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)
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