5 Online Businesses You Can Start With No Money
The internet is the great equalizer. In business specifically, it has leveled the playing field. Anyone can start a money-making online business—anyone with a computer, that is. But here’s the thing: virtually no technical experience is needed. Today there are plenty of tools you can use to build an online business that makes the technical work a lot easier than it was in the past.
You can also live anywhere you want, set your own schedule, and work as little or as much as you want, depending on how fast or big you want your business to grow. No business or marketing experience is needed either. It’s a truly democratic medium for entrepreneurship.
And this is just the start of the many available no-money e-commerce startup solutions. Let's consider five of the top ways to start an online business and make money online with little or no cost at all.
1. Drop Shipping
The basic idea behind an online drop shipping business is that, as a small business owner, you don’t have to maintain a large inventory (or any inventory whatsoever) of products or handle any delivery to your customers. That eliminates the financial cost and risk of having a warehouse full of stuff you might not sell, and the hassle of arranging to send orders all over the country or the world. In fact, you don't have to manufacture or store any products at all.
The only thing you have to focus on is marketing and advertising to find the customers and make the sales. Once the sale is made the rest is handled by others. Your only cost is the expense of marketing and advertising to acquire a new customer.
Once that is done, you'll work with a company that specializes in drop shipping. Here’s how it works:
- You list products for sale on your website or a platform like Amazon, eBay, or Etsy.
- When one of your customers makes a purchase, you purchase the product from a third-party company (the drop shipper, usually a manufacturer or wholesaler) for a lower price. This process is as simple as forwarding the order from your customer, a process that can actually be completely automated. (Remember you don't have any risk here of buying inventory because the sale has already been made).
- Your drop shipper then sends the product to the customer
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is somewhat similar to drop shipping but with some key differences. With this e-commerce model, you again don’t maintain an inventory of your own products, and you don’t have to worry about shipping products to customers.
Basically, you pick a profitable niche for your online business, and then you find an affiliate partner who has products available in that niche. Some of the most popular affiliate sites are Clickbank.com, Amazon.com, and CJ Affiliate by Conversant (formerly Commission Junction). Between them, they offer just about any digital information product (like ebooks, audio files, video files) or physical product you can think of. Many big name companies and brands like Wal-Mart and Home Depot run their own affiliate programs.
All you have to do is handle the marketing to get your prospects to buy (through social media, email marketing, blogging, or whatever method you choose). But after they click the affiliate link, it’s out of your hands. You don’t have to ship products or handle any customer service questions. And you certainly don’t have to maintain an inventory.
Affiliate marketing really is one of the most "hand-off" types of online businesses you can start.
3. Blogging
If you have the expertise or a passion or interest for a subject, you're ready to start making money with a blog. With a service like Blogger (www.blogger.com), you can start up your blog totally free. You can also create your own site and secure your own hosting for a low price, which is generally the route I recommend, as many free blogging sites have restrictions on what you can say or do, including making money or advertising.
You may think blogging is all about writing. And it can be if that's what you want to do. But written blog posts are just the start. You can post photos, videos, and links to other sites, you can even repost news and other articles… anything is game, really, as long as it relates to your niche.
They key is that you want to post original content that is useful to your target audience and to post on a regular basis. That is the best way to get ranked in the search engines and to also get your audience to take action.
You make money in a variety of ways with an online business blog.
- Google AdSense
Have you ever been to a website and seen an ad on it? Chances are it was an ad being run through the Google advertising network.
These pay-per-click ads appear on your blog. Every time somebody clicks on an ad (which is supposed to be about a subject related to your niche), you make a few cents or more. Small amounts each time, but it adds up. This is extremely hands-off. You just need to get a code from Google, place it on your website - and the ads will automatically appear on your blog.
Google will only show ads that are relevant to your blog so it's a good experience for your visitors and maximizes the number of clicks you get, meaning more income.
- Blog ad networks
You can also work with ad networks other than Google, like Blogads, and run banner ads on your blog. Same as Google Adsense ads, you place the code once on your website and when your visitors click on the ads then you get paid. In addition to banner ads, you can also run video ads on your site.
In many cases you can make more money with blog ad networks, but they tend to only work with blogs that are getting tens of thousands of visitors a month or more; as opposed to Google Ads where you can start right away regardless of the amount of traffic you get.
4. Online Video
Have you watched a YouTube video lately? Of course you have! This is one of the world’s most popular websites, with more than 2 billion users watching hundreds of millions of hours of video each day.
And it’s not all cats doing funny things, by any means.
You can leverage YouTube’s reach to make money online. No, you’re not trying to create a viral video, so to speak, although if it does go worldwide and is seen by millions, that’s a good thing.
Instead, you’ll be following a proven strategy for maximizing views of multiple videos on a regular basis. You’ll be creating useful content—something engaging that people want to watch. And it works in many, many different niches. It could be a how-to video or a talking-head video on a topic of interest for people in your niche—the sky is the limit.
You make money with ad revenue. Your first step is to create a YouTube account and start uploading videos. Then you enable monetization on your YouTube settings.13? Basically, this gives Google the go-ahead to include short AdSense ads with your videos, which you've seen if you’ve watched a YouTube video. When viewers click on those ads, you get paid.
Some tips to create professional-looking videos (no expensive pro equipment needed):
- You can use your smartphone or a simple video camera. But make sure the lighting is good so that everything in your video is clear and easy to see.
- Make sure the audio is clear. You don't want an air conditioning hum, construction noise, or other distractions.
- Use simple editing software like iMovie to put titles at the beginning of the video and to edit out any flubs.
Above all, remember that your videos can be simple and don’t have to be slick. Just provide useful content and be engaging and interesting. Funny helps, too.
5. Information Products
When you have an internet business, it doesn’t have to be about selling physical products. In fact, digital information products are one of the easiest and quickest ways to make money.
There's no shortage of ways to create information products, but the most popular formats include:
- Audio: a recorded teleconference, interview, course, or some other spoken-word product
- Video: a recorded webinar, a how-to, an interview
- Text: an ebook, an instruction booklet of some sort, a travel guide
In each of these categories, you can really get creative and make any type and format of content, as long as it’s engaging and useful.
No matter which way you do it, it’s passive income—money you earn while you sleep because you put these products up for sale on your website and a customer can buy and download them any time of day or night, automatically. All you have to do is check the sales periodically to see what topics or types of products are selling best so you can make more of those.