- How to start a business with no money.
Ya know most of the online business gurus
will tell you to not start a business with no money.
They'll tell you well go get a job.
And I understand exactly where they're coming from
but what I don't think is often considered
is that there are people who simply can't just
go out and get a job or get a better paying job
in some situations.
There are plenty of people that have to either stay at home
or might actually be excluded from the job market
because of something in their background
or because of health reasons.
There are plenty of people with invisible illnesses
that often find themselves discriminated against
in the job market and can't just get a good job.
So today for those of you
who can't enter into traditional employment
but need an income or you're in between jobs right now
and you're looking at another potential opportunity
even to start a side hustle,
I'm going to tell you about some business opportunities
that you can start with no money or very little money.
And for the nine losers
who are gonna worry about it in the comments,
I'm not selling an online business course but even if I was
you should probably buy it.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake
helping you create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
For those of you who are new here,
you have no idea who I am, first of all welcome.
Thanks for dropping in on this video.
My name's Roberto Blake.
I'm an online business owner
and I also am a public speaker and I like to teach people
how they can build their own brand and business online
so they can have a little bit more control
over their life.
And today I really wanna talk to you
about starting a business on your own terms
with no money, how to start a business with no money.
First things first,
you can either have a service-based business
or a product-based business.
Let's start with a service-based business
because it has the lowest cost to entry
but it does have some requirements.
With a service-based business you can either trade in
on your skills, experience, or knowledge.
I like to tell people
that even before you start a formal service-based business
consider freelancing.
If you haven't done freelance work before
I have an entire video on getting started
and several videos on how to find freelance clients,
freelance job websites.
So if you need to make money fast
and you have some level of skill
then I'm gonna recommend you watch those videos
because it's going to help you do something
that can make you money today, this week, this month
ya know in the next 30 days.
So definitely would recommend that.
What are some examples of service-based businesses?
Social media marketing, web design, graphic design,
app development, copywriting, or become a virtual assistant.
Being a virtual assistant is the most practical,
stay-at-home business that you can do
with zero money and here's why.
If you become a virtual assistant
and you work for entrepreneurs or ya know
you work for influencers, there's a great opportunity
to make decent money and it costs very little up front
because all of your software and services
that you typically use as a virtual assistant
tend to be free,
meaning that you can use all of the Google suite
in terms of Google Docs, Google Sheets,
just like Microsoft Word and Excel, Google Drive,
you have almost everything you need.
There are communication tools
for you to do online video conferencing with your clients
like Skype and Zoom.US and so many others.
There are a lot of opportunities to do work
as a virtual assistant managing people's email,
managing their contacts, taking Google Voice calls
and filtering their calls for them.
There's a lot of opportunity there to make good money
and the reality is
that you can do it from anywhere in the world.
So don't underestimate what being a remote worker means
and that in this current digital economy
you could start a business like this with no money.
By focusing on things that rely on open source software
and just being able to provide a service,
direct value to the market,
there's so much opportunity there.
Now in terms of getting those opportunities,
there are online marketplaces
and you can use social media to your advantage
because those websites are free marketing
without even buying ads.
Now let's talk about a product-based business.
What I like to talk about is knowledge commerce,
intellectual property.
This is something that has helped me
in building a six figure income
and diversifying my revenue streams.
I trade on my knowledge
because if you have a service-based business
you're still trading time for money.
I did a whole video about trading time for money.
Now even with a service you can just bill for your services.
It still takes time and hustle
but at least you're not working on an hourly rate
in most cases.
If you are you need to bill higher.
So, let's go to a product-based business
because this is where you get to leverage your smarts
and build something that can make money potentially
when you can't work
because as I said it's not about being lazy.
Some of you physically and for health reasons
or for family reasons can't always put the hours in
but if you can put some in up front
or over a period of time, you can build a product
that makes the money for you and then later
once you're profitable,
maybe you can leverage other people's time.
So there are a lot of ways to approach developing a product.
I think one of the most accessible ways
is self publishing an e-book with Amazon
and making some money up front.
It's a very entry-level product
and it can help build your brand in your niche.
So what I recommend is if you have knowledge
you can deploy that in the form of e-books
and that could definitely help you as a first-level product.
There are people who can build online courses and sell them
without building a massive audience.
Most people do build an audience
and are able to sell their online courses.
They build their brand or they run ads.
But if you don't have money the thing that I would recommend
in terms of a product-based business
is one where you can use skills
to build something like assets.
Templates and assets do very well
in terms of a product-based business.
For example, there are people
who've built an entire business around web design templates,
WordPress templates,
or if they have app-developer level skills
they build appliances, they build social media plugins
and sell them online or they build mobile applications
and they sell that online and it's profitable.
Now again, these are higher level skills
but if you have no money that's the answer.
If you don't have money then you have to have skill
and that's why you have to learn a high level,
a high-income skill, something Dan Lok,
great online entrepreneur, talks about all the time.
I've been living it for years and I'm only here today
because I have high-income skills.
But the good news is I developed them
by learning online for free for most of those skills.
Now with e-commerce, even digital commerce,
the barrier is that sometimes a little bit of money
goes a long way.
If you don't have an audience,
having even a little bit of money
to spend on Google or Facebook ads
could make all the difference for that online business.
Also there are people
who wanna do drop shipping and sometimes
you have to put a little bit of up front money into that.
The reason that I think a service-based business
is the one to go into if you don't have any money
is that you can just go ahead and immediately deliver value
to the market even if for example,
let's say you didn't wanna do something,
'cause I know a lot of people sometimes are like,
"Roberto, I don't understand all this online or tech stuff."
Well, you could use the online component
to strictly do marketing and you could still do
a real world service-based business
outside of traditional employment
whether you're going to do mechanic work,
whether you're going to do lawn care,
whether you're going to do child care,
whether you're going to do dog grooming or dog walking.
You could leverage free online marketing
to scale that physical service
and to build your brand and reputation
in a way that makes you a a little bit more prominent
or be able to charge a higher rate
than everyone else who's providing that same service.
So you could kind of build the brand
and I teach you a lot about that here
on the YouTube channel.
There's videos on marketing yourself here on Instagram,
YouTube, LinkedIn, so on and so forth.
You could take advantage of those things.
I think that skill like copywriting,
I wouldn't necessarily even call that being tech savvy.
Copywriting comes down to the ability
to communicate very well and usually again,
this is something that a lot of people
will pay good money for.
Graphic design is another great service-based business
that again the technical skill
is down to the applications of the software
more than anything but the actual talent and ability
doesn't come from the software it comes from you.
So don't let the idea of technology
talk you out of starting a business.
Now briefly pivoting back to products.
I think that products are more challenging
to understand market demand for
and then also how to properly deliver them.
There are more systems and mechanisms
that people typically need in place
for a product-based business than a service-based business.
I still think that with little or no money
you can get into that
but also think it's for some very specific markets
and I think that people who have either knowledge
and can go into what's called knowledge commerce
with online courses and e-books and things of that nature
or have visual talent in terms of the ability to make assets
whether that's video animation and photography,
I think people with those skillsets
lend themselves much better to a product-based business
than a lot of other people.
I think in terms of leveraging physical products,
you have to put money behind that.
Examples that are an exception to the rule
might be if you're very creative
and you can do a print-on-demand based business
in terms of artwork, posters, T shirts,
things of that nature.
That allows you to deliver a physical product.
You obviously will have some margins against that
cut into your profits but it is possible
if you really are adamant about delivering something
that's a physical product.
So again, those are some ideas
on how you can start an online business with no money.
And ya know I hope that this was very helpful for you guys
and I hope it was encouraging because, like I said,
I understand that some of you, you're not lazy
you just can't win in the traditional market
and maybe the world of traditional employment
has just said no to you and I want you to realize
that there are options available to you
and that you can have an opportunity to still provide value,
still ya know feel a sense of self worth,
and of course bring in an income
that supports you or your family.
Question of the day.
Let's help as many people in the comments as we can.
What are some business ideas that you have
that I didn't mention
that require little or no money to start
and have you built a successful business?
Do you have a story, a success story
that we can learn from in the comments?
If you do, please share it
and of course please share this video out.
And I'm gonna do something different.
I'm gonna ask you guys if you're watching
to the end of this video here
to share this in online communities like Reddit,
in the entrepreneur and freelance sub-Reddits
and places like that.
I wanna get my videos out there more
and I'm gonna be kind of stalking internet forums
and starting to answer more questions and engage there
because I really want this material to help people
so that they can help themselves.
Anyway, like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome stuff here on the channel
and as always you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget,
go out there and create something awesome today, take care.