What Is the Online Equivalent of a "Boring But Stable" Offline Business?

[Andy Black]

I think folks find Google Ads boring. It’s pretty stable too when dialled in.

I’ve been running Google Ads for appliance repairs since 2009. 12 years later people still search “oven repairs dublin”…

I’m delighted everyone’s doing sexy marketing such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Themes for various platforms, like WP, Shopify, etc.
Web hosting.
And yea, ad management.

 

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[biophase]

Something like selling pillows and sheets to hotel chains. Or salt and pepper shakers to restaurants. You can launch any e-commerce business and target large chains

 

[biophase]

Bumping this as I've been thinking recently I'm just no longer fit for all these cool and sexy online businesses that require you to use social media, entertain people, and contribute to shortening society's already ridiculously short attention span.

I've been thinking recently about businesses aimed at seniors. Many of them love boring and stable and they don't expect silly memes, TikToks, and all that BS.

I think you think way too much about this stuff. If you want to open a restaurant, open one. If you want to be a YouTuber, just go do it. If you don’t want to use TikTok, don’t do it. Don’t let all that external stuff make you start a business you don’t want to.

 

[BizyDad]

with little risk of being disrupted

I'm having trouble thinking of a business model that this doesn't apply to.

Anything you do on someone else's platform has risk of being disrupted.

Anything you do on someone else's server has less, but most of your marketing has potential for being disrupted. With regularity in fact.

And if you run your own servers, well that doesn't necessarily minimize your risk either. In fact it might increase it.

This is actually a harder question than I thought it'd be...

A paid email newsletter. That's my answer and I'm sticking to it. Newsletters are boring. Email is as old school as it gets on the internet. And if someone tries to take away your technology to do this, you can just upload some emails to a different location and keep going. Just got to have enough content that people find worth paying for...

 

[Black_Dragon43]

What are your thoughts?

Anything in an industry that people are NOT passionate about. In the physical world, nobody wants to scrub toilets. In the digital world the equivalent would be opening a store or affiliate website around specialty cleaning products for example.

The sexy alternative is starting a YouTube channel, starting a video game store, building an affiliate website around pets, and so on.

 

[MTF]

In the offline world, you have a lot of different businesses that are boring but stable, potentially very lucrative (as they often generate recurring income) and with little risk they'll ever get disrupted and won't be needed anymore. For example, lawn care, landscaping services, cleaning services, food trucks, vacation rentals, etc.

What do you think is the equivalent in the online world? What kind of an online business is boring but stable, potentially lucrative, and with little risk of being disrupted? What kinds of online businesses are largely ignored because they aren't glamorous enough?

I think it may be some kind of a B2B service, perhaps some consulting services or lead gen.

What are your thoughts?

 

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[Andy Black]

A paid email newsletter. That's my answer and I'm sticking to it. Newsletters are boring. Email is as old school as it gets on the internet. And if someone tries to take away your technology to do this, you can just upload some emails to a different location and keep going. Just got to have enough content that people find worth paying for...

Shh... stop telling people.

 

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[doster.zach]

In the offline world, you have a lot of different businesses that are boring but stable, potentially very lucrative (as they often generate recurring income) and with little risk they'll ever get disrupted and won't be needed anymore. For example, lawn care, landscaping services, cleaning services, food trucks, vacation rentals, etc.

What do you think is the equivalent in the online world? What kind of an online business is boring but stable, potentially lucrative, and with little risk of being disrupted? What kinds of online businesses are largely ignored because they aren't glamorous enough?

I think it may be some kind of a B2B service, perhaps some consulting services or lead gen.

What are your thoughts?

A lot of stuff that just helps peoples business get running, that blocks people from executing.

• Shopify / eCommerce UI Widgets
• HR management tools
• Customer Service / Customer Experience tools
• Product / Inventory management
• Product / Inventory Fulfillment
• Software Implementations (Something that needs a developer to hook up to your site, can't just click "Install"
• Hosting (This one has kinda been taken over by the big guys)
• domain management
• Billing & finance tools
• Maintaining Low-Code / No Code sites

 

[BizyDad]

After all, how would people trust you to deliver, say, a good guide on how to run a cleaning business if you've never owned such a business?

They would trust you by putting together a great guide on how to run a cleaning business.

If you do that, someone will take a chance on it, and if they have a positive experience, they'll tell somebody else, and on and on it goes.

Some of the best coaches in sports never played the sport. Some of the best players in sports, made terrible coaches.

I'm sure having the experience of running a cleaning business would help you with creating the content for the course, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. There's many paths to success when educating others.

 

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[Andy Black]

Excel courses.

I'd thought of creating them but maaaan, that would be so damn boring.

 

[Andy Black]

I think that in the end the best equivalent may be simply online education. It's not going away, good teachers are always needed, and education is an investment so it's always easier to sell than a lot of other stuff. The only thing that could probably be better (but more competitive) would be general B2B services.

Dammit. So you’re saying both my courses and services win the boringness prize?

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

While the majority of people are under the impression that you have to "be online" in order to run a successful and profitable businesses, that is simply not true.

Some of the people I work with have no website, or true social media presence, yet run businesses with cash-flow and notable profit margins. And I found these people & companies through the aforementioned platforms.

There are also forums (which could be it's entirely own suggestion) that act as a directory of sorts and ultimately fall under the same category of a database for lead generation.

Sometimes websites and social media hurt a company more than they help. Like for a B2B company, having a Google listing where random people can leave reviews? Not good, because all of the reviews are nonsense.

And sometimes you’ll see photos posted by employees under the business, showing stuff from inside.

Just a headache. B2B customer marketing can be very different from consumer marketing, varying widely by industry, too.

 

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[MTF]

They would trust you by putting together a great guide on how to run a cleaning business.

If you do that, someone will take a chance on it, and if they have a positive experience, they'll tell somebody else, and on and on it goes.

Some of the best coaches in sports never played the sport. Some of the best players in sports, made terrible coaches.

I'm sure having the experience of running a cleaning business would help you with creating the content for the course, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. There's many paths to success when educating others.

I remember this approach of interviewing 20-30 top players in your chosen niche and creating a free guide out of that to send to everyone else in the niche. That positions you as the expert even though you've merely compiled best practices from the industry.

 

[Kevin88660]

In the offline world, you have a lot of different businesses that are boring but stable, potentially very lucrative (as they often generate recurring income) and with little risk they'll ever get disrupted and won't be needed anymore. For example, lawn care, landscaping services, cleaning services, food trucks, vacation rentals, etc.

What do you think is the equivalent in the online world? What kind of an online business is boring but stable, potentially lucrative, and with little risk of being disrupted? What kinds of online businesses are largely ignored because they aren't glamorous enough?

I think it may be some kind of a B2B service, perhaps some consulting services or lead gen.

What are your thoughts?

Most of the offline business that have stable revenue had some geographical specific reasons reasons for their success.

There is skill shortages in traditional blue collar job related services in Singapore but because the it is a fairly open economy that can always get affordable skill laborers oversea, the profit margin in those services (plumbing , electrician and cleaning services) aren’t as obscene as they are in the west.

There are cultural specific factors as well. I noticed English speaking countries and Chinese speaking countries spend a lot more in wedding than other cultures, and that it a specifically good market for the wedding business.

There are no physical boundaries on the internet. In theory everyone is competing with everyone globally if your online business does not have an offline connection. So the key thing is offline connection and hence barrier to entry against margin erosion.

One example is b2b saas. In theory is the competition is online and global. But because of management culture and practice the global market is still heavily focused on American companies serving American market.

One segment that could have defensible margin online is online content/education/consulting, where language of the recipient is a major barrier. Most of the innovation today still takes place in U.S. and as a result, if you are operating in the space in UK, Canada and Australia these market could be easily colonized by leading business from U.S.

On the other hand you can just learn what is the new thing that is happening in U.S. and apply/copy/teach the German/French/Chinese/Japanese/Spanish speaking market it could have a very solid barrier against leading U.S. colonization.

Just take MJ’s books for example while he could translate his books in Japanese there is no way he can build a fastlane forum in Japanese. There is nothing stopping a Japanese guy copying this idea and build a similar forum in Japanese.

I call this the “language barrier arbitrage strategy”.

 

[MTF]

Bumping this as I've been thinking recently I'm just no longer fit for all these cool and sexy online businesses that require you to use social media, entertain people, and contribute to shortening society's already ridiculously short attention span.

I've been thinking recently about businesses aimed at seniors. Many of them love boring and stable and they don't expect silly memes, TikToks, and all that BS.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Maybe courses? I don’t have a ton of online experience so I’m subbing to the thread, but I’d imagine repeatable offerings for teaching things like math and science or technical courses would be great.

A mandatory licensing course would be a good example, but many here would have an ethical problem with it lol!

Maybe you make a “forklift operator” training course and businesses pay you a subscription for it so they can show their new hires.

 

[Andy Black]

Maybe you make a “forklift operator” training course and businesses pay you a subscription for it so they can show their new hires.

I did a bit of work for a business that was doing very well selling forklift truck training and certification, amongst other things.

There's lots of boring courses people need to take every year to be compliant.

 

[Odysseus M Jones]

All I can say is read unscripted , all your answers will be there. There’s to many red flags in your question that the unscripted book will help you uncover if your willing to see them.

Yes, read it, again lol

For example, lawn care, landscaping services, cleaning services, food trucks, vacation rentals, etc.

How very dare you!
These are all sexy businesses.
Shirtless hunks mowing lawns.
French maids washing your smalls.
What's sexier than artisan street food?
Vacations are all about sex, except for the 20-40 year old demographic.

Something like selling pillows and sheets to hotel chains. Or salt and pepper shakers to restaurants.

Hotel beds are all about sex and salt n pepper shakers are very phallic.
But those businesses will get disrupted if there's another world lockdown.

Paid newsletters are super sexy these days.

Because you're still doing that vegan one?

Paid newsletters are sexy, another reason why you youngsters are lonely.

And now you've got Andy Black in stockings and heels in my mind.

I can't unsee that.

 

[Andy Black]

Yes, read it, again lol

How very dare you!
These are all sexy businesses.
Shirtless hunks mowing lawns.
French maids washing your smalls.
What's sexier than artisan street food?
Vacations are all about sex, except for the 20-40 year old demographic.

Hotel beds are all about sex and salt n pepper shakers are very phallic.
But those businesses will get disrupted if there's another world lockdown.

Because you're still doing that vegan one?

Paid newsletters are sexy, another reason why you youngsters are lonely.

And now you've got Andy Black in stockings and heels in my mind.

I can't unsee that.

I must get round to disabling my webcam…

 

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[WJK]

Maybe courses? I don’t have a ton of online experience so I’m subbing to the thread, but I’d imagine repeatable offerings for teaching things like math and science or technical courses would be great.

A mandatory licensing course would be a good example, but many here would have an ethical problem with it lol!

Maybe you make a “forklift operator” training course and businesses pay you a subscription for it so they can show their new hires.

I'm taking an online course for another State license. When I get the license, I must take a continuing ed course every year to maintain it. That's job security for the company that provides that education.

 

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[Charnell]

Job boards.

Not sexy at all and there's room for more. If anyone's done any hiring using the big boys like Indeed, Monster, etc, you know that you have to sift through a lot of dog shit to find people to interview. People with 10 years of dishwashing experience applying to be a project manager for a healthcare architecture firm.

You create the source for healthcare architects, that only healthcare architects know about, you're in there like swimwear. Perkins + Will, HDR, HKS posting 10 roles a month each, the smaller firms posting because they see the big three there. Hyper niche so $300, $400, $500 per job post is hardly a dent in the hiring budget.

BTW, just a quick Google search showed healthcare architecture is a $1.5bn industry in the US. -> Healthcare Architecture Market Size, Share & Forecast 2025

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

I'm wondering how this could start from scratch. Because in essence it's a two-sided market. Job seekers won't come unless there are jobs. Employers won't offer jobs unless there are job seekers.

You make it work. Look at how MJ started this forum. He said he even “talked to himself.”

Post dummy listings. Make lots of accounts. Get things going on the site. Gotta think outta the box

 

[biophase]

Can't help it, my number one job the past couple of years has been professional overthinking. I guess a lot of free time does that to a person.

But what you are not thinking is of the other side.

There are plenty of businesses that do well using social media and probably even more that do just as well not using social media. There are plenty that email their list daily and plenty that don't. You are just bias in your research.

 

[Johnny boy]

Good example though I have no F*cking idea what they're doing (which I find to be the case for most IT corporations like that).

My best friend is a salesman there that focuses on selling cybersecurity to large enterprises

It’s so damn confusing.

I tell him he is in such a great, esoteric niche where there’s billions flying around he needs to go out and get some contracts reselling things and have his own little company in this space.

Dude would rather do affiliate marketing. Smh

I tell him he’s a F*cking moron. Being in such a hard to understand niche working with big a$$ companies all day is just a golden recipe for having a highly profitable business when you finally grow the nuts to start.

 

[eramart]

Hosting with support?

 

[Itizn]

The yellow pages/Manta/directory model

 

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[eramart]

Not technical enough to understand it well but can it actually be threatened by no-code software for everything you need, like Carrd, Substack, etc.? Then you don't need hosting.

Not really, there are a lot of businesses who want decently sized online projects that are controllable and customizable and want good support that will take care of security, availability, outages, scaling hardware when necessary and such.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

ad management

Ad management is quite crowded, especially social media ads. Not easy to find clients

 

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[Andy Black]

But isn’t that where most sales are ?

What I mean is :
Even though not intended, @MJ DeMarco books are consumed by a lot of people that do not even take the action of joining the forum( sure he can confirm that book sales > users on forum by a factor of at least 10)
Yet he still made those sales, which helped propel the books a bit forward toward other people willing to take action.

Sure thing it must feel good when you know you’ve helped so many people take action, but if you can’t control that.

I don’t mind having to sift through lots of rambling in free YouTube videos or podcasts. I figure the price that’s the price to pay if I don’t pay in cash.

What bugs me is lots of rambling and unnecessary teaching in courses I pay for. I pay so I can get through the course fast and go implement. I’m after the results and the learning that comes from taking action, not the “book learning”.

I think people appreciate courses that are no fluff and actionable. That’s been common feedback on my courses.

Whether folks take action or not doesn’t bother me in the slightest. They’re big boys and girls and it’s not on me to make people take a course they bought.

 

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