Every entrepreneur must start somewhere when it comes to building a successful business, experience, and skills. With major advancements in the entrepreneurial world, novice entrepreneurs can get inspiration from a vast set of small business models. This article highlights the top five small business ideas to help you build your entrepreneurial muscles.
Franchise
A franchise is typically a “plug and play” business model. By purchasing the parent company’s license, the entrepreneur receives a viable and fully branded business serving a specific locality. The upside to purchasing a business franchise as a novice entrepreneur is that it covers your inexperience in hiring, marketing, and strategic development. These services will be included in the purchase deal. You will enjoy and reap the benefits of an already established brand.
Subscription
Over the past decades, the number of customers purchasing service and product subscriptions has been growing. We all know of subscription services such as Hulu, NatureBox, Netflix, BarkBox, and more.
The popularity of subscription services renders it a viable small business idea for beginners. With the upfront collection of business revenues, your cash flow will accelerate. Another major advantage of the subscription business model is that you can partner with other brands and use their services and products for your subscription.
Drop Ship
When starting, managing your business can be challenging, especially when deciding on the type of products or services to offer. Overhead expenses can also get out of hand. However, you can avoid all these problems by taking up the drop-ship business model. Under this model, you will use the resources of already thriving businesses to generate revenue and keep your budget lean.
Dropship businesses operate by selling other brand’s products on online stores such as eBay and Amazon. Beginners can take advantage of this business model because they will not have to build brand trust and reputation.
With this small business model, you will not require an in-house store because products are shipped directly from the producer with a capped revenue on each product sold. Consumers will find your products via third-party online marketplaces such as Alibaba.
Mobile Business
Low overhead expenses and simple operations make mobile businesses ideal for new entrepreneurs. Mobile businesses include mobile day pet grooming, salons, spas, catering, and more. A common mobile business is a food truck.
After your mobile business has become a success, you can expand into a physical store or purchase more trucks. Before starting a mobile business, you should make sure that your local regulations support this business model.
Online Course Developer/ Instructor
To take advantage of this business model, you must have unique skills and knowledge to teach. Your business could entail creating tutorial videos for platforms such as YouTube, for example. It could also mean uploading online course material on marketplaces such as Skillshare and Udemy.
E-learning has presented online course instructors an opportunity to offer their content for trade colleges, schools, and universities.
