Five Ideas For Starting a New Online Business in 2017

The internet is the modern entrepreneurial petri dish from which great ideas can come to life.

And with e-commerce sales boasting a 15.6% growth rate in 2016, it’s clear that if you’re not already doing business online, now may be the time to start.

Today’s infographic from Distributel details five online business archetypes that are worth knowing for anyone looking to launch side hustle in 2017.

Five Businesses, Five Personalities

As the infographic shows, there is a business type for every online entrepreneur.

Some would prefer to make online business their full-time job, while others may want a side hustle that helps monetize their impressive social media presence or creative abilities.

Which of the five business types suits you?

1. The Expert
Sometimes it’s an idea, rather than a product, that will captivate the marketplace. The expert’s e-commerce strategy is to capitalize on that winning idea, distributing it from a tiny seed, like an e-book or a newsletter, and growing it into a much larger media enterprise. Media mavens like Gary Vaynerchuk have proven the power of this expansion-oriented style of online commerce.

2. The Creative
Whether you’re handy with needle and thread or a 3D printer, e-commerce is the world’s biggest craft fair. The vanguard of the DIY e-commerce movement is represented by services like Etsy and Fiverr, where unique DIY ideas and highly-varied skill sets can be marketed to a global audience. Etsy alone sold $667 million worth of handcrafted goods produced by its army of sole proprietor vendors in 2016.

3. The Social Butterfly
Partnering with others is the driving force behind one of the most social forms of online commerce: affiliate marketing. Simply put, blogs and social media influencers promote sponsored products in return for a commission on sales that are referred through their site. According to research by Rakuten Marketing, affiliate marketing is expected to grow into a $6.8 billion industry by 2020.

4. The Market Trailblazer
Online commerce also often allows an entrepreneur to partner with a larger distributor or wholesaler to become a storefront. This allows web entrepreneurs to open up new markets for existing products, and to conduct high volumes of business without having to manage a huge inventory and overhead.

5. The Optimizer
Though online businesses have low overhead and are easy to start, they are not without risk. The Optimizer knows this, and makes it their business to lower that risk and improve their profitability. Once you’ve started turning an e-commerce idea into an optimal, well-oiled machine, it’s equally important to use the right metrics to measure your progress and iterate toward greater successes.