46 Ways To Start A Business With No Money
Most people who want to start their own business don’t have a ton of money laying around and it’s probably one the most common questions I get emailed about: How can I get started without a lot of cash?
Well I’ve put together a list below of the best ideas I’ve heard and personally used. I hope you find it useful!
The three basic strategies to starting a business without much money are:
- Delay the normal “business starting” activities like incorporating, hiring, renting office or retail space, etc until AFTER your business has started earning money. This is known as bootstrapping.
- Doing everything yourself and spending your personal time instead of hiring an expert. (Takes longer but costs less.)
- Using some neat tricks and little known deals below.
Start With The Easy Stuff: Eliminate Expenses
1. Don’t rent an office! – work from home. Or better yet work from the best free office with locations everywhere: Starbucks. If you need to meet with a client and are worried about seeming small time without an office, don’t be. Just meet them at a restaurant for a lunch meeting. This is what people with the nicest offices do anyway.
2. Don’t hire any employees! – do it all yourself until you have some $ coming in the door.
3. Don’t hire lawyers, technical people, graphic designers, or assistants (see below)
Legal Stuff and Incorporating
4. Get a free lawyer and legal advice from the mentors at Score.org
5. Find a website with a similar legal document and modify it to your needs
6. An LLC is probably the best business structure, but don’t worry about incorporating until you’re earning money, just do a sole proprietorship, you can always incorporate later (you can get it setup with the IRS in just a few minutes by calling them at 800-829-4933)
7. Learn how to do your own financial statements for your business in Excel instead of hiring a CPA or bookkeeper (again you can do this after you’re making money)
8. Take a Quickbooks class at your local community college
Make a website for your business
9. Don’t pay a premium for a top end domain name, there are plenty of good ones left
10. Test out your ideas by writing to a blog, you’ll get feedback on what people like and don’t like
11. Get a free business website at www.wordpress.com. It won’t be your own domain (it will be something like yourbusiness.wordpress.com) but…
12. When you’re ready to have your own domain, get a hosting plan (new domain included) at 1and1 for $4.99/month, and install wordpress on your own server (instructions)
13. Get a professional website design for free with a wordpress theme that you can install with a few clicks (no programming knowledge needed)
Getting a Logo
14. Don’t hire a fancy graphic designer. At least not yet. Use LogoYes to create your own logo (or at least get ideas that you can recreate on your own for free)
Accepting Credit Cards
15. Don’t bother with a full merchant account to start off with, they are complicated, come with monthly feeds, and require programming expertise. Instead try a simpler (and much cheaper) solution like Google Checkout or Paypal
16. For a more professional look and a complete shopping cart for only $5/month use E-Junkie, its great and I use it on this site
17. If you have lots of physical products, try a Yahoo Store
Starting a service business where you consult, coach, teach, etc
18. Create several pages on your wordpress site: one for your experience, testimonials, rates, availability, etc (here’s an example)
19. Pick a domain name with your #1 keyword in it! (Assuming it isn’t a very competitive keyword you’ll rank on the first page of google within a month or two for that keyword which means customers!) here’s the proof
Creating Info Products
20. Use an ebook template like these from Eben Pagan
21. For print books, self publish it at www.lulu.com and use print on demand (they don’t print a single book until someone buys it which means you have zero up front cost for inventory!)
22. Use a $20 webcam or digital camera to create educational video products
23. Use camtasia ( $200 for PC) or iShowU ($20 for Mac) to record your screen and make great videos like this one. Or record powerpoints and do the voiceover to make great educational products.
24. Use a mac to edit your videos (iMovie is free) and you can even produce DVD’s
Before investing in a retail location…
25. Go to a local fair or festival and rent a booth to see if anyone buys your product. Talk to potential customers and get feedback.
26. Try selling it on ebay
Always be learning about business
27. Go to a meetup.com groups in your city related to business/entrepreneurship
28. Read all the best business books by getting them from the library
29. Get 3 of the top 10 books on building wealth for free in PDF
30. Make friends with other entrepreneurs and share material
31. Install the stumble upon toolbar and choose business/entrepreneurship as one of your interests to find all the best videos and talks out there (this is literally like going to a free semester of business school, you get to see all the best speakers and thinkers of our time, and those of the past)
32. Read blogs like this one in google reader
Marketing, free website traffic, and getting your first customer
33. Get 250 full-color business cards for free to hand out to people you meet
34. Post an offer on craigslist
35. Post videos on youtube with links to your website
36. Post the same video to all video sharing sites (Google Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Revver, etc) at once with TubeMogul (this is some of the best free marketing you can do)
37. Generate leads by offering an incentive on your website for people to give you their contact info (some incentives that work well: Top 10 reports like the top 10 myths about…the top 10 thing you should know before…etc, videos, audio interviews, one page cheat sheets, free ebooks)
38. Write a good article and send it to more popular websites (include your byline at the bottom)
39. Learn how to use google adwords and spend $10 and see if it brings in at least $10 (if so keep going!)
40. If you can’t afford to get links from expensive directories like Yahoo ($299) use Directory Submitter to get links from hundreds of smaller directories for free
41. Pick a good domain name with your keywords in the domain (use hyphens if necessary). This will help you rank in Google for that keyword and get visitors to your website.
42. Do some basic on page SEO
43. Research what keywords will bring you the most traffic (and are least competitive) with keyword discovery, Wordtracker’s Free Service, and (probably the best option) WordTrackers free trial of their full service (just have to remember to cancel within 7 days to not get charged!)
44. See which keywords are likely to bring buyers (instead of tire kickers)
45. Get more incoming links to your site by creating a Squidoo page (these rank very high in the search engines for some reason!)
46. Send an email to everyone in your email program’s contact list with a short friendly note letting them know you are starting a business and ask if they could forward it to just one or two people who might be interested. Offer something free for the first 10 people. This has an exponential effect because it not only reaches who you know, but everyone who knows who you know (an order of magnitude bigger group of people.)
What did I miss? Please make a comment below.
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Best of luck!
Brian Armstrong
Want to get 3 of the top 10 books ever written on building wealth for FREE? Think and Grow Rich, The Richest Man In Babylon, and The Way To Wealth are yours for free when you subscribe to get updates from StartBreakingFree.com!
Caroline (works from home typing) said,
Wrote on May 17, 2008 @ 7:37 am
I’d add that sometimes outsourcing work is also a way to save time and money. I don’t necessarily mean hiring someone but buying software to automate processes you spend a lot of time doing. I have found this to be a great time saver and a long term money saver.
Reply
Brian Armstrong said,
Wrote on May 17, 2008 @ 12:07 pm
Yep thats a great one Caroline!
Reply
directory submitter said,
Wrote on July 24, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
directory submitter…
Many blogs have stopped using trackbacks because dealing with spam became too burdensome. (Blogger now has backlinks – very similar…
Lisa Christensen said,
Wrote on August 11, 2008 @ 11:05 am
Dear Brian,
I have just begun researching a business idea I have had for some time now. My husband is sick of listening to me complain and has threatened divorce if I don’t actually follow up on it this time!
Anyway, I stumbled across your website and must say that it seems like just the thing I needed to get me moving. Even though I have an MBA – I have NO idea how to start a web-based business. I ordered your book and if its anything like this post – well it will be the best $25 I have ever spent!
Thank you for making your knowledge available to the rest of us!
By the way – I also loved your quote about the difference between rich people and poor – rich people give away $100 to get $10 back from lots of people. That is the backbone of my business idea but I didn’t realize it until I read it!
All the best,
Lisa
Reply
Brian Armstrong Reply:
August 12th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
THanks for stopping by Lisa! I’m sure it will come together for you…even if it takes a couple (or a couple dozen) tries. Successful entrepreneurs are the ones who just didn’t stop after the first 10 ideas didn’t work ;) Your book is going out today so it should arrive soon.
Brian
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Sondra Reply:
May 18th, 2009 at 1:25 am
Hello Lisa,
I read your article relating to your desire to start a business and that you have an MBA but you are not sure about how to start a business!
I would be glad to assist you in starting your business and can refer you to some very good contacts to help your business grow! If you are interested just send an email to Sandra.webanalyst@gmail.com and in the subject line type in Business 101. All the Best for you!
Reply
Beenie said,
Wrote on August 15, 2008 @ 3:32 pm
Hello Brian,
I happened to (luckily) stumble upon your website today – finally, some real workable tips (rather than the generic ’spend time networking’ bull on every other career based website).
Brian I have a real quandry. Over the past couple of years I have come up with some excellent business ideas. Some are slightly more far-fetched than others, but there is one or two in my mind even now that are just waiting to be worked on by me.
My biggest problem is: I can never follow through! I’ll spend a few weeks, pondering, making the idea grow, researching it and then within the month having done nothing concrete, my drive will fizzle out. I know someone else is going to get there before me if I don’t get off my backside and do something – but how do I get over my doubts and staticity and actually start bringing my ideas to life?
Help please!
Reply
Brian Armstrong Reply:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Hi Beenie,
We all struggle with that:) My advice is to pick the the single most important part of it, eliminate everything else, and just try to do that one small piece. When it seems like a lot of work, thats when we get into “analysis paralysis”. Just do the smallest piece possible to test the idea.
Here is also some advice from this interview which was good:
http://sivers.org/tim-ferriss
Give yourself a 10-day deadline:
“When friends talk about starting a business I say if you’ve got idea you want to do, don’t sit there for a whole year trying to raise funding or whatever before you can put it out in the world. Just give yourself a 10-day deadline. If there’s something you think the world wants, try it within 10 days. If you don’t have a programmer, do it with a piece of paper and a telephone. Start it even with only one customer, because then you can start the feedback loop, finding out what your customers want. Then you can incrementally improve it over the months. A year down the line you’ll be doing so much better than the guy who is still being secretive in his second round of VC funding. Just get it out there and start to get feedback.”
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Beenie Reply:
August 15th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Thank you Brian. This is very inspiring!
Reply
Janie said,
Wrote on September 12, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
Good article. I always recommend tapping into your social network, especially family and friends, to get money and resources to start a business.
40billion.com helps entrepreneurs raise money for startups through friends and family rather than through traditional financial institutions. It is the first friends-and-family funding network for small-business entrepreneurs. Using the Internet-based service, entrepreneurs connect with their social networks – friends, family, friends of family, colleagues, and others – to raise capital, and entrepreneurs can share their fundraising pages on MySpace and Facebook too. 40billion.com’s scalable platform facilitates the funding requests and transactions to make it easier for an entrepreneur to manage many investors, who can provide $50 to $10,000 each.
For more information, visit http://www.40billion.com .
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lostbunotforgotten said,
Wrote on September 17, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
Hey brian i just wanna know, i have about 10,000 dollars to spare and would like to know of some quick or maybe half year to year turnaround plan to make this 10 into more let me know if somthing comes to mind.
Reply
AWESOME Photos From The Web 2.0 Venture Forum said,
Wrote on December 15, 2008 @ 2:50 pm
[...] how different I am from the mainstream MBA/VC crowd when I am out there telling people how to start a business for $100 and do it in one month. If you are just developing a website – partner with a developer and give [...]
Big Annoucement Coming Up Later This Week! said,
Wrote on April 15, 2009 @ 3:10 am
[...] am following my own advice on this project and launching the whole thing QUICKLY and INEXPENSIVELY to test out the idea. As [...]
Lydia Awuor Ochieng said,
Wrote on April 21, 2009 @ 5:59 am
Dear Brian,
I love your article. I once struggled to get a loan to start my cake business but in vain. I then decided to do start it at home. But my biggest problem is that i dont restrict myself to saving this money to start a big shop elsewhere. Please advice.
Regards
Reply
Brian Armstrong Reply:
April 21st, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Hi Lydia, yep this is something you can definitely bootstrap. I’d recommend you check out a book called The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.
Reply
Jarod said,
Wrote on May 19, 2009 @ 9:21 am
Hey Brian, I bought one of your books about 2 years ago. I never got to finish reading it, I hope you remember a 14 or 15 year old telling you about purchasing one of your books online? Im one of them or him if im the first. I only messaged you once and my computer broke down so I couldn’t get it back… So yeah a lost of money bags gone. Ill maybe purchase it again hopefully if my mom lets me AGAIN *lol*.
Reply
Jarod said,
Wrote on May 19, 2009 @ 9:24 am
Also I found this article that might help kids with little cash on starting a business. (here: http://www.createthedream.net/?c=155&a=1380)
Reply
Brian Armstrong Reply:
May 24th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Hi Jarod, yep I remember! :) Glad to hear you are back and at it, keep it up.
Reply
Sherri said,
Wrote on May 26, 2009 @ 6:33 pm
Hi Brian! I have always dreamed of starting my own business. For the past 1 1/2 years, my dream has been to start a monogramming business. Like someone else said in another post, I have the dream, take time to research it, get scared and it fizzles out. My problem is the money, and the support from family. I love your article. It gives great step-by-step advice. And I just don’t know where to begin. With a monogramming business, I would have to have the equipment and some supplies. I would want to start out in my home. Do you offer any additional advice that would be helpful to me, especially regarding the money and financing.
Just another thought…deep down I feel like this would be a good time in my life. I am recently going through a divorce and also have lost my job. Maybe this is my time! Thanks in advance…Sherri
Reply
Brian Armstrong Reply:
May 27th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
I’m not sure what equipment would be required for that business but I imagine it would be easy to start small…some sort of simple sewing machine that you can use out of your home? Start with the smallest thing possible, or find someone else who has one and borrow/rent/trade something for a little bit of time to use it. Or outsource the actual monograming to someone else and just get the customers for it (the marketing). If it actually takes off, do you really want to be at home monogramming 100 items per day? Doesn’t sound like a fun business :) Hope that gives you some ideas!
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Bootstrapping Vs. Outsourcing Vs. Partnering. Part 1: Bootstrapping | Gordie Rogers said,
Wrote on June 6, 2009 @ 2:32 am
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Brimo Knight said,
Wrote on June 25, 2009 @ 3:05 pm
Hey Brian, I have been thinking about opening a coffee shop, not long actually probably for this past month, Im 21 years old and currently part of an internship. I have a lot of time to plan, and research, but I cant seem to grasp what exactly I need to do. The obvious would be taking a basic course in business, however, in the meantime… Do you have any suggestions on what I should start learning, if I am someday to own a coffee lounge? Books? Sites for people starting coffee shops? Anything you post is HIGHLY appreciated thanks…
Reply
Brian Armstrong Reply:
June 26th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Hi Brimo,
I don’t have much experience there, but I can tell you what I’d do: find half a dozen local coffee shops that seem to be doing really well, and see if you can get a meeting with the owner. Most people are willing to help if you approach it as someone eager to learn. Just tell them you are an aspiring entrepreneur and have no idea what you are doing, but want to see if you could get 10 minutes of their time. They’ll talk your ear off with all the challenges they’ve faced, some may try to talk you out of it, but it will all be valuable. If you happen to connect especially well with one of them, try to follow up with them on a regular basis and get them as as mentor.
Remember: the best way to be successful is to find someone who has already done it and do what they’re doing.
Also, be careful not to get advice from a coffee shop owner who is also doing it for the first time, almost bankrupt, or barely getting by. Obviously this is a delicate issue and you can’t ask them outright for their financial statements, so you’ll have to use your best judgment.
Good luck!
Brian
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Brimo Knight Reply:
June 27th, 2009 at 2:36 am
Thats some good advice! Thanks Brian, for sharing your input… I’ll be SURE to take it into consideration, and just so you know, I have already scheduled a meeting with a coffee shop owner… and will be meeting with others… Blessings and Thanks!
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