Now is a great time to launch a remote business. Not surprisingly, 74% of professionals and 76% of entrepreneurs expect remote work to become the new standard in their industries.
If you want your business to thrive in 2022 and beyond, you probably ought to go remote. If you haven’t started your business yet, Under30CEO has some excellent remote business ideas in various industries.
With the exception of services that have to be provided in person (for example, massage therapy, chiropractic care, and nail care), most businesses can be run remotely. Here are some of the reasons that’s an appealing move today.
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Remote businesses have almost no overhead
Running a brick-and-mortar business entails an array of non-negotiable costs, including:
- Rental of office space
- Office cleaning fees
- Copy machine purchase or lease
- Liability insurance for the premises
- Electricity bills
- Internet bills
- Furniture and décor
When your business is remote, you won’t incur most of these expenses. You’ll still have to pay your home’s utility bills, but you won’t have to pay two utility bills for the services you would normally double if you conducted your operations in a separate office space.
Not having to rent commercial equipment will be a huge money-saver. For example, if you need to make copies, you can run to your local FedEx or UPS store; you don’t have to spend $300 a month to rent a commercial copy machine.
Managing vaccine and testing status is costly
Many cities across the world, including Los Angeles, have recently enacted regulations that prohibit unvaccinated people from entering a business. To comply with these new laws, companies are expected to require customers to prove they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19 or show a negative test just to enter the premises.
Verifying this information requires having additional staff on hand, which means paying more labor costs. It will also slow down your business operations, and you’ll lose sales from people who have not been vaccinated and don’t want to pay for a test every time they want to go shopping.
You can employ independent contractors more often
When you run a physical business, it’s hard to hire independent contractors because most tasks you need to have performed would make the person an employee. However, when you run a remote business, a broad variety of tasks can be performed by contractors, such as:
- Creating spreadsheet templates
- Negotiating discounts for your software purchases
- Affiliate marketing
- Tax preparation
- Graphic design
- Copywriting
- Content writing
- Calculating your end-of-month finances
- Making website edits and updates whenever needed
As long as you follow the rules set forth by the IRS, you don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for misclassifying employees as contractors.
You can hire top talent
Perhaps the best reason to take your business remote is that you can gain access to top talent across the world. Normally, in a brick-and-mortar business, you have access only to local talent.
Sometimes you can get people to move to the area to accept a job, but the perks and the pay typically have to be exceptional to be persuasive. When your business runs remotely, you can hire top talent from anywhere across the globe.
You’ll still need to offer competitive pay, benefits, and perks, but you won’t be limited to local candidates.
You can create evergreen, digital products
Operating a remote business requires that you have a website. On your site, you may sell physical products and digital products.
But a bigger leverage for generating revenue might well come from selling digital products. Once you have a digital product, you can sell it over and over without any additional cost or work.
For instance, you can sell PDFs on Shopify or any digital products and require little or no additional effort to continue selling. There are no material costs, no production costs, and no labor required when you set up an automatic payment and download system.
Examples of evergreen, digital products include:
- Pre-recorded webinars
- Replays of Zoom conferences and meetings
- Digital downloads such as guides and other informative material
- Access to video and audio libraries
With a remote business, you can supplement your regular products and services with purely digital products and services. When you have an evergreen digital product, you create it once and sell it forever.
Grow your business by going remote
The revenue potential for remote businesses is off the charts. With fewer expenses and no physical plant, you’ll have more money available to invest in growing your business. Add in digital products, and your revenue potential is potentially unlimited.
In the future, operating a remote business may become a requirement in almost every industry. That doesn’t appear to pose a problem, since many employees prefer working remotely, and so far, remote businesses are thriving.