The Covid-19 pandemic has changed people’s lives more than anyone could have expected. For instance, if you were running a successful physical store and were planning to expand and open a new one, it is very likely that these plans have changed significantly.
What once worked really well doesn’t anymore. However, the worldwide pandemic has also opened a lot of new doors, especially business-vise. Many people had to find a way to make ends meet and discover the world of online business.
Starting an online business may come as a challenge, but it brings in many benefits, such as working for yourself and being in charge of important decisions. Today, we will share some inspiring ideas with those of you who are dreaming of becoming the boss of your own startup during the pandemic.
Sell Outdoor Items
If you want your new startup to succeed, you need to concentrate on what people tend to do nowadays and what items they need most. Surely, you often hear that when planning to start a business of your own, you need to think about the things you personally enjoy to stay motivated during the building of the business.
However, that’s only partially true.
As mentioned before, what used to work a year ago, no longer works. And just how the world has adapted, you need to adapt as well. For example, if you love traveling, selling multi-functional clothing for travel is not the best solution during the lockdown.
If you think about it, one of the biggest forms of entertainment nowadays is outdoor activities. Therefore, creating and selling custom backpacks for hikes and other activities could be very successful.
Plus, according to Walker Stands, 41% of US consumers order from Amazon once or twice every week, which gives you a pretty good idea of where you could sell your customized backpacks.
Bonus tip:
Also, you can adapt the cross-selling strategy for your business and, as additional items, sell outdoor functional clothing, fire-starters, water containers, and similar items. While building your website, think of a way to suggest these additional items to your customers before or during the checkout process.
This will likely increase your sales because if your customer doesn’t have a backpack for hiking, it is very likely that that person also lacks other related items.
Run a Graphic Design Business
If you have some graphic design skills and a lot of time to spare, you could invest all that free time to improve your skills and become a really good graphic designer.
In order to improve in a specific field, you can watch multiple video tutorials on YouTube, use Google Search to find written tutorials, or, if you want a more step-by-step guide, try such learning platforms as Udemy that offer all types of different courses online.
After you feel confident about your skill set, it is time to work on some personal projects to build a portfolio and market your business. For a portfolio, you can either purchase a domain and build your own website by using a website builder, use a blogging platform such as Tumblr to upload your work, or simply create an account on such websites as Dribbble and Behance.
More to it, creating accounts and sharing your work on popular graphic design websites will give you more visibility and likely bring you more potential clients.
Here are some ideas to land your first projects:
- Register for such freelancer websites as Upwork and Fiverr. Complete your profile and start browsing and applying for projects that interest you.
- Look for Facebook groups that are focused on sharing job offers for freelancers. Don’t just focus on local groups; aim for big groups that gather people and companies from all around the world as well.
- Check out the websites that list regular job offers. A lot of graphic designers nowadays work remotely, and you might land a full-time job using this method.
- Register for logo contests on such websites as 99designs.com; it will help you land your first customers. More to it, if these people really like your work, you might be expecting a long-term business partnership with them.
Become a Virtual Assistant
If you are currently a first-year student and don’t really have specific skills, you could become a virtual assistant.
A job like this has at least two benefits:
- First of all, you will be able to invest your free time in order to earn some extra money.
- Secondly, working on multiple projects as a virtual assistant might help you discover what it is that you want to do in the future.
Besides, the more different projects you work on, the more experience you will collect. This is a huge bonus because you can brag about all that additional knowledge on your CV and land better-paying jobs or charge more for your services. And who knows, you may even land a higher job position on one of the projects that you were working on.
The easiest way to find projects to work on is to check freelancer websites and Facebook groups. And once you get the hang of it, you may even open your own virtual agency that offers remote assistant services.
Iftalia