And one of them doesn’t even require any money!
Dear friend,
No matter where you look, everyone wants to be an entrepreneur nowadays.
And the idea sounds great, doesn’t it?
Be your own boss. Cut the middleman. Receive 100% of your efforts. Make yourself rich instead of a manager or CEO or some faceless corporation.
But I live on planet Earth and I know that sometimes, it’s not as easy as it seems. Why? Because you’re busy.
You wake up early. You rush through breakfast and a shower to beat the early traffic or maybe you’re taking public transport to work. There you’re paid the salary of an intern but do the job of an entire department. Your boss is impossible to deal with and sometimes you think if you only had a different boss, this job could be good.
You come back home, drained, exhausted, both mentally and emotionally. Then instead of resting, you may have to be a good spouse or parent and take care of other kids. By the time evening comes, sleep seems like a reward, a blessing, and you’re happy that you can put your head on the pillow and slip into dreamland.
Just… for a few hours, as at 06:00 AM, your phone will ring and do it all again.
So yes, it’s cool and profitable to be an entrepreneur, but maybe in another universe where the day is 48 hours… or where you don’t have to pay for rent and food for a few months until you get your business off the ground.
I understand you. Many people go through this. Most people do. A lack of time is by far the main reason smart, ambitious people like you don’t start a business or write a book or dedicate yourself to self-improvement activities. It’s nice to do, it’s even important but when? How?
Don’t worry because I’ve got you covered.
This is because today I’ll reveal to you not one, but three online businesses are as part time as they get. This means you can do them in the weekend or they’ll take you less than one hour a day. These are a few of the businesses that can generate you a nice side-income or even replace your main one… without feeling like you’re taking a second job.
And what’s even better, none of these require specialized skills.
You don’t need the writing skills of Stephen King or the coding skills of Bill Gates or to be brilliant entrepreneurial mind like Elon Musk. If you can follow a simple, 1 – 2 – 3 instructions, then you’re on the path to become not only an entrepreneur but a PROFITABLE one.
Sounds good?
Let’s get started then.
Business Idea #1 – Arbitration
You know what’s the heart and soul of commerce?
Buy low and sell high.
This is how people were earning fortunes in Ancient Rome and how fortunes are built now. Well, the life of a trader usually requires a lot of time but there’s a simple model you can use right now.
It won’t earn you a fortune but it will add a few extra hundred dollars to your life, every month, for zero investment and almost no time invested at all.
The idea is simple. You find people who need services like web design or writing or video editing. You can do this by looking on social media or on freelancing website. Then once you get the job, you go to fiverr.com, hire someone for pennies on the dollar and let them provide the service.
Example – Adam needs a book edited, and he’s willing to pay $1.000 for it. You go to Fiverr, hire a book editor for $500 with the advance Adam gave to you. Then you get the work from the cheap editor, send it to Adam and pocket the rest.
All the effort required – a few emails.
It’s not unusual to get a 100% profit margin on this. This is especially true if you’re selling to people who are not tech savvy and don’t know how to find cheap talent online. I’ve seen one guy from Estonia earn about $2500 per month doing this, that’s USD and all he had to do was answer a few emails per day.
What’s even better, he didn’t even do the work himself. He hired a VA for $2.5 per hour to apply to jobs and the same VA would find the best person to do the work. He would just confirm the vendor and the supplier, pay for it (he wouldn’t trust the VA with the money) and briefly review that everything was done to spec.
His total workload? About 3 hours per week. Not bad, isn’t it?
Business Idea #2 – Become An Accountability Coach
Do you like to inspire and help people?
Then you’ll love this.
So some time ago, I was struggling with building a new habit. I’ve found a site that offered me a person to keep me on track with this and the price was about $30 per week.
At $30 / week I said I have nothing to lose so I went along with it.
To make a long story short, it worked.
All this person did was asked me once a day if I did my habit. If I did not, he would ask me why. I think he invested like 30 seconds per day with me. And I was paying $30 in exchange for the privilege.
Now imagine that all you have to do is check-in with ten people per week and earn $300 per week. You send them an email or a question in a chat window. It takes anything from a few seconds to a few minutes if you’re very chatty, although my coach never was.
Isn’t this easy and profitable?
I admit it though – this is not a business per se but rather, an income stream, but if you want to help people, if you are passionate about keeping people accountable and if you want to earn extra money, go for it.
One place where you can sell this is coach.me, which is like a marketplace for this “micro coaching”, although there are many other. I wouldn’t recommend this if it was hard work but since most engagements are less than a minute that’s like $40 – $60 per hour.
And your investment in this?
I think you have to pay for a sign-up fee but apart from this; it is zero. No inventory, no people to pay, nothing. Pure income stream.
Business Idea #3 – Affiliate Marketing (Review Model)
“But wait Imran, isn’t affiliate marketing like complex?”
Yes, it can get complex. I know affiliate marketers who have 50+ people on their team.
And they’re earning millions of dollars per year.
But if you’re just starting out, you can make it a lot simpler than this. How? Well, write reviews on what you’re passionate about. Maybe you’re passionate about technology like mobile phones. Or books. Or video games. Or cars. Or wine. I don’t know – whatever rocks your boat.
Write about something that makes sense to you because in this way, it won’t even feel like work. Then sign up for Amazon’s affiliate program and each time someone buys from you, you’ll get a small commission.
For example, let’s say I write a review on a power bank I’ve bought. I explain the pros and the cons and I post it online. Then when people look for a review on that product, they’ll reach me. At the end there is a link to Amazon, an affiliate link. If they buy through that, Amazon will reward me with a part of the sale.
What’s great about this is that you can do it on your own terms. You can write a review per week or one per day. Or if you’re comfortable on camera, you can do it on video. As long as you get the traffic, on your site or social media, you’re good to go.
And some products bring huge payouts! Sure, the payout on a power bank is not that high but if you review a $5000 big-ticket item, even 5% of that is $250.
These are three models you can use right now.
They require a minimal time investment and apart from some token fees, are as investment free as they get. Sure, I can also talk about Amazon and drop-shipping or about information publishing or about blogging and other business models, but these take more time. The three I’ve presented to you are as entry level as they get.
You have no excuse to not do them, as they don’t take time, they don’t take money and they take no special skills.
So which one of these make most sense to you?
Let me know in the comments below.
Best regards,
Imran
