What are some good offline businesses to start?

What is your background?

What are your interests? (business)

What are you doing for income currently? Why?

What would you like to be doing? Why?

There are basically three types of business

sell services
sell physical products
sell digital products

There are other business models like forex and stock trading etc. but you probably want to stay away from those.

MOST successfully businesses sell something.

It's not clear by your question what exactly you are asking.

A business can be a franchise, affiliate sales, e-commerce, based on your own website or blog, reselling, drop-shipping, ebay/shopify shops etc.

Normally you would specialize in a particular market or more likely a niche. i.e. fitness, diet, make money, travel, t-shirts, or if you are offering a service maybe SEO, logo designs, video creation, voice overs etc.

So first thing is to decide what kind of business you want to create.

Likely something with low start-up/overheads. That means maybe creating your own web site or blog and using that to sell something.

Then decide what you want to sell. This should be something people think they need and is usually something that will make them richer, healthier or happier. That's what people pay for. People don't really buy dogs because they look pretty or cute. They buy them because they make them happy. Often filling a gap that is missing in their lives.

This is how you must look at selecting a product to sell.

Of course it helps if you have good knowledge of the product or the subject/niche or if it is at least interesting enough to you that you will enjoy finding out about it.

In reality it doesn't matter what you choose as long as you do some reasonable due diligence. Choosing a niche or product to sell is the number one reason for not doing anything that I see in students. It's is a real stumbling block.

You simply have to choose and move on. Because all the real work is yet to come. If it takes more than 2 hours to decide your wasting time!

Everything you do from this point is relevant to any product and any niche so nothing is wasted even if later you decide that a another niche is better.

Selling digital products is usually the easiest way to start because you can sell other peoples products for a commission usually 50% or more of the sale price. Physical products do not get anywhere near that in commissions.

Create a web site, or at least a squeeze page and give away a free digital product in exchange for and email address. Then market to that email address for as long as they stay on your list.

You can drive traffic in a multitude of ways social, Facebook ads, solo ads, many other but don't worry about traffic until you have everything else in place.

Then focus on one way of driving traffic until you master it. Much like a niche just pick one and move on.

Don't let anyone tell you this is a quick way to get rich. It's not

Like any business you need to work at it, become proficient at the things you need to do, become experienced in the process and then you start to see results.

OK, one idea: Start a mail service. It will cost you NOTHING to start.

Here is a step by step plan:
A. Drive around town, look for BILLBOARDS. Take a pic or take notes who is advertising.

B. Make a .list of businesses using billboards.

C. Send them a letter, an offer, to have their billboard ad sent to 5,000-10,000 homes via EDDM.

D. Sell them on the effectiveness of the billboard in the mailbox program, use a giant size postcard.

E. Do one a week, ONE advertiser on a giant postcard. Rinse and repeat.

You have probably delivered EDDM during your career. You KNOW people pay to have that thing mailed, why not pay you?

Chances are, there is a business you already know of, perhaps you delivered their mail, and it would be easy to call. Attorneys, dentists, insurance agents, car dealers spend huge numbers.

And if you don't know jack about ads and offers, plenty of guys right here can help you out.

You spend a little time. SEE who is already spending money on ads, now just tell them how a follow up postcard billboard with an offer will more than pay for itself. You don't even need to be that good of a salesman.

Seems like something to get you started and without eating up much time or money, and you could get HOT and sell a couple a week.

GordonJ

PS. ALL how to info is readily available, make Google your friend.

Food always seems to sell...

Restaurant, catering, cafe, bar...

Mobile food for events...