Easiest Way To Start An Online Business From Scratch (For Beginners)

About this video

Sean argues the easiest beginner online business is selling ebooks on Amazon KDP. Comparing services (you trade time and income stops when you stop), physical products (inventory, shipping, returns, low margins) and digital products, he favours digital for no inventory, high margins and the ‘freedom trifecta’ of financial, location and time freedom. Ebooks beat courses for beginners because they are simpler and can be made free with Google Docs or Canva; you do not need to be a writer — he notes English is not his first language, having been born and raised in Japan and moved to Hawaii at 14. Creation options are writing it yourself with AI help for outline and draft plus your own editing, or hiring a ghostwriter while controlling outline and quality, and the first book should not be perfected for months. Sell on Amazon, not your own site, Gumroad, Payhip or Etsy: those have zero built-in traffic, while Amazon has buyers already searching, ships to over 100 countries across 19 marketplaces, and, per a chart he shows, controls 74% of the US book market versus 11% for Apple iBooks; KDP has no listing fee and handles payment, delivery, customer service and refunds. Using BookBeam estimates he cites examples such as a kids’ stock-investing book at $56/day (about $1,500/month) and a Costa Rica travel guide at $51/day. Choose a painful problem, brain-dump 5-10 problems per experience area, niche by method and audience (e.g. intermittent fasting for women over 40), then validate on Amazon: he uses BSR below 80,000 as a signal of roughly $500/month. His goal is a catalogue of 10 high-quality books, avoiding the mistakes of following passion without demand, skipping validation, and quitting too early.

Key takeaways

• Pick digital products over services or physical products for no inventory, high margins and location/time freedom.
• Start with ebooks, not courses: they can be created free with Google Docs or Canva, using AI assistance or a ghostwriter.
• Sell on Amazon KDP for its built-in buyer traffic instead of a standalone site, Gumroad, Payhip or Etsy where you must bring all traffic yourself.
• Validate topics on Amazon before writing, using BSR below 80,000 as Sean’s signal that a book is making roughly $500/month.
• Aim for a catalogue of 10 high-quality books and expect the first book to be a practice book, not an instant hit.

Episode details: published March 23, 2026 · 18:38 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Sean Dollwet’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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