5 Creative small online business ideas for anyone to make money in 2024

If you feel productive and have some spare time but can't decide what to do, we have prepared a list of creative small business ideas for inspiration.

We live in a tech-driven world, and innovations and new developments re-shape our current social, economic and political situation every day. One of the areas that have undergone a big change is our way of doing business.

Now you can start a profitable online business without even leaving the comfort of your home. In the old days, starting a new business required huge capital investments. But now, with online business options, you can start a business from scratch with no money or with a small startup investment.

5 Creative Small Business Ideas for Anyone!

Starting a small online business comes with many benefits in terms of profitability, accessibility and self-improvement. So, if you are interested in discovering more, let's get down to business with some creative small business ideas!

With the new possibilities of online platforms, you can start an online business without any monetary resources or with a small startup investment. These small online business ideas will give you flexibility as you will be working remotely in your free time or making money as a student on the side. By implementing effective time management strategies, you can efficiently balance your business activities with other responsibilities, maximizing productivity and success.

#1 Start a Blog

If you trust your creativity and writing skills, managing a blog can be a good option for you as an online business idea. There are millions of blogs on the internet right now. So, to build a profitable blog, you need to create high-quality content on a regular basis.

Moreover, it will be easier for you to make your online business idea profitable if you pick a niche and narrow down your target audience. When you create a specific audience around a subject, this will definitely attract relevant business for advertising.

If you trust your creativity and writing skills, managing a blog can be a good option for you as an online business idea. There are millions of blogs on the internet right now. So, to build a profitable blog, you need to create high-quality content on a regular basis. When starting your business and hiring remote employees, consider implementing an employee rewards program to recognize their contributions and keep them motivated, even from a distance. Consider using glass award plaques as part of your recognition efforts to add a touch of elegance and personal appreciation

Advertising is the main income model of blogs. So, in order to turn your small business idea into a profitable model, first, you need to establish a loyal audience. One of the best parts of blogging is that you don't need any startup capital.  You can start with free blogging platforms. The most commonly used platforms are WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr.

#2 Get Started with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has become a very popular term these days as it has relatively low barriers to entry. It is basically the process of promoting someone else's product or service and earn a commission on the sales generated through your link. The commission rates change regarding the brands, products and clients.

Your revenue highly depends on your marketing performance in this income model. Also, it would be better if you have some basic SEO, copywriting knowledge and social media management skills.

If you are planning to be an affiliate marketeer, we recommend you first investigate the means through which you will promote the products. Social media is the most popular mean for this income model. So, your presence on these platforms and social media skills are very important.

It can be a challenging and time-consuming task to maintain a strong presence on social media platforms. It would be best if you had a big audience and credibility. At this point, you can benefit from social media management tools that will save you money, time and effort in your online business.ü

Circleboom can be highly beneficial for you as it enables you to grow and strengthen your Twitter account.  You can maintain an attractive follower/following ratio to build your audience, discover new content to publish related to your interest, and schedule your tweets when your audience is active on Twitter.

If you do not know where to start with affiliate marketing, you can check Circleboom Affiliate Program and earn up to 1,317$ per year.

Similar to affiliate marketing, referral programs are also a good option to make some money without initial investment. Referral programs differ from affiliate marketing in the sense that its more personal and resemble mouth-to-mouth marketing but online.

For example, passive income app Honeygain has a referral program, where you gain a percentage from each referral you bring. All you have to do is encourage people to sign up with your personal code.

There are numerous referral programs you can choose from, so make sure you figure out all the details before signing up, in order to find the ones that suit you the best.

#3 Create an Online Course

If you are a specialist in a field, we have creative small business ideas just for you! You can create an online course program on your subject with your expertise and deliver it on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platforms.

The massive open online courses (MOOCs) market has the potential to grow $16.01 billion during 2021-2025, and the estimated growth rate for 2021 is 30.50%. If you are an authority in your subject field and trust your training design skills, it can be highly profitable for you.

Besides the MOOC market's attractive growth rate, there is another outstanding advantage of this small online business idea; once you have created your training program, there is nothing left for you to do. You can upload it on an established MOOC platform, and your training program will generate income as people start to participate.

If this creative small online business idea is the one for you, you can check the well-known platforms such as Udemy, Teachable and Skillshare. For more specialized topics, such as CCNA, you should refer to specific CCNA Practice Test and course material to ensure that the content you create is relevant and valuable to your audience.

If you don't want to sit back and wait for your course to generate passive income, you can promote your course via your social media accounts. With Circleboom's Smart Search Tool, you can find your target audience on Twitter and make sure that they hear about your course. All you need to do is determine the keywords, and via Circleboom, you can search these keywords on Twitter profiles, including bio and tweets.

#4 Monetize Skills with Handmade Productions

With the platforms like Etsy, Not on the Highstreet, Shopify and Artfire, it is now easier to monetize your skills if you have an area of expertise or even a hobby. For this creative small business idea, the startup costs highly depend on the product you are making.

Another popular option to sell your handmade products online is to use social media platforms. Even you are not directly selling on these platforms; social media will definitely help you to increase your sales. As the accessibility to handmade products has been increased a lot in the last years, it is now harder for small businesses to stand out.

One of the most effective marketing ideas for small businesses of handmade products is social media. With the help of social media, you can increase your brand awareness and attract more customers.

Always on content can help you to build a loyal audience for your brand. But it is a challenging business. You need to create high-quality content regularly and manage your social media accounts like a pro.

Circleboom's Social Media Publisher can help you discover new content and publish them without excessive effort and time. You can schedule your social media posts in one sitting, and Circleboom will post them automatically right on time. Moreover, you can also find the best time to post based on your audience's activity on the platform.

#5 Master SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of getting more traffic to a website from the relevant search engines in terms of both quality and quantity.

This is very vital for any online business. As the website of a brand appears on top in the related search engine searches, they will be able to generate more traffic to their website and increase their potential sales.

If you want to learn and master SEO, you need to know how to determine the words for the headlines, titles, descriptions, blogs, links, and other types of text content of a website. Also, the computer-programmed algorithms of the search engines change. So you need to update your knowledge constantly. As it is highly crucial for online businesses, the demand for SEO consultants is really high.

If you want to how SEO helps online businesses, we recommend you to check our blog, "Create your local marketing strategy with SEO in 2021".

The hardest part of small online businesses is to take the initial step. After you decide what to do, you should find relevant marketing ideas for small businesses and advertise your business on the right platforms with suitable small business advertising ideas.

Wrapping Up

There are many creative small business ideas if you have the time. These small online business ideas and marketing ideas for small businesses can also help you develop new skills besides the potential revenue they offer. We all have different interests. Your skills can turn into a profitable online business by just sharing your expertise with the world.

Whatever you choose to do as an online business, we recommend using social media platforms as part of your marketing strategy. If you manage your social media accounts effectively, you can easily increase your brand awareness and generate more sales by reaching out to your target audience. If you are interested in managing your social media accounts like a pro, you check our guide for content marketing on social media.