The only way to be financially free is to start your own business. And stocks, of course. But a business is much more appealing because you are in charge of it, and nothing beats the feeling of starting something that will grow into something big.
But if you don’t have any money, how do you start one? The best way to start a business is to do it online.
Today, you’ll learn about online businesses that anyone can start with little or no money and start making money online.
Why should you open a business online?
Online business is easy to start up and doesn’t cost much to run. Unlike a traditional store, you don’t have to pay for water, heat, or electricity. You don’t have to pay rent either. With a physical store, you can expect to pay more than $500 a month for rent and pay employees.
With an online business, all you need to do is pay the website’s monthly fee. It’s up to you if you want to pay for other software, such as an auto-responder, software for automated marketing and social media, and so on.
An online business doesn’t cost much and doesn’t cause as many problems as a brick-and-mortar store. You don’t even need to go anywhere. And what’s best? No matter where you are, you can run your business.
Create a blog.
Price to pay: $4 per month
How does someone make money with a blog? There are a lot of ways to make money off of a blog. Look at some of the following:
- Info product: Sell your course or eBooks as an information product.
- Membership: Ask people to sign up and pay a monthly fee.
- Advertisements: Use Google ads or ads from other ad networks
- Services – sell what you can do for money
Affiliate marketing, which we will talk about later, can also use a blog as a sales funnel. You don’t need a lot of money to start a blog. You can start a blog for free, but the free platforms don’t have as many features.
You should start with one that costs money. WordPress.ORG is the best platform, not WordPress.COM. You have to pay a monthly fee to a web host like Bluehost or SiteGround in order to use the ORG platform.
It’s easy to start a blog. You don’t have to figure out how to code. What matters is that you give your readers useful information, build your credibility, and get more people to visit your site.
Affiliate marketing: How to Get Started
No cost is needed.
In affiliate marketing, you tell people about the products of someone else. If you convince people to buy the product or convince them to convert, the merchant who sold the product will give you a commission.
To get started, you need to find a product you want to promote and sign up for the affiliate program. Once this is done, you will get a link from the sponsor. This link is your affiliate link. This is the link you’d advertise.
There are a lot of ways to sell the product. Some examples are:
- YouTube: Make useful videos on YouTube and send people to your affiliate site
- Blog: Write things like product reviews to get people to buy the thing you’re trying to sell.
- Ads: Make ads on Google or social media; the link in the ad should be your affiliate link.
- Forums: Answer questions on forums and post your affiliate link.
In affiliate marketing, you don’t have to spend any money if you don’t want to. But, like any other business, you have to put some money into it to have a stake in it.
You can put money into your blog or spend it on ads. You have to decide how you want to market the products you chose and then get really good at that method before moving on to something else.
Build an E-Commerce Store
Price to be paid: $29 per month
You are in charge of your policies, shipping, and other things in an e-commerce store. One of the best things about an online store is that there are no fees. Every time you make a sale on eBay or Amazon, you have to pay a seller fee.
If you want to build your brand and sell your own products, you should open an online store. You don’t have to learn how to make a website because you can build your store on platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce.
Start dropshipping.
Price to be paid: $29 per month
Dropshipping is also a type of online store, but you don’t make the products yourself. You also don’t need a list of things.
When you do dropshipping, you sell the goods of another retailer or supplier. But you won’t order that item until a customer has already paid you. With dropshipping, all you have to do is set up your store, choose your products and suppliers, and start marketing.
If you start dropshipping, you can make money by putting a profit on top of the price you pay for the item. If a store sells a pair of socks for $4 plus $3 for shipping, you can charge $9 for the socks and $3 for shipping. In this case, you get $5 more than you put in.
If you sell 1,000 units, you made a gross income of $5,000 in a month. From that, you have to take out the cost of hosting your website, which is about $29 per month. If you don’t spend any more money, you can keep the rest and make a profit.
Social Media Agency
No cost is needed.
A social media agency is a business that handles the social media posts and advertising needs of a business. This is not as hard as it might seem. All you have to do is put content on the business’s social media channels.
Companies need the following types of content:
- Quotes
- Infographics
- Blog posts
- The visual arts
- Memes
- Video tutorials
As a social media agency, you will work with freelancers to make all of these different types of content. You can save a lot of money if you can do them yourself. You don’t have to worry about money because the client’s down payment will cover the costs of outsourcing.
You can list your services on online marketplaces; you don’t need to build your own website to get started. When you start making money, you can put money aside, build your own website, and start advertising.
Virtual Assistant Services
No cost is needed.
As a virtual assistant, you can do so many different kinds of work. Like any service-based business, you don’t need any money to get started. Just look for work online and wait until someone hires you.
Here are some things you might do as a virtual assistant:
- Data entry
- Planning things to do
- Meeting scheduler
- Work in the office
- Getting on the phone
- Booking travel arrangements
Think about it, there aren’t many things a virtual assistant can’t do. A virtual assistant can do anything that can be done in an office or from a distance.
Depending on how hard the job is, you could charge different amounts. The most common rate for a virtual assistant is $5 per hour, and this rate is for easy tasks. If you’re going to do hard work, you can charge at least $10 per hour.
Writing on Your Own
No cost is needed.
All online businesses need content, so there is a need for freelance writers. From blogs to product descriptions to ad copy, people need writers a lot.
You can write it yourself or put together a group of writers to do it for you. If you choose the second option, your main job will be to find clients, promote the business, and edit the writers’ work.
For a simple blog post like a listicle, you can charge at least $30 per 1,000 words if you do it yourself.
You can charge more than $100 per project if you’re going to write complex materials, like landing pages. Your goal as a writer is to find people who want to run an online business but don’t know how to write or don’t have time to do it.
Writers are everywhere, so you must have great writing skills to do well at this. You will have to compete with a lot of other writers, and the only way to do well is to be good at what you do.
Graphic Arts
No cost is needed.
You can make a lot of money by making things like infographics and editing photos. Web content with pictures is much more appealing than content that is just text.
You should know how to use Photoshop if you want to be a graphic artist. If you can’t afford Photoshop, use free software like InkScape or GIMP instead.
As a graphic designer, you can make a lot of different things for your customers.
Here are some examples:
- Posters
- Flyers
- Brochures
- Infographics
- PDF newsletters
- Feature pages
- Hero banners
Even for a very simple output, you can charge at least $5. For this kind of project, you can use free tools like Canva, which lets you make graphics without having to pay for the software. Once you start making money, you can move up and get more materials, like icons and stock photos.
Videography
How much is needed: $300
Videography is in demand, and animation is the most popular type of this service. To shoot videos in the real world, you have to be in a certain place. You may even have to set up your own props sometimes.
But the animation is better because you don’t have to go outside. With animation software, you can use a lot of templates, characters, icons, and backgrounds that are already made.
You need a camera and video editing software to start an animation business. Camtasia is one of the best programs out there. It has everything that animators and video editors need to do their jobs. PowToon is another option.
You might not need an expensive camera if you want to make videos. Most of your clients will be people who already have their videos shot and just need you to edit them.
Sell on Online Markets
No cost is needed.
If you don’t want to make your own website, you can also sell on sites like eBay, Amazon, Etsy, and more.
You don’t have to pay anything to sell online, but your inventory will cost you. The thing is, you don’t have to buy inventory if you make your own products or sell used ones.
If you know how to do it without any money, selling online is one of the best ways to make money. Only the transaction fees need to be paid.
How can you sell if you don’t have things to sell?
You can do dropshipping or arbitrage in any way you want. In dropshipping, you can put pictures of items on online marketplaces and sell them, but you won’t order the items until a customer has bought them from you.
In arbitrage, you buy something on eBay and then sell it on Amazon, or the other way around. You sell it for more, and the difference between the two prices is your profit.
Sell Photos
No cost is needed.
You only need your phone to sell photos. You must have either an iPhone or an Android phone, right? Go out and take pictures of everything if you do.
Take pictures of everything, including dogs, people swimming, people drinking, and so on. You can take pictures of buildings, beaches, decks, patios, mosquitos, cats, and a lot of other things.
Where do you sell these pictures, though?
You can use the money to:
- Adobe Stock
- Fotomoto
- Alamy
- Etsy
- Shutterstock
- Crestock
- Fiverr
- Freelancer
In fact, there are a lot of places online where you can sell your photos. All you have to do to keep them from being stolen is put watermarks on them. You can sell the photos for $5 or less, but it’s really up to you how much you want to charge. If you can take photos of good quality, you can sell them for more money.
Also, you can decide if you want the buyer to have full rights or if the photo can be owned by more than one person if it has “private label rights.”
Flip a Blog
Cost: between $100 and $1,000
Flipping a blog means you are going to buy a blog site. Most of these blogs aren’t doing well, so the blogger has stopped caring. Most likely, these blogs aren’t making any money, so the person who writes them has lost interest.
If you know how blogs work, you can build this business. After buying the blog, you’ll need to make some changes to make it easier for Google to find.
Here are the skills you’ll need to turn a blog around:
- SEO skills
- Making graphics
- Web design and web building
- Partner marketing
- Traffic-building
- Marketing
When you buy a blog, you need to be careful. You must make sure to check all the contents and then see if any of them are the same. You want a blog that is clean and doesn’t have any black-hat SEO or Google penalties. Also, you want a blog that will make you money with little work on your part.
Be a Consultant
No cost is needed.
You must have used at least one skill in your job. You might be an accountant, a nurse, or a business leader.
You know a lot about something, and you can sell that knowledge online. In this business, you are your own product. You must make yourself into a guru. You have to prove yourself first. You have to make free content and then promote it on different social media sites.
Once you have a following, you can start offering your consulting services. Always be able to show what you’re worth. You can do this by showing how your past work turned out.
People will pay you as a mentor for the time you spend with them. You can charge whatever you want. Just make sure that when people pay you, you help them or add value to their lives.
Write eBooks
How much is needed: $300
If you know how to write, this is one of the easiest ways to make money online. If you aren’t, you have to pay someone to write the eBook for you.
For an eBook, which may or may not include the cover, you have to pay writers around $300. You can sell the eBook online once you have it. You may only have to pay for formatting services and eBook covers if you write your own eBook.
You can sell your book in the following places:
- Amazon
- Google Play Books
- Smashwords
The fees for each of these platforms are different. Some of them would charge up to 40% of your selling price.
Dropserving
Price range: $0 to $29
Dropserving is like dropshipping. You won’t sell anything, though. You will instead sell services. In drop serving, you make your own website and then sell services from it.
Some of these things are:
- Writing
- The visual arts
- Web design
- SEO
- Making a website
- Shopping center
When you get an order, you’ll ask a freelancer to do the work. The price you charge your customer is more than what you would pay the freelancer. You make money on the difference.
Before you start your drop-serving business, you need to try out a few freelancers and find one who can do the job to the level of quality you want. These freelancers can be found in places like Fiverr and Freelancer.
As with dropshipping, the only cost you would have is the monthly fee for your website. You can either write blogs or put up ads to find clients. What will cost you money is the advertising.
If you don’t want to pay for ads, you can bid on projects on online marketplaces and then give the job to your freelancer.
Services for SEO
Cost: between $0 and $50 per month
One of the most difficult parts of running an online business is search engine optimization. If you know about SEO, you can turn it into a business and help other business owners get higher rankings on Google.
If you want to be an SEO expert, you need to be able to do the following:
- Analysis of speed
- Backlink strategies
- Keyword planning
- Plan for content
Make sure you do not make false promises. Do not tell your clients that you can make their websites number one.
You already know that Google decides how to rank websites. Focus your services on giving your clients strategies and action plans they can use, not on results you can’t promise.
Sell e-Courses
No cost is needed.
The last idea we have is to sell online courses. Like a consultant, you have a lot of knowledge. An e-course is different because it is a series of videos where you teach your students from beginning to end.
How can you make money? People can learn almost anything.
Here are some examples:
- Mathematics
- Marketing
- Woodworking
- Crafts and arts
- Accounting
- Data analysis
As you can see, you can sell anything you can teach. Once your video series is done, you can put the course on sites like Kajabi, Udemy, Coursera, and others. These platforms will take care of selling the courses, and when a customer buys a course, they will charge you a transaction fee.
What Kind of Business Should You Start Online?
Because there are so many options, it’s easy to want to start an online business right away. When you are in a hurry, you might make a bad choice.
The first thing you should do is ask yourself, “What am I really interested in?”
All of these businesses are almost free to start, which is why they are so appealing. But you shouldn’t start a business if you don’t like doing the work that comes with it.
Which online business is best to start depends on:
- Your skills
- Your history
- What you want
You should also think about how much work you will have to do. If the online business you want to start requires some kind of marketing, you should ask yourself if you have the skills to do it.
Are you ready to learn about marketing online? If not, you should think about a different business. All of these online businesses can make you money, but only if you work at them.
In this day and age, the best way to do business is online. It takes little or no money to start, but the profits can be bigger than those from a store.
Take an online course about how to run a business online before you start one. This way, you will know what to do and won’t get burned. Many people who try to start businesses online fail because they were not ready.
Make sure this doesn’t happen to you. Look into what you can do to get ready for your online trip, and then get ready for a wild ride.
