What some see as a threat, today the GAFAs (for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) offer the best leverage for any individual who wants to become self-employed or earn extra income alongside a salary.

Here are some ideas:

A) Amazon FBA (or “Fulfilled by Amazon”)

Amazon provides its logistics service, which is probably the most advanced and efficient to date, to anyone. Simply open a seller account on the Amazon website, put an item on sale and activate the “shipped by Amazon” option.

Then simply send your products, and Amazon takes care of storage, customer delivery, customer service and returns management.
For a private account there is nothing to pay, except a commission on the item sold (which varies between 5% and 20% depending on the category) which will be automatically charged by Amazon. There are no minimum quantities, no special legal status to have. Storage costs vary between EUR 26 and EUR 36 in cubic metres per month.

If you exceed a certain threshold of units sold, Amazon will ask you to convert your private account into a business account. The business account costs 39 EUR (excluding VAT) per month. At this point, it may be useful to seek advice on choosing the right country, the legal structure to adopt, and how you plan to collect your income.

B) Google

Google now processes an average of more than 40,000 search queries per second, resulting in more than 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 billion searches per year worldwide. Google provides you with one of the most effective advertising services to date. He can promote your services to anyone who performs a search on his search engine. The best known service is Google Ads “pay per click” (or PPC). You pay according to the clicks on your site. With an optimization of the sales page, keywords and a good digital marketing agency, it is possible to considerably increase sales – whether for a product or a service – in a relatively short period of time.

The suggested strategy is to address a niche market, which is not saturated. Go to the Google Keyword Planner tool and target the keywords that are searched for about 10,000 times a month.

Google also offers the ability to display your business in Google Maps, one of the most widely used mapping systems in the world.

C) Facebook

Facebook is often accused of “stealing” our personal data, at least accumulating it and making obscure use of it. What is less often highlighted is the possibility of exploiting this multi-billion dollar information database by a single individual. Just as Google makes the billions of people who search every day available as part of AdWords campaigns, Facebook makes information about billions of potential customers available. Facebook offers a unique opportunity to target potential customers with much more detail than Google. Just like Google, a good customer targeting strategy can give access to a single individual, a multi-billion dollar targeting tool.

The tool for finding your audience on Facebook is called “Audience Insights”. Using this tool, you can find your audience by keywords, geographic region, page likes and many other ways.

D) Apple

Apple makes its “App Store” available. Simply open an account on Apple Developer and pay an annual fee of about USD 99 per year. If you don’t have any programming experience, no problems! There are many ready-made applications that you can buy and customize. Platforms such as Jungleworks offer application templates that can be customized to suit your domain. Otherwise it is possible to have your application developed for a few thousand or even hundreds of francs/EUR on platforms such as Freelancer or Upwork.

E) AirBnB

AirBnB makes your home accessible to millions of travellers. You can not only rent your own home, but also those of your friends, neighbours or anyone who is not comfortable with new technologies. You don’t have time to welcome customers and change sheets? There are concierge agencies and services such as Keys’n’Fly, BnB Sitter or Luckey Homes, the AirBnB subsidiary, that can help you.

F) Booking.com

As many people might think, booking.com is not strictly reserved for hotels. It is possible to rent your apartment in a few clicks. All you have to do is register your apartment from this page. The commission is certainly higher than known