7 Businesses / Online Earning Models you should avoid if you’re a Beginner
Hi everyone, I hope you’re having a great day !!
My name is Shubham, and I like to talk about online entrepreneurship. If you are interested in starting then you’re probably well aware that there are so many different online businesses and earning opportunities you can start with. Well, today I’m going to share with you the 7 online earning/business ideas that I recommend not starting if you are a beginner.
Now with that being said a quick disclaimer I know many people who are doing very well in some of these online businesses but if you are a beginner, I don’t see these being good fits and I’ll explain why for each one. All 7 of these are strictly my opinion and I’m just trying to protect you guys if you are new to making money online or starting an online business. I don’t want you to fall into some of these traps that could lie ahead for some of these online businesses.
Now, this isn’t going to be any fluff, so as I go through these I’m going to name what the business is and why I don’t recommend it for a beginner. With that being said, let’s get started :
1. DROP SHIPPING
Now again I definitely know people who are doing extremely well in drop shipping but if you are a beginner there are 3 reasons why I don’t recommend it for you.
1. Most of this business revolves around Facebook advertising, so if you don’t have an extensive past in Facebook advertising and you’re not willing to test a bunch of ads and spend a lot of money to optimize them then it’s probably not the right fit for you.
2. It’s actually pretty hands-on. You have to deal with customer service, you have to deal with returns, and a lot of the times people who start to scale up drop shipping have to bring on an employee or two, just to handle customer service alone. So as you start to scale up with drop shipping you have to bring other people in and that’s more to manage it’s not really passive at that point.
3. The margins are generally low, so you have to move a lot of volume in order to make substantial money. And a lot of the times you’ll see people showing big numbers on their phone like $50,000 in the last month but keep in mind that that’s their revenue, that’s the total sales in their store. They still have to subtract all the costs, so this is your product cost, your software cost, your employee cost that you have to pay them plus the biggest one which is your advertising cost. Generally, this number comes down to only about twenty to thirty percent as actual profit. So if they’re showing you on their phone fifty thousand dollars in the last month, when everything’s said and done that’s probably only ten to fifteen thousand dollars before tax that they get to take home.
2. MULTI LEVEL MARKETING or NETWORK MARKETING.
Essentially what this is a pyramid structure so those who refer someone, that person then has to pay monthly to be a part of it and the idea is that they can refer people under them. And the way that these people make money is because every time they refer someone, they get a commission on it. And then if that person that they referred refers to another person, they both get a commission on it. The original person who referred that person will get a commission on every referral that that person makes, and then each of their referrals, the commission keeps going up the ladder. So this is the pyramid structure.
I see so many people who are new to business or online business fall for this because it sounds so good. You pay monthly and they give you everything for your business. Now tomorrow when you wake up you’re a business owner, that’s the sell that they go with but trust me when I say you’re really not a business owner. You have to pay every single month or every single year to be a part of this and you are making the person who signed you up a commission. Now this is typically presented with some kind of front, some kind of product or service that you pay to get inventory or you pay to get access but really the money’s made on their referrals.
However, as a general rule of thumb if something is pyramid structured and it involves you paying to become a part of it, stay far away.
3. AFFILIATE MARKETING
Again I see this one happen so often and that is doing AFFILIATE MARKETING with ClickBank or JVZoo. Now I am a huge fan of affiliate marketing so allow me to explain this a little bit. When you’re doing affiliate marketing, you can essentially become an affiliate or a marketer for any product or service that has an affiliate program. Now there are these websites that you can join that have a bunch of different products that you can offer and you only have to join the affiliate program of this website then you can promote any of these products within it and then get paid through the website instead of going out and finding individual products and joining their affiliate program. This you just do in one place and you have a bunch of different offers.
Two big examples of websites like this are called ClickBank and JVZoo. The reason that I do not recommend getting involved with these is that a lot of the products on these sites are very scammy, very high ticket products with big commission’s to try to attract affiliates but the actual product on the other side of it is complete trash.
So what happens are new affiliates join these affiliate networks because it’s an easy one place to join, they scroll through and they see all these huge potential commissions and they start promoting these products which are generally expensive and the products are just really bad.
So if you are going to get started with affiliate marketing, make sure you recommend products that you know, you trust, you’ve used, and you would recommend to a family member. Don’t just go on ClickBank or JVZoo and look for the ones with the biggest commissions and start promoting those. That’s why I recommend staying far away from ClickBank or JVZoo.
4. SMMA or Social Media Marketing Agency
Now what this is essential you become a marketing agency and you approach restaurants, businesses and you bring on clients to handle their social media for them. Now like I said, I know people doing extremely well with this, they’re bringing on clients between two and ten thousand dollars per month and they’re managing their social media.
However, it is very hard to start this as a beginner because you need to have years of experience with Facebook advertising, Instagram advertising and Google AdWords. If you don’t have experience with this and you bring on a client and now you’re using their funds and spending it if you don’t get a return on their investment they are not going to be happy.
So if you are a beginner without experience in paid social media advertising I don’t recommend starting a social media marketing agency.
Now, this is heavily promoted and a lot of people are saying I’ll teach you every step you need to know to start bringing on clients and yes some of those programs may be good and teach you what you need to know but that’s an upfront investment and there are definitely other online businesses that you can start that would be better for beginners.
Now as a side note on this one someone that I know that runs a social media marketing agency has a Facebook Ads person, so it’s him and another person who runs the actual paid to advertise so he gets the customers and his partner runs the advertising and that’s a good combo so if you know someone who is really good at paid social media advertising, maybe you guys can partner up but again you’re dealing with real people and real money and real businesses so if you aren’t confident that you can get a return on their money, I wouldn’t recommend starting here.
5. STOCK TRADING
Whether this is Forex or day trading stocks you really need some experience for this. A lot of people who are new to online business fall into these because it looks like it’s an all-in-one package that’s guaranteed to make money will send you exactly what to trade and when I really don’t recommend that if it were that easy everyone would be so rich.
So if you don’t have experience with stock trading or forex trading, whatever kind of trading it is, I recommend staying away from it may be trying to learn as much as you can on YouTube about it and then opening up a trading account that doesn’t use real funds and you can practice and see if you would have profited or lost a lot of money.
I personally know someone who was heavily involved in stock trading and he focused on penny stocks, and he was so good at it. However, he got on the plane to fly home and by the time he got off the plane he lost seventy thousand dollars from one stock.
6. AMAZON FBA or Fulfilled By Amazon
As a beginner in online business, I don’t think this is the right move for you because it comes with quite a bit of risk.
You have an upfront investment you have overhead costs and a lot of hands-on moving parts. This again can sound really good coming for people who are doing it but just know that this is a lot more hands-on than you imagine and it’s really not as passive as you’d think as you start to scale it up.
7. SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCER
Now again I’ve seen a lot of people really succeed with this but I don’t think it’s the right approach if you’re starting out with the online business. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to build up a loyal following on any social media platform.
So if you are playing the long-term game and you’re willing to spend a year, two years, three years just building up an account and a loyal fan base then this can work for you but if you are starting out an online business, I don’t think this is where you should focus your effort to start.
There are so many other different ways that are low risk as well and you can start making money within the first year, you don’t have too long term play this two, three years out.
Now if you have built up a really big following and by really big I just mean a hundred thousand or more followers. and if they are engaged in loyal followers then this can be very profitable for you but I wouldn’t recommend this to someone starting out because it’s going to be a ton of upfront work and you’re not going to see much results for a long time.
WRAPPING UP :
I have mentioned 7 Businesses / Online Earning Models that beginners should avoid to be successful in this competitive online market. The 3 main reasons as per me to stay away from these are :
1. You’ll be demotivated in spite of putting so much effort and time and almost zero results.
2. You’ll not learn anything and end up quitting your online earning dream.
3. You may invest and end up losing some money for nothing.
Don’t forget to keep these deadly growth killers away from you!
Thanks for reading, have a great day ahead !!
