-quality online course takes a lot of work up-front, but you’ll be able to reap the rewards almost passively once that work is done. The best-selling courses are video courses, so this is the area to put your focus on. If you aren’t comfortable on camera, you might be able to get away with talking over a slide show or a recording of your computer screen, depending on your course subject.
Once you’ve got all of the videos and materials for your course, you can host them on your own website or upload them to a marketplace like Udemy if you don’t have any site-building knowledge. Just be sure you check the terms and conditions if you go down the marketplace route because you will probably lose some control over pricing and other factors.
Open an e-commerce store
As with the two ideas above, shopping is another part of our daily lives moving online to an even greater extent this year. More people buying a wider range of products online creates an ideal opportunity to earn a living from owning an e-commerce store. Of course, e-commerce has a number of advantages over opening a brick-and-mortar store, but one disadvantage is the amount of competition in the online space. More competition means you need to find unique ways to make your store stand out above the crowd.
A great way to differentiate your e-commerce business is to find something you can sell and deliver that few other stores offer. Alternatively, you’ll need to think up creative ways of providing a unique experience to your customers. For example, I’ve seen a few ready-mixed cocktail delivery businesses pop up since the pandemic, which is something a lot of people possibly wouldn’t have thought about buying online in the past.
Another excellent e-commerce idea is to sell homemade or custom-built products. Custom-built products mean you’ll cut the competition down dramatically. The real challenge with unique, custom products is to market them effectively, but you can build an entire brand with loyal customers if you get it right.
About the Author – Klay Pineda has recently turned to freelance writing to share his knowledge in entrepreneurship, growth hacking and marketing. He has worked for several startups in the NorthEast region after graduating from the University of Boston. Besides work and writing he enjoys travel, fine arts and high intensity workouts.
