A lot of the people reading this blog have an "online" skill set.  They are strong in web design, Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click management, Web development, or some combination of those different skills.

People with these skills look to make their entrepreneurial claim by doing something online.  That usually entails selling these services to other companies in the form of consulting projects, or trading hours for dollars.  It's the path of least resistance (and risk) and a way to form a source of income.  The problem is that while the business might be moderately successful, there is a limit to how successful the business can be.  There are only so many hours in a day and only so much you can charge for these services (no matter how good you are).  Since freelancing is not a real business model and does not scale, you should focus these skills on building a system-based business.

Here are some ideas to create a new business based on the skills that you already have.

Scale Your Skills

Instead of doing the work yourself, have 1, 2, 5, 10, 50 people do the work for you.  Once you have other people doing the work, there is no limit to how big you can grow the business.  Start by creating a manual detailing everything that you do and make it a repeatable process that someone else can follow.  You will still have to find some people with some ability as you don't want someone with zero creativity to design high-end websites for your clients.  But if you create an efficient process in getting new clients and delivering their service at a reasonable, known cost, you can start scaling the business.

In order to reduce your risk, I would start out with contractors.  Pay them on a "per project" basis so you are only obligated to pay when you get paid.  Your profits won't be as high and it can be tough to find reliable contractors with good prices and quality products but once you do, it becomes very easy to scale up your business.  Start out with determining your profit margin and you can estimate projects based off of the quote you receive.  That's just one part of your sales process that you need to automate.

Create a "Product"

If your skills are in web design, pick a market and create your best web design that you can sell over and over again.  If you create a really great web site with a lot of cool features for restaurants (newsletters, birthday club, email-a-friend), sell it to restaurants operating in different markets.  You might charge a lower price for each site but it will require less effort to set up.  It's even something that you could hire a contractor to set up on a per-site basis.  (Blogger's Note: I wouldn't charge less - I would charge more.  That's only because I would make it more valuable than a custom web site.  But that's a lesson for another day.)

If you are a Pay-Per-Click expert, you could sell a program to similar businesses of keywords and ads that are pre-built and tested to be very effective.  Just make sure you don't sell it to competing clients.

Web Site Flipping

This might require a little more investment but you could also bootstrap and start with a small portfolio that you constantly turn over and make more money off of them.  But the idea is that you should buy websites, improve them, and then sell them.  Maybe it's a website that just needs a few tweaks to convert better, or a site that needs some basic search engine optimization, one that hasn't utilized Pay-Per-Click yet, or one that could use all of these changes.

Create systems to effectively find, value, purchase, and improve sites.  Most people who flip websites might do it on a "one off" basis.  They don't create systems to repeat the process over and over again.  I liken it to real estate flipping companies who have scaled their business so they buy multiple properties, have a select group of vendors they use to improve the properties, and then sell it.  They have great systems in place.  From the very beginning, they have a set budget and they know what changes they can make and how much value it should add to the price.

Create Software

Ok, nothing too original here but I think this is a case which people think too big.  They think the only software worth creating and selling is something that nobody else has created.  There are a lot of niche markets for which you can build useful software.  You don't have to create Microsoft Windows, just something that is useful to your targeted niche market.

For example - you could create an online scheduling service for businesses that take appointments like tanning salons or beauty parlors.  There is a lot of scheduling software out there but if you create a product specific for an industry, you have created a successful product.  

And the best part about software is that once it's created, there is very little effort to maintain it.  Unlike trading hours for dollars, you can create a mostly passive form of income.  

What Do All the Ideas Have in Common?

It probably wasn't apparently obvious with each of these ideas but they all involve targeting a niche market.  You're not going to be able to create something that works for everyone but if you create something that has utility for a niche market, your system based business can grow quite successfully.