At risk of stating the obvious, having an online presence isn’t the same thing as running an online business. Most companies these days, large and small, will have a website or at least a dedicated Facebook page peddling their wares and services. It is one thing to advertise on the internet, but quite another to actually run an operation from start to finish from a laptop or your tablet. But it is possible, and millions of people do it.

One job entirely created by the arrival of the internet was web design. There are plenty of tools on the web for building your own website, but generally speaking you get what you pay for. A do-it-yourself kit will produce an adequate platform just so long as your design skills are up to it, but it will never compete with an all-singing, all-dancing site produced by an expert with your own enterprise specifically in mind. Customers are prepared to pay for quality, and if you have a flair for design and are able to learn the requisite coding and protocols then web design could be an appealing option for a start-up business.

Your Virtual High Street Store

Another popular web-based enterprise is drop shipping, a term used to describe a process through which you create and market your own virtual high street store. It works by partnering with a supplier, creating your own online “skin” which apes that of the real supplier of the goods, and then using your own imagination, contacts and resources to advertise it on the internet. To the buyer you are a major enterprise issuing forth vast quantities of clothing, electronics or whatever but in actual fact you are simply the messenger, processing orders which will then be fulfilled by the actual supplier. You never get to see, let alone to store, the merchandise you sell, but you do get a cut of the proceeds.