What are virtual startups?
A virtual startup is a business that exists only online. Customers buy a product or service on a website, and ordering, payment and delivery happen automatically.
There’s no office and no shop. When I wrote this page in 2016, we were developing virtual startups together with developers, designers and marketing specialists – each solving a specific customer problem as a one-click service: one click, one payment, and the solution arrives.
The upside: as founder or owner you have a great deal of freedom and get the full benefit of the low costs. For that to work, the virtual startup needs a web-based business model.
What is a web-based business model?
A web-based business model is one where the entire value chain runs over the internet: customers find the offer online, pay online and receive the service online. I mainly invested in two such models:
| Model 1: Virtual services | Model 2: Advertising on content sites | |
|---|---|---|
| Type of selling | active | passive |
| Revenue | recurring customer payments | payment for ad clicks and impressions |
| Customers arrive via | search engines and landing pages | SEO and social media |
| Key metric | conversion rate | traffic |
Model 1: How do you sell virtual services?
In the first model you actively sell a virtual service, ideally with recurring payments. The flow:
- A customer searches for a solution and lands on your landing page – a page that explains exactly one offer – via a search engine.
- They see that your service solves exactly that problem.
- They pay online, for example by card or direct debit.
- They get the solution or information on screen straight away, or by email once it’s done.
Two things decide success: the landing page has to be found, and it has to convince. My articles on call to action examples and why customers buy show how to turn more visitors into customers.
Model 2: How do you earn from ads on content sites?
In the second model you passively sell ad space, for example through Google AdSense. You publish content that people find via social media or search engines. In the past you were mainly paid when a visitor clicked an ad. Since 2024 Google AdSense has paid publishers mostly per impression rather than per click.
My traffic portfolio from these sites at the time (as of 2016):
- more than 1 million unique visitors a month
- more than 2.8 million page views a month
- more than 5.5 million ad impressions a month
What has changed since then: for many searches Google now shows an AI answer right above the results, and more and more people ask ChatGPT and similar tools instead of a search engine. Pure information sites get fewer clicks as a result. If you build a content site today, you need content based on your own experience, your own data or tools that an AI answer can’t replace – and you want to be cited as a source in AI answers yourself. My guide to Google AI Overviews explains how.
What are the advantages of virtual startups?
- Lower costs: all a virtual startup needs is a website where customers can pay. No rent for an office or shop.
- Freedom: you work from anywhere, and revenue keeps coming in overnight once processes are automated.
- Scalability: whether 10 or 1,000 customers a day, an automated website handles both with little extra effort.
- Fast testing: a landing page lets you test an idea in days rather than months.
What are the limits of virtual startups?
- Platform dependence: if almost all your customers come from Google, one update can change your business overnight.
- Competition: what you launch quickly online, someone else can copy just as quickly.
- The work doesn’t disappear: customer questions, tech, marketing and bookkeeping remain – they’re just more flexible.
- Obligations: a virtual business still needs the legal pages and proper accounts that any company needs.
How do you start a virtual startup today?
- Find a problem: what do people want solved online, and would they pay for it?
- Build a landing page: one offer, one clear benefit, one clear next step.
- Automate payment and delivery: a payment provider, automated emails, and AI for repetitive tasks where it makes sense.
- Get visible: on Google and in AI search for the terms your customers use. Enter your address in my free SEO Compass, and within a few minutes you’ll see where your biggest levers are.
- Measure and improve: where do customers come from, and where do they drop off?
If a project stops being the right fit for you at some point, you can sell it – what matters is covered in selling a website project. You can read more about me on my about page, and more articles on the blog.
