Top 10 best online business ideas to start in 2025

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If you’re looking to start your entrepreneurial journey, learning about online business ideas with the highest growth potential is a solid first step. 

Being your own boss has been popularized a lot, with online businesses being one of the most attractive options. It’s because an online store is generally less expensive to start and run than a brick-and-mortar one. It’s also likely to have a much larger potential for profitability and growth, as you’re not limited to a specific geographical area when building a customer base.

But just because it’s easier doesn’t mean you don’t have to put in the time and work — keep in mind that it’s also easier for your competitors. The first step is figuring out which business would work best in the current economic and tech climate. This article will reveal some of the best online business ideas for 2025.

Why online business is a great opportunity in 2025

As you can see from the infographic above, online retail commerce sales have been steadily growing for more than a decade. With growing online consumer needs and technological innovations, sales are set to continue to increase in the foreseeable future. Some of the most important reasons why the business landscape is shifting from physical to online are:

• Starting an online business involves lower startup costs: When opening a physical business, you have to spend a lot of money on its physical location, plus other significant expenses like storage and manufacturing equipment. Online businesses don’t need a fancy brick-and-mortar store, and you can save on storage and production in various ways, including dropshipping and on-demand manufacturing or cloud manufacturing.
• Online businesses are much more scalable: Scaling a physical business is also much riskier and more expensive, as you have to invest in new physical locations and personnel. Online businesses benefit from automation tools like Omnisend and scalable cloud-based infrastructure, making it easier to adapt your business to fit your client base size.
• Your reach is global: The sky may be the limit, but everywhere else is within your reach. You can easily adapt your online store to market and sell your products all over the world.

Top 10 profitable online business ideas for 2025

This is a list of the 10 best online businesses to start in 2025, plus a brief description of each. We’ll discuss them in further detail later in the article. 

1. Ecommerce store (dropshipping or print-on-demand): Dropshipping and print-on-demand services eliminate the need for a large initial investment, making it easier to become profitable
2. Freelance services (writing, graphic design, consulting): Selling your skill online to whoever needs it requires almost no upfront investment
3. Online course creation: If you can teach others, creating online courses can be an inexpensive way of generating passive income
4. Affiliate marketing: Discovering a potentially popular good or service and promoting it online has low costs and a high potential upside
5. Subscription box business: If you’re highly knowledgeable in a specific niche, you can monetize it by selling curated product selections to customers
6. Virtual assistant services: Many people need someone to help them manage their daily schedule, and the internet makes it easy to do so remotely
7. Social media influencer or content creator: Creating content for online audiences can be hugely profitable if you find the right niche
8. Digital marketing agency: Not all online business owners have the time and skills to do their own marketing, and you can take advantage of that by doing it for them
9. Web or app development: All online businesses need an attractive website, app, or both, creating a huge marketing base for your web or app development skills
10. Blogging or content writing: People still read online, so selling your ideas can generate lots of revenue at almost no cost

1. Ecommerce store (dropshipping or print-on-demand)

Physical store owners have to spend lots of money on manufacturing their merchandise and storing their stocks in a safe and adequate environment. Modern technology has removed these barriers, and nowadays, you can open an online store without worrying about buying expensive manufacturing equipment and having a large warehouse to store your products.

Dropshipping saves you time and money, as a third party will keep your product until someone buys it and then ship it directly to them. This way, you won’t need to build and store a large inventory, which will significantly reduce your cost.

You don’t even have to make products yourself, as print-on-demand services allow you to sell customized products, like clothes, jewelry, tote bags, phone cases, and many others, without manufacturing and storing them yourself. Platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce will host your store, so all that’s left is finding the right niche and building your brand.

2. Freelance services (writing, graphic design, consulting)

If you have specific knowledge and experience in a marketable skill, you can market yourself directly online and find clients who need what you have to offer. Common examples of in-demand offerings include graphic design, digital marketing, web development, legal consulting, business management, and data analysis, but the range of freelance services that can be sold online is virtually unlimited. It’s great for skilled professionals who don’t like the rigors of regular employment but who aren’t particularly passionate about entrepreneurship.

There are many platforms that facilitate the interaction between people who want to monetize their knowledge and those looking for their services. Examples include Fiverr, Upwork, and LinkedIn, but there are many more, with some of them being niche-specific. You can also take the proactive route by building a personal website and reaching out directly to potentially interested people.

3. Online course creation

The internet has arguably taken away the monopoly that colleges, universities, and other traditional educational institutions have on high-quality, in-depth information. Today, if you’re highly knowledgeable on a specific subject, you can teach others online. There’s a market for a large variety of course topics as more and more people have the need and desire for continuous education.

It’s also a relatively low-risk online business opportunity, as platforms like Udemy and Teachable will host your courses while also helping you market and monetize them. All you’ll need is the basic gear to get started, which is usually a device with a camera and microphone, plus specific tools for your particular teaching niche. Creating a course that will stay relevant for a long time can generate passive income for years.

4. Affiliate marketing

If you have a powerful online presence, you can leverage that by becoming an affiliate marketer. This essentially means promoting products and services sold by other organizations through your own social media profiles, blog, or website. You’ll give your audience special links that help the selling organization track your referral and let them know that you sent those respective customers there. You’ll earn a commission as a reward, which is usually a predetermined percentage of the sales generated through your links.

Platforms like Amazon Associates and ShareASale will make it easy for you to create an affiliate account and find products that you think you can promote effectively. They will help connect you with a wide variety of merchants and make it easy for you to sell their products and earn a passive income.

5. Subscription box business

The internet has also enabled people to dive deeper into their passions. From coffee to scented candles and even clothes, many of us would like selections that go beyond what you can find at your local store or supermarket. This gave rise to the idea of a subscription box.

Starting such a business enables you to send your audience a personalized selection of high-quality niche products each month in exchange for a recurring fee. Some common niches include beauty, food, and fitness products, but there are endless possibilities regarding what you can sell.

There are other advantages that this type of online business has over a typical online store besides the growing appeal of niche products. Having your customers pay a monthly fee makes your income more predictable, and personalizing your products can lead to increased customer loyalty. 

6. Virtual assistant services

As the online business world continues to grow, new adjacent niches appear all the time. Entrepreneurs and professionals in various fields are constantly looking for ways to spend their time as efficiently as possible, and a great way to do that is by outsourcing certain time-consuming tasks. This is where the virtual assistant comes in. 

Depending on your skills, you can offer services like handling customer service operations for your clients, managing their social media profiles, or taking care of administrative tasks like managing their schedules and answering emails on their behalf.

There are virtually no startup costs involved if you don’t count a working computer with an internet connection. You can work from anywhere and create your own schedule, giving you plenty of flexibility to pursue other activities. You can also scale your business later on by hiring and managing other virtual assistants.

7. Social media influencer or content creator

If you’re passionate about creating engaging content on the internet through posts, images, videos, and other methods, you can monetize it and turn it into an online business. Brands are constantly looking to associate their image with popular internet personalities. It’s a highly effective form of marketing and advertising, as audiences tend to trust the online influencers they follow. 

There are several ways to monetize your internet popularity. 

One of the most effective is to partner with brands and promote their products to your audience. They can either pay you for an entire campaign or on a pay-per-click basis. It’s important to actually like what you promote, though, as authenticity is your strongest asset. 

Other monetization methods include displaying ads on your online channels, developing your own product lines in partnership with other brands, or the above-mentioned affiliate marketing route.

8. Digital marketing agency

Digital marketing agencies help various businesses expand their online presence. They do it in a wide variety of ways, like implementing sound SEO (search engine optimization) practices, growing social media profiles with quality posts, designing attractive websites, making email marketing practices more effective, and creating quality content on behalf of their clients.

Most businesses, both online and with a physical presence, need digital marketing to engage with potential customers and stay competitive in their fields. This means that there are plenty of possibilities for growing as a digital marketer. 

There are great opportunities for specialized services and remote work. You can start by yourself and slowly build a larger business by getting more clients and hiring staff. You can also generate a predictable monthly income through monthly fees for services like social media channel management and SEO services.

9. Web or app development

Since so many people are online in one way or another, it’s safe to say that most businesses need at least a good-looking and well-functioning website. Others also need a dedicated app for smartphone and tablet users, as it’s generally easier for users to access a company’s online services through an app than via an internet browser.

This means that if you’re a skilled website or app designer, you can leverage that and start working on your own rather than for an employer. It’s a highly competitive market, though, so you’ll need strong coding or user experience design skills. The most in-demand website and app developers have both these skills, but focusing on one of them is also a good way to start your website and app development business.

10. Blogging or content writing

Although most online information is consumed via video and sound, there’s still a strong market for the written word. If you’re passionate about a particular subject and can write engaging materials on that topic, consider starting a blog or seeking companies within that particular niche that need content for their websites. You’ll need to be highly organized, though. This involves strategizing your content and learning SEO practices.

The ways you can make money through your own blog are somewhat similar to how social media influencers and content creators do it. The most straightforward way is by displaying ads directly on your blog. Platforms like Google AdSense can help you with that, and you’ll usually earn money on a pay-per-click basis. Affiliate marketing and partnering with brands to present their products are also lucrative ways of monetizing your blog.

How to start an online business

All online businesses are different, and there’s no surefire way to achieve success in any of these 10 ways. There are, however, some basic steps you must take at the beginning to set your business up for success. They are:

1. Choose a business idea: It all starts with having an idea and choosing the exact type of online business you want to create. Determine what your best skills are, pick a type of online business that fits those skills, and find a unique niche or approach that can help differentiate yourself from your competition.
2. Set up your website: Now that you know what you want to sell, how you want to sell it, and to whom you want to sell it, it’s time to build your website. You don’t necessarily need to have website-building skills, as dedicated services like Wix, WordPress, and GoDaddy make building a professional-looking website quick and easy.
3. Create a business plan: Although things can change quickly, and there are plenty of unknown variables, creating a strong business plan to guide you is a necessary step. Analyze your online business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and use them to create a roadmap for the future.
4. Start marketing your business: After setting everything up, all that’s missing is the customers. Reach out to them in as many ways as you can, including social media, email, and SMS marketing tools like Omnisend, and optimize your content for better search engine integration.

How Omnisend can boost your online business

As we’ve noted earlier, marketing your business is a crucial part of its success. If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool to help you market your products and brand as effectively as possible, you should try Omnisend. Its flexible and personalized approach makes it a good fit for most, if not all, business models presented in this article, from a blog to a huge ecommerce website. Some specific elements of your marketing strategy that Omnisend can help you with include:

• Email marketing automation: Interacting with your customer base via email is one of the most direct and effective ways. Omnisend’s email marketing solution allows you to create and send professional-looking emails to your audience.
• Customer segmentation. Not all potential customers respond to the same type of message. With Omnisend, you can segment your audience and create personalized marketing campaigns based on their distinctive characteristics.
• Scalable solutions. As your business grows, Omnisend will help you scale. Its free plan gives you access to all its features for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails per month, and you can choose a superior plan as you get a bigger audience.

Conclusion

There’s never been a better time to start an online business than right now, in 2025. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though, and the first thing you need to do is figure out what your monetizable skills are and what online business model fits them best. Since most of them involve a low entry cost, you can experiment with different models to find the one that’s right for you.

Once you find it, you have a wide variety of tools at your disposal to attract an audience. Omnisend is one of them, and it will help you reach out to your audience in personalized ways and automate messages like welcome emails and abandoned cart alerts, giving you the time you need to focus on growing your business.

Online business ideas FAQs

These are some frequently asked questions on the subject: