u/PastTip9715

I’ve looked at thousands of business ideas over the past few months.

during this time, I noticed a strange pattern when looking at trending business ideas.

I kept on hearing how “website reselling”, “UGC”, or whatever other idea was the best business idea right now. 

And yes, there aren’t bad ideas, but there is a big problem. 

People are telling others the “best business idea” when the best one for them isn’t the best for you. 

Factors like your personal experience, marketing preferences, budget, and many others determine the best idea. 

Even though it seems obvious, there isn’t a best idea and chasing the shiny new business most likely won’t work for you. 

Here are my opinions on a few business ideas…

TikTok Shop

This is where you dropship on TikTok’s platform and act as a middleman between the seller and manufacturer. 

• Low initial investment
• High competition 
• 4-6 figure monthly revenue with good products
• Need to be good at making short-form content and ads.

For people like me who aren’t video creators, this business is terrible for us.

AI SEO optimizations

 This is where you help businesses get more AI visibility on ChatGPT, Claude, etc.

• Medium competition
• Credentials/proof needed  
• 5-7 figure monthly revenue with good products
• Need to cold message or be good at creating content

This idea could be good if you have credentials or some sort of proof you know how to use AI well. 

Custom theme room makeover

This is one of my favorite ideas. Go to local houses and design and build custom rooms for clients.

• Higher startup cost 
• Design/builder skills
• 4-6 figures monthly
• Easy to get referrals and market on Facebook or at local groups
• Very low competition

 

Niche ideas like these are great and fit you much better than the new “greatest” idea. 

Final thoughts

Just because it’s trending doesn’t mean it’s the right idea for you. 

The best thing you can do is think of problems you can solve with your unique skill set and experiences.

Then look at the factors of the business to see if it’s the right fit for you. 

To help you start out, I created a free LIST of 163 business ideas sorted by type, startup cost, my perceived level of difficulty, potential monthly revenue, and growth factors. 

If you want it, upvote this post and comment “list” below, and I’ll send it to you.

This is my 163 business ideas list. The ideas are sorted by type, startup cost, my perceived difficulty level, monthly revenue potential, and growth factors.

Now go and get started!

Im looking for quality newsletters to recommend each other.

I run business deconstructed where I write weekly emails on marketing and business strategy to 1700+ entrepreneurs.

My audience is US based and are quality subs with a 39.75 open rate.

I get around 200-800 subscribers a month and would love to recommend another newsletter similar to mine.

Please comment below or send me a DM if you’re interested.

I started my newsletter 12 months ago with zero newsletter experience.

I didn’t have any following online. I didn’t have a budget for ads. I didn’t even show my face.

i also did it in the few spare hours i had every week.

Now, I’m at 1700 subscribers, made ~$1000 (monetization has not been a huge focus yet), and want to share my thoughts on how you can start a newsletter. 

1/ Newsletters aren’t for everyone

People ive seen who have long-term success with a newsletter likely have these two qualities.

• A love of writing (or at the very least, you don’t dislike it)
• Willingness to write about the same topic.

Most newsletters stop because you aren’t consistent enough. 

2/ Start your newsletter on a free plan

There are two reasons for this.

1.  it saves money 
2. you might not like, so it’s better to test it out before you go all in

3/ create reusable templates

Doing this right is kinda complex, so i’ll give you an overview. 

The best way to save time is create reusable template (subject lines, image placement, headers, ads, and so on)

Once you create your newsletter template, you can write the email within the structure and reuse it every time.

4/ get your first subscribers (probably the most important step)

I  recommend starting by reaching out to people within your network.

This builds momentum and gets your skin in the game to continue growing the newsletter.​

There are plenty of free (or paid) platforms you can market on. Try a few, then stick the one that does best.

5/ create automations once you get consistent growth

Not very important at the beginning, but once you start to grow, create automations (email sequences that send automatically).

For my newsletter, I have a welcome and re-engagement automation, but there are plenty of other ones (sales, abandoned cart, and so on). 

Final thoughts

I could talk about newsletter forever, but i wanted to keep this short and actionable. 

Newsletters are really the long-game, but have a lot of benefits and I highly recommend trying your own.

I have a free, more comprehensive newsletter guide than just these notes off the top of my head. If you want it comment below or sendv me a dm and I’ll send it.

there’s so much AI slop and bad info from ai. Is it even worth it to use for your business and how would you use it

Or is it not. Why?

To celebrate this milestone, share your business below and a one sentence description.

Here’s to more growth

I started my newsletter 11 months ago with zero experience in newsletters. 

I had no audience, no marketing budget, and honestly no idea what I was doing.

But, I failed fast and learned a lot. I recently hit 1700 subscribers, made a decent amount, and learned a lot.

here’s my advice on what i would do if I had to start a newsletter as a beginner.

1. Get to marketing fast. Don’t worry about logos, post templates, a cool website. I wasted a whole month before getting my first customer and my posts still sucked. But, by marketing I learned what posts worked and how I should position my newsletter.
2. Be your OWN follower. YOU should be your target market. Watch content your followers watch. It will make you a better marketer and writer. 
3. Repurposing and reusing content. I repurposed content from my newsletter on Reddit. I also reused and combined old reddit posts. this saved me a lot of time
4. Templatize viral content. I got my first 100k+ viewed post from doing this. Find viral content and break down the exact structure, hook, and style. Then add your own content and knowledge into their structure.
5. Choose something you can write about endlessly. i write a new email every week and new posts almost daily. A newsletter is all about the long-term and if I didnt love business, i would have quit. So choose something you can write about endlessly.

 

final thoughts

great content creation and newsletter comes from consistent progress while sticking to the fundamentals.

if you have any questions about newsletters, my newsletter, or for marketing let me know.

I recently studied Mark Ford’s books and journey scaling multiple businesses to $100M+.

He did all of this without grinding 24/7, and his main focus wasn’t on making an amazing product. 

As an entrepreneur myself, there was a lot of good advice that I wanted to share. Here are my biggest takeaways:

1/ Your main focus must be on the selling process.

Mark wrote, “Invest most of your time, energy, and attention to the selling process.

The ratio of time, creativity, and money spent on selling as opposed to other aspects of business should be something like 80/20, with 80 percent of it going toward selling and only 20 percent toward everything else.”

selling is huge. Understanding the selling process and the product-market fit is essential in the beginning of your business. 

He didn’t mention this, but it reminded me of creating a minimum viable product and focus on selling and getting feedback. 

2/ The only data point that matters: Critical Mass of Qualified Customers.

As a smaller business, your main goal is working toward a critical mass of qualified customers (CMQC).

Your critical mass of qualified customers is the number (usually ranging from 10 to 1,000+ depending on your business model) of qualified customers (high-value buyers).

to achieve this goal, you need to sell.

You will have to try different marketing channels, products, or content. When you do this, you figure out what works so you can leverage it.

3/ Constantly innovate and test new products

Once your business passes $1M in revenue, your job is to maximize the product you already have. 

Then, your focus should shift toward innovating and introducing new products that have clear improvements and USPs from existing products that work. 

mark also mentioned back-end products that you can sell to existing customers to increase the lifetime value.  

I interpret these backend products as your premium services for the small, but high-value customer segment that will pay a lot.

4/ Create systems to run and scale your business

This last step if for businesses that are beyond 10M in revenue.

To keep consistent quality and make your company more scalable, Mark tells us to make systems on the key metrics on our business (customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, fulfillment accuracy, and inventory turnover, etc.)

These key metrics should be tracked and improved by creating systems to achieve those results. Your job is to simplify the operations and establish boundaries for the managers to work in.

final thoughts

the most important parts of a small business is the selling process and getting to a critical mass of qualified customers.

Then through innovation and systems, you can continue growth and quality.

if you like this type of actionable business strategy, you can check out my free newsletter in my profile.

I have a post coming out in 3 days on how to use scarcity to drive more sales that you might like.

feel free to ask any questions below

I started my newsletter 11 months ago with zero experience in newsletters. 

I had no audience, no marketing budget, and honestly no idea what I was doing.

But, I failed fast and learned a lot. I recently hit 1700 subscribers, earned $600 from ads, and am in the middle of making a digital product

I wanted to share advice on what i would do if I had to start a newsletter as a beginner.

1. Get to marketing fast. Don’t worry about logos, post templates, a cool website. I wasted a whole month before getting my first customer and my posts still sucked. But, by marketing I learned what posts worked and how I should position my newsletter.
2. Be your OWN follower. YOU should be your target market. Watch content your followers watch. It will make you a better marketer and writer. 
3. Repurposing and reusing content. I repurposed content from my newsletter on Reddit. I also reused and combined old reddit posts. this saved me a lot of time
4. Templatize viral content. I got my first 100k+ viewed post from doing this. Find viral content and break down the exact structure, hook, and style. Then add your own content and knowledge into their structure.
5. Choose something you can write about endlessly. i write a new email every week and new posts almost daily. A newsletter is all about the long-term and if I didnt love business, i would have quit. So choose something you can write about endlessly.

 

final thoughts

newsletter aren’t passive income. Only when you grow a large audience, you can post and earn a consistent income from ads and affiliate offers.

But even then it’s not fully passive because the best newsletters build a brand and you have to be active about it.

great content creation and newsletter comes from consistent progress while sticking to the fundamentals.

feel free to ask me any questions

I recently studied Mark Ford’s books and journey scaling multiple businesses to $100M+.

He did all of this without grinding 24/7, and his main focus wasn’t on making an amazing product. 

As an entrepreneur myself, there was a lot of good advice that I wanted to share. Here are my biggest takeaways:

1/ Your main focus must be on the selling process.

Mark wrote, “Invest most of your time, energy, and attention to the selling process.

The ratio of time, creativity, and money spent on selling as opposed to other aspects of business should be something like 80/20, with 80 percent of it going toward selling and only 20 percent toward everything else.”

selling is huge. Understanding the selling process and the product-market fit is essential in the beginning of your business. 

He didn’t mention this, but it reminded me of creating a minimum viable product and focus on selling and getting feedback. 

2/ The only data point that matters: Critical Mass of Qualified Customers.

As a smaller business, your main goal is working toward a critical mass of qualified customers (CMQC).

Your critical mass of qualified customers is the number (usually ranging from 10 to 1,000+ depending on your business model) of qualified customers (high-value buyers).

to achieve this goal, you need to sell.

You will have to try different marketing channels, products, or content. When you do this, you figure out what works so you can leverage it.

3/ Constantly innovate and test new products

Once your business passes $1M in revenue, your job is to maximize the product you already have. 

Then, your focus should shift toward innovating and introducing new products that have clear improvements and USPs from existing products that work. 

mark also mentioned back-end products that you can sell to existing customers to increase the lifetime value.  

I interpret these backend products as your premium services for the small, but high-value customer segment that will pay a lot.

4/ Create systems to run and scale your business

This last step if for businesses that are beyond 10M in revenue.

To keep consistent quality and make your company more scalable, Mark tells us to make systems on the key metrics on our business (customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, fulfillment accuracy, and inventory turnover, etc.)

These key metrics should be tracked and improved by creating systems to achieve those results. Your job is to simplify the operations and establish boundaries for the managers to work in.

final thoughts

the most important parts of a small business is the selling process and getting to a critical mass of qualified customers.

Then through innovation and systems, you can continue growth and quality.

hopefully you found these takeaways as valuable as I did.

skills, traits, what do they have in common