What's the Easiest Way to Start an Online Business in 2026?

Everyone's talking about starting an online business. But where do you actually begin?

Alice digs into the Dear Alice inbox this episode, answering two questions she's been hearing a lot lately...from Melissa, who has zero idea what kind of business to start, and from Jen, who wants to know if creating her own products is even necessary.

Alice gets practical and specific...walking through how to pick a topic, how to find products to promote without making a single thing yourself, and why the businesses that stand out right now are the ones focused on genuine connection over endless content output.

One gem to take with you: Your social media following can disappear overnight. Your email list goes wherever you go. Alice explains why building one...even a tiny one...from the very beginning is the single most important move a new online business owner can make.

If you've been sitting in the thinking phase a little too long, this episode will give you something concrete to act on today, so you can make your way to your own #lifestyleselfmade

RESOURCES:

* Start your FREE 14-day Noomu All-in-One Business Builder Trial.

* Free Courses at EKitHub University.

* "Dear Alice" Submission Form. Submit questions here.

* Learn more about our upcoming affiliate marketing training (June 10, 2026 only): Details here. 

Please share with ANYONE you think could use this information and guidance.

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Transcript

0:00

So hey! If you've been listening to the podcast and wondering like how you could start building an online income, creating your own business, you are in luck. I've received quite a few questions to the dear Alice inbox on this topic. So I'm gonna cover a couple of the basic things today. And if you have more questions, I will give you the link to submit your questions and we can cover them in future episodes. And if we haven't met before, I'm Alice Siba, your co-host of Lifestyle Self-Made. Currently, Yusuf is very busy with our all-in-one builder business building platform at Numu. So I've been running the podcast and I hope you've been enjoying the episodes. We've done a lot of stuff on mindset. Now let's just get a little bit more practical. So Melissa asked, What kind of online business can I start? And then I have a question from Jen that says, Do I have to create products? Because you see a lot of that online. If you've ever started to engage in the idea of having an online business, you see a lot of ads that will teach you how to create your own products. And product creation is wonderful. Digital products are fabulous. They're not hard to make, but they are work. As are putting together product funnels and managing the customer service. But there are options, lots of options if you don't want to create your own products. So I think the important thing is that you really find the niche, the topic that you want to engage in. If you have a product idea already, then you're gonna build on it from that way. You're gonna figure out who your audience is for that product and go from there. But let's say you're starting fresh because you don't know. And in the rest of Melissa's question, she said, I have no idea, I don't have any expertise. And she wanted to know where she could fit in. And the truth is you don't have to be an expert. You just have to be someone who has something that will be useful to others. And if you're talking, you're venturing on a specific topic, maybe you're achieving a goal like weight loss or something to do with your hobbies or sports or crafts or anything, cooking, then all you have to do, you don't have to be the expert. All you have to do is be a little bit ahead of your customer, or know a little bit more about some things that they don't know about, or have a certain way of conveying information. A lot of people use their personality to build their following. If you have a good sense of humor, or you're very analytical, or you can pick apart misinformation, or something like that. There are different ways for you to enter in. And if you're willing to do that, then you're gonna stand apart right now. Because the truth is that everyone's gone AI crazy, they're pumping out garbage. Obviously, AI has great uses and it can help you build great content. But the fact of the matter is that everybody's focused on volume. But if you focus on connection to your audience and delivering something useful to them, you can build an online business and you will stand apart because you do have your audience in mind, first and foremost, even though your business is there to make money, if you don't show the care in your content and how you communicate with them, that's gonna be clear to people and your audience is gonna be fleeting. So getting started is as easy as picking your topic. Is it gonna be about food? Is it gonna be about meditation or yoga? Is it gonna be any topic that you are interested in? As long as there are products in the marketplace currently selling on that topic, you can build a business around it. And even if there are products, as long as there is a lot of search volume around those topics, you can also make money with advertising and things like that. But let's just focus on the best indicator where if there's products being sold, if there's books, if there's other physical products or digital products that are selling, that audience would want you can have a business from it. So you can create some products, you can get someone who will ship those products out for you if they're physical products, and you can create digital products, but you can also recommend a lot of products through affiliate programs. If you're not familiar with the concept of affiliate programs, it's just simply a way of signing up with a company, they give you a special referral link, and if you make a sale, you get a commission. So basically, you're recommending products and telling them why you like it, what issues it might have. You're being honest. If you've tried the products, even better. And many companies do have affiliate programs. There are big programs like Amazon and stuff like that. They have an affiliate program where you can promote a ton of stuff there. I personally don't recommend Amazon for someone just starting out because their program is very stringent. If you sign up and you take your time, try to set up all your resources, you're trying to build your traffic, they will actually cut you out of the affiliate program if you don't make any sales in a fairly short window. I think it's actually a little bit cruel that they do that. But if you search for the product you like and say affiliate program with it, you will you can probably find where you could promote it as an affiliate. Or you seek out new products that do have affiliate programs and try them out. But the key here is really that you're creating things that are useful and you also focus on building an audience that belongs to you. So, yes, you can get started on Facebook and TikTok and Instagram, but that's not really a business. You're not really owning that audience, it can't go anywhere with you if you leave the platform. You're also subject to the algorithms even wanting to show your content. So even where you may grow your following and you start getting lots of triviews, you could see that take a nosedive soon after. And that's tough. So what you really want is at minimum is to have a website where you can give something away for free in exchange for an email address, and these people come on your list and you nurture them and you give them great information, you share your story, and you learn through the process. And as your audience grows and your email list grows, you can start creating your own products or sourcing new products, but it it can start that simply. And email is far superior to social media even now, where people tend to go to social media and people say email's dying, but it's absolutely not true. But when you're sending an email, your email is more likely to get through, it's a very high percentage that will go through. Obviously, emails can bounce and things like that, or spam filters could keep you going through, but it's not an algorithm-based thing like social media, where social media is just rewarding the accounts that they think they can make the most money off of. Email delivery doesn't work like that. Also, email tends to be more commercial. People expect commercial messages more than on social media, so actually selling becomes a lot easier. And then even if you decide to move your website somewhere or your email list to another service, you can take it with you, unlike your Facebook following or your Instagram following. So, what I'd suggest, if you do want to get started, is find that topic. Think about your unique angle or the things you'd like to share. What products you would recommend to that audience, whether you make them yourself or you source them, or you source them from another merchant, or you promote them through an affiliate link. Then you're gonna set up a simple website. Well, homepage can be a free gift that you give away on that topic. So let's say it's about yoga, and you're gonna go from the angle that yoga is great for anxiety. You'll give out something that will help them with poses and different methods that can help with their anxiety, something that they can download for free and put into action so they get onto your mailing list. That's your home page that you're gonna offer this free thing. Then you can have an about page that can tell them your story, why you're talking about this topic, and you can have a contact page where they can get in touch with you in case people sometimes when they see you building traffic, other companies may contact you because they want to sponsor you or something like that. Then you're available for that. And also, if people have questions about things you promoted or want to interview you, etc., you do want to have a contact page. So those three basic pages are enough to get started. And if you don't know it already, we do have that all in one business builder at Numu. You can try it free for 14 days. And all these pages are built for you. We have a lot of turnkey websites where you can just slide into a topic and pick that website template, and a lot of it's done. It's fill in the blanks. There's tutorials show you how to update it, and you can get started that way. And then as you start to learn about your audience and they're reacting to things, you can build on it. But you can get it published really quickly. There's no need to wait. Although we're living in this kind of crazy digital age of AI and things, people still want to connect with real people. They want real advice, they don't want canned information. And if you have a unique perspective on something, the volume doesn't matter as much. You don't have to be pumping out endless amounts of content. You want to get stuff people can connect with out there. If you want to also learn a bit more about growing your list and things like that over at eKid Hub University, we do have some free classes you can take that will show you how to grow your list. If you do delve into selling products, we have classes that teach you how to make more per sale, like how to bring in extra value for your customers so that they spend more with you. And overall, I'll encourage you to really not sit in the thinking phase because you don't learn much in the thinking phase. If you've never done something before, you can't imagine the perfect scenario. You can't study your way into figuring out what a successful online business will be. You have to get the stuff out there. You talk to people, you build that list, you start promoting products through affiliate links and seeing, okay, they're interested in this, maybe I should develop something that takes us further or gives them more help in this area. You get that intelligence by publishing something. So I'd love again to encourage you to go head over to Numu, start your free trial. Once you've signed up, we do a free 30-minute strategy session with you. So if you are still a little unclear about what makes you unique or what area you really should go into or what you should be promoting, we can talk about that with you. And then we have ongoing support via email in our community discussion. And each week on Zoom, we do have a live support session where you can get on-screen help in case there's anything technical you're having an issue with your Numu site that you don't quite know how to do, or there's a little technical part that you're unsure of, always happy to help because you don't build alone with Numu. And again, go over to eKanab University, sign up for a free class, and the comments area is open here as well. Let me know how I can help. Because times are tough. But this lifestyle self-made thing is possible, but you have to create your own kind of ways of doing things. And we're here to help you do that. Until next time. And remember, if you also want to send any questions in anonymously, the form for the Dear Alice submissions are in the description here as well. And happy to give you a hand and perhaps share your question in an upcoming episode.