Business

How to Start a Profitable Online Business from Scratch

If you are thinking of starting a business, you will no doubt be weighing up the risk of founding it versus the potential long-term upside. This is a necessary thought process, and your eventual decision will be entirely determined by the type of company you want to start and your current personal and financial situation.

However, although businesses are always tough to start and require a huge amount of work to make prosperous, it has actually never been easier to build a profitable business.


Considering the current backdrop of a looming recession, rising inflation, and a cost-of-living crisis in many Western countries, this may sound like madness, but the logic is sound.

Thanks to the proliferation of the internet, the start-up costs of many business models have been slashed. This is most stark with online-only companies – which don’t require offices, vast full-time teams, or long development costs to thrive.

In fact, you can become profitable from the very start with many online business models.


Rather than explore the vast amounts of potential businesses to start, this guide will explore ways to ensure you are profitable from scratch.

This is what you need to know:

Buy in a more complete skill set

One of the biggest problems holding back first-time business owners is the fear that they don’t know enough about their chosen market to succeed.

Although it is crucial to have a working understanding of your market and service to run a successful business, it doesn’t mean you have to know everything. 

Instead of trying to complete the various service tasks yourself, you should instead outsource it to a specialist like Cedar Bay. Their IFS Infrastructure services free you up to complete other tasks without worrying about your tech structure.

Market yourself relentlessly

Another crucial tip you need to consider is to market your business consistently. If you want to be profitable from the get-go, then you need to ensure your target customers know who you are. 

Start by conducting detailed market research on these prospects. Find out who they currently buy from, the type of content they enjoy consuming, and which medium of marketing they prefer.

This could be radio adverts, social media (and if so, find out which platform they use), billboards, or email marketing, for example.

By establishing a brand image and making noise in your market, you will start to garner interest from potential customers. Although you should not expect results overnight, this is a fantastic way to start building momentum with your business. 

Find a proven market

Arguably the most important point to consider is finding a provably profitable market. It is easy to make grand plans about how you are going to dominate a particular industry or even start a new one, but until you examine its current state, you will have no way of proving it to be the case.

Therefore, choose a market that has established businesses in your niche and a healthy number of customers already buying from them. This will reduce the chances of you entering a barren sector or failing to be profitable in the short term.