There’s a lot of work upfront and by comparison to other ideas, there can be a fair bit of work on an ongoing basis. But if you automate as much as possible and/or hire a VA in the Philippines for example, you can get it down to just a few hours a week.
Anyways, so here’s the idea…
Find a product or group of products that are hard to buy locally for people (anything nichey works, from magic trick supplies to specialized bedding), aren’t that easy to buy online (or you can otherwise rank high in Google), and then setup your online store.
Sort out a drop shipping arrangement directly with a trustworthy provider and voila!
There’s a lot more to say on this and it ain’t a case of one two three voila, so I’ve spent a fair whack of time going through the process in a separate article.
But getting back to the main thing here; look for products to drop ship that are in the $50-$200 range, are cheapish to ship, are pretty stable over time (ie not always being updated / changed / running out of demand) and cannot easily be price-shopped online (eg branded cameras are easy to price-shop, whereas something like aqua blue bedding with it’s different mix of thread count, material type etc, is much harder).