5 Ways To Start An Online Business With No Money
Thanks to the growth of the internet, anyone can start an online business with no money or just a small investment. None the less, the internet is the greatest equalizer we’ve seen in the realm of business.
If you go back 2-3 decades ago, starting a business wasn’t easy. Back then, no one could start a business with no money. Today, that’s changed as there’s never been a greater period of wealth than the one you and I are living right this very second.
The top question I get when it comes to starting an online business, “how much money do I need to start an online business?” The second most common question, “do I need business, technology or marketing experience to start an online business?” The answer to all of them is essentially no. You can start a business with no money, you don’t need technology experience to start nor do you need business or marketing experience. With that said, you will need money and experience to grow. For now, you don’t, so let’s get started.
(1) Affiliate Marketing
One of the easiest ways to start a business online is through affiliate marketing. This is due to the fact that you don’t need a product or service to start. Technically speaking, you don’t need anything but an audience.
Affiliate marketing is when you sell someone’s product or service and you receive a commission (money) every time you make a successful sale. Companies will give you a specific link, known as an affiliate link, which gives you credit when someone clicks on that links and buys a product/service from the company.
Some of the most popular affiliate programs are Amazon, ClickBank and C.J. Affiliates. However, there’s thousands of top affiliate programs that you can join and make money from.
If you already have a blog or website, you can monetize that platform with affiliate products and services.
How can you start making money online from affiliate marketing? Just sign up for an affiliate program, nearly all of them are free to join. Create your account and you’ll be giving an affiliate link to share. Keep this somewhere safe as this is the link you need to share to get credit for sending traffic to the affiliate website.
I recommend being niche specific with your affiliate marketing programs, meaning you join affiliate programs that are related to one another.
First, you need to make sure your niche is profitable. The larger the market, the more opportunity. Clothing is a huge industry and it’s a niche that I would label as profitable. Cooking is another profitable niche, technology is another. If you’re having trouble choosing, I always recommend building a business on passion. What are you passionate about? What do you enjoy doing in life? Try finding affiliate programs that you’re passionate about or ones that you’re an expert in.
Why? It’s a lot more enjoyable working in a niche you’re passionate about.
(2) Drop Shipping
For those of you that would like to have your own store, drop shipping is one of the easiest and most cost effective business models to have.
Ecommerce platforms are one of the most popular businesses to start.
As a drop shipping business, you won’t be required to have inventory, which is the biggest cost to having your own store. On top of that, you won’t be required to ship products as a drop shipper. Again, that can be a hassle and another cost.
Let’s look how drop shipping works.
- List products on your website, blog, platform
- When someone buys, you place the order with your vendor
- You pay the vendor
- The vendor ships the product
- You profit on every sale
Now, if you had to start your own store, you’d have to keep inventory on hand and ship it out when people buy. Plus, it would take you a lot of money to get started. Even if you started your online ecommerce store with just a few products, you’d still have more expenses than using the drop shipping business model.
While technically you can start a drop shipping business for free, it’s worth investing in your own unique name and a platform such as Shopify.
(3) Leveraging Video
Videos are in high demand, more so than at any other time in history and it will only continue to grow as more people utilize video into their marketing strategy. Since videos are in high demand, so is video content. If you produce high quality videos, you can make a great living working from home.
Now, what about the largest video platform online, you know, YouTube?
There’s a lot of ways you can make money with YouTube. In order to do so, you need a YouTube channel, which you can create for free. YouTube has created a lot of millionaires and is still doing do at high return rates, so there’s always the possibility you can be the next YouTube star.
The most common way you can use YouTube to make money is through Google Adsense. You can sign up for Google Adsense for free. Once you have a YouTube and Adsense account, you can integrate the two from your YouTube account. Google Adsense displays ads on your YouTube videos and you get paid when someone clicks on your ads.
While Google Adsense is the most common way to make money on YouTube, there’s several other ways you can profit from YouTube.
- Paid review on a product or service
- Sharing videos that share your affiliate marketing links
- Paid video for a brand or company
(4) Blogging
Another way you could be making money online from home is through blogging. If you have a passion for a specific niche or topic, you can build a blog around that concept.
With Blogger.com, you can start your blog for free. However, I’d recommend investing a few bucks and getting your own unique domain.
There’s a lot of ways you can make money blogging. If you’ve already signed up for Google Adsense, you can also show ads on your website and get paid when they’re clicked on. You can also get paid for reviews, guest content, paid sponsorship, affiliate marketing or generating leads.
A blog can be a launch platform for a personal brand or business. It gives you the opportunity to build an audience focused around the topics you create.
Most profitable blogs are niche specific, meaning they focus on a specific topic or concept.
Here’s a few profitable niches that would be perfect for blogging.
- Travel
- Finances
- Investing
- Weight Loss
- Supplements
- Fitness
- Business
- Photography
- Dating
- Making Money
(5) Digital Marketing
One of the fastest growing industries in the world is the digital marketing industry. In the U.S. alone, the digital marketing industry is expected to grow to a value of $120B. Due to this, there’s a huge opportunity for anyone that wants to become a digital marketer.
Digital marketing is a broad term, closely related to online marketing and the strategies used online to help a business grow. Since every business needs more clients and customers to succeed, digital marketing jobs are in high demand.
You can start a digital marketing agency with little to no money down, but you will need to learn the strategies are used, such as SEO, Facebook ads, content marketing or paid ads.
At TeachingOnlineBusiness.com, we have the Digital Marketing Accelerator. This is our premier training course that teaches you everything you need to know about digital marketing.
We also have the Teaching Online Business Elite membership, which is our paid membership program that helps you start and grow your business.
One of the best ways to learn how to make money is by learning from someone is already where you want to be, that’s why so many others come to our blog and is a part of our community here at Teaching Online Business.
If you’re ready to start getting around the right people, come join our free Facebook group here. Learning how to start an online business with little to no money is just one of the many topics we’ll be covering there on Facebook. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to connect with us.