Despite common belief, you don’t necessarily need money to make money, especially to start a home business. It is possible to start a home business to make extra cash or replace an income without a large financial investment. Here are tips for starting a home business if you’re broke.
1) Choose a home business that doesn’t require a huge investment.
Offering services (tutoring, consulting, baby sitting, etc), selling your used items, and creating information products are great low-cost home business ideas. Your only investment is time and use of tools and resources you probably already have, such as a computer. The result is that you can start today for nearly nothing.
Here are some ideas to get you started:
How to Start A Service-Based Home Business Quickly and Cheaply
How to Make Money with Amazon FBA
10 Places to Sell Your Stuff Besides eBay
How to Make Money Online with Information Products
9 Free Ways to Make Money Online
6 Home Business Ideas You Can Start for Free or Cheap
2) Choose a home business that you know.
The fastest way to make money is to tap into your current knowledge base. There is a learning curve to starting and running a business. Don’t slow yourself down by choosing a business idea that may be fun, but will take too much time for you to learn.
Choosing a business that you know means taking a skill or experience and turning it into a business. This can be something you’ve learned in your job, or it can be an interest or passion. For example, if you’re an administrative assistant, you can start a home-based virtual assistant business. If you have an interest in cooking, you can start a blog, create information products, or do YouTube videos related to cooking.
Read: Turn Your Hobby Into a Home Business for more ideas.
3) Use what you’ve got to build and run your home business.
There’s a temptation to buy a ton of new things to run your home business. While you might need to spend money on a few items or services, chances are, you can make do with what with you’ve already got. Don’t buy a new computer and expensive software. Even if your current computer and software don’t quite meet your needs, use them until you’re making money and can use some of your business profits to invest in the equipment you need.
The same goes for any other tools or resources you may need to get your business going such as office furniture and supplies; use what you have on hand, if possible, before investing in something new.
4) Borrow or barter for products and services.
There are ways to get the resources you need to build and run your business for nothing or a simple exchange. Barter in particular is growing in the small business sector as people trade their skills or products to get the services they need. For example, I once built a WordPress site for a friend of mine who was starting a home-based editing business in exchange for editing services.
5) Use free resources unless it compromises your professional appearance.
There are a host of free tools and services you can get online such as voicemail, fax services, blogs, conference calls, PDF file makers, audio editors and more. However don’t use free resources if it will sacrifice the quality of your products or services or undermine your credibility. For example don’t use a free web host for your business website as it tends to look unprofessional.
Here are some resources to help you:
Free Stuff to Help You Work At Home
6) Choose free and low-cost marketing tactics, such as business cards, blogs, email, social networking online and off, press releases and articles.
Today, there is a ton of free and low-cost resources that can help you market your home business. Just remember, you don’t want to sacrifice a professional image in an attempt to save money.
Here are some resources to check out:
How to Get Free Media Attention for Your Home Business
How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan
7) Don’t spend everything you make.
If money is tight, you might feel compelled to spend everything you make. However, to support and grow a business, you need to reinvest some of the earnings into tools or services that can help you make more. The more you can leverage resources, automate tools, and get help, the more income you can earn. But often it costs money. So look at reinvesting your profits in resources and tools that can give you more time to do the money-making activities so you can earn more.
Do you have more tips and ideas on starting a home business without any money?
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