Some are evergreen businesses, and some are trend-based businesses. The favoring times, the concept, the consumer’s basic nature to know and buy something new, aggressive marketing by labeling the product as a great problem-solver and availability of online platforms to push the products to the consumers are some factors that lead to the success of trend-based businesses.
These previously in-trend businesses do not necessarily cease to exist completely. There’s a market, and the manufacturers and marketers keep pushing the products and services to their target audience until there’s even the slightest demand. Most of these businesses are not big brands, but they enjoy huge popularity when the product is in demand.
Online advertisements, great packaging and labeling and fast delivery with some cool offers – the marketers leave no stone unturned to boost sales to the maximum. It means big money for the business owners as the customers are driven more by the trend and less by the need for the product, so they do not mind paying extra to get that product or the service. Here are some top businesses that were in great trend and saw record sales during the last few years but have now lost steam.
You can still see their ads here and there - direct and indirect – and larger-than-life claims on their landing pages, but now, it’s just some routine business and not what it was in its heydays. So, think twice before you plan to start any of these online businesses to make big money and be a successful entrepreneur in the digital world. Or maybe not think of it at all.
CBD products online
Want to make money by starting a CBD business and selling CBD products online? This information here will interest you to a great extent.
Where there is a need, there is a product. The beauty of in-trend businesses is that they mostly work on the reverse model. In their case, the products create the need. Or, say, they are presented in a way that consumers are made to believe what they have been missing. The top such product is cannabis.
Yes, there are studies that CBD helps in managing different kinds of health problems people face, but how effective it is or how much it has actually worked on the people who purchased it is a matter of further study. The studies were ongoing at that time and are still on, but there has been no concrete evidence that it actually cures. But some years back, CBD products took the market by storm, and everything from tinctures to gummies, ointments to flowers were selling for over $100 per piece.
The businesses that joined the juggernaut at the right time made big money. There were online CBD sellers, dispensaries, packaging and labeling companies, sourcing companies and what not. It was rightly called the Green Rush. CBD marketing campaigns were larger than life, and the cannabis products were selling like hotcakes.
Currently, the CBD business startup owners and online entrepreneurs in this field have gone silent, especially after the legalization talks were silenced by the new administration. The CBD market was predicted to hit $22 billion by 2022, but big money is certainly not there, and the journey for the industry is not smooth due to the current regulations.
The CBD sellers would have continued with their aggressive marketing tactics, but the real reason it stopped was because of the saturation. The prices dropped by almost 60-75%, people had had enough of it, and the negative news articles running parallelly meant a downturn in the CBD market.
Online courses that promise ‘make money online’
So you think making money online is easy, and you can also do it by taking some online course? Read this.
Online courses that guarantee to make you rich were a massive success for a few years. The online world was buzzing with stories of people making big money through freelancing sites like Upwork and Fiverr and selling stuff on e-commerce sites. Nobody wanted to miss the chance, but back then, nobody was internet-savvy enough to get online and make money like their heroes from the success stories were making.
And then there were online businesses who took this opportunity quite innovatively and said, ‘ok, we’ll tell you all the secrets to make money online, and for that, you just need to download our e-book or have access to our video course.’ That, of course, meant money that ranged anything from $100 to even up to $5000.
Well, when you promise someone to change their lives by offering a guarantee of several thousand dollars a month and also claim that you have become rich doing the thing that’s there in the e-book, desperate people are bound to fall for it.
Call it a fad or whatever, but the truth is that such e-books were selling wildly, and people behind them were making some cool money online. Not every seller was a scammer but considering that the same routine advice is available on plenty of videos online, it was proving to be a bad idea to spend money on creating marketing blogs and getting ebooks prepared.
Nonetheless, it was the e-book rush during the last few years, and it helped some small businesses reap the benefits. The reason for its end – too many players in the business, leading to saturation, very high pricing of setting up an online course business, and lack of demand for online courses due to negative reviews online which ultimately eroded consumer confidence in such products.
Online health classes
Planning to make money through live streaming in health and fitness? Read this.
Live streaming the health and fitness classes and with some even offering direct interaction if the customer needed was an instant hit with people. The movement restrictions during the pandemic further gave a shot in the arm that online health and fitness classes-related businesses needed. Even the people who were not into too much of health-related products and services or who simply hated the idea of visiting a health club regularly found it pretty cool to join an online health class.
It offered cool discounts, was cheaper than going to a health club or a gym and saved the time that was lost in travel. These factors made the business successful in very little time, but it soon started to fade as people were bored. The business was certainly not sustainable in the long term, but like all other in-trend businesses, it made money for its owners during its peak times.
Since there was nothing more that this model of health and fitness business could provide to the subscribers than routine classes, people got bored. Also, with the arrival of Peloton, a large part of the subscribers moved towards the more known names. That’s another story that even Peloton is now down and out and unable to sustain. In 2022, Peloton stopped the production of many of its fitness equipment and reported a loss of $1.2 billion.
Dropshipping/Affiliate marketing/e-commerce sites
Planning to start an online business? This information will certainly keep you hooked right till the end.
A couple of years ago, almost every business around e-commerce was a massive hit.
Ecommerce website building platforms and online marketplaces for sellers - Etsy, Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, etc.
Affiliate marketing, where you build a website and send people to bigger sites like Amazon, offered great commissions.
Dropshipping, where people simply fulfill the online orders and don’t have to stock anything, was the major moneymaker for small businesses.
Simple online stores offering products in some specific category.
And much more...
People were shopping online wildly, and more time indoors due to the pandemic meant a big boost for the businesses that work around the e-commerce industry. Amazon slashing its commission rates for its affiliate marketers meant the closure of a massive number of websites that thrived because of it.
As Amazon grew larger, it meant lesser opportunity for other online sellers as there’s not a thing that’s not available on Amazon and that too at the lowest prices for almost all the products. This led to many dropshippers shutting down their businesses, and those who are still online now don’t make the kind of money they did during the glorious days of online selling or affiliate marketing.
Digital Agencies
Planning to start a digital agency business? First, read this right till the end.
Google rules. There is no denying it. For every business to survive, it has to feature on Google. The problem is that not every business can feature as they wish on Google. There is a particular process for that. You build a website, do blogging, build links, create a presence on social media, list yourself on Google My Businesses, Google Maps, and work on Search Engine Optimization, which consists of various ranking factors that Google uses to rank you up in its search engine. And lastly, you have to manage your online reputation to be seen as a trusted business by online visitors.
Now, that’s a massive task, and some smart people knew how to make money out of it. In this case it was the digital marketing concept, a one-stop solution for all your online presence needs. The digital agency offered packages of all sorts – call it silver, gold and platinum for the sake of calling it something. The digital agency owners charged heavily for their services as every business wanted to showcase itself as the best on Google search engine.
Digital marketers quickly started agencies that offered an end-to-end solution – website designing, SEO, blogging, social media marketing, online reputation management and even fake reviews. They took care of everything but for a hefty fee which many businesses were happy to pay because there was no other way to get business from customers.
It even meant more business for them as they were visible to a wider audience online. But in today’s times, the ranking has gotten extremely difficult (call it saturation), paid ads matter more than the organic ranking, and so many digital agencies entered the game arena that they simply trashed the internet.
In desperation to show quick results to the clients, digital agencies adopted tactics that even led to a ban on websites by Google. The good days are over as digital agency owners face stiff competition, running costs are high, workers in digital marketing choose to work independently as freelancers or consultants rather than stay in a job, and bad results for many businesses. All of this combined meant a lack of trust among the clients.
