Why the Big Tech Layoff Could Be the Best Thing That Happened to You
Updated on October 11, 2023
It’s difficult to lose the dream job you worked so hard for. For those of you who’ve been laid off early in your tech career, it can be hard to envision your future. Especially with the rise of AI, many wonder if they’ll be replaced by machines.
While you’re going through rough times right now, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
All of the skills and knowledge you’ve gained through your education and work experience can be put to good use to earn you a sizeable income while you’re considering your future.
Not only can you earn an income, but you can also earn it from wherever you want to be in the world, in whichever industry you have an interest in, and you can scale your income faster than you can in a tech career.
If this sounds like an interesting opportunity to you, then read on to learn how you can buy an online business to replace your full-time income.
Buying A Profitable Online Business
Millions of profitable online businesses from as low as $10,000 up to 8 figures and beyond are sold by entrepreneurs every day on marketplaces like Empire Flippers.
Depending on the business model, a business worth $50,000 could be earning around $2,000/month in net profit—profit you earn from day one of owning the business.
You pay the price and own 100% of the business and run it as the new owner. And because the business is online, you don’t need to work in an office, so you can run it from wherever you want in the world.
With an online business, you don’t have physical assets like an office building or a physical store to manage. Everything you do for the business is online.
However, the best thing about buying an online business is that it’s already established. All of its systems are running, it’s making sales, and it comes with a reputable brand within its niche. It’s for these reasons that online businesses are accessible to anybody, even if they’ve never built or run a business before.
Many online business models are designed for beginners. For example, Amazon supports business owners who sell products on their platform by running the majority of the logistics side of the business for them.
But you’re not going in completely blind. In your career and through your education you’ve developed many skills you can use to help you run an online business. At a minimum, you’ll have developed the following skills you can transfer
- Project management
- Operational systems development
- Data analytics
- Research
- Team communication
As a tech professional, you have even more specialized skills in your tool belt, giving you access to business models that most other ex-professionals wouldn’t be able to access.
Instead of working for a large tech company, you could own a small tech company.
Small Software As A Service (SaaS) Companies or Apps
Owning a software company is a fantastic opportunity to build your software programming skills. Even if you’re not a software engineer, it’ll still be valuable for you to train yourself how to code.
Having said that, the beauty of acquiring a pre-built software company is you don’t have to manage the software. Most SaaS companies come with developer freelancer contacts or a team of developers who can usually manage the software for you.
If you acquire a no-code SaaS, then the software is even less of a concern. As long as it’s built on a reliable platform you know how to use, then you shouldn’t come across many issues with your service.
If you’re a developer, you’re in the best position to be successful with a SaaS business. You can scale it by improving the software and adding new features. With a no-code SaaS, you can add code custom features and step ahead of the competition for your service.
Another benefit of acquiring a SaaS is the business side is also pre-built.
Profitable SaaS companies have a customer base, a customer acquisition and sales system, and organized operations to deliver the service. These assets come in the form of a website that’s ranking in Google, a customer relationship management (CRM) system where customer contacts are kept, and other marketing assets including email lists and social media accounts.
With a customer base and a functioning software, you can focus your time on scaling the business, making improvements, or almost passively managing it to keep it generating income.
SaaS companies are probably the most suited to you, but you’re not limited to that business model.
Blogs
A blog is a website, usually built on WordPress, that features articles and other forms of content focused on a particular niche.
Blogs earn money through affiliate sales. When visitors to the site click on the links in articles and purchase products or services from the affiliated businesses that provided the links, those businesses then pay the blog a commission on the sale.
Another way blogs earn money is through advertisements displayed on the site.
The site owner implements a small piece of code provided by an advertising network, like Google AdSense, which displays ads on the site. Businesses pay the advertising network to have their ads displayed on sites. When a visitor clicks on the ad, the site earns money from the connected advertising network.
Blogs are one of the most passive online business models because once it’s ranked in Google, driving a substantial amount of traffic, and is making sales through affiliate marketing and display advertising, there isn’t much day-to-day work required to maintain the site.
All you need to do is keep adding content to the site to maintain and grow its Google rankings and occasionally update the content already on the site.
You can use your development skills to customize the site if you like, which would give you an advantage over most competitors who aren’t very skilled in coding.
We’ve seen ex-tech professionals also do well with product-based businesses since they tend to be systems-oriented people, which works well with this business model.
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) And Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA)
Amazon is one of the best platforms on which to run a product-based business because of its huge fulfillment network, platform, and employee base.
Amazon KDP is a third-party ecommerce platform where publishers can sell ebooks. On the KDP platform, anybody can sign up and start selling books on the Kindle marketplace.
If you run an already-established KDP business, all you need to do to maintain it is keep an eye on the book listing and occasionally make updates. You might also consider scaling the advertising campaigns being run to increase their rankings within the platform. Otherwise, all sales and book deliveries are processed automatically.
You don’t even need to be a professional writer to publish books. A lot of books selling on Kindle are written by ghostwriters, with the entrepreneur running the business.
Another product-based business you can run on Amazon is FBA.
This is an ecommerce business that uses Amazon’s warehouses and product delivery network to store and deliver products.
Because Amazon handles the majority of order fulfillment, including product sales on its platform and customer service, an established FBA business that is well-built doesn’t require much management.
Main tasks include ordering inventory, monitoring sales and product reviews, and marketing tasks like managing advertising campaigns.
Well-built FBA businesses, like the ones we sell on our marketplace, have teams of employees, sofwares, and operational systems in place to make the business hands-off for the owner.
Now you’re aware of how beginner-friendly online businesses can be, you might be wondering whether it would be worth saving your money and starting a business from scratch.
Why Don’t I Just Build My Own Business?
While the businesses we’ve just talked about are mostly hands-off, they weren’t always that way.
The owners likely built two or three failed businesses before they built one that is profitable. That’s because it’s very difficult to get a business to reach product-market fit. There are many influences working against you, including competition and your business experience and skills.
The reality for most businesses is it takes many months or years before they even start making sales. Then you have to scale the business and make it profitable.
When you buy an already-established business, you skip this startup phase and start earning money from the business from day one. Plus, it’s already established within the market, so you don’t need to worry about whether what you’re building will actually become a profitable business.
Having said this, the reality of buying a business is that it isn’t guaranteed to succeed.
Some buyers find their business starts to decline after they’ve bought it and they need to figure out why to save it, so there is also this risk.
However, compare being in this position to not earning any money from a business you’re scaling from scratch, without any assets you can leverage like a customer base, sales history, profits you can reinvest into the business, brand recognition, established operations, and teams of employees to help you.
When you buy a business, you can earn while you learn, instead of learning without earning like at University. The business can pay for your education in entrepreneurship or the tech industry if you acquire a SaaS business.
This will not only give you valuable skills you can learn to build your wealth, but it’ll also give you knowledge and experience that will make you stand out in the workforce.
A Business Is A Gold Star On Your Resume
Imagine if you could say to a big tech employer that you’ve run your own software business—how much would that stand you out from the competition?
You’ll know exactly what to say at interviews because you’ve had hands-on experience, as opposed to theoretical knowledge from books.
You’ll gain many new skills to add to your resume. Plus, you’ll have valuable knowledge you can apply in the workplace.
By seeing firsthand how product changes affect a business, you’ve gained a perspective most other employees don’t have. This experience will enable you to do your job better as you have a holistic understanding of how what you do impacts the whole company.
You’ll have a range of skills, instead of being limited to one specialty. This makes you more desirable to employers and opens up the options for your future. You can choose which specialty you want to go into instead of being limited to the label on your University degree.
If the business you acquire has a team of employees or assistants, you’ll gain hands-on management skills that you would have had to wait potentially years for in a job role. And you can put that experience on your resume and go straight for management jobs if you want to fast-pass your career.
Needless to say, buying an online business has many life-improving benefits. Plus, with the big tech layoff, you’re in a position with a unique opportunity.
Join With Others In The Same Situation As You
You’re lucky to not be in this situation alone. Thousands of other tech professionals are right with you, so why not get together to buy an online business?
You’re surrounded by potential business partners. Acquiring a business with another professional could amplify your wealth-building and chances of success, especially if you partner with someone who complements your skills. For example, if you’re highly skilled in software engineering, but not so experienced in data analytics and research, you could partner with someone skilled in those areas. Together you could acquire and grow a software business, with you developing the software and your business partner selling it.
Another benefit of partnering with another professional is you can pool your money together to buy a business larger than one you could acquire alone, increasing your income potential.
Whether you decide to acquire a business alone or with a partner, if it’s your first time buying, you should get the right help.
How to Find The Right Business For You
The safest and easiest way to acquire an online business is through an online business broker.
At Empire Flippers, we have departments for every step of selling businesses. We vet all businesses submitted to us to verify their earnings and legitimacy before we list them on our marketplace. In fact, we reject 91% of businesses submitted to us.
We have sales teams to help you identify the right business and help you negotiate the best deal with the seller. We also have a migrations team that gets the business assets for you and handles the entire migration process.
If you’d like some free, no-obligation advice on buying your first business, then schedule a call with one of our expert business advisors today.
Or, create a free account to start browsing our marketplace using our 40+ search filters to help you narrow down on a business within your budgets and interests in seconds.
