After building a variety of businesses from home for the past 10+ years, I'm breaking down the basics for anyone who's curious about it themselves! In this episode of Burning Brightly, we discuss the two main types of online businesses, the pros and cons of each, as well as some of my experiences with each one.

If you've been thinking about starting a business from home but struggle to find true (non-scammy!) information about the right path for you, this is the perfect place to start.

Learn from some of my favorite entrepreneurial guides:

Bonnie Christine (teaches how to make money as a surface designer)

Alison J Prince (teaches e-commerce)

Stu McLaren (teaches about memberships)

Amy Porterfield (teaches about courses)

The Rainmaker Family (teach how to sell on Amazon)

Hey, hey, hey friends.

We have a really fun episode for you today, and I cannot wait.

It is all about building a business 1 0 1.

Basically a broad overview of anything you might need to know

to start a business from home.

I get it that this can be a scary step and you don't know what

advice to trust, which I so get.

There are a lot of scams out there and people trying to make money off of you.

So I actually give away free advice about business building.

Every single day on Facebook groups that I'm in because I love talking about it,

and I've been in it for over 10 years and I've built a multitude of businesses.

And so, I really, really love sharing my expertise about this.

If you like this type of episode and you want more, please email

me info@bonniewhiscome.com and let me know that you like this

type of episode and you would like more of them and I will do more.

. So the first thing to know is there really are two main

types of businesses from home.

There are product based businesses where you sell products, physical

products, and there are content based businesses or service based.

Those kind of get lumped in together, and I'll explain why in

a little bit, so a few examples of product-based businesses are MLMs.

People often think of MLMs when they work from home, so multi-level marketing

businesses where you sell jewelry or makeup or clothes, but you are getting

them from a kind of parent company and you are under other representatives,

you can build an e-commerce store on your own website.

So, create a boutique or some, some sort of product based

business on your own website.

Or you can sell products on a third party website where another company takes care

of bringing the traffic in and you just kind of set up a virtual shop on their

website and sell your products there.

So a few examples of content or service-based businesses are coaching,

selling digital courses, being a blogger or a podcaster, as well as designers or

financial experts, technology experts, et cetera, like the sky is the limit.

There is also, I wanna mention here, a subset of service-based businesses

like massage therapists or nail or hairstylists that require people to

come to them or they go to other people.

But we're not gonna focus on those today because they do require an amount of foot

traffic either for you or for the client.

Instead, we're gonna focus largely on those that are internet-based and

do not require people to come to you.

So I personally have experience with both product-based and

content-based businesses.

Like I said, I have been in business for myself for over 10 years, and I

have made money selling products on my own site, on Amazon, on Etsy, as well

as being a blogger, a social media influencer, a course creator and a coach.

So have.

My finger's in a lot of pies.

I've tried a lot of different things and so I have a lot of

advice to give you and I'm always happy to answer questions as well.

I started, uh, chatting about selling on Amazon on a Facebook group the other

day and got so many people messaging me.

I was like, well, maybe I just need a podcast episode to send

them to, to explain all that.

So maybe I'll do a separate one all about selling on Amazon.

But there are so many ways, an infinite number of ways to make money from home.

Yes, for real, real legitimate ways that won't get you into trouble are,

are not a scam, and many of them make.

Lots and lots of money, like plenty enough to support your family and then some.

It's, it's an amazing world we live in.

However, like I said, it can be very difficult to find good, clear

information from someone who's not just trying to make more money off you.

If you are in a position to start a business on your own, once I explain some

of these to you, hopefully you will have a better grasp on what is right for you.

Because only you know what's best for your time, your expertise, , and

how much time and money you have to put into the business, everyone's

family lives, and, uh, investment opportunities are different.

So this is just an overview to help you pick one that might be

worth looking into for yourself.

All right, so let's start with product based businesses, because very often

when someone thinks I wanna start a business, they think about products,

I mean, it's no wonder why, right?

All of us buy products almost every single day.

Physical products, and these are easy to market because everybody needs products.

Everybody needs hair gel, and everybody needs clothes and shoes

and makeup and all the things.

And everyone understands what a physical product is and how to buy one.

And almost everyone knows how to buy one online, which is such a

beautiful world that we live in.

A few more pros for selling products from home include being

able to do it all from home.

You don't need an office or a warehouse or anything, although I'll get to the

complications of that in a minute.

You can create or just curate, so collect, a large assortment of products to sell

and they can be amazing things that you feel really, really passionately about.

You can see a hole in the market and go fill it with a unique product

that you design, or you can find a very specific type of customer you

wanna serve and go find wholesale products that would serve that person

perfectly in that particular niche.

There's just a million different ways to do it, but there are three

main ways to get the products that you might wanna sell.

One is making them homemade, very often, it's where most of us entrepreneurs start.

We start with a lemonade stand or something.

We've made ourselves, maybe we sell some friendship bracelets in the

fourth grade, so we create something from scratch with our hands.

We can sell that or you can manufacture things.

So you can actually create a design, go to a manufacturer and ask them to.

Make that design for you, or you can purchase a product

wholesale and then resale it.

So what that looks like is a manufacturer creates the products but doesn't

have a way to sell it to the public.

The manufacturer and the retailer connect in some way, and then the retailer

says, yes, I wanna buy your products at.

A very low price, and then I will resell them to the general public.

So the manufacturer gets the bonus of being able to sell these products in

mass quantities, sometimes hundreds and thousands at a time, and the retailer gets

the benefit of marking them up and getting them directly into the customer's hands.

So there are pros and cons to every single one of them.

I'll run through them just really quickly.

Homemade products obviously are very fun and exciting, and it can be

really therapeutic to make something with your hands, but it requires

lots and lots of man hours and probably will end up with some carpal

tunnel or some arthritis, right?

You can't do that forever unless you do a very, very slow pace.

And if you want it to be worth your time, you're gonna have to charge

a very premium price in order for.

Your time to be worth that.

Manufacturing your own product is also a dream come true.

So many of us think, oh my gosh, I have an idea for X, Y, Z.

If only I could get it made and sell it, it would make a million dollars,

and it is much easier than homemade.

Admittedly, a manufacturer's doing all the work, you're not doing it.

However, as you can imagine, it requires a large financial

investment upfront, usually.

Thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to

get a manufacturer to be willing.

To create this product from scratch that's never been made before.

Wholesale tends to be a good place to meet.

In the middle.

You're not making the products, but you're also not needing to invest so

much money to do the prototype and the sample and get a manufacturer

to, to create something brand new.

What you do is you go take the products that they've already developed so you

know, fewer man hours and a smaller investment, and then sell them.

But of course, you're limited to what's already out there.

Now there is a way to bridge the gap between wholesale and a from scratch

product that a manufacturer creates.

You could go to manufacturer and say, Hey, I see that you're making all these skirts.

I would like them just a little bit different.

Could I pay you to make it a little longer?

Make it a little shorter, add some buttons, whatever.

You can customize the design they already have.

This happens in clothing all the time, and then they can.

Sell you what you've created, but probably in smaller amounts and less

of a financial investment because they were already creating the, the skirts.

You don't have to create them from scratch, if that makes sense.

But, you are largely limited to what you can already find out there.

So those are the basic options for getting a product in your hand that

you can sell so homemade designed by you and manufactured by someone

else or wholesale, so already manufactured and you just resell them.

Now, I will say from experience that seeing a person enjoy a product that

you have found, you've gone out and curated, or that you've designed and

then manufactured or even created with your own hands is such a thrill.

It's an amazing experience to say, oh my gosh, I designed that,

or, oh my gosh, I made that and look at all these people love it.

It's so beautiful.

Total drink come true.

But of course there are downsides.

Like I mentioned a couple already.

Funding your inventory is probably the number one.

So even if you're making things from hand, you're gonna have to

buy fabric or supplies or beads or whatever it is you're making.

And sometimes that can get pricey

If you're building up a wholesale inventory, again, a little bit more

money the most money is required.

When you manufacture your own unique product, you will also need

a place to store your inventory.

So I mentioned having a product based business from home, which is

totally possible, but as your store grows, your inventory also grows.

And unless you have a massive warehouse for a garage,

eventually you run out of space.

So you can rent a warehouse or a storage facility of some sort, but it, things do

get complicated when that inventory grows.

There's also the logistics of fulfillment.

So fulfillment means getting the product from your warehouse or home

into the hands of the customer.

So that looks like packaging, invoicing, and then getting it on the road.

If you choose to do your own fulfillment.

It will likely very quickly take over your life and your house.

You will have boxes in every room and every other day you'll be shipping

something not exactly the passive income that a lot of us are looking for.

It's a great way to start, but as your business grows, you're

probably gonna wanna outsource that fulfillment in some way or another.

There are actually fulfillment centers.

Now, these are a beautiful thing.

You can take all the orders on your website and then they immediately

get sent over to the fulfillment center, which is essentially just a

warehouse with employees that package up your product and send it on their

way, and you never have to touch it.

It's amazing.

You can also do the same thing through Amazon.

There's an FBA program which stands for fulfilled by Amazon.

So when you buy something prime, it comes from an Amazon warehouse, which is

how it gets to you very, very quickly.

It's not generally coming from somebody's home.

So that person has, you know, designed or manufactured that product, put

it in Amazon's warehouse, and then it gets shipped off to the customer.

So there are alternatives to shipping it all yourself.

Another con for holding onto physical inventory is that inventory ages,

especially if you sell clothing or jewelry or anything where the styles change quite

quickly, it'll go in and outta sigh and all of a sudden you have inventory that

is now no longer as valuable as it was six months ago because now the styles have

changed or the weather changes, right?

So that inventory actually depreciates.

It becomes less valuable over time, and that's something to be aware of as well.

Finally, if you build a e-commerce store on your own website, you

actually have to get traffic to it.

You know the old adage, if you build it, they will come?

Nope.

Doesn't count for e-commerce stores.

Like you'll build it and you'll sit and total your thumbs and no one

will find you unless you're doing advertising and other marketing.

So you have to get the traffic there yourself.

Or if you put it on a third party website like Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, eBay,

you will then have to compete with lots of other businesses that are also trying

to get the eyeballs on their products.

So there is no clear winner there.

You have to just pick one and choose the one that's gonna work best for your life.

So that is a quick overview of selling products from home.

Whew.

Okay, you guys ready for content?

All right.

Content based businesses are absolutely where I encourage people

to start when they have little to no money to invest in their business.

Because you don't have to fund any inventory.

You don't have to actually have products to sell.

You get to just come up with stuff out of your brilliant brain.

It's amazing.

So essentially you or your brain is the product or service, and

you put it out there, and try to get people to purchase it.

However, that means it has to be really good, right?

You're gonna be competing with a lot of amazing people on the internet that have

lots of good content and services to sell.

If you don't have any marketable skills, you will first need to

invest time or money into some sort of training or education,

Let's say you wanna teach art classes.

Well, that's great.

Do you have an art education?

Do you have experience doing art?

Are you talented in any way?

Maybe you love art and you're a little bit talented, but you

have a lot of things to learn.

There's gonna be some investment there in your own brain before you have

something to sell to someone else.

However, lemme say here that I do see many people becoming very successful

with content-based businesses with no education or training.

They just take a hobby that they love and they turn it into something marketable, or

they share life experiences or something that they're really, really good at.

So think for a second what the last thing was that someone complimented you on.

Did they tell you, you.

Are really good at doing your hair, that your hair's always beautiful.

Did they say they love the meal you baked, or are you great at photography

or gardening or cleaning or organizing?

Maybe you're just an exceptionally patient parent, or literally

any other skill on the planet.

You can teach others how to do it in one way or another.

That is hands down.

The easiest way to get started with building a business online is by sharing

your own expertise or your own life experiences and knowledge with someone

else who is maybe a few steps behind you.

So especially experienced parents.

Couple episodes I talked about all the superpowers that moms have that

make them exceptional entrepreneurs.

Every year you're a parent, you're developing some incredible skills like how

not to fly off the handle when your three year old throws a fork at his sister.

These are really important things that other people want to know.

How can you use this knowledge and these life experiences to

improve someone else's life?

Now, let's say you have one of these skills and you want

to share it with someone else.

How do you do that?

Well, I would suggest one of two ways.

Developing an online course or a membership are currently phenomenal

ways to make money for relatively little time and effort upfront.

Now, it's not like you're gonna set it up one day and just sit and drink.

Lemonade on the porch all day while the money rolls in.

That's not exactly how it works.

There is a lot of work that goes into it.

However, when you compare the profit margin of a content based

business versus a product based business, it cannot compare.

So for example, if I'm selling a product for $50 and it costs me $20 to buy the

product, my profit margin is about 30.

Obviously, there's other overhead as well.

If I am selling my content, For $50, my overhead is like five, whatever it

took me to get the website up right?

So your profit margin is always gonna be a lot higher with content

because it doesn't cost you anything to make or very, very little to make.

It just takes your brain power.

So courses and memberships are really, really, really powerful

ways to set up a business that is really successful as well.

In addition to being easy to set up and easy to run content businesses or

selling digital products, you know, like PDFs or designs et cetera, they have

the potential to scale very quickly.

Okay?

So you could create a course one time and then potentially sell 5,000 of

them and be a millionaire, right?

That happens.

It's really, really fun to watch.

In fact, I recently saw a documentary on the fabric designer, Bonnie Christine.

I've talked about her here before.

She's really inspiring and I'll, I'll include the link to the

documentary in the show notes.

So her story is going from starving artist to literally a multimillionaire by

creating a course and a membership site.

That's it.

She has a course teaching people how to do.

Surface design, so how to design fabrics and wallpaper and that

sort of thing, and a membership to support those business owners.

And that's it.

And she makes many millions of dollars every year.

So pretty powerful to watch something like a content business, teach other

people how to fulfill their own dreams while also making you money.

The possibilities here for content based businesses truly are limitless.

But again, it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

There really is no business where you just set it up one

day and watch the money roll in.

It takes time and effort to build an audience.

So with a content based business, maybe the products don't take

quite as long to to create, and it's not as much grind ongoing.

But you have to have people that want what you have, and that

includes building an audience.

You have to get people to know you and like you and trust you before

they will give you any money.

And sometimes that takes a long time, sometimes years.

And of course the same goes for services that you might offer

people who have a pain point.

So I know millions of people could benefit from coaching, but first I

have to convince them that I have the solution for their problem, and second,

that it's worth whatever I'm charging.

So it's all just a matter of putting yourself out there, finding the audience,

and getting them to know, like, and trust you enough to pay you what you're asking.

So I mentioned digital products briefly.

In addition to these courses and memberships, you could sell things,

like I said, PDF guides, video series, audio trainings, and so much more.

Any way you can get your knowledge into someone else's hands is

a way that you can sell it.

You can also make money as a content creator, via a blog or

a YouTube channel or a podcast.

So essentially how those people make money, and this includes

social media marketing as well, is through ads or affiliate marketing.

So ads, obviously we know what those are.

We're watching a YouTube channel and ad pops up.

The creator of the YouTube channel usually gets a little cut from that ad.

Affiliate marketing is when they will share a product or service

with you and include a special link.

Very often they'll have a promo code or something.

That promo code ensures that they get a kickback when you go

make a purchase with that code.

Obviously all of us are familiar with Instagrammers and Talkers who go out

and make money on the platform by showing up and getting partnerships

with other brands in order to show their products or rave about it, or

tell everybody it's the hottest thing.

I could go on and on about business ideas all day long, but the fact of

the matter is if you have a dream of giving somebody something they

want or something they need, then you can build a business around it.

It might take a little time and tweaking.

In fact, it likely will to figure out exactly who will pay you this money

and what exactly they want from you.

But your mindset is key.

That's why I'm here because I know that your commitment to it, to

stick to it until you see success is the most important thing.

Now, if you want a good place to start with any of these ideas, I will include

links to some of my favorite online teachers in the show notes that includes

someone who teaches about memberships, about selling digital products and

courses about, physical products.

So , give all of them a follow or just those that seem relevant

to what you wanna build.

And let me know if you have an amazing business idea.

I cannot wait to see.

Would you guys come up with, talk to you guys soon?