@OP: Not enough information to give advices.
"low-risk (long-term)"
how long (10y, 20y? ...) and which goal (distributing, accumlating? for you or inheritance for your children)?
"anything to do with extreme volatility like crypto."
What is exactly your risk acceptance? Which max drawdown do you accept?
"ETF's? Buying franchises or smaller established offline businesses?"
Do you want a lazy investment or active? Obviously if it's active you can except higher profits.
If it's passive (ETFs) with stocks/bonds/... as general rules:
1/ first step: limit fees with bank/brokers. low trading fees, no custody fees... (i.e. Interactivebrokers)
2/ second step: depending your country of residence, try to choose the tax efficient ETF.
For instance, if your country is capital gains tax free, choose an accumulating ETFs.
If you live as NHR in Portugal, choose distributing ETFs.
Moreover, if your country of residence has no tax treaty with the US, it's better to have an UCITS accumulating ETF (if not witholding tax of 30% by default).
3/ Most of active portfolio are beaten in the long term by a simple passive portfolio.
4/ Active ETF investment means fees paid to the management.
5/ Active ETF (such as JEPI...) are very young with no long term feedback.
6/ Higher returns generally (always) means more risks.
7/ Building a diversified portfolio is the best mean to decrease your max drawdown:
just an example:
x% of WORLD stock ETF (IWDA... JEPI if you want)
x% of BONDS (ETFS, direct bonds [see tax efficiency])
x% of MONETARY (i.e. currently €STER 3.6% / 5.3% Overnight US fed rates....)
x% of REAL ESTATE (direct, REITS...)
x% of CRYPTO
x% of .....
Percentages depend on your max drawdown acceptance.
This (#29 of
@jafo ) is the most important post in this entire thread. Sadly, people never pay attention to warnings like this.
Investing today in the stock markets of most developed countries means investing in overvalued equity when taking historical metrics into account.
Yes, GAFAM especially which have single-handedly boosted results since the beginning of the year.
But it's very complicated (nearly impossible) to find the good entry point.
I like to read old threads on forum investors. 5 years or even 10 years ago, you find good investors who said that markets were already overvalued.
Obviously, if your entry point is in 2000 or 2007 (100% stocks)...
.
Use a Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) strategy to reduce the risk.