Let's talk about online business ideas to help you create some additional streams of income during the current downturn. If you were googling online business ideas you probably came across many articles such as "20 Online Business Ideas" and " Online Business Ideas You Should Copy in 2024." From a quick look at them, most of them provide very weak guidance of diverse online business ideas such as Social media consultant, Virtual assistant, SEO consultant. Those ideas are not suitable for most of FIRMSconsulting community as people within our community tend to be highly educated and highly skilled, particularly when it comes to complex problem-solving. So we put together a list of online business ideas more relevant to our audience.

In the previous article, we addressed the importance of taking the recession very seriously. If you are currently working and have not read that article, please read that first as it covers some crucial steps required to prepare for a recession before you even consider online business ideas for your potential own business on the side. Such steps as updating your resume and making yourself indispensable at work should be prioritized in most cases.

You need to start taking steps now to prepare to help you weather the recession. If your job is secure the best investment of your time may be to make yourself even more indispensable for your organization. But if you think the best investment of your free time right now is to start a business on the side, below are some online business ideas for you to consider.

In this article, we list 10 online business ideas for you to consider to help you create a Plan B as we are entering a recession. There are, of course, many online business ideas to consider. But given that we are entering a recession and that FIRMSconsulting community members are generally highly skilled, we will focus on online business ideas that have a high chance of making money during a recession and leverage higher skill level.

The primary rule of online business:
It is about the customer.

As you are considering various things you can start on the side focus on what customers actually need, especially in current difficult times of economic downturn and hardship. What are customers' biggest issues that you can help them with?

Online Business Ideas to Consider: #1 Start a Blog and Monetize It

Tens of thousands of business owners are creating profitable blogs on topics as diverse as surfing, scrapbooking, travel, excel modeling, negotiation, marketing and more. If you are passionate about a certain topic most likely there are many people out there who are just as passionate as you.

You need to create a blog that matters to you.

What does blog do for you? It creates an audience. A blog attracts potential buyers. And a blog is an asset that will continue sending visitors to your site for many years.

Some ideas for the topic of your blog are:

• Financial Modeling

• Organizational Design

• Strategy

• Consulting Lifestyle

• Business Travel

• Public Speaking

• Communication Skills

• Business Analysis

• Market Research

• Time Management

• Productivity

• Language Learning

• Personal Development

• Healthy eating

• Self-Employment

• Entrepreneurship

• How to lose weight

• Photography

• Lean Start-up

It's really easy to start a blog these days.

Online business ideas to consider: #2 Business Coaching

If you can help people make money they will be happy to pay you a portion of their additional earnings. The key here is to make is risk free for clients to work with you, while also protecting yourself. For example, you can work with them for a week to help them improve their revenue, without damaging long-term health of the business. You can agree to work for free until they make additional revenue and, at that time, they pay you a commission. Once you showcase your abilities to the client, you can then figure out terms that are fair and continue working together.

Online business ideas to consider: #3 Local Business Consulting

During a recession local businesses will be strugling to survive and they will pay somebody who will help them weather this recession. This is similar to idea #2, only here you focus on local businesses. There will be many businesses around you during recession who are barely hanging by a tread. They will be willing to pay you for results. Deliver results to them, via a free short project or a free short project where you only get paid once you deliver results. And once you build some trust, you can renegotiate the terms.

Conclusion

People are struggling to find clients because of a lack of value and risk involved. Remove risk, deliver value, and people would gladly work with you.