You’ve probably heard that to make money you need money. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. With the internet has come a plethora of opportunities and anyone with a can-do attitude, consistency and focus can take the opportunity.

You don’t need any money to start a business, you just need to put your own time in and put some elbow grease in to get things started.

Here are 5 businesses you can start without any money upfront.

1. YouTube Channel

Did you know being a YouTuber is the most popular thing to do for kids when they grow up? It’s no surprise! Earning loads of money, being well known by fans, and working with global brands. It definitely does have its perks.

Some say YouTube is saturated but that’s not true at all. It’s true that there are over 51 million YouTube channels and over 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube per minute; however, it’s never been a better time to start.

There are still plenty of creators that started their channels not too long ago and have a dedicated fan base with thousands of subscribers.

The first thing to do is decide on your niche and what your videos will be about. Then you should create your own YouTube channel by registering an account and uploading your channel art and channel logo.

Once you have done this, decide whether you want to be in the YouTube videos yourself or whether you want to use video software to create videos without you in them. Either works and it’s really up to you which one you choose.

Once you have done this aim to keep a regular upload schedule and post consistently. A good rule of thumb is to post 1-2 videos per week. Make sure you also put time into crafting a good thumbnail and selecting the right keywords and creating a good title that is click-worthy.

With YouTube, a good way to monetize is through the ads that YouTube display on your videos as well as affiliate marketing, selling merchandise, and partnerships.

2. Instagram Page

Instagram is one of the most popular social media apps in the world with over 1 billion active users. There are many people making thousands of dollars per month from Instagram.

To start you need to download the Instagram app on your phone and make an Instagram account. Once you have done this, set your profile up and add a profile image. Next you need to choose what your Instagram page will be about. This can be anything such as sports, news, celebrity gossip, interior design, business, etc.

Try to pick something that can be easily monetized later on, however. Once you have done this it’s time to post content and grow your page. If you don’t have any of your own content you can repost content you find from other pages on Instagram, just make sure to give credit from where you found it.

A good way to grow your page from the start is the follow-unfollow method. Basically, you go to a popular page within your niche and go to that page’s most recent post and you follow all the people that have liked the post.

As those people have shown interest in the niche by liking the post they will most likely give you a follow as well plus a lot of people follow people back that have followed them. Once you have some followers, unfollow the people that haven’t followed you back. Then just rinse and repeat.

When you’re Instagram page has a dedicated follower base you can start monetizing your page by selling shoutouts & affiliate marketing.

3. Marketing Agency

A marketing agency is a fantastic way to make money when you don’t have any money. All you need to do is put your time in and work hard to get clients and results for the clients that you land.

With a marketing agency in essence you are helping businesses grow, get more sales and build more awareness whether that be through social media or any other way.

You don’t need a website or blog to start off either. You can start with an Instagram page. You want to keep your page professional, meaning no pictures of your dog or anything not relevant to your agency. Also, either think of a good name for your agency or just use your personal name.

What you want to do is look for people within the niche that you want to cover. Say for example you want to help dentists get more patients through you would serch for the hashtag #dentistmichigan or #dentistbirmingham or whichever area or location you want to target.

Once you have searched for the hashtags a bunch of posts will come up for dentists in that area. Sort the posts by most recent – these are the pages that have most recently posted, so they will be more likely to be online.

Send them a message and let them know how you can help them. You may not get a reply from your first message but it’s a numbers game.

4. Freelance Writer

As long as you’re good at writing you can make good money at writing online. Even if your writing skills are a bit rusty and you haven’t written anything since school, there are still free courses you can do to brush up on your skills.

The best way to get started as a freelance writer is to make a profile on freelancing websites like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer. Once you’ve made profiles on these websites a good way to promote yourself is in Facebook Groups.

When you have made a profile on freelancing websites it is a good idea to charge relatively low for your work. That way when you have built some reviews and testimonials up you can start raising your prices. Being a freelance writer is a job you can easily work from home.

5. eBay Dropshipping

Dropshipping is when a customer orders from you but the manufacturer or supplier of the product then ships it out to the customer and fulfills the order. Dropshipping is a popular method online and many people have been doing dropshipping.

However, with eBay dropshipping, we utilize the traffic and customers that are already on eBay and promote the products to them. Then when someone makes a purchase you go onto the supplier’s website and place the order.

For example, If I list a garden bench on eBay. Someone buys it and pays me for the garden bench. I then go onto a website like Aliexpress.com and order the bench and pay the supplier for the garden bench and they ship it out to my customer for me. As I had a slightly higher price on eBay, I kept the profit I make.

Conclusion

Making money when you have no money can be difficult. However, if you’re willing to put the work and time in then it can be doable. With the opportunities we have nowadays it is more than achievable.

As you can see there are plenty of ways to make money with $0 and it is just about being creative and getting stuck in.

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