I was born in the 80s so a home business wasn’t really a thing.
In fact, if your parents bought you two new pairs of shoes a year then I looked up to you and figured that your family was rich.
When I was a kid I didn’t know much about money and freedom. I knew that everybody had to get a job. Most people hated theirs and some people liked theirs.
I figured it was just the way of the world.
Even through college, I figured that I would have to pick a career and that’s what I would do for the rest of my life.
Then the Internet really started to happen.
It seemed like every day I was finding out new ways people were making money from home. It was both amazing and overwhelming because I didn’t understand any of it.
When people talked about starting a business online I assumed that they already had a lot of money allowing them to invest in whatever was needed to start a business. Having a home business with no money to start it with couldn’t be possible, could it?
Eventually, I started my own and that’s when I entered the world of home businesses and I never looked back.
Advantages of Owning a Home Business
You might already know some of these advantages:
- Choose your hours
- Work at your own pace
- Be your own boss
- No limit to your salary
These are cool advantages but they don’t happen the second you decide to start your own business. It takes a lot of work to get to this point.
There is a saying that entrepreneurs are the only people in the world that will work 80 hours so they don’t have to work 40.
While I understand this I don’t like it. The goal is to get MORE freedom, not less.
Fortunately, not all home businesses require you to spend 80 hours a week on them if you don’t want to. Some don’t even require any type of investment besides time.
6 Home Business You Can Start with No Money
In this post, I am going to share with you 6 home businesses that anyone with a computer and online connection can start. These are home businesses you can start with no money.
I am not promising you untold riches but if you are looking to make some extra money these can be great businesses to get started today.
1. The Professional Survey Taker
Did you know there are companies that will pay you just for answering questions? It sounds crazy, but companies are always doing research for their future products and they need people to help them. This shouldn’t be done for free and so they hire companies to find people to answer some questions.
This is where you come in.
It’s a stretch to call this a business, but it’s a start. You won’t get rich from doing this, but it’s something that can help bring in extra money allowing you to invest in other businesses that will require a little bit of money to get off the ground.
If this sounds interesting to you then check out these 7 awesome survey sites that will pay you cash.
2. Creating a Digital Product
People will pay other people to teach them to get better at something.
Back in the day you would take a course at the community college or the town rec center on, say for example, How to Macrame (My mom actually did that one). It was pretty much just a regular lady who just happened to know how to do Macrame who taught the class.
Digitial Products like eBooks or Courses are basically the same concept, except they’re digital instead of in-person.
At Odd Noodle we’ve helped regular people like you create businesses with digital products that help people learn how to save time by freezer meal planning, how to get in amazing shape after 40, how to knit, how to do their small business finances… And on and on.
What’s great about digital products, especially nowadays, is that you can get started without using super complicated or expensive tools so the learning curve is much smaller than it used to be.
And you don’t have to be an expert or anything to create one.
You just have to be able to improve someone’s life in some small way. Whether that’s saving them 30 minutes at night because they don’t have to cook dinner or giving them a specific nutrition plan that will help them get in shape, if it helps them improve upon a problem that frustrates them, they’ll be willing to spend money on it.
If this is the home business (and yes, you CAN start it with no money) for you, then you can learn more about this type of business toward the end of this post.
3. Babysitting
I remember when my wife and I moved to LA and she told me that she didn’t want to go back to the corporate world. She had been a Sales Manager at Canon and it simply broke her down.
I am not one to argue against someone’s happiness, but that doesn’t mean you get to stop bringing home the bread. So she went on Care.com and found a great full-time nanny position.
It was great because she got to work with kids (she loves kids) and there was absolutely no overhead involved.’
Of course, you can also look on other sites like Craigslist, Facebook, and any local bulletin boards that might be in your city.
If you want to aim a bit bigger you can set up a mini-daycare. This usually works best when you get clients through word of mouth which usually means families that know each other looking for your services.
If you want to go even bigger then you can set up a simple website and run your own babysitting agency.
4. Freelance Writing
Before you even get started on how you aren’t a professional writer or don’t have the right skill set let me stop you right there. You don’t need to be a professional writer to get paid to write.
There are thousands of sites out there looking for people to write articles for them. Some people are able to make six figures solely from freelance writing.
As you grow as a writer you’ll get more assignments that pay more. Don’t be surprised if after a couple of months you are booking more than $5,000 a month in jobs.
So how do you get started with freelance writing? It’s great if you have a blog so you can showcase your writing abilities.
Then you can hit different writing job boards looking for gigs. Initially, these jobs will be lower-paying than they are worth, but like any other type of freelancing career you will want to build up a portfolio.
Places to look around for gigs are:
To find more writing opportunities check out 67+ online writing opportunities to make money.
5. Virtual Assistant or Digital Business Manager
Virtual Assistants, or VAs as they are called, are people who help others do whatever is needed to help them run their business. For example, if I were to hire a VA to help me with this blog then I would have them run my Twitter and Pinterest account along with vetting emails to decide which ones I need to look at versus which ones they can handle.
As a VA you become a vital component to a person’s business. A huge plus of being a VA is that it gives you the opportunity to learn the ropes from other business people.
If you want to level up the amount of money that you make then becoming a Digital Business Manager will be for you. In fact, one of our students has an amazing program showing you how to become a Digital Business Manager.
6. Become an Influencer
Now before you skip past this one, hold on just a moment! Influencing is not just for the stunning 20-something you keep seeing showing up on your Instagram feed.
Pretty much anyone can do it.
Basically, the job of an influencer is to say Hey, I’m like this, if you want to be like me, you can use these tools/products/services. Usually, the influencer will get paid a commission per sale or a lump sum for promoting a product.
And with the rise of User Generated Content, you don’t even have to have a huge social media following anymore. Brands are actively looking for regular people to create content about their products
Brands know people trust the opinions of other people who are like them. People buy products they have trust in. You can help the brand build that trust.
With User Generated Content (UGC) you get paid for creating the piece of content and you will also likely get some free products! It’s a fun extra bonus.
If this is the path you want to try, we have a free bootcamp that will give you the ins and outs of starting with UGC.
How Can I Start a Home Business With No Money? The Gameplan…
Alright, out of the businesses that we discussed above, the 2nd option is definitely our favorite.
The reason why? Well, it’s better to list the reasons:
- Free to start
- Product creation is free
- No inventory
- Infinitely scalable
- This can be done by a single person
- You keep most of the money
All of these reasons are great, but they don’t mean anything if you don’t know how to do it yourself so here’s the gameplan.
1. Figure Out Who You’re Going to Help
Instead of trying to jump right into what kind of products you’re going to create, your best bet is understanding who you’re going to help. We like to call this person The Hero.
When you know who you want to help then it becomes a lot easier to figure everything else out.
What are the key requirements to making sure you pick the right kind of person to help? We’ll go over some of this in a bit, but the main thing is that they are willing to spend money to solve a problem.
2. Figure Out What They Want
Now that you have an idea of who you want to help it’s important to understand what they want. What is the outcome they are hoping for?
For example, if you say that you want to help busy moms then one of the outcomes they may want is to not have to spend every night cooking dinner. This is where Freezer Meal Plans come in handy.
At Odd Noodle, we want to help Creators create a lifestyle where they can do more of what they want, and to do that they need to make money. So we help Creators learn how to build online businesses that make money.
3. Create an eBook to Help Them Get What They Want
Now that you know what they want it’s time to create an offer that helps them get what they want. This isn’t going to be your only offer, but this is the offer that you can start with.
If you’re thinking that the idea of creating an eBook is overwhelming then know that we’ve developed a process to help you create an eBook in 12 hours or less.
We’ve helped 100s of Creators create eBooks to start their digital product empire.
Here’s a simple way to create an eBook using Google Docs:
4. Create a Mailing List and Opt-In
Next, you want to create a mailing list and a lead magnet that can help get people to your mailing list. Why is a mailing list so important when you can build an audience on social media?
- You don’t own your audience on social media, the algorithm does.
- Everyone has email and everyone checks email
- You own your mailing list
- Email allows you to build a stronger relationship with your audience
The majority of your money is going to be made selling through your email list. And if you’re worried about coming across as too salesy then that’s what social selling helps with.
5. Create Content to Help Sell the eBook
Now it’s time to create content. Why?
Because you need to attract people to you so they know that your book exists. But wait, can’t you just put the book up on Amazon or Etsy?
You could, but you still need to figure out ways to drive traffic to your book. Those platforms just won’t hand over an audience to you. Plus, they like to take a decent cut of the money and you can’t charge as much for your book.
When your book is on your own platform you get to control everything.
So where do you create content? This depends on who you’re trying to help and what you’re trying to help them with. If you’re dealing with professionals and helping them get better at salary negotiation then LinkedIn makes perfect sense.
If you’re helping people garden then a visual platform like TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube makes a ton of sense.
But you shouldn’t do social media alone. Blogging is a great complement to social media for building more passive traffic that can build up over time.
So when people ask if blogging is a waste of time then understand that blogging might be the biggest money generator for you if you work on it. It’s all about creating content that attracts the right people to you.
6. Keep Creating Content
What do you do from here? You continue to create content to build up an audience that wants to pay attention to you and then you let them know that your offer exists.
It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
Over time, as more of your content gets put out into the wild, more of it will do the work for you allowing you to spend more time doing the things that you want.
If this sounds interesting to you then be sure to check out our FREE Playbook breaking all of this down.
Anyone Can Start a Home Business With No Money
It sounds crazy for me to say this but with an online connection, anything is possible.
Some people are intimidated by the thought of starting their own home business but they really shouldn’t be. The gist of any business is that you find a problem that someone is having and who is willing to pay for a solution to that problem.
If you can find enough people that fit this criteria then you have a great shot at succeeding.