7 Best Online Business Ideas During Lockdown and Coronavirus
Intro to best online business ideas during lockdown
Today I’ll show you best online business ideas during lockdown, which can let you keep income during coronavirus.
I want to tell you about Alice’s story. She is my friend and 34 old business analyst in a mid-size company.
Actually, She WAS a business analyst in a mid-size company. Her role was cut by the crisis in a trendy way during the last months.
Two big clients needed to hold-on their projects, and the company’s incomes have been frozen, so they decided to cut costs.
In this case, they decided to fire all contractual employees, and Alice was one of them.
She tried to find something new, but recruitment processes are very long now, and conditions are much worse.
When we meet, she told me about that case and the terrible situation in the marketplace. I’ve thought we could find some ideas about what she could do.
We spent some time brainstorming, and next to a few days of research, she could do to keep her incomes stable.
At the end of the article, I will tell you what Alice finally is doing now and if she is successful, but in the few points below, I want to share with you the results of our anti-COVID business research.
Let’s start!
And if you prefer video, here is the youtube version:
Fitness technology
Lockdown can make a massive impact on our shape in both ways.
It’s all because, during the pandemic, we have limited possibilities of fitness activity.
Even if countries don’t close gyms, many people prefer not to visit too crowded places, and fitness clubs are definitely among them.
What can we do to don’t go out of shape?
We can train by ourselves, but many of us don’t have enough self-motivation and don’t know how to train or improve our training intensity.
It’s a great time to create a fitness application.
We can build an app that can provide a training plan with home-gym equipment.
It’s only the first idea, and there is a wide field to show off because users will need meal plans, some video calls with their trainers, or even group video confs that give the feeling of training as part of the group.
Meals & grocery delivery
Some countries close restaurants or limit their working time, for example, up to some hours.
The same thing with the grocery, many markets limit the allowed number of people who can go inside one time, or some products are limited, which can generate many people waiting around the market.
Besides that still, there is the main point, people prefer not to go into the big groups of people.
So delivering food from restaurants directly to people can be in significant demand, even if there are already food delivery people.
During the pandemic, demand grows heavily, and still, there are not enough of delivery companies.
A similar situation is with the grocery, just there are almost no delivery options.
You can find grocery delivery in some cities already, but there wasn’t so big selection even before the pandemic.
So even if in your city some markets already offer grocery delivery, there is always space for the next one, and it’s actually not very difficult to organize.
Video personal trainer
In the first idea, we talked about creating a fitness application that helps people to keep training.
This one idea lets you help people keep training but doesn’t require to build and host application.
Instead of that, you can create a simple website with a calendar, market it a bit locally, and set up video calls via skype, zoom, or something else.
If you already have fitness knowledge or are a personal trainer, you do not need to stop your business.
Training people via video calls can be done 100% remotely, and pandemics or lockdowns have no impact on that, so you do not need to worry about your business’s future.
It has some more benefits like, for example, you can organize your time much better because you and your clients don’t need to come to the gym.
Virtual real estate
Have you ever thought about buying a property remotely?
Okay, maybe buying a property remotely is not the 100% correct method, but your clients can definitely at least see it this way.
It’s a great idea to add that service to your company, especially if you already have real estate, but not only.
Even if you do not have a real estate company, you can offer the service of creating interactive real estate walkthroughs.
A few years ago, you’d need a lot of work to create this solution, but now you can do it quickly and easily.
To create a virtual reality real estate tour, you need just 360 degrees cam, VR goggles, and software to create the tour.
Online course
The E-learning market is worth tens of billions of dollars, and there are predictions it will grow over 300 billion by 2025.
Teaching people is a trendy way of making money, and can be profitable not only during the pandemic.
E-learning is a very comfortable and cheap way of getting knowledge.
A few years ago, if you wanted to learn marketing, you had to leave home, travel to office/school, and learn in person at a specified hour and day.
Now you can visit some online course marketplaces or e-learning companies. For example, if you want to be a programmer, you can visit www.duomly.com and pay a few dollars for knowledge that you can trade for much more as a salary or invoice.
If you have a very good knowledge of some topic, you can sell your knowledge by creating a course.
To create a good quality online course, you will need a few lighting lamps, a good camera, and a good microphone.
The last one is crucial, good sound is more than 50% of the video quality.
Next, you can sell your course on your own, or go into one of the best online learning platforms.
Selling home-gym products
When people know how to train and have some companion to do it, they will need some equipment to do that, especially if they cannot train in the gym.
Now is the best time to sell the home-gym equipment!
It’s nothing shocking because a few resistance bands, jumping rope, and yoga matt can 100% replace your gym.
That kind of set gives you the possibility to do most of the exercises, not only cardio.
For example, a combination of resistance bands can give a resistance similar to than 100kg + weight and take the space similar to a pair of boots.
To start this type of business, its enough to shoot a quick WordPress e-commerce, assign payments gateway, add products, and run quick local advertising.
Social media management agency
Social media marketing is huge TO GO during a pandemic, and if you know how to do it, that one can give you tons of money.
During a pandemic, every industry needs marketing and online presence.
For some of them, it is or not to be.
Some industries go into a very heavy crisis and desperately look for money, such as the restaurant industry.
Social media agencies can provide a way to go online, market them, and give them sales ASAP, which will probably keep their business on the ground.
If you have knowledge on that topic, starting your own agency during that time can be a 100-points shoot and shouldn’t require a big investment.
There is enough to set up a website, some social profiles, and start hitting clients in many cases.
Conclusion of best online business ideas during lockdown
These few points are only a small part of our research. We’ve found in these 7 is the biggest quick income potential, but let’s come back to Alice’s business during the pandemic.
We analyzed the most potential business models, and next, Alice evaluated their skills and hobby.
Strong analytical skills would help with social media agency, but fitness as a hobby moved her closer to the fitness app, coaching people and fitness equipment.
She does fitness kinda often and has some overview of the fitness industry, at least from the final user perspective, but doesn’t have enough knowledge to offer personal training.
Business analyst experience would be beneficial with both of the ways, fitness application or e-commerce.
Alice decided to go with the e-commerce way, and started selling a small amount of home-gym equipment products without building her own e-commerce shop, went into existing platforms instead.
The first weeks were spent on the exact product research, searching suppliers, contacting them, and designing packaging.
The next 3 weeks were spent waiting for shipment, preparing a simple marketing strategy, and setting up existing platform product pages until products finally came.
As far as I know, now it is a few months from the start of the business, and my friend is a very happy beginner entrepreneur.
Even if the first weeks looked like 100% failure and my mate felt overwhelmed with all of that organization-related stuff, her business is going forward now.
I hope Alice is not the one person that will benefit from my research, and some of you will find the “aha!” moment.
I know the first days of starting a company, taxes or marketing sounds like a big deal, and feel free to ask what is bothering you in the comments, and I’ll try to help.
In the next episodes, I will tell you what products you can sell during a pandemic, so don’t forget to follow us!
Thanks for reading,
Radek from Duomly