How to Find a Profitable Online Business Idea

You’re currently reading Chapter 2 of The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your E-mail List.

How to avoid the “List-Building Rat Race”

When I first started my website, I spent $500 on a custom design, wrote tens of blog posts, and worked hard on it for months.

And yet, in over the course of 6 months, I only managed to get a measly 42 e-mail subscribers, and never expected to turn it into an online business that I could live off.

I LIVED the “List-Building Rat Race”, and it’s no wonder I ended up deleting my website after spending hundreds of hours and dollars on it.

Why did I struggle with growing my e-mail list?

Well, I probably broke every single rule in my Ultimate Guide to Growing Your E-mail List (oops):

• I didn’t test my business idea or experience any Moments of Traction (TRACTION stage)
• I didn’t create an Epic Lead Magnet that would turn my website visitors into e-mail subscribers (MOMENTUM stage)
• I definitely didn’t create and promote any Remarkable Content (GROWTH stage)

Instead, I built a blog, started sharing my ideas, and hoped that I would somehow magically build an online business. It didn’t work.

The good news is that you don’t have to repeat my mistakes and spend 6 months grinding to 42 e-mail subscribers.

And the best way to start is to find a Profitable Online Business Idea.

Finding Your Profitable Business Idea might not be something that you think of as a crucial step to growing your e-mail list.

However, it can be THE thing that makes the difference between a business that grows exponentially and a business that stays stuck in the List-Building Rat Race forever.

In this post, we’ll talk about:

• Why you need a Profitable Online Business Idea to grow your e-mail list in 2019
• What is a Profitable Online Business Idea
• 12 Examples of Profitable Online Business Ideas
• 9 Ways to come up with a Profitable Online Business Idea
• Why you shouldn’t spend hours and hours brainstorming ideas (and what to do instead)

Let’s dive in!

To Grow Your Email List in 2019, You Need a Profitable Online Business Idea

Back in 2006-2007, you didn’t have to have a particularly unique business idea to build a successful blog.

Since this was before blogging exploded and it was way harder to get into it (you couldn’t just buy a blog template for $50 and start blogging), there was far less competition.

You could simply start writing, and people in your social circle would read what you write. Facebook posts would get hundreds of likes and shares. Your content would automatically be found on Google, since there was little competition in most industries.

But in 2019, just writing a blog is not enough.

Today, there are over 40x more blog posts written than back in 2006-2007. This means that you likely have 40x more competitors than you did back than, if not more (if you’re trying to enter a very saturated niche like fitness, that number might be a lot higher).

That’s why today, to grow your email list and build a successful online business, it’s more important than ever to have a Profitable Online Business Idea.

The Business Idea Masterclass

Because finding a profitable business idea is such an important topic, I recorded a 65-minute masterclass about it that goes into way more depth – you can watch it here as a supplement to this blog post:

What is a Profitable Online Business Idea?

Today, with thousands of online businesses out there, your should come up with a business idea that is unique in some way to stand out and get noticed.

By a Proftitable Online Business Idea, I mean that you should try to:

• Solve a problem nobody else is solving yet
• Help an audience that nobody else is helping yet
• Help an audience with a problem in a better or different way than anyone else

This will give you the highest chances of finding an online business idea that your potential customers will be happy to pay for.

You can find a Profitable Business Idea in a number of ways:

• You could come up with a completely new problem that nobody is solving yet (teach people how to learn a new programming language)
• You could take existing knowledge and tailor it to a specific audience that nobody is helping yet (teaching accountants how to get more clients)
• You could enter a saturated market with a new angle (lose weight through spices)

As you choose your business idea, you should pick an idea that:

• You are excited about, and could talk about for hours on end
• You know a lot about, and you could confidently give advice about
• There is enough demand for, and people are willing to pay for

I assume you already have some kind of a business idea in mind as you’re reading this guide, and that’s awesome.

But if you tried creating content or publishing an Epic Resource and you just didn’t get an amazing response (or you struggle with getting your first 100 e-mail subscribers), then your business idea is the first piece of the puzzle you should revisit.

12 Examples of Profitable Business Ideas

To get a feel for what makes a Profitable Business Idea, let’s look at some of the ideas from established entrepreneurs I interviewed for this guide.

Every single one of these entrepreneurs has an e-mail list of thousands of e-mail subscribers, successfully sold online courses or coaching programs, and the majority of them earn more than $100,000/year with their online businesses.

Here are some of my favorite examples:

• Nagina Abdullah: Helping ambitious women lose weight with spices
• Rusty Gray: How to become a professional animator
• Karen Dudek-Brannan: How to become better at speech pathology
• Gabriela Pereira: How to get better at writing without getting a degree
• Sam Gavis-Hughson: How to master coding interviews at top tech companies
• Danny Margulies: How to become a freelance copywriter  
• Jenni Waldrop: How to grow your Etsy business
• Will Darling: How to mix EDM music
• Luke McIntosh: How to become a bassist
• Ryan Hildebrandt: How to speak at TEDx events
• Christina Rebuffet: How to speak fluent American English
• Geraldine Lepere: How to speak French

Notice how the majority of these ideas are unique / specific in their own ways (and interestingly enough, the majority of them are not in the health / money making niches).

Some people say that “you don’t need to be an expert to build an online business”, and that you don’t need a unique business idea to succeed, but the data seems to say otherwise.

If you want to live of an online business today, it’s more likely you’ll be able to do it if you come up with a unique business idea than if you try to pursue an idea that has already been done before.

9 Ways to Come up With a Profitable Online Business Idea

When I asked these entrepreneurs how they came up with their business ideas, they shared a few key strategies that you can use to come up with your own Profitable Business Idea.

These are the actual “strategies” that worked for them and helped them build 5-6 figure online businesses.

Strategy #1: Find the Common Complaints

Matt Rosenblum came up with his Profitable ONline Business Idea (marketing for life coaches) by reading Facebook groups related to his industry. He noticed that his audience complained about getting clients ALL the time, and that marketing their business and making it sustainable was a big challenge for them. Since he had a strong background in marketing, he felt like that was a challenge he could solve for them.

Just like Matt, you can pay attention to things people constantly complain about, whether it’s in-person or online. When you find a Common Complaint you can solve, you have a Profitable Online Business Idea worth exploring.

Strategy #2: Find a Game You Can Win

Danny Margulies knew that he wanted to help his clients with Freelancing, as that was something he was good at. Initially, he decided to focus purely on Freelancing through Upwork, and later on he focused on “Freelance Copywriting”, rather than the more competitive fields of just Freelancing or just Copywriting. That’s how he found a game he could win.

As you’re coming up with your Profitable Online Business Idea, ask yourself “What’s a game I can win?”, and try to find a specific audience (Freelance Copywriters) or a specific platform (Upwork) that you feel like is big enough for you to build a business around, but still small enough to be “Winnable”.

Strategy #3: Answer the Unanswered Questions

When Sara Kirsch started her online business, she joined a lot of Facebook groups in her industry and paid attention to questions that kept getting unanswered, or that didn’t get great answers. That’s how she found problems that nobody else was solving for her audience.

As you’re doing research around your Profitable Online Business Idea, try to spot the “Unanswered Questions”, and see if you can find a pattern. You can then use that pattern to form your Profitable Online Business Idea.

Strategy #4: Use Your Unused Research

Karen Dudek-Brannan started her online business by talking about speech pathology, a field she has worked in for 12 years. As she picked her online business idea, she wanted to pick an idea she already knew a lot about, and coincidentally, she had a “pile of research” she wasn’t using from her PhD that she could talk about in her business, which she used to build her online business.

If you have a collection of research / experiments you’ve done in the past that you never shared with anyone, this might be a great opportunity to build a business around.

Strategy #5: Share Your Personal Transformation

Nagina Abdullah saw her online business take off when she shared her personal transformation with the world. As a mom of two kids, she managed to lose over 40lbs and keep the weight off for over a year, and a lot of people were asking her questions about how she did it.

If you have an incredible personal transformation that people keep asking you questions about, this can be a great springboard for your online business.

Strategy #6: Find an Ultra-Specific Audience

Since the health industry was already pretty saturated when Nagina started building her email list, she also decided to focus on a very specific audience as she pursued her idea. She focused on helping busy ambitious women lose weight that didn’t have the time to think about what to do or where to start.

By having a specific audience in mind, she could say things to them that nobody else was saying (about losing weight when you have kids, about walking into a boardroom being consumed with how you look rather than sharing a message with your employees…).

If there’s a specific audience you can relate to or would love working with (and nobody else is serving well), you can try to reach that audience (instead of trying to compete with everyone in your industry).

Strategy #7: Answer Questions People Ask You ALL The Time

Vickie Gould wrote a lot of books, and people around her constantly asked her how she did it. She turned that into an online business where she helps people write and publish best-selling books.

If there’s a topic people ask you questions about all the time, it might be something worth exploring for your Profitable ONline Business Idea.

Strategy #8: “Someone Should Create This”

I recently talked to a friend about how he started his online business, and he said he’s had an idea for YEARS and constantly said to himself “someone should do this”, but nobody ever did. Eventually, he had enough of it and did it himself, and built an extremely profitable online business that helps millions of people all over the world.

If you have a feeling that “someone should create this” about a topic (but nobody ever does), then you could step in and do it yourself, and build a successful business around it.

Strategy #9: “I Could do This For a Different Topic / Audience”

Will Darling who helps people produce EDM music online had a friend who built an online business around helping people learn how to play guitar. He thought to himself “I could do the same thing, but for EDM music”, and it worked.

If you ever see someone building a business and think to yourself “I could do the same thing but for a different topic/audience”, you should definitely try it out.

Why You Shouldn’t Spend Hours and Hours Brainstorming Profitable Online Business Ideas (And What to do Instead)

Something that surprised me as I talked to entrepreneurs about how they came up with their Profitable Online Business Ideas was that almost nobody said “I sat down for 3 hours and brainstormed different business ideas, then came up with this amazing idea” when I asked them how they came up with their ideas.

Sure, some of them might have done a bit of brainstorming, but the actual ideas didn’t come from that. They came from something they were amazing at, that they’ve been doing for years (and just made sense, like with Rusty Gray, who helps animators get jobs as professional animators).

Or, it was that they randomly got an idea as they were browsing through Facebook groups online (like Matt Rosenblum and Sara Kirsch).

You can’t really brainstorm a Profitable Online Business Idea. It will come to you when you least expect it, whether you’re going for a walk, taking a shower, laying in bed in the evening or having a conversation with a friend.

Brainstorming is something that will merely help you START thinking about business ideas, and allow your brain to think of more ideas on the go.

What’s important is that WHEN the idea comes, you don’t dismiss it and say “it will never work” before you actually test it, but to go out into the world and see if there’s something there.

So take some time and brainstorm some ideas – then go out and test them in the world using the next chapter of this guide.

Summary: How to Find a Profitable Online Business Idea

In this chapter, you learned that you need a Profitable Online Business idea to escape the List-Building Rat Race and successfully build an e-mail list in 2019.

Without a great idea, your list-building efforts will bring you disappointing results and feel like an “uphill battle”. With a great idea, building an e-mail list will feel easier than you think

We covered that your idea should:

• Solve a problem nobody else is solving yet
• Help an audience that nobody else is helping yet
• Help an audience with a problem in a better or different way than anyone else

You can find a Profitable Business Idea by:

• Coming up with a completely new problem that nobody is solving yet
• Taking existing knowledge and tailor it to a specific audience that nobody is helping yet
• Enter a saturated market with a new angle

And that you should pick an idea that:

• You are excited about, and could talk about for hours on end
• You know a lot about, and you could confidently give advice about
• There is enough demand for, and people are willing to pay for

We looked at 12 examples of Profitable Online Business Ideas and went over a 9 different strategies for coming up with your own idea:

• Strategy #1: Find Common Complaints
• Strategy #2: Find a Game You Can Win
• Strategy #3: Answer the Unanswered Questions
• Strategy #4: Use Your Unused Research
• Strategy #5: Share Your Personal Transformation
• Strategy #6: Find an Ultra-Specific Audience
• Strategy #7: Answer Questions People Ask You ALL The Time
• Strategy #8: “Someone Should Create This”
• Strategy #9: “I Could Do This for a Different Topic / Audience”

And finally, I argued why you shouldn’t spend hours and hours brainstorming your ideas, and recommended you to test them in the real world instead.

In the next chapter of this guide, we’ll talk about how you can validate your Profitable Business Ideas in under a week and get to your first 100 e-mail subscribers without getting stuck in research.

Continue to Chapter 3: How to Validate Your Online Business Idea

Your Turn. Which Profitable Online Business Idea(s) did you come up with? Share them with us in the comments below!