Top 3 Most Popular Legitimate Online Business Opportunities [Demystified]

Honestly, there are so many legitimate online business opportunities on the internet.

And, at the same time, there are many scams as well.



So, in this article, I am going to share with you the top 3 most popular legitimate online business opportunities.

And, what you should look out for so that you are not caught in a scam.

Also, the opportunities that I’m sharing are businesses that will eventually help you earn a passive income.

Which means that you do not need to trade your time for money.

Whether or not you have products to sell, or you have prior knowledge or experience, it really doesn’t matter.

These are legitimate opportunities meant for people who have absolutely no idea what they should do to make money online.

Before you read this article, I want to let you know that this is not an article that will give you “ideas” on how to start an online business.

This is an article that will lead you to getting started and getting your hands dirty with the business you desire.

So, read this with an open mind and take action on your selected path.

With that, let’s dive into the top 3 legitimate online business opportunities.

#1 Affiliate Marketing

This is probably one of my favorite picks.

It is an industry that has led thousands of individuals, including myself (here’s my story), become financially free.

Let’s take a look at what affiliate marketing is in this short video:

The secret formula to Affiliate Marketing is:

High Quality Traffic + Products with High Conversion Rate = $$$

Affiliate Marketing is not about promoting any types of products online.

It is about promoting products that matter to a specific group of people.

In other words, it is called Niche marketing.

Basically, when you are starting out as an aspiring affiliate marketer, you should be asking yourself who are your target audience.

Who do you want to serve online? What topic you want to be an expert in?

In the past, this was considered a word of mouth marketing, but put this into context, you are actually going to the “expert” who recommends people to products or solutions.

And, at the same time, earning a commission for successfully referring someone to purchase a product.

The problem lies in finding the quality traffic (eyeballs on the offer).

I am pretty sure you’ve seen advertisements about how you can earn money by blogging, YouTube, Facebook, Podcasting, etc.

They are simply referring to affiliate marketing, although they didn’t mention it up front.

These are the channels that will help affiliate marketers grow their audience (quality traffic).

You don’t really need to be an expert…

The beauty about Affiliate Marketing is that you don’t really need to be an expert about a topic before you earn an income.

And, you don’t really need any prior knowledge or experience about marketing before you can start this business.

All you need is a unique angle to market or sell products to a specific group of people.

This is a skill that can be learned by anyone.

Affiliate Marketing is a proven strategy to earn a living online.

Unfortunately, there are many scammers out there who will charge you an arm and a leg for their poor quality training courses.

Be informed or be scammed…

Here’s what you need to look out for…

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Any kind of affiliate marketing training that promises you success is basically a sham.

What you need to know is that more than 90% of the people who ever started an affiliate marketing business failed.

There are many variations of elements that cause the failure, but I’ve identified 10 reasons why people fail to make money online.

However, one of the most predominant reasons is proper guidance and support.

If you join a training course that is sub-par (a course that do not lead you anywhere), and it does not provide quality support, you are almost guaranteed a failure.

I’ve seen too many of these programs on my journey to fighting online opportunity scams.

High Quality Affiliate Marketing Training Courses

After searching high and low for good quality affiliate marketing training, I’ve found a few that I am happy to recommend.

Just in case you don’t know who I am and what barenakedscam.com stands for, we are out there exposing online business opportunities every single day.

And, we serve up legitimate online business opportunities that are worth your time and money.

Which means that we dive through long hours of training modules to identify if a program is worthy of mention.

We’ve done all the hard work so that you do not need to waste your time on a poor quality program.

So, if you are serious about becoming a successful affiliate marketer, here are the training courses I recommend:

  1. Wealthy Affiliate – The most thriving affiliate marketing training and community on the market
  2. Authority Hacker – A high quality training that teaches you how to build an authority site which leverages on affiliate marketing for profits
  3. Legendary Marketer – A high quality social media marketing training program, with high ticket affiliate opportunity
  4. Fizzle – A high quality training program that teaches about online marketing

Either of the training courses can potentially lead you to success.

The trick is to be consistent and never fall victim to these pitfalls.

If you happen to know legitimate affiliate marketing courses that are worthy of mention, please leave them in the comment section below.

Now, if you are not interested in affiliate marketing, let’s take a look at E-Commerce.

#2 E-Commerce

In the past, e-commerce is about purchasing physical products at a low price and selling it online at a higher price so that you earn the profit margin.

The big problem was the physical space for running this type of business.

People usually buy products in bulk and storing them at a place (usually at home).

This takes up a lot of space and if you start renting a space to store these goods, it will lower your profit margin, and you could suffer a loss, if not managed properly.

Then, you have to worry about clearing your stocks as well as logistic issues.

With the internet evolving, the e-commerce space has evolved as well.

You no longer need to buy products and store them.

You can now sell a product without even owning it, and you don’t need to worry about order fulfillment.

Now, the supplier (the distributor) will take care of those issues.

This concept is called drop shipping.

What is Drop Shipping?

With the drop ship concept introduced, there are variations of e-commerce business you can start.

Types of E-Commerce Business

A. Fulfillment by Amazon

To put it simply, you can purchase products from suppliers (for example, in China), and have them ship to Amazon.

Your products will be listed on Amazon, and when there is a sale, Amazon will take care of it.

All that is left for you to do to run the business is to continuously source for profitable products that are highly in demand.

B. Build a Shopify Store

Just like affiliate marketing, your business needs a focus.

You can’t just set up a store and sell just about any trending products online.

Your store needs to sell a particular type of products.

If you set up a store that sells baby products, it’s best you sell products just for babies and not kitchen equipment.

You see what I am getting at?

What you should be wary of?

With this legitimate online business opportunity, many scams were born.

There are really a lot of low quality training programs out there that are selling the “American Dream”.

This person in the video speaks out just the things I want to say about this business opportunity:

High Quality E-Commerce Training Courses

With that, I’ll leave you with these training courses about E-Commerce that are worth your investment of time and money:

  1. Amazon FBA Ninja Masterclass
  2. Ecom Success Academy
  3. Proven Amazon Course

#3 Online Trading

The first thing you need to know about trading is that there are thousands of assets to trade online.

There are Currency (forex), Equity (stocks), Commodities, Options, etc.

But they are all driven by the market psychology and price action.

Technically, if you can read a chart and pair them with the fundamental economic news, you can technically trade any assets.

The biggest problem with online trading is that you risk losing part or all of your money invested.

Especially when you are new to trading, you are most likely going to lose money than making any.

Honestly, trading is not for everybody.

Some people are risk adverse, some are driven by emotion, and some are driven by logic.

One thing for sure, trading is not meant for the weak heart.

And, if you trade with emotions, you are going to lose a lot of money.

However, this is a skill that can be learned and developed over time.

To get a better understanding about online trading, this is one of the best videos that explain the elements of online trading.

Now, let’s dive deeper into the popular assets to trade…

A. Stock Trading

You have to understand that trading is simply a zero sum game.

Which means that if you are profiting, someone else is losing money.

A company only issues a set number of shares on the market, and while you are trading online, you are simply exchanging shares with another individual or corporate who owns the shares.

If you buy the shares at a “good value”, it may mean that the person selling it is losing money.

And, if you are selling your shares at a loss, that person buying your shares could be profiting.

B. Forex Trading

I like to trade Forex because it is an asset that has one of the highest trading volume.

In order for trading to be exciting, you need a lot of transactions happening every single second, this is what we call the trading volume.

Especially on currency pairs like EUR/USD, you can practically see thousands of transactions happening in just 1 second.

And, this is where the real market psychology comes into play.

There is not one player who can manipulate an entire currency pair, unlike trading stocks where the majority shareholder(s) can tank the entire share price of an equity.

This is why I like Forex Trading.

High Quality Online Trading Courses

Unfortunately, I only have one training program to recommend. I’ll definitely share more with you when I find other quality training programs.

  1. The Day Trading Academy

Most Recommended Legitimate Online Business Opportunity

Affiliate Marketing!

You see, so many people are creating courses after courses about affiliate marketing, and there is a good reason why.

I am sure you see and hear people saying that they are able to make money by blogging, or becoming a social media influencer.

To be honest, blogging, social media, podcasting, etc, is just avenues (channels) for people to grow their audiences.

The real opportunity behind those channels is affiliate marketing.

The real reason why I recommend affiliate marketing is because you can literally start a business in any niche and at a very low cost.

People who are strapped for cash is most suitable for this business opportunity.

However, as I’ve mentioned above, more than 90% of the people who start an affiliate business fail.

If you don’t want to be a statistic of the majority, then I recommend that you read this article “10 reasons why people fail to make money online“.

One of the most predominant reasons for failure is the lack of support and guidance.

As a newbie, you may not know what to expect, and there are many low quality training programs out there that will get you nowhere, but burn a big hole in your pocket.

I was a victim of those programs as well, and that was the reason that led me to creating this website to help you avoid those programs.

Best Affiliate Marketing Training Program

Out of the bunch of Affiliate Marketing Training programs I’ve mentioned above, I personally recommend that you check out the Wealthy Affiliate review.

Because it was the program that got me to eventually fire my boss and work full-time online.

But, I’ll say that the path of Affiliate Marketing success is not an easy road.

It takes a lot of time and effort, patience and perseverance, to make things work.

Thank you so much for reading this article.

I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

If you have your personal favorite Legitimate online business opportunity, please, feel free to share them in the comments section below.

Also, if you find this article helpful, I would be grateful if you can share it on Facebook and Twitter.

Your pal,

Jack