There hasn’t been a better time than now to start a business with no money.
Gone are the days when you needed a loan from the bank of Mom & Dad to start a business online. In today’s increasingly digital world, there are tons of ways to kick off your journey to financial freedom with zero investment.
1. Short Form Content Creation
This is without a doubt one of the easiest business opportunities of our generation. You’ve got Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts & TikTok videos which are the main 3. There are more videos going viral than ever before and each platform (besides Instagram) has introduced new ways to pay creators.
YouTube Shorts
YouTube Shorts for example pays creators around 4 cents / 1,000 views. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you think about it, each video is a maximum of 60 seconds long. There’s not that much work involved in making them and most creators manage to push out between 1 to 3 videos per day. Plus, we’re trying to start a business with no money here, so we’re going to have to build from scratch.
I’ve done some digging and on the channels that go viral, it takes on average 50 videos for their first viral video, and after that, YouTube pushes their shorts to every corner of the algorithm and every 3 – 4 videos is a viral video (1 million+ views). That’s a potential $40 for each video that goes viral. The key here is obviously mass content creation, but people are now starting up YouTube channels purely based on short-form content and zero long-form videos.
TikTok
TikTok has a similar payment process but you tend to get more views, quicker on TikTok due to the sheer amount of scrollers on the platform vs. YouTube. I mention a guy on TikTok who has millions of views by creating these surprisingly simple videos that involve a small square pane of glass and some Cheetos (I’m not kidding).
Instagram doesn’t currently allow monetization of reels, but there are ways around this with sponsored posts, ad placements, or affiliate links. Post enough high-quality content on Instagram and brands will start to notice and reach out with paid collabs.
Key to Success With Content Creation
To make this work, you need to stay consistent and persevere. Success doesn’t come overnight, and rarely does it come in the first month. Unfortunately, most people quit after a week of none of their videos going viral. Don’t do this. If you quit, there is zero chance of success. If you persevere, you’re still in the game. Aim for 100 followers/subscribers in the first 14 days. If you can achieve that, then you know there’s enough demand for your videos and you’re creating decent content which is a great way to start a business with no money.
2. Sell Digital Products on Etsy
Now before I get into this, I want to make it clear that I don’t like Etsy as a platform. You can read more about why by clicking here. But, if you want to start a business with no money, then selling digital products on Etsy is one of the easiest ways to do it.
Introduction to Selling Digital Products on Etsy
Etsy is an online marketplace where thousands of sellers list their products under their own shop pages. Millions of customers search for products on Etsy and when they purchase a product they like, that seller makes money, minus Etsy’s commission and fees.
Setting up an account on Etsy is completely free, and you only pay fees and commissions when you sell, with the one exception; when you list your products, you’re charged a ‘listing fee’. At the time of writing this, the listing fee is $0.20 but this is usually taken out of money made from sales. If you don’t make any sales for about a month, Etsy will want to recoup this listing fee from you.
Digital products are downloadable files for your customers to purchase, you don’t physically ship them. For example, a painting in a frame that you send to customers in the post is a physical product. A painting you’ve made in Photoshop, which you then allow customers to download and print themselves, is a digital product.
Aside from the obvious advantages of digital products such as no shipping costs and zero inventory costs, one of my favorite reasons to sell digital products is that with most of these types of products, there’s no work to be done by you once you’ve created the original file, so you can sell an unlimited amount and forget about it while it makes you money in the background.
The key to succeeding on Etsy with any type of product is your niche. In my other article, I talk about the importance of niche selection to ensure you have enough demand but less competition, so you can easily carve a space for yourself in an otherwise saturated niche.
Digital Product Ideas For Etsy
Etsy allows the sale of 2 types of digital products, instantly downloadable files or made-to-order files.
Here are 2 examples of digital products you could sell on Etsy, that are currently doing really well on the platform now.
Event Invitations
This product can be in either of the 2 digital product categories mentioned above.
You can create high-quality, instantly downloadable invitation templates for birthdays, baby showers, and weddings. When your customer makes a purchase, they get access to a link to the editable template, through an online graphic editing service like Canva, which they can then edit themselves. Alternatively, when your customer places an order, you can take the information from them such as the location of the event, time, and RSVP details, which you then input into the template yourself.
Printable Wall Art
This is most likely going to be an instantly downloadable file that you have already created, which is available for purchase again and again with no further input from yourself.
There’s a load of different styles and types of printable wall art, so you’ll need to do some good research to see what’s trending at the time, and what’s doing well on Etsy.
Printable wall art as a whole, is doing very well on there, but there are a lot of people selling it. So you’ll have to pick a niche that has demand, but where you can put your own twist on the design of the product that will stand out from the crowd.
Think about what style of artwork you’ll be doing, what room in the house you’re creating artwork for, or the type of person you ideally want to sell to. One example is people who want minimalist decor in their house, and who usually work from a home office. In this case, you’d keep your designs minimal and make sure the artwork is intended for display in a home office.
Alternatively, you could create wall art that would be perfect for a kid’s bedroom, keeping with the use of pastel colors only and child-friendly but attractive artwork that parents would like to see in their children’s bedrooms.
Selling digital products on Etsy is a great way to start a business with no money, but you’ll have to do some good, quality research to make sure you do well.
3. Organic Dropshipping Without Ads
Introduction to Organic Dropshipping
Most of the money I’ve made online is through eCommerce. I’m now focusing on other ways of making money online, but when I started, you needed a significant amount of money to spend on product stock, marketing & ads, shipping and logistics, etc
Recently though, eCommerce has transformed and now a lot of people are doing what I like to call organic dropshipping. This is a great opportunity to start a business with no money. I didn’t think it would be possible to create a 5 or 6-figure online business with $0 but people are actually doing it and it seems to be one of the easiest ways to start a business with no money.
This ties in with the 1st method of using short-form content instead of ads. The nature of dropshipping means that you do not have to pay for stock. Now, with the advent of TikTok Shop, you don’t need money to create a website as the store functionality is now built into TikTok for a one-click checkout. TikTok handles order capture and payment processing, and you can even use their shipping provider. There is one caveat though, as TikTok only allows people from certain countries to set up a shop, USA & UK included.
How to Start Organic Dropshipping
The best way to go about this business idea is to swipe through TikTok and look for trending products. Often, people will order a sample of the product they’re looking to sell and create multiple videos with it showcasing its uses and how cool it is.
Once you’ve found a product you like the look of, and it’s attracting some virality through TikTok, you should see if you can find this product on TikTok or Amazon for purchase. Purchase 1 and have it delivered as soon as possible (you don’t want to be late to the party). When it arrives, start creating some kick-ass content with it. The idea isn’t to reinvent the wheel or to create a new trend. You should take inspiration from other videos you spotted whilst doing your research but make sure you add your own twist to it. You don’t want to be the same as them, you want to be better.
Start uploading content to TikTok daily and eventually one or more of the videos will take off. If none of your videos is successful, then either review the content you’re creating and see if it’s competing with others, or the product may not be a viable option anymore.
In the past, you’d have to waste $100’s on Facebook and Instagram ads only to find out that your product is a dud. Today though, you can find out for free using the method above.
If Your Product is Viable
If your videos take off, put in Google what the product actually is and add ‘dropship’ to the end of it. You’ll get a whole list of suppliers that will dropship that product straight to your customers every time someone orders. I’d stay away from China suppliers because they usually take 2+ weeks to arrive and you’ll have complaints and strikes against your TikTok shop if this happens. Look for dropship suppliers based in your own country.
Take some epic product pictures and get the product listed on your TikTok Shop. You can then start tagging videos in your TikTok feed with the shop link to the product, so when people watch your video and like what they see, they can purchase it then and there which massively increases conversion rates.
Keep the price point low whilst making a good profit. You want your product to be an impulse buy, not something your customer has to contemplate whether they can afford it or not. Impulse buys tend to perform the best with dropshipping.
Once you’ve generated sales and earned some money, you can re-invest that money into advertising which will earn you more money. Once your product takes off really well, you can reach out to your suppliers for heavy discounts and ask for a new, cheaper price if you were to purchase stock of say, 500 units. After that, you can scale your business to multiple figures.
Summary
I hope this article has shed light on some great ways to start a business with no money, and it should serve as inspiration. There are so many people changing their lives for the better using the methods I’ve outlined above. I say this to my friends and family all the time so I’ll say it to you; There are an insane amount of opportunities for making money online, and I know I’ve said it before but there really hasn’t been a better time to do so. I’ve witnessed with my own eyes people go from broke to a digital nomad visa in Bali. The only differences between those who make it and those who don’t are consistency, hard work, and above all, perseverance.