50 Best Businesses to Start in 2024

What's better than doing something you like and getting paid for it? Doing something you like, getting paid for it, and being your own boss, complete with all the associated perks!

It's really no wonder that so many people these days turn to starting their own businesses as opposed to keeping up with the daily grind of working for someone else. Latest reports show that self-employed people are generally more satisfied with their jobs, and hey, no one's surprised by that.

Having your own gig, big or small, means that you have complete freedom over what happens to it, and that means controlling your income and your free time. Whether you want to switch jobs or earn a little money on the side, you can achieve that by starting your own business. (Hint: Doing this with Whop takes as little as a few minutes.)

What business do you want to start? The sky is the limit. The options range from businesses with no startup cost and a low barrier of entry to projects you can invest in. For many of them, all you need is an internet connection.

In our comprehensive guide, these run the gamut from technical jobs to creative ones to service positions, so somewhere in this list could be the future you’ve been dreaming of. Let's jump right in and get you a new job!

Looking for a certain type of business idea? Jump ahead to:

• 5 Small Businesses to Start
• 5 Online Businesses to Start
• 5 Service-Based Businesses to Start
• 5 Home Businesses to Start
• 4 Side Businesses to Start
• 5 Ecommerce Businesses to Start
• 6 Remote Businesses to Start
• 6 Life Hack Business to Start
• 5 Student Businesses to Start
• 4 Reselling Businesses To Start

5 Small Businesses to Start 

If you’re ready to become your own boss, you may want to start small. Small businesses are part of our social fabric. This goodwill can translate into money in your pocket if you find the right kind of business to fit your skills.

Most small businesses, depending on exactly how small you start, don’t require a lot upfront, at least not financially. As long as you’re prepared to put in the work and time it takes to grow, your small business can have a big impact and grow into something much, much bigger. 

1. Personal finance advice

To start a personal finance business online, you just need to have the appropriate background and a clear plan for who your target demographic is. Offering financial advice to young professionals, for example, looks very different from giving advice to retirees. 

There are tons of ways to monetize a business like this. You could start a community centered around financial advice, offer one-on-one coaching calls, write ebooks, make online courses - or do all of these at once.

2. Nutrition advice

If you have the appropriate education and certifications, you can make a business offering personalized nutrition plans and dietary advice. You can charge hourly rates for one-on-one consultations, or you can make and sell digital content to a community of clients in your own whop. 

As a nutritionist, you can even partner with gyms or wellness centers for mutually beneficial promotion and a shared pool of customers, or bundle your services with personal training advice. 

3. AI consulting

AI is the one buzzword that gets people talking these days, and that trend is not about to go away anytime soon—the latest projections show that the AI market is set to grow to $2.7 trillion by 2032. This is a business that will tap into a growing need and position you at the forefront of technological advances. With the right expertise in AI, you can offer services from prompt engineering to performance monitoring to offering market insights. 

Existing businesses need to integrate AI technology into their operations, meaning you can also take advantage of their need to upgrade. You can even fold this concept into other industries to create a satisfying intersection for yourself, like using AI to make sports bet predictions or creating trading bots.

4. Notion templates

Notion is a popular productivity tool, but let's be real—having to set it up can be a hassle. Many people want the benefit of being able to use it without having to come up with their own templates. 

If you’re familiar with Figma or other design tools, you can offer users templates for users to download. Templates can be targeted toward task prioritization, calendar organization, project management, or more generic templates that include a little of each element. 

5. Sports picks

Sports betting isn't just something to do with your friends before a big game; it's a legit money-making strategy with a lot of thinking involved. Fun as it may be, sometimes people just want the ease of having someone else pick for them. If you have a thorough understanding of point spreads and feel confident enough in your ability to charge for it, selling sports picks can be lucrative. You can offer coverage year-round by folding in various sports organizations like the NBA, MLB, MMA, KBO, UFC, NHL, soccer, or tennis. 

Your client base can pay you monthly for continued picks, and you can charge for extra features like a bankroll calculator, beginner’s workshops, giveaways, and promotions. Once you’ve established yourself as a presence, you can offer customers more of a community experience with sports consulting group.

5 Online Businesses to Start 

You know how we said that starting your own business is great? It is, but guess what's even better? Running your business entirely online, at little to no cost, and without having to leave the house. Although many of the businesses on our list can be managed entirely online, the five listed below fit the list perfectly.

1. SEO optimization 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for … well, pretty much everything these days, from cooking blogs to eBay listings. Good SEO makes the difference in a search engine response being buried, or showing up at the top of the first page. If you're an SEO expert, you have a lot of ways to convert that knowledge into a successful business. 

You can offer services like keyword research, content creation, backlink building, and SEO strategies. With this kind of service list, clients can pay a fee on a per-project basis or they can pay to keep you on retainer. If you want more passive income than a business you have to put weekly hours into, you can instead sell helpful courses about SEO.

2. TikTok

TikTok currently holds the silver medal—second only to Snapchat—for being the most popular social media platform for Gen-Z. That exposure to a freshly adult audience with such buying power opens the door for you to monetize TikTok in a lot of different ways. The Creator Rewards Program can pay as much as $8 per thousand views, and you can utilize TikTik Live to get tips directly from viewers. 

Having a popular TikTok channel is also a great vehicle for sponsorships and affiliate marketing, not to mention the fact that you can create a paid community and engage with your audience to get some of that sweet recurring revenue.

3. Making apps

If you can make apps, you're inches away from getting your hands on multiple streams of revenue. For instance, you could develop your own app and make money through a subscription service. 

You can also develop apps for other businesses, and then land yourself a lucrative retainer by providing regular updates and maintenance. Finally, you can also make courses on app development to then sell them to people who want to be a little bit like you.

4. Social media

While you may not become the next MrBeast overnight, you can become a social media influencer with a little bit of persistence and a lot of creativity. The key element to monetizing a social media platform is to grow an engaged community that is interested in what you have to say and, potentially, sell to them. 

You don't need to have millions of followers to make money through social media; micro- and nano-influencers can be highly successful if they're clever about it. You can do things like selling merch, using affiliate links, having brand deals or sponsorships, or taking direct donations from your fans, not to mention setting up a private community for your fans to talk to you directly.

5. Selling subscriptions

What's better than being paid once? Being paid every month and knowing you'll get paid again the next month. The key to turning digital subscriptions into a small business is just to offer valuable content to your audience on a regular basis. Newsletters, online courses, podcasts, and videos are all perfect for sharing exclusive content that readers or viewers can only get from you. 

You can shake things up with different price points and tiers. For example, with your own whop, you can offer all sorts of bundles, from access to a private community to ebooks. Lock exclusive content behind an extra tall paywall and watch the money keep rolling in as long as your subscription service remains valuable and active.

5 Service-Based Businesses to Start

A service business can range from cleaning and dog walking to offering personalized crypto advice. However, if you want low startup costs and a high-income ceiling, here are your 5 best bets for making money in this area.

1. Cryptocurrency advice

If you're into crypto, you know better than anyone that it's one scary and fickle beast. From the highs of the bull market to the terror of the bear market, countless people want to jump in and make money without leaving their homes. This is where you come in with some pro tips on investing in crypto.

There are a few different ways to approach this. You can sell ebooks, open up a community of experts for conversation and advice, or sell one-on-one calls with personalized portfolio advice. Focus on building credibility in the crypto community and go from there. 

2. Workout programs

Online fitness is a $16.4 billion industry, and if you have the certification and/or the experience to teach people to pursue their own fitness goals, you can develop a thriving small business doing just that. Working as a personal trainer means that you can offer personalized services based on what your clients need, be it group classes online or private calls with monthly fitness plans. Supportive paid communities are especially popular.

A good way to start is to get your existing clients to share their success stories and review your work.  Alternatively, if you're new to the industry, think outside the box and prepare some content that can give your future clients some insight into what you can offer.

3. Career coaching

Career coaching falls under the same umbrella as life coaching, but with more of a focus on helping people find a fulfilling career or meet professional goals. This is done through cover letter and resume optimization or teaching people job search strategies. 

You can charge for career coaching in a few different ways. You can create workshops or subscription-based content that offers general advice. If you’d rather take a more active approach, you can instead offer private calls, resume reviews, and video calls with mock interviews.

4. Travel deals

Travel deal blogs and websites are a modern cousin to travel agents, helping connect people who like to plan their own trips with the kind of discounts and deals that in the past were only available through professional connections. Helping people learn how to cut the middleman out can be lucrative, especially if you adopt a model of offering higher-tiered subscribers better deals. 

To be successful with a travel deal business, it’s important to use all of the tools social media offers to get the word out. Affiliate marketing, SEO optimization, and regular free posts that offer travel tips and advice can all work to help you build a presence. You can also offer travelers a place to gather and discuss their own experiences, reinforcing the community aspect.

5. Social media management

You can make money by managing social media accounts for other people (and more commonly, companies). The pay can depend on the scope of the work, but some of the things you can offer are: 

• content strategy
• ad campaigns
• regular posting
• content creation
• follower count growth
• affiliate marketing
• SEO optimization

If you prefer to be more of a consultant, you can also charge companies to run assessments on their existing social media to point out ways they can improve. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer can help you with analytics and scheduling posts.

5 Home Businesses to Start

Whether you're dabbling in online businesses or wanting to get a bit creative with some crafts, an at-home business is a great way to cut back on costs and still make money. What can you do (and get paid for it) without leaving the house?

(Psst: We also have a comprehensive list of work-at-home business ideas you can check out.)

1. Handmade goods

In a world where fast fashion is so widespread, focusing on high-quality homemade crafts. Many buyers want the experience of purchasing something that they can feel good about and have more of a personal connection with. Depending on what your craft is, you can not only sell the items themselves but possibly also sell DIY kits or teach workshops to other people with an interest in creating. 

Websites like Etsy, Amazon Handmade, indieCart, Big Cartel, and iCraft are good platforms to explore if you want to sell online. If you prefer selling locally, you can search your area to find craft fairs and markets or reach out to businesses to see if there’s interest in showcasing your products in their stores.  

2. Custom apparel

If you've got a knack for design, you can make bank selling personalized apparel like t-shirts, hats, and hoodies. To keep starting costs low, use print-on-demand websites to fulfill orders and list your products through established sales platforms like Etsy, eBay, or Shopify. 

An easier and cheaper way to run this type of business is to design the templates and sell them, leaving your customers to figure out the printing by themselves. 

3. Online courses

If you're a good teacher, don't keep those awesome skills to yourself—share them with the world for profit by creating and selling courses. With a talent for developing comprehensive and engaging courses, you can pick your niche and make videos, quizzes, and lectures, as well as offer downloadables as an added bonus.

Whop is one of the best platforms you can use to create an online course and get paid for it. You can create your course from scratch through Whop, eliminating the need for third-party software, then bundle it with other digital products, create a community around your course, or sell it by itself.

 4. Ebooks

If you can write, then you can make money online. It doesn’t even matter what you’re writing, so much as how you market it and sell yourself. There’s an audience for almost every niche, so whether you’re writing true crime novellas or technical guides, you just have to find the right readers.

Writing fiction is certainly more fun than writing guides about things like SaaS and dropshipping, but if that's where your knowledge lies, share it. Once it's written and up for sale, an ebook can generate revenue for months, or even years, without requiring updates. It depends on the industry.

5. Dating consultancy

Anyone looking for love and unable to find it might just need the help of a dating consultant. There's no certification needed (though there are some available), and the only real requirement is a strong ability to communicate and top-notch people skills. As a dating consultant, you can help people perfect their dating profiles and assist in finding them matches either on popular dating apps like Tinder and Hinge, or from outside of those platforms. 

People generally pay consultants per session, though you can also offer specific services like profile assessment. For easy exposure and to reach clients, you can make a blog or a newsletter with dating advice or by offering free initial consultations that can funnel into paid ones. 

4 Side Businesses to Start

If you aren’t ready to commit to a full-time business, then you may just want to start a side hustle. These are usually more flexible in terms of how much time you have to commit to them, but they can still provide you with extra income and even potentially expand into full businesses later on when you’re ready. 

1. Trading advice

There are people out there that want to start trading stocks, but don’t know where to begin. With a small business geared toward stock market education, you can appeal to the market of people willing to pay for that expertise. 

You can approach this in one of two ways. Either start by offering useful content online on platforms like YouTube or TikTok, then expand to paid options, or march right in with a lot of useful information locked behind a paywall with a paid community. Being able to discuss your own trading successes will go a long way in giving credibility to your business.

2. Life coaching

Becoming a life coach is one of the easier side businesses to start, because there is no universal certification needed to become one. It may be helpful to develop some credentials just to lend validity to yourself in the eyes of potential customers, but there can be other ways to build a network of clients who trust you. The key to this is deciding what type of audience you want to market yourself toward and ensuring that the coaching you offer will genuinely be constructive to them. 

You can also begin by offering people trial sessions at a discounted (or even free) price. After that, you can charge per session or in session bundles. Self-help books or advice blogs are a great way to get your name out there. What's more, they're also a great way to make extra money.

3. Newsletters

Newsletters are the type of side job that can be as low or high effort as you decide, based on how much time you want to put into it. They’re also flexible toward your interest, since you can make a newsletter about basically anything. Try to find the intersection of what you’re knowledgeable with, and something that people are actively seeking out. 

Platforms like Substack and Revue allow you to set the price of your paid newsletter. Better yet, use your whop to also add a forum and a chat to supplement your newsletter with a whole new depth of interaction. 

4. Cybersecurity

If you're in cybersecurity, we don't need to tell you that it's a highly lucrative career—you already know. However, if you want to make a little side income, there's a lot of potential for it. Offering cybersecurity consulting services ranges from ongoing maintenance to security audits and employee training. Target small-to-medium businesses who need this type of service but aren't willing to hire a full-time security expert.

5 Ecommerce Businesses to Start

The internet is a great equalizer, and with an ecommerce business, you have almost instantaneous reach to a whole world of customers. On top of that, the start-up cost for ecommerce is usually low (especially if you utilize dropshipping) and such businesses tend to be both easier and cheaper to scale than a brick-and-mortar business. 

1. Subscription boxes

People love a mystery, and a subscription box can be exactly that. Customers pay a set fee every month, quarter, or season, and in return, you deliver a curated collection of products to fit the theme of the subscription. This can be beauty supplies, snacks, books, crafting items … Honestly, there's a market for just about anything out there, but geeky stuff and snacks tend to do very well.

You can tier the pricing of the subscription box to match the contents, offering premium subscriptions for higher quality or more items. There are existing platforms (like Cratejoy) to help you manage subscriptions. This strategy works best if you work on building up a social media following and invest in marketing.

2. Dropshipping

Dropshipping is where you act as a middleman between the actual seller and the end customer. This means you don't have to keep any inventory or even have a physical location in order to get started. Dropshippers often sell their products on platforms like eBay.

Dropshipping is still a promising market, but it's definitely one where you need to be flexible. Staying on top of the latest trends and jumping on them as they appear will help you thrive; markets become saturated very quickly.

3. Amazon FBA

Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon program lets you source products from manufacturers and then list them on Amazon, then let Amazon take care of the rest. In this business model, you'll be paying Amazon a fee or a cut out of each sale; in return, the platform will house your products and handle customer service.

If you want to get into selling via FBA, you should use tools like Jungle Scout to research what products are hot on the market. Like with dropshipping, this is a volatile field where trends rise and fall in the span of days.

4. Affiliate marketing

While not exactly an ecommerce business all on its own, incorporating some affiliate marketing into your ecommerce strategy can be a great way to get more customers to view your store—and that's just a few clicks away from making a purchase.

The best way to utilize affiliate marketing in ecommerce is to reach out to influencers in your industry and offer them discount codes to share with their followers or ask them to review your products. When they share links to your products, you'll make a sale and they'll get a cut.

5. Specialty store

Certain types of stores, such as clothing shops or ecommerce grocery markets, are difficult to succeed with in this day and age. There are simply so many of them already out there that you'd be competing against some of the biggest brands in the industry, and that's hard to do as a budding entrepreneur.

However, starting a specialty store is a great way to reach untapped markets. Think: How can you niche down your business? Perhaps that clothing store could do better if you focused strictly on personalized caps and sneakers?

6 Remote Businesses to Start

Even businesses that were once in-person have now gone remote, at least partially. Here are some businesses that you can offer entirely remotely.

1. Fitness influencer

As long as you have the right background in fitness to do so responsibly, you can offer personal training, fitness videos, and group online fitness classes. All of this is especially effective if you're a fitness influencer with an established following.

Much like any other online business, hitting a niche is a good idea here; instead of just offering general advice, consider offering climbing classes or HIIT. All of these are adaptable to multiple payment models, like subscriptions, memberships, or creating an app that people buy. 

2. IT consulting

These days, every business needs their IT person who knows what to do if everything goes wrong and the usual "turn it off and on" mantra fails. If you're a techie, you can make money remotely by offering your services to customers and companies in need of IT services. You can charge hourly or on a project-based fee, scaling the rate as your experience and expertise grows. Some of the more common areas to specialize in are cybersecurity, network infrastructure, and cloud services. 

3. Profile optimization

Online presence is everything in today's world, as evidenced even by the number of social media small businesses that you’re learning about in this article. If you’re social media savvy, you can leverage your skill into a successful small business by helping other people make sure that their social media profiles on websites like Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, or Twitter (okay, fine, X) are optimized. This helps with growing follower counts and, in turn, making more money.

You can start building relationships by offering consulting services where you do a quality assessment and offer critiques on areas that could use some improvement. This can progress to being paid to fix up these profiles and even manage them on a daily basis.

4. Graphic design

Being a graphic designer can be a profitable career for anyone with the skill to create, and you can be very successful even without signing with an agency. You can charge clients to make their logos, marketing materials, websites, and social media graphics. 

Platforms like Fiverr and Etsy are common targets if you want to sell graphic design templates, but don't forget that you can sell all sorts of downloadables on Whop to a massive, already-established audience.

5. Yoga coaching

The wellness industry is an over $5.6 trillion industry, and you can tap into that without leaving your house. As a yoga coach, you can offer personalized coaching online by creating routines for people, or you can take more of a group-based approach. 

Hosting classes on Zoom allows you to charge people per class, or for a set number of classes. You can also take the same approach as nutrition and fitness education and offer supplemental materials online or partner with other wellness businesses. Again, remember to niche down—things like healthy spine yoga or pregnancy yoga can help you stand out.

6. Blockchain automation

If you know all about the blockchain, there's no reason not to make money by sharing your skills with the world. Things like smart contract development, blockchain integration, tokenization services, decentralized application (DApp) development, and automated escrow services are increasingly popular.

You can find clients in crypto communities through Whop, Telegram or Discord, but also through platforms like UpWork and Reddit.

6 Life Hack Business to Start

Who hasn't fallen down a rabbit hole of life hack videos on Instagram or TikTok at least once in their life? A life hack is any type of tip, trick, or shortcut that can offer time, energy, or money-saving solutions to people. By centering your business around simple but effective life hack strategies, you can become a life hack guru and get paid for it. 

1. Life hack blog

With a life hack blog, you can offer tips for productivity, organization, health and wellness, personal finance, technology … Basically, any aspect of life that people ever find themselves wanting a way to simplify. 

In terms of how to monetize it, you also have plenty of options. The content on the blog itself can be free as a lure for readers, or you can post a mixture of free and paywalled content. You can also offer supplemental material in an ebook style, or paid newsletters that come out on a regular basis to keep people engaged. Diversifying into platforms like YouTube or Instagram can help you reach a wider audience.

2. Reselling guide for beginners

Reselling is a huge market and it can be intimidating for someone just starting out. If you have experience, you can make big bucks by creating guides to teach new resellers the key skills in this industry. We mean things like product sourcing, pricing strategies, and advice on how to market themselves. 

As the topic of reselling is so robust, the more content you can provide, the better. Some of the most successful sellers on Whop offer access to paid communities, courses, ebooks, and even one-on-one calls in bundles or separately.

3. Automation software

If you’re a software developer, you can make money developing and selling automation software to just about anyone, from individuals in need of something to simplify their lives to businesses wanting to cut back on costs. This is the kind of software that streamlines processes for them to make everything else, from workflow queueing to customer relationship management, easier. 

You don't have to reach out to businesses directly in order to sell your SaaS. There are plenty of ways to make money off your skills; check them out here.

4. Business plan templates

Templates of any kind are a good way to earn passive income for a set amount of work. To that end, selling business plan templates, Excel spreadsheets, or Notion productivity templates is a good life hack business to start. You're saving people time and getting paid for it.

Want to scale up? Easy as pie—just offer personalized templates instead, at a higher cost.

5. Astrology

This is a bit of a fun addition to our list, but bear with us. The astrology industry has experienced astronomical (pun intended) growth over the last 5years, and researchers expect it to continue its upward trajectory. 

To monetize this recent trend, astrologists charge for things like birth chart analysis, tarot readings, compatibility readings, horoscope reports, astrological and spiritual counseling, past life regression, and transit readings. There’s also money to be made in teaching people how to interpret astrology to help people find their own insight into influences on their lives, relationships, and careers. 

6. Finance consulting

If you're an accountant or an economics guru, you can offer consulting services to individuals and to companies alike.  You can tailor your business strategy for whatever category of finance you’re more experienced in, like budgeting, tax planning, retirement, or investing. 

A finance consulting business can also extend to workshops or online courses that teach financial literacy. There will always be people in need of advice or direction with debt management and financial responsibility.

5 Student Businesses to Start

Student services will always be in high demand, which makes a business targeted at students a smart idea. A background in education can help with some student-related small businesses, but isn’t a requirement. 

Whether you're a student yourself or you want to work with them, this list can serve as some solid inspiration.

1. Tutoring

If you have a firm grasp of a subject that's commonly taught in schools, you can start a business tutoring for an hourly rate or per semester. Tutoring is a job that can be done in person or via Zoom, meaning the position can be as remote as you need it to be. 

Platforms such as Tutor.com, Varsity Tutors, TutorMe, and CheggTutors are worth checking out if you want to work as a tutor. Or, to really maximize your earning potential, create your own whop. In your whop you can host video calls, a community, and sell access to things like books, courses, and worksheets.

2. Teaching languages

Tutoring-adjacent, teaching languages to people all over the globe is a reasonable way to make some extra money. Language tutors can be booked both by individuals and classes. You may be asked to make your own curriculum or required to follow one that's already been provided to you.

For these types of jobs, check out VIPKid, Italki, Preply, Verbling, or AmazingTalker. Or, sell services independently through Whop.

3. Study organization

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of schoolwork you've had to do? Most of us have, which is why a business focused on making productivity and schoolwork easier for students can thrive if you market it the right way.

You can offer a number of services, from downright tutoring to calendar templates that make it easier for kids to plan out their days and weeks. One-on-one calls can serve to help with things like student success and educational therapy.

4. Scholarship guidance

There are over 1.7 million scholarships available in the United States, which would be a daunting number to almost anyone … especially if you’re a student who doesn’t even know where to begin searching for ones that apply to you. As a scholarship guide, you can offer students tips on not only how to find the best scholarships but also how to apply for them. 

You can publish an ebook, video content, articles, or even newsletters with advice on things like essay writing, managing deadlines, and filtering through searches. Students can pay a flat fee to access the guide, or you can produce weekly/monthly content that they subscribe to for regular advice on how to secure financial aid. 

5. Test prep

Standardized tests like the SAT, ACR, and GRE are the path to unlocking college admissions and scholarship money. Most students like to try and prepare as best they can, and you can help them out by preparing useful courses aimed at specific tests. A comprehensive course could be sold for a higher fee, with additional upcharges like personalized coaching or additional practice materials. 

With a test prep business, you can promote your services around at local high schools, through educational websites, or on an online marketplace like Whop. Students with successful outcomes can give you testimonials that you can share on social media to reach more customers. 

4 Reselling Businesses To Start

Reselling business can be lucrative if you find the right product or item to resell, and can breach the right customer base that wants to buy it. With reselling, you can explore a diverse range of products to see what best fits your interests and the market. Some of the best things to resell can include things like event or experience tickets, digital assets, or even collectibles. There’s also a sustainability benefit to reselling physical items! 

1. NFTs

NFTs are digital assets that people are willing to pay good money for. An NFT represents a unique token that no one else can own, meaning that if you’re an artist, musician, or creator you can mint your own works using platforms like OpenSea and Rarible. 

Because NFTs are online collectibles, find communities where people are enthusiastic about buying and selling them to begin promoting yours. Mind you, NFTs have been going through a rough patch, but if you know how to make them, it's essentially free money.

2. Tickets

You can use websites like StubHub and Ticketmaster to buy tickets for high-demand events (like concerts, sporting events, and theater shows) and then resell them at a higher price. If an event is sold out, hopeful attendees are willing to pay a premium for a ticket at resale value. 

If you choose to pursue ticket reselling as a business, just make sure to check the terms of each event beforehand to make sure you’re within the legal guidelines for a resale. 

3. Collectibles

Remember those Pokemon cards your parents threw away 10 years ago? They might be worth a fortune now. While you may never get back your old holo Charizard, you can still make money flipping collectibles. As a collectible reseller, you can source items from garage sales, websites like eBay, or even other stores, and then flip them at a profit.

You can market your listings by emphasizing the value, rarity, or nostalgia factor. Reseller communities are great for spreading the word about your inventory. Once you're ready to sell, send your customer a handy Checkout Link with Whop.  

4. Sneakers

You'd be surprised how big a market there is for sneaker resellers. These resellers focus on high-demand, limited-edition sneakers from various brands we've all heard about. Limited drops sell out in seconds or minutes, which is why scoring a pair means quite a nice profit.

Resellers often focus on sneakers such as Air Jordans and Air Max as well as celeb collabs like Yeezys. 

What is the Most Profitable Small Business Idea in 2024?

Having seen all 50 of our best business ideas, we hope you've shortlisted a few and are getting ready to take your pick. But if you're not looking for a passion project and you're more into the idea of making money, what's the best option?

It's impossible to deny that digital products—and digital anything, really—are the way to go in 2024. From ebooks to SaaS, digital products are among the safest bets you can make when deciding on a business to start in this decade.

For starters, the digital product market is booming, with markets such as SaaS seeing rapid growth, projected to rise from $273 billion in 2023 to $908 billion by 2030. No matter which branch of digital products you dive into, you'll benefit from perks like:

• low or non-existent startup costs
• global reach
• flexibility
• ability to scale up or down at will
• fully remote work
• high earning potential
• can be a side hustle or a full-time job
• no physical inventory

Starting a digital business is just about as risk-free as it gets, which is why it's the best business to start in 2024.

Which Small Business Idea is Right for Me?

The point of this business is to make you money, so before you jump in, consider the options where you might already have a headstart. Any special certifications, degrees, or experience you have can lend themselves to the success of your business; however, there's nothing wrong with changing careers and breaking into a field that offers a higher earning potential.

Other than thinking about what you want to do, consider what you have to work with to begin with. If this is going to be a side hustle, your resources will be limited compared to someone who has investment capital to pour into a new company.

Before narrowing the list down to just one, perfect business, think of things such as:

• Do you need any supplies to get started?
• What are the start-up costs?
• Can the business be run online or do you need a physical location?
• Will you have to travel to see your customers or clients?
• Is the business idea flexible?
• Can you combine it with your current job?
• Does it offer any potential for passive income?

Not all of the above factors will be important to you. However, what we're trying to say is that the ideal small business is one that works for you. Aim for something with low start-up costs and a lot of flexibility so that you can build your way up at your own pace.

Start Your Business Today With Whop

Starting your own business is easier than ever, and a lot of the ideas we outlined above align perfectly with what you can do with Whop.

Whop is a social commerce platform built all around selling digital products, including, but not limited to:

• SaaS
• Apps
• Courses
• Ebooks
• Access to paid communities
• Newsletters
• Templates
• Bots
• AI tools
• One-on-one calls
• Live workshops

Whether you want to start a small business as a side hustle or you're itching to leave the 9-to-5 life and build something for yourself, Whop can help you.

Whop makes the whole process super simple. Create your own whop and choose the apps that you want to use, from courses to downloadables. Write up catchy blurbs, set pricing models, and voila—you're ready to start making money. 

Starting your own business is incredibly rewarding—but we know it's not always easy. That's why Whop was made with entrepreneurs like you in mind. With an established audience and creators who make millions every year, Whop is the perfect way to jumpstart your own business. 

Joining Whop is a quick process that takes minutes, and with industry-leading fees, you'll be well on your way to making money in no time. 

FAQs

How can I start a business with no money?

Starting a business can be free if you open a digital business. Look into things that you know you can do or are willing to learn, such as graphic design or personal fitness advice, and sell your work on a marketplace such as Whop, bringing start-up fees down to zero.

How can I make passive income?

Making a passive income is all about preparing content that's fairly evergreen and can be sold for a longer period of time. Things like courses and ebooks make for solid options for one-off payments, and subscription-based content, such as newsletters and videos, require a bit more upkeep but bring in money every month.

How do I start a small business from home?

If you are ready to take the leap and start a business from home, identify your niche first. Figure out what skill or service you can offer that will stand out. Make a business plan so that you are working with structure. In some cases, there are also some necessary legalities to take care of like registering your business but that depends on the type of business you’re starting. Next, register with a platform like Whop to sell your services or products securely and at a low cost.

How long does it take to start a business?

It all depends on the type of business you want to start. If you're offering sports picks or financial advice through a marketplace like Whop, the whole process only takes a few minutes. However, if your business requires a dedicated website and additional content, the process may take days or weeks.