---
title: 'Best and Worst Online Businesses for Beginners in 2025'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=-U51CVG2kVY'
video_id: '-U51CVG2kVY'
date: 2026-08-06
duration_sec: 1590
---

# Best and Worst Online Businesses for Beginners in 2025

> Source: [Best and Worst Online Businesses for Beginners in 2025](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-U51CVG2kVY)

## Summary

This video provides a comprehensive rating of online business models for beginners in 2025, based on the creator's personal experience. It evaluates six models—physical products, digital products, services, agency (drop servicing), personal brand content, and faceless content—scoring them on risk, time to profit, scalability, and suitability for beginners. The creator concludes that building a personal brand through long-form content is the best starting point for beginners.

### Key Points

- **Introduction and Purpose** [00:01] — The video aims to rate the best and worst business models for beginners, based on personal experience, to save viewers time. The creator emphasizes that many popular models like affiliate marketing are actually poor for beginners.
- **Criteria for Best Business Model** [00:29] — The ideal beginner business model requires little experience, low investment, doesn't take much time, is easy to scale, and can be delegated without sinking.
- **Physical Products: Pros** [00:55] — Pros include great financial opportunities, mass production and worldwide distribution, selling on various platforms, creating a strong brand not tied to a face, and easier marketing with UGC.
- **Physical Products: Cons** [02:43] — Cons include huge risk, large financial and time investments, need for paid traffic skills or audience, low margins (20-40%), and high entry threshold. Rated 1.5/5 stars.
- **Digital Products: Pros** [05:06] — Pros include super low costs, no inventory or delivery, can be sold endlessly, high margins, scalability, and international reach without logistics.
- **Digital Products: Cons** [07:05] — Cons include high competition, low willingness to pay in CIS market, and difficulty in marketing intangible products. Rated 3.25/5 stars.
- **Services (Freelancing): Pros** [08:29] — Pros include low entry barrier, high margins (no production costs), and quick start on platforms like Fiverr. Good for beginners.
- **Services (Freelancing): Cons** [10:06] — Cons include high competition, earnings limited by time, and difficulty scaling. Rated 3.2/5 stars.
- **Agency Model (Drop Servicing): Pros** [11:15] — Pros include passive income potential, reduced lost profit, and high scalability. Suitable for those with existing client base.
- **Agency Model: Cons** [12:34] — Cons include not suitable for beginners, need for strong assets (reviews, portfolio), and difficulty hiring/training professionals. Rated 2.75/5 stars.
- **Personal Brand Content: Pros** [14:39] — Pros include multiple income streams, loyal community, easier sales, instant feedback, low competition in CIS, and faster learning curve. Rated 4/5 stars.
- **Personal Brand Content: Cons** [18:50] — Cons include difficulty scaling and dependency on a person. However, it's the best for beginners due to lower competition and easier first subscribers.
- **Faceless Content Model: Pros** [20:43] — Pros include multiple income streams, low competition, and high scalability. Can be run as a content factory with a team.
- **Faceless Content Model: Cons** [23:15] — Cons include difficulty gaining initial traction without a personality, need for trend analysis and hiring specialists. Rated 3/5 stars.
- **Final Ranking and Recommendations** [24:12] — Ranking: 1) Personal brand, 2) Services, 3) Digital products, 4) Agency, 5) Physical products. Recommended path: learn content creation, share expertise via long videos, sell consultations, then digital products, and later scale via faceless channels or agency.

### Conclusion

The video concludes that for beginners, building a personal brand through long-form content is the most effective and lowest-risk business model, offering the best balance of low investment and high return. It recommends starting with content creation and gradually expanding into other models as experience and audience grow.

## Transcript

affiliate marketing, create passive income. This is all that was on everyone's lips 2 years ago, but having actually tried all of these business models, many of us realized that these are actually the worst types of business for beginners. Therefore, in this video, I will give a
rating of the best and worst business models to save you time. Everything comes from my personal experience. I tried these types of businesses. I wrote down their pros, their cons, all the pitfalls, and found the best business model specifically for beginners. It
requires a lot of experience and knowledge. It does not require large investments to start earning and getting into the black. It does not take much time. It is easy to scale. If you delegate your business to others, it will not sink, and with
revenue with minimal costs. There are thousands of different types of business. But in fact, they can all be filtered by type of business. Let's take it one by one. The first type of business is the sale of physical products. This is something you
can touch, something that is material. Dropshipping is an online store. Your own brand. Let's move on to the pros. Firstly, there are great financial opportunities. If everything is done correctly, there are a lot of things in the world.  There are examples of billion-dollar companies
physical products. Secondly, physical products can be mass-produced and distributed worldwide, unlike selling a service, for example, which we will talk about later. Thirdly, physical products can be sold on
various platforms, such as Walber Azone, through your own store, through wholesale partnerships, or through regular physical stores. They are ideal for creating a strong, recognizable brand that is not tied to your face. For example,
again, yes. Through physical products, you can create a strong brand separate from the founder. This is a strong advantage, since in this scenario, funders maintain confidentiality since the success of the brand is associated with the
product, and not with a specific person. In addition, this gives freedom for scaling or transferring ownership rights. This kind of independence makes the business more valuable and attractive to investors or
buyers, providing founders with autonomy and independence. Marketing physical products is also much easier than marketing services. For example, especially these days, with the help of user-generated content, UGC, UGC is
when customers themselves create, say, a video. Using your products, everything is very simple. For example, yes, the product can be visually shown in action, like how you apply cream or use a vacuum cleaner. This is right away. demonstrates value.
While services such as courses or consulting rely on reviews or storytelling, there are complex ones. Yes, here you need to really bother with marketing, and if you are a beginner, learning how to do competent marketing,
storytelling, and packaging cases will take a lot of time. Let's talk about the disadvantages in general, a business on physical products - This is a huge risk, since large financial and time investments are needed to achieve success.
Firstly, for your products to sell well, you need to be able to either work with paid traffic advertising, and this skill takes a lot of time, or you need to have your own audience to form, which will also take a lot of
time. In addition, if this is dropshipping, to find a successful product, you need to test different products. And for this, again, you need money to test through advertising or a lot of time to review these
products and post them online. And in fact, from my own experience, I will say that dropshipping is successful only if you know how to do great marketing because the product itself is not unique, you sell the same thing that is
people, and to make a decent living from this, you need a lot of traffic. And for this, you need to be able to do great marketing. Which requires a lot of experience and perspective. And if this isn't dropshipping, and you want to sell your
scratch. Creating your own product is a huge investment. Not to mention that you also need colossal experience. For a product to become successful in the market, you first need to validate it. Understand demand, have a
competitive advantage, test it, and develop various prototypes. This also takes a lot of time and money. You also need to be able to understand pricing in logistics. Again, this is a huge
investment, simply unaffordable for beginners. And thirdly, physical products have the lowest margins compared to other types of business. This is because a lot of money goes into the production and logistics of the product itself,
thereby increasing its cost. And there are also advertising costs. Therefore, on average, the margin for physical products is about 20, there 40%, which is why I gave this business model one and a half stars out of five, and of
all the models that we will discuss further, this is the worst for beginners.  Two reasons: Firstly, it's a big risk, because beginners will most likely lose all their money if they invest in this business due to a lack of experience and knowledge,
because the entry threshold here is very high. And secondly, it will again take a lot of time before your investment pays off, again due to the low margins of physical products. The second type of business is the sale of
digital products, these are all books, courses, guides, templates, workshops, webinars. In general, everything that is intangible that you can't touch with your hands. Let's figure it out. The advantages: Firstly, these are super low costs compared to physical ones, since there are no
costs for inventory, storage, or delivery costs, as well as for creating a digital book, for example, on average. If you have an Expert, it will be ready for sale, with physical products, it may take years.
Yes, while the product is ready for rollout, products can be sold endlessly without additional production costs, that is, and your video course. You can record it once and then sell it again to
hundreds of people. Of course, it needs to be updated. But it's much cheaper than producing digital products, you  You can scale your income without scaling expenses, achieving high, rapid growth with minimal effort.
Thirdly, most of the costs are upfront, that is, the time and resources to simplified versions, the only cash costs are advertising, and after the product is ready, almost all sales are profit minus advertising, and everything
else is profit. Therefore, in this business model, you can retain most of your income compared to physical products, where you cannot do this. Where margins are often limited by production and
logistics costs. In addition, after creation, digital products have virtually no recurring costs. Which again leads to higher margins. That is why, of the entire list, this type of business is probably the
closest to passive income. Let's go further. Unlike physical products, with digital products you can enter international markets without worrying about delivery, customs, or inventory restrictions. In addition, customers receive
purchase. Which increases their satisfaction and reduces problems with customer support, for example. Let's now talk about the disadvantages. Firstly, there is super high competition here, since the entry threshold is low. Anyone can create a
digital product, since this  cheap and fast, and therefore there are a lot of digital products on the market, and to stand out, your product must either be super niche or really solve a specific problem. In general, it must have great value
so that it can be sold without an existing audience or paid advertising, and with it, as it turns out, you also need to know how to work. Many newbies think that now I’ll create a course and start making money, but this is not just like that,
since I myself am in the infobusiness. I know that there is simply a lot of work behind this, so I’ll tell you, just like that, no one will buy another course on R&R. Secondly, in our CIS market, people are not at all used to paying for digital
products; we often see all sorts of leaks and piracy there. Thirdly, with digital products, it’s difficult to create marketing materials since the product is intangible; for this, you need reviews and the ability to sell through storytelling, and it will take a
long time before you start making money, so this business model. I give it 3.25 out of five stars because, firstly, compared to high margins;
minimal costs; digital products are highly scalable, but that’s all  I don't recommend beginners to start with this model because without experience in traffic or an existing audience, it will take a very long time to get the first sales. The third model is
selling services, which is freelancing. Yes, it can be producing, copywriting, web design, and video editing, mentoring, consulting. The first advantage is that often only skills and knowledge. Secondly, this is the highest rust, since there are
no production costs at all. Let's say you hired a person to produce a YouTube channel, he paid you $ 2,000, all these $ 2,000 go into your pocket. The investment is only temporary, so for beginners, this is a very good model.
Thirdly, if you have some basic skills, let's say you are good at editing videos, you can set up your profile on freelance platforms like F upwk in a couple of weeks, set up your social networks, showcase your
work, and basically start earning small amounts of money. The first money will initially take own experience, I can say that I earned good money on Fiver. via ugc Koten By the way, if you are interested in this topic, watch this video
there I told from and to everything I know about F about how to optimize the card and make money, so from my experience I will say that if you pump up sales, marketing and packaging results through storytelling, you can
significantly save time finding the first clients. And when they already have them, then if the results are good and the cases are well packaged, the clients themselves will come to you. Therefore, to make money selling your services, you will not need
a couple of years compared to selling products, for example, and again, this model is very well suited for beginners. Let's now talk about the disadvantages. Firstly, there is also very high competition. You need good skills and
expertise to start earning decently. The easier it is to start earning in any business model, the more competitive it becomes. There are a lot of editors and web designers from Pakistan on Fiver. And that is why the earnings will be small.
why the earnings will be small. If you do not differ from them in skills. As a work in speed in communication. Thirdly, this model is difficult to scale. Earnings are only for paid hours. For example, if
sold to hundreds of people, then with a service and certain number of clients that you can take because you only have two hands and one head, or you will need good professionals to whom you
can delegate part of the work, this will already be an agency model, which we will talk about soon. I give this model 3 C2 stars out of five, since it is again well suited for beginners, low risk, only temporary investments, it will
time to start earning, our scaling criterion received only two stars. But beginners should not worry about this yet. You can come to this when you already have a base of repeat clients and you yourself do not have time to take on everyone there. This is where you
can already think about the model of selling services as an agency. In English, this is called Drop servicing. This is like dropshipping, but you resell not physical products but services. You hire an intermediary, train him and transfer
part of your clients to him. And for this you receive your share. The advantages of this model are, firstly, you know, such a passive income, since you yourself, for example, will no longer edit videos. But you will still earn thanks to the fact that
you. Many freelancers are growing into the agency model on Fivel, working on getting their profile to the top. They accumulate good reviews,
delivered orders, and due to this, their profile rises to the first page. When a card is on the first page, it already means huge client traffic, and it is at this stage that professionals begin to delegate work because they
cannot cope with such an influx of clients. The second advantage is a reduction in lost profits due to the fact that you now have more hands, you do not lose potential clients, and this helps maximize your profits. Thirdly,
this model is highly scalable. We will also talk about the disadvantages, but in general, if everything is done correctly, you can delegate processes to a team and scale there, build a large agency and make very
having some freedom and focus on attracting even more clients, strategy, and so on. Let's move on to the disadvantages. Firstly, this model is not suitable for beginners, since
strong assets are needed, for example, on Fivel, assets are cards with reviews, a portfolio, the number of delivered works, these are all the assets. Yes, this is an asset that generates clients even without traffic.  and there can't be a history of an agency.
For example, I also have a service, a production service. You can choose to work with me or with my producers. But this would be impossible without a strong asset in the face of my YouTube channel. I would not have come to such a model where you delegate the work to a
producer trained by me, for example. Secondly, without experience, it is difficult to hire professionals or train them from scratch, and this is probably the main disadvantage of the agency model. Those to whom you delegate the work, contractors, producers
your agency because the result and satisfaction of clients now depend on them. For example, if you have an advertising agency, you need specialists who will produce real results and set up advertising
so that it brings in real income, otherwise the agency will not live long. Without cases, without history, again, without results, the flow of clients will simply stop and the agency will cease to exist. Therefore, you either need to
train your employees from scratch yourself, and this will take a lot of time, or involve third-party professionals. Good ones, as we know, are not cheap, so again, without experience in hiring, managing people, management will be
very  It's not easy to build a successful agency. And in general, working with people is probably the hardest thing. Everyone has their own whims, desires, goals, and in general. It's hard to manage people and it doesn't work for everyone, so for beginners, this is not the
so for beginners, this is not the best model. I give it 275 out of five. You need to come to an agency. The fifth type of business is content business on a personal brand. These are all bloggers, influencers, podcasts, YouTubers. This is the type of business that I
do and I do, that is, earning money with content. The advantages are, firstly, the ability to earn money in many different ways. This could be advertising, selling digital physical products, a community, private community, SAS. You
audience. And if you do everything right, you will immediately start earning well because there is an audience that will buy. Yes, there is traffic, and as they say, this creators. Secondly, if you are a blogger, you
can earn money not in one but in many different ways. This is very good for diversifying risk. For example, I earn money from advertising there. Yandex and other companies often sponsor my releases with  YouTube Academy course and with
producing, I could also sell digital products there, books Guy I could sell physical products, merch of some kind and This is a very cool advantage due to the fact that If any of the methods sags, it's okay,
you have other sources of income. Thirdly, when there is a loyal community, it is generally easier to sell and make beer monetization. Let's look at my case. Previously, I sold consultations and a course on UGC, and
then I got beer and now I sell courses on YouTube. I can afford to do this because I have loyal viewers. There are people who first bought a course on UGC from me, then bought a course on YouTube. But companies and types of
businesses without a face cannot change niches so radically, and this is probably the main advantage of a personal brand, since people trust people and are more willing to buy from real people. Trust is higher here, which positively affects conversions in
purchases. Fourthly, this business model has instant feedback from customers, thanks to which you can quickly test and improve the product. like it, they'll immediately write in the comments and give it to you and let you
budgets on customer research. business, there is low competition here. I'm talking specifically about the CIS market in general. There are 258 million native Russian speakers in the world.
Correct me if I got the data wrong, but Russian is spoken not only in Russia but also in other CIS countries. There are also a lot of relaxation artists in the States, Europe, and so on. For example, my course is purchased by 40% from Russia, 25% of
Russian speakers in the USA, 25% from Europe, the rest from Kazakhstan, and so on. That is, there are 258 million Russian-speaking content consumers in the world. And there aren't that many creators, as we think. In fact, in addition to this, the reduction in
authors on YouTube by 21% last year opens up even more Sixthly, compared to other business models, it is much easier for us at our academy to learn how to create content and make money on your expertise.
For example, it takes students an average of 3 months to start publishing their first long videos on the channel.  and start earning there on consulting or on producing channels. This is all because this is a
fast-growing industry. There is a lot of demand for producers as businesses begin to understand the value of attracting traffic through social networks and little supply because people do not yet understand what YouTube production is, for example. Therefore,
few people go into this industry, and long content, as practice shows, is super effective in sales. For example, I create content on both Instagram and YouTube. My monthly reach on Instagram is 1.3 million. For comparison,
my videos get 10 times less attention per month from YouTubers. Yes, but 80% of our sales come from the tube, so the quality of views on long content is simply
incomparable with short content. If you are interested in this topic in general, I advise you to watch our free webinar. I talked there and shared cases from our school about how my students there go on to an income of $2,000 a month in a couple of months by selling
their first advertising on the channel. Therefore, if you have any expertise, watch this lecture.  An hour of super- rich information about how to become an expert and how to choose a niche and a model for earning money on YouTube. I'll leave a link under
this video. Let's now move on to the downside. Firstly, it's hard to scale up with this model. It's hard to scale up when everything is tied up. For example, if you have everything when everything is tied up. For example, if you have everything
exists without a person, it's easier to develop, and you can then sell it. But when success depends on a specific person, without them, the business won't exist, and it's mentally difficult for the person themselves.  As if it becomes a product,
it can burn out, not want to create content, take hate, low views, and so on, so I give this model four stars out of five because I think that in the CIS market this is the best model for beginners because
there is less competition and it is easier to learn how to get your first subscribers there, and as my experience at the academy shows, it is enough to get 2-3,000 views on long videos to earn a couple of $1,000 a month. In general,
2-3,000 views on long videos are not that difficult to get, but this is enough to earn good money. Let's say you sell your consultation there for $60 on astrology. For example, if your videos
get 2,000 views with the lowest conversion rate to sales there is 0.5%, that's already 10 people, that is, 2,000 views 0.5% 10 people multiplied by 60, you earn $600 from one video. And if you publish
four of these  videos that also get 2,000 views on average, this is already $ 2,400 per month, of course, you need to implement the right calls to action links, you can reach such an income in 3 months through long content;
my students really achieve such results. That is why I believe that this model is best suited for beginners. And then, when you already have an audience and the skill of creating content, you can consider all other models for better scaling, since this
model is poorly scalable, but beginners should not worry about this. At this stage, the sixth model of content business is a faceless model: YouTube channels, Instagram accounts without a face, here the focus is on the content itself without a personality,
without a specific author. Examples of such channels are Ablok Nauchnopok, and so on. Where there is a kind of voice-over and animation with editing. Of the advantages, firstly, just like have the opportunity to earn in various ways; you can sell advertising,
depending on the niche. Yes, since there is traffic, there is an audience, again, you can well diversify the methods of earning. You can again make money on selling  Dietary supplements For example, if a channel is in the health or fitness niche, let's say here
again, there is low competition in our market since there are many more consumers than content creators, as we have already discussed. And especially news about blocking YouTube and so on scares off a large part of the population and they don't think
that Well, since monetization is disabled on YouTube, I don't understand that earning money with monetization is not important at all, but selling your products is
10 or even 20 times higher. Yes, traffic is always money if you know how to monetize it well, but the main advantage, unlike a personal brand, is that a faceless model can be scaled up well. You can hire a
team of actors, scriptwriters, editors, a project manager, and create, you know, such a content generating plant, and build a system so that it generates passive income. For example, I think that behind this channel there is a
team of at least 10 people. In 2 weeks, they published five videos, as we can see, which is very difficult to do if there was one face behind all this. Yes, the output would not be so great. Come up with ideas, write a script.  Filming all this by one
person would be very difficult. Well, it would be very difficult, that is, this channel is just such a content factory, a content machine, a content business, generating views and income. I have friends who have 10 faceless channels there, with a team of 20 people. And
the owner of these channels himself has built a team and a process system. So, a couple of hours a week are spent on management, and earnings with tube monetization and with the monetization of the tube itself from advertising amount to 30,000 dollars a month. And there are a
lot of such cases on the market because, again, in our market, there are many more content consumers than creators. Let's now discuss the disadvantages. Firstly, I spoke a lot with those who manage faceless channels, and they all say that it is
faceless channels, and they all say that it is personality, since people watch people, and if a person has great charisma and a personality, then they will quickly gain the first subscribers. That is why you
can’t get ahead with a faceless model here by just looking at your face; here you will need to get ahead with the content yourself, enter fast-growing niches, and be well versed in trends.  There, in the topics that fly in, to understand the formats, and for this you need a very good
eye and the ability to analyze. Experience in hiring great specialists is also very important here, there, in writing scripts, animation, editing, and so on, for this you need to be able to manage people and a team, therefore, I give this model 3
stars out of five, it is not quite good, not the best model for beginners, since you need good knowledge in creating content, cash, again, yes, you will not take that out here, but this model is stable and cool, scalable there, unlike
channels with a face. So, if we summarize, then this is our distribution. First, the personal brand channel, the expert channel, this is the best model for beginners, here the minimum investment is the maximum return, in second place for us, and
selling your service is the easiest way for beginners to start earning money. And although the earnings are small, later this can develop into an agency model, then we have a model for selling digital products, then the agency model is also not the
best model for beginners, and in last place, selling physical products is the riskiest model for beginners, in my opinion. Based on this, it follows that if you have  If you have at least some expertise, be it a psychologist,
tarot reader, video editor, or copywriter, I advise you to take the following steps: first, learn how to create content; second, start sharing benefits and your experience through long videos on YouTube, which will generate sales; and third, you
Yes, the simplest are consultations; then, based on this same knowledge, you can start selling digital products with low risk. Since there will already be an audience, there will be someone to sell your consultations there, webinars, and then
you can sell anything to the community, physical products, private communities, and so on. And when you already have experience in creating content, you can try a faceless model; scale it well so that all this doesn’t get
tied up, or open an agency. Yes, delegate the delivery of the service itself to your students or contractors, in general, if you are an expert and don’t think that you will have to consult people yourself for the rest of your life. For example, you can train people to
delegate some of the tasks to them, and focus on attracting traffic or on strategy. For example, if you want to learn more about how to start a profitable channel on YouTube from scratch, even without expertise, watch our free
The webinar link is in the description, and I hope you now have an understanding of various business models. I spent a long time carefully preparing this lecture. Please give me feedback on what thoughts you had after watching the video. Maybe
you already have an implementation plan? Share it too. And if you want more reviews of similar business models, let me know and I'll record another similar video. That's all for now, thanks for watching and Uvi, see you very soon. Bye-bye.
watching and Uvi, see you very soon. Bye-bye.