If you want to build something online that can eventually produce income, it is very easy to start in the wrong place.
You can spend weeks comparing affiliate marketing, ecommerce, freelancing, digital products, YouTube, blogging and dozens of other possibilities.
But choosing a business model is not necessarily the first decision.
Before deciding what to build, it helps to establish who you want to help and what they actually need.
One of the easiest mistakes to make is to start with a platform, product or business model.
A better starting point is the person you hope to help.
Before worrying about websites, social media, products or technology, try to answer five simple questions.
WHO — Who are you trying to help?
PROBLEM — What are they trying to achieve, change or solve?
WHERE — Where can you find these people? Where do they already ask questions, look for information or discuss the problem?
SOLUTION — What could genuinely help them?
OFFER — What could you provide, create or recommend that they might be willing to pay for?
WHO → PROBLEM → WHERE → SOLUTION → OFFER
Once you have some idea who you want to help and what they need, you can start thinking about how you might build a business around that.
There isn't one “best” online business model. Different models suit different people, skills, resources and audiences.
Most of the possibilities can be reduced to a few broad routes.
1. Sell a service — Use a skill or ability to do something for other people or businesses. This can often be the quickest route because you don't need to create a product first.
2. Create your own product — Turn knowledge, experience, a skill or an idea into something people can buy, such as a guide, course, template, tool or other digital product.
3. Recommend other people's products — Help people find useful products or services and earn a commission when somebody buys through your recommendation. This is the basis of affiliate marketing.
4. Build an audience — Create useful content around a particular subject or problem, attract people interested in it, and then develop ways of generating income from that audience.
These routes are not mutually exclusive. A business may eventually use several of them.
The important question is not “Which one sounds easiest?” It is “Which one makes sense for the people I am trying to help and the problem I am trying to solve?”
One of the biggest risks when starting online is spending weeks or months building something before discovering whether anybody actually wants it.
You don't need everything in place before you start learning.
Talk to people. Read the questions they are asking. Look at the problems they repeatedly describe. Create something useful. Put it in front of them and see what happens.
What you learn may confirm your original idea — or send you in a completely different direction.
The aim is not to have everything worked out before you begin. It is to start small, learn from real people and build on evidence.
© 2026 Ian Ashbrook. All Rights Reserved.