Small Businesses That Run Themselves? Here Are the Best 10 Automated Business Ideas
Trying to make the most of small businesses that run? You are in the right place. Below we break it down in plain English, with practical tips you can actually use.
Key Takeaways
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- Looking for automated business ideas or passive income strategies? This guide details the top 10 hands-off models that run smoothly wi...
Looking for automated business ideas or passive income strategies?
This guide details the top 10 hands-off models that run smoothly with minimal ongoing work after initial setup:
- Selling digital products like online courses, which only need to be created once but can be sold indefinitely.
- Monetizing a YouTube channel through ad revenue from videos that continue earning money indefinitely after being uploaded.
- Affiliate marketing through promoting other companies’ products and earning commissions, with little ongoing effort.
- Dropshipping physical products through online stores without needing to handle inventory or shipping.
- Building an income-generating blog through evergreen content, affiliate links and ads.
- Selling print-on-demand products like t-shirts, mugs and bags with artwork, where printing and shipping are automated.
- Developing mobile apps that provide passive income through subscriptions and advertising.
- Licensing music tracks through stock music libraries.
- Writing an e-book that continues earning royalties with little updating required.
- Renting out assets like your home, car, parking space or boat.
Follow along as we detail how to systematize these hands-off business models to run smoothly on their own with minimal input needed from you once set up.
Table of Contents
ToggleWhat Makes For a Excellent Automated Business Idea?
We define a passive income business as the ability to earn money today and in the future for work that you’ve done in the past. In other words, your business’s ability to generate revenue doesn’t depend on you trading hours for dollars.
There are two ways a business can run without your ongoing active participation:
- Automation: Use technology to perform repetitive tasks.
- Delegation: Have someone else perform repetitive tasks.
With the right systems in place (and in some cases, the right people), most good business ideas can generate passive income. To understand why, let’s look at what a business is at the most basic level.
As described in the now-classic business book, The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman, a business has five distinct parts:
- Value creation: Discovering what people need or want, then creating it.
- Marketing: Attracting attention to, and building demand for, what you’ve created.
- Sales: Turning prospective shoppers into paying shoppers.
- Value delivery: Giving your shoppers what you’ve promised and ensuring that they’re satisfied.
- Finance: Bringing in enough money to keep going and make your effort worthwhile.
Think of value creation as your overall business idea. This is where you’ll need to put in the bulk of your up-front effort and investment. To create passive income, the goal is to create something of value , a product or service , that has no marginal cost of replication.
As angel investor Naval Ravinkant said in his famous Twitter thread how to get rich (without getting lucky):
From there, you want to automate the marketing, sales, value delivery and finance parts of your business. Of course, this is easier said than done. But your business won’t be truly passive unless you automate each part of it!
For each of the passive income ideas listed below, we’ll address how and to what extent you can automate these elements of your business, leaving out finance, as that aspect of the business is largely automated by default with these options.
The Best Passive Income Business Ideas
Remember: nearly all passive income streams require work on the front-end, during the value creation phase and systemization process.
Expect to put in the effort to set up the systems, software and people that will minimize your future inputs for your business.
Once those pillars are in place, what you’ve created should continue to run with only occasional work from you, creating value that compounds over time.
Each of the options below will require minimal inputs after you’ve set up these compounding systems.
#1. Create Information Products
The demand for information products (like e-books, online subscriptions to premium content, digital patterns, tutorials, membership websites and digital courses) has risen sharply over the years, and it isn’t slowing down. We ranked this as the top passive income idea because of its efficiency: you create the product once and sell it over and over again.
Learn how ChatGPT and other AI creation tools are simplifying the process of launching a business, such as creating and selling information products, in our article on how to make money with ChatGPT.
Beyond value creation, how can other parts of this business be automated?
Marketing: If you build your information product on an existing course platform like Udemy or Skillshare, where audiences are visiting specifically to purchase courses, a lot of the marketing work will be done for you. (With the caveat that these sites take a share of the profits.)
For platforms where you’ll need to bring the audience (such as Teachable),
Final Thoughts
The bottom line: a little research on small businesses that run goes a long way. Compare your options, watch for seasonal offers, and never pay full price when a better deal is one click away.
Originally published at thewaystowealth.com.
Jenni Sisson
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