Worldwid Management

Host a Group Program
Want to work with a community of clients or customers all at once? Consider offering a live group program that has a distinct start and finish.

Virtual group programs have exploded since the start of the pandemic, with online book clubs, social clubs, and fitness challenges quickly becoming viable business models. When marketing a group program, speak to how a group environment has more camaraderie (and is often more cost-effective) than working with someone one-on-one.

Pro tip: If your online course idea isn’t fully baked yet, test it as a group program or live workshop series first. This helps you work out the kinks and see firsthand what customers actually want and need and how they implement the tools and ideas you present to them. It also saves you from building and launching an online course no one wants (which I have done before – trust me, it’s not fun).

Break Into the Creator Economy
Many online platforms have recently earmarked funds to dole out to creators, including Facebook, Instagram, and Snap. If you love creating content online and have something to say, big tech platforms want to pay you to do it well.

Most platforms require a certain amount of traction first before you can monetize. On YouTube, for example, Partner Program requirements state that channel owners “need to be in good standing with YouTube, have 4,000 valid public watch hours in the previous 12 months, and at least 1,000 subscribers.” These barriers help ensure new accounts don’t come in and try to game the system from day one.

Adam Erhart, a marketing strategist with over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, notes that the time it takes to hit these benchmarks varies from industry to industry and platform to platform. The content production piece, however, is entirely within your control.

“Where you do have choice on a platform like YouTube is in how quickly you want to produce and publish your videos,” he says. “For simple math, let’s say you need to publish 30 videos on your channel to hit certain subscriber and watch time benchmarks. You have control over how fast you want to reach that threshold; it could take a year, six months, or even 30 days if you wanted to go crazy with it.”

“Those first few dollars are incredibly motivating and powerful because they provide proof that you’re doing something right.”

Erhart also notes that a common mistake new creators make is that they focus too much on making content that’s all about themselves, rather than what people actually want to watch.

“If you’ve done your research on what types of videos other people in your niche are creating, you’ll go into the filming process with a clear idea of what video you’re making and why,” he says. “Most creators skip this step, and that’s why their videos tank when they publish.”

Start Freelancing
Online job marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr have helped millions of freelancers supplement their income or even make a living working remotely. LinkedIn also recently launched its Services Marketplace, another sign of the dramatic shift in employment opportunities.

Can you write? Are you good with social media, or video, or coding? Offer your skills online where people are looking to hire and you might be surprised at the results. Having an eye for detail and no particular area of expertise works, too; virtual assistant work has huge demand, and your clients will tell you exactly what they want you to do.

Freelance work is also a great compromise if you want to augment your income, but aren’t ready or interested in leaving your 9-to-5 job just yet. Contrary to popular belief, many successful entrepreneurs first tested their idea as a side hustle and validated their value proposition before making the jump.

White Label a Beauty or Wellness Product
Manufacturing a wellness or skincare product from scratch can be a huge and expensive undertaking. If your next brilliant idea falls into this category, have you looked into all the FDA regulations? Multi-year timelines are not unusual for new products in these industries.

White labeling a product can be a smart compromise if you’re just getting started. JBK Wellness Labs, an Inc. 5000 company, notes that white labeling is a great supplement for salon or spa owners, hairdressers, and beauty influencers who want to apply their own branding to proven formulations.

“Choosing to white label high quality formulas provides an opportunity to capture increased revenue in retail sales with products that carry higher profit margins,” says Dr. Jenelle Kim, JBK Wellness Labs’ Founder & Chief Formulator. “Additionally, the products you sell to your clients can’t be repurchased on e-commerce sites, leading to increased visits to your location.”

Start a ‘Volume Photography’ Business
With cameras on smartphones becoming so good these days, most people only hire a photographer for special events, like weddings or parties. To get more bang for your buck, look for photography gigs that involve taking many, many photos in the same setting throughout the day. This is known as volume photography.

Volume photography can quickly get overwhelming if you don’t have a good workflow. In recent years, management platforms for photographers and creatives have become increasingly popular. PhotoDay, a sales and workflow platform for photographers, is designed specifically to help professionals who plan to take lots of photos in sessions.

“My wife and I work together, but all our time was focused on that – work,” says Robin Janson, a professional photographer. “Now we make more in less time, so we can focus on our marriage and family. PhotoDay was a game changer, whether volume photography is your full-time job or your side gig.”

Rent or Lease Out Existing Assets
When Airbnb burst onto the scene in 2008, the idea of subletting a stranger’s home for a weekend felt foreign and bizarre. Nearly 15 years later, the “sublet economy” is now everywhere, and an entire crop of “Airbnb for X” startups exist that help people turn existing assets into moneymaking opportunities. Among the recent “sublet economy” options:

RVnGO, a platform for renting out your RV (or booking one for an upcoming road trip)
Spacer, a marketplace for garages and parking spaces
Swimply, a subletting platform to rent someone’s pool
Sitting on an underutilized yacht or a private jet? Call me. Kidding – but you could use Boatsetter or Jettly respectively to get some additional residual income flowing.

Create an Online Course
E-learning was a $250 billion industry in 2020, and is projected to become a $1 trillion industry by 2027. If you have a computer and something to say that can help people, online courses have low startup costs and high profit margins when you hit the nail on the head.

To make an online course fly, however, you need an audience of people who want to buy it, and audiences can take years to build. Online course marketplaces like Skillshare can be a great way to work around the “no audience yet” conundrum. According to Skillshare Chief Marketing Officer Liana M. Douillet Guzmán, your online course doesn’t have to be as long as you might think in order to be lucrative.

“The best way to succeed as a Skillshare instructor is creating engaging content that is digestible, project-based, and personal,” she says. “Most of our classes include an hour or so of pre-recorded video content broken down into a series of short 2-5 minute videos. Rather than teaching a broad, sweeping skill set, the most successful classes hone in on one specific concept or skill.”

“Once you make and upload your content, you can continue to make passive income with no additional work,” says Guzmán. “We find that most teachers love the community on our platform and engage with students long after the class has been posted. As a teacher, you get paid from a royalty pool based on the number of minutes members watch your class – and as the number of classes a teacher posts increases, so does the opportunity for members to watch your content, incentivizing teachers to keep building their presence on Skillshare and become a successful online creator.”

Guzmán notes that the residual income generated from even just one class or workshop can be substantial.

“Our top teachers on the platform make an average of $2,000 per month, with some of our teachers able to pay their rent with earnings from a single class.”