With the coming end of the year and the rise of prices on commercial products, the e-commerce industry becomes more palatable towards the everyday consumer-turned-entrepreneur. Since it’s easier now more than ever to make some money quickly, it is a no-brainer to think about starting your very own online business. With so many options to choose from, there are many paths you could take towards a profitable online business.
However, there are many nuances that come with each separate sector of the e-commerce industry. Not only are there tons of markets all with different audiences, but there are also little tricks that come with starting in each sector. With all the available ones to choose from, how will you ever decide which one to go into?
There are a couple of options that are highly profitable and easy to start up. In this article, we will explore the top 5 best online businesses to start in the upcoming 2025 year.
1. Create an Online Shop Selling Handmade Goods
There are many websites that allow you to create your own shop, complete with its own title and brand. Etsy and eBay are a few that host thousands of unique options to quickly start an online business as they themselves are e-commerce platforms.
| Top 5 Shops on Etsy | # of Monthly Sales | Category |
| CaitlynMinimalist | 681,437 | Jewelry |
| SilverRainSilver | 473,547 | Jewelry |
| WarungBeads | 398,490 | Craft Supplies & Tools |
| ArrowGiftCoLtd | 376,897 | Paper & Party Supplies |
| Seed Geeks | 305.894 | Home & Living |
Given that an online shop gives you the freedom to choose how and when you sell your products, it is one of the most reliable forms of profit. Any form of original art, such as paintings, clothing, or knickknacks, can be sold to anyone in the world, as well as be a steady stream of income if the product is also steadily made.
Picking your niche market to sell your products to will allow you to keep a solid audience base that can allow your online business to maximize profits, so the most important thing is to identify the best products you can create, as well as the consumer audience that you are targeting.
2. Become an Influencer
Every time you open your phone to a social media app, odds are you’ll encounter an influencer, whose job is almost simply to be themselves. While there are more nuances to it than that, there are many different platforms to choose from as well, from YouTube to TikTok to Instagram.
An influencer path may drive you into a niche corner, however, most people find themselves more comfortable working with one of their favorite hobbies. The more genuine an influencer appears on their social media, the more likely the user-consumers are to flock towards their content.
Some of the most popular influencers on YouTube, for example, Jacksepticeye or PewDiePie, got their famous starts by playing their favorite video games and sharing their love of them with the world. Their genuine reactions and likeability caused their fame to skyrocket in the 2010s decade, and their channels are still going strong to this day. Their profits can be anywhere from $14,000 to $225,000 in a single month!
| Influencer | Average Monthly Income |
| Jacksepticeye | $119,500 |
| PewDiePie | $31,550 |
| Mr. Beast | $7,000,000 |
This may be one of the more difficult paths to an online business as it can take months to a year for profits to even start coming in, but certainly one of the most successful and most enjoyable ones. It is certainly the best avenue to pick if you are a people-person and enjoy interacting with your followers on a daily basis.
3. Publish Your Own Book Online
A non-traditional online business that most don’t often think of is becoming an author through the also non-traditional route of online publishing. Online platforms like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing allows for a larger quantity of people to get their work out and into the hands of more people, while the traditional publishing route could take years or not even happen at all due to corporate publishing houses’ particularness.
| Self-Publishing Profits on Amazon | Average Monthly Profit |
| Normal Earnings | $10,075 |
| Royalties | 60-70% |
While books can be time-consuming to write and then subsequently edit, some hard work and determination can make your journey as a online author-entrepreneur worth it. Less roadblocks to getting the material published and the widespread availability that online publishing offers allows this avenue lots of potential to earn you royalties, a feat that not many e-commerce entrepreneurs can boast.
Places like Amazon, arguably the biggest self-publishing channel out there, champion a high royalty rate and let authors get the most exposure to their target audience. While authors aren’t typically thought of as online businesses, they can easily use their books, and any subsequent sequels to gather the most income possible from each business venture.
Books also give you a large field of topics to choose to write about, and you don’t necessarily have to be the most amazing write in the world to make an impact in the industry. While fantasy and romance books are some of the most profitable genres, there are certainly others that can be explored like uncharted territory.
4. Building Websites Through Freelance
A more freelance route towards e-commerce, building websites can set yourself apart from the typical freelance scene. With easy-to-use platforms like Wix, or even teaching yourself to code, creating applications and websites for widespread consumption can open up a plethora of opportunities for the more tech-savvy entrepreneur.
Websites like Wix allow you to bypass all the coding and get to the visual-side of how a website will appear as a finished product. The only part of this avenue that may cost you a bit is buying the domain from Wix, so that it is not attached to the website indefinitely.
| Top 3 Website Builders |
| Wix |
| Squarespace |
| GoDaddy |
If you’d rather go the coding route, there are plenty of free online resources in which to learn easy programming code like Python or C#. Even Google has its own free course for those looking to learn Python, being one of the easier codes to master for people looking to break into the freelance programming industry.
There are plenty of people, and even other online businesses, that are looking for their startup websites and the best way for them to achieve that without the know-how themselves, is to hire a freelance programmer or web designer that could give them that extra help they need to get themselves, and possibly you, off the ground.
5. Become a Virtual Assistant
Even taking a peek at any job website like LinkedIn and Indeed, you can see that Virtual Assistants (VA) are in high-demand nowadays. As another more freelance route, VAs can choose and charge their preferred hourly rate and offer their services to just about any online business or other entrepreneur looking for the extra helping hand.
The average VA base salary comes out to $26.92 per hour, which can give that little profit bump to anyone looking for a little extra on the side, or even make a full-time career out of if the relationship between the VA and the client extends past a small-time contract.
| Annual Salary | Monthly Pay | Weekly Pay | Hourly Pay | |
| Top Earners | $70,000 | $5,833 | $1,346 | $34 |
| 75th Percentile | $59,500 | $4,958 | $1,144 | $29 |
| Average | $49,156 | $4,096 | $945 | $24 |
| 25th Percentile | $38,000 | $3,166 | $730 | $18 |
People and businesses all over the world are looking for anything from administrative duties to even marketing responsibilities to aid their organization’s effectiveness towards their goals and mission statements. The remote availability that VAs present allows for flexibility of helping anyone anywhere in the world. You may even be able to be a VA for multiple parties at once, doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your income if you set your schedule just right.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to start a new online business or become a e-commerce entrepreneur, there are so many options to choose from. Some of the most profitable of online businesses give you the creative freedom to not only enjoy the work that you do, but to make an honest living that doesn’t present itself in traditional full-time or part-time work through a W-2 employment agreement between yourself and a random company out in the world.
When thinking about the specific industry within e-commerce you want to go into, ensure that whatever you do, you enjoy it and that you can make a solid business plan to keep yourself afloat. The second you detest the work you do or don’t have a plan going into starting your own online business is the second you may run into trouble with getting it off the ground.
Make sure you do all your research about the specific online business industry you plan to go into, as well as research your competitors and the places that would best benefit you for whichever product(s) you plan to create and share with the world.
As long as you consider all your options and make your own informed decisions, you are more than capable to set up your very own successful online business.
