5 Careers that Didn’t Exist a Decade Ago

Last Updated on January 14, 2023

With the boom of the Internet and technology in recent years, many people have made viable careers using resources not previously available. Who would have thought that you could make thousands of dollars a month writing about your daily activities? Here is a list of five career options that your grandparents, possibly even parents never had.

Blogger

Blogging can be big business. With the web saturated with blogs with just about any content out there, it can be hard to break into. But if you learn the tricks of the trade and find a profitable niche, there is always money to be made.

Blog topics can range from how-to websites, to some of the silliest things like “How to be a man”. One popular personal development blogger makes well over six figures a year from his blog. If you like to write and are knowledgeable about a topic that other people might want to learn, you could look into this as a career.

Affiliate Marketer

What is affiliate marketing? Essentially, you sell another person's product for them and get a share of the cut. Sounds simple right? You might be surprised to find out that it's not as hard to get into as you might think.

This can actually go hand-in-hand with blogging. Let's say you have a blog about eating healthy and being fit. You write regularly about good tricks to help people lose weight. Once you have a base of people that trust your advice, you then recommend “Product X” to them to help them get into shape, and when they buy that product with your affiliate link, you get a percentage of the profits. Let's say they buy a DVD workout set worth $100, and your affiliate percentage is 70 with that product. Just using a few numbers you can figure out how profitable this can be.

Mobile Applications Development

Do you own a smartphone? If so, you are among the millions of humans who own smartphones. That's right, millions. Millions of people that use a smart phone would also need millions of applications (apps) to help them. That's where you could come in.

Just like with making programs for computer, applications take a problem and solve them. Let's say you want an app that helps track your weight loss. There's a huge profitable niche right there! Starting weight, current weight, weight loss goals, food plans… The list could go on for forever.

Even if the idea you have for an app is already well done, you can almost always improve upon someone's design. There is always something about every app that could be changed to make it better, and that's where you could come in. It's not as hard to break into mobile app development as you'd think either. A couple of “For Dummies” books will teach you the simple programming abilities you need to begin making your app.

eBay Seller

I'm sure anyone who has heard of the Internet and making money on the Internet has heard of eBay businesses. eBay businesses work because they are able to get a huge amount of product for a discount, and sell it at a slight markup. Once you have established a reputation as a reliable seller, always answering customers’ questions and taking care of the customer, when people are looking at buying a new phone on eBay, your good rating will attract business for no other reason than you're a reliable seller.

How do you get started? Look around your house and find stuff you don't use and/or need anymore and post it. If you're really voracious, you could hit up yard sales and Craigslist for stuff people are selling for cheap and resell them at a slightly higher price. This works a lot better than you'd think. I once found a set of Golf Clubs at a yard sale for fifty bucks, and resold them on eBay for $100. A guy I used to work with used to resell Wal-Mart cheap hats on eBay for double the price! Use your imagination and research your product, and this can definitely be a good business option for you.

Domain Name Flipper

Just like you can make a living buying houses, fixing them up, and reselling them, you can also make a living doing the same thing with domain names. Domain names are simply the word you type into your browser with .com or .org at the end that takes you to a website. There are so many domain names out there that you might think it would be hard to get started, but such isn't always the case.

Here's an idea of how profitable domain name flipping can be. Let's say a summer Blockbuster movie is coming out this year, but the name they want for their website is already taken. Sure, they could figure out some obscure name for their website, but it's much simpler to look-up “moviename.com”. So if you're the holder on the website name they want, they might offer you some cash for it. Serious cash. The next time you see a website that isn't being used, but says you can purchase it if you want, click the button and see how much the domain costs. I once found a domain going for $2000! Seems how a domain is only about ten dollars for a year, that is quite the turnaround.

So there you have it, five ideas for viable careers that wouldn't have been available to you a few years ago. With the power of the Internet at your hands, you can learn all the skills you need to and then launch your Internet career all within a matter of a few weeks.

Written by Lindsey J. Davidson for PETAP, who know that whatever business venture you decide, an online degree is the way to go in this day and age.