If you’re like millions of Indians who dream of starting their own business, you may feel there are dozens of obstacles keeping you from actually doing that. Additionally, you might also lack enough motivation, don’t have a solid idea, or haven’t yet invested enough time to understand the work required for your dream business. But where most people give up is their realisation that it requires capital to start a business, which they usually don’t have.
Starting a business with no money seems impossible at first thought. However, with a bit of strategic planning, it’s pretty feasible. If you focus on the long run, learning how to start a business with no money can be a positive experience. It means you can’t touch your savings and will have to be lean, creative, and entrepreneurial. Read on to know everything about starting a business with no money and some businesses you can start quickly in 2022 just by working from your home. In this blog, we will discuss:
- Why go for an online business?
- Top 10 ideas to start a business with no money
- How to start a business with no money in India?
Table of Contents
Why Go For Online Business?
The majority of business opportunities, regardless of how great they might sound, are overwhelming due to expensive upfront costs, slow scalability and minimal margins. On the other hand, online businesses are often more appealing primarily due to the absence of default hurdles faced by the majority of new businesses. Here are the main reasons why online businesses are the best investment:
- Offer convenient scalability
- Provide limitless freedom
- Low upfront capital and high margins
- Access to a global market
Top 10 Ideas to Start a Business with No Money
Blogging
Many business trends came up and lost their shine, but blogging remains the most popular and rewarding online business with no capital investment upfront. There are various choices when you want to monetise your blogs, and affiliate partnerships, ad spaces, paid membership blog sites, e-books, and paid courses are just a few among the numerous ways to make money through blogs.
The pace at which your blog reaches new people also depends on the niche or industry you choose to write on. For example, fashion, lifestyle, and travel are industries with a maximum audience willing to explore new content.
Additionally, you will write in the best way possible only when genuinely passionate about the subject. Subsequently, monetising a blog will depend a lot on what you write, how much you know about it, how you write it and are you passionate about the niche or not.
A successful blog strategy aims at establishing a relevant, engaged and loyal audience. Think from the users’ perspective – how will they find the content, what will keep them hooked, and why will they want to revisit your page. Once you consistently deliver value to your readers, you build trust, generating leads and revenue for you.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is reselling online and charging a particular commission on your sales. So whether you are a content creator, blogger, influencer or an active social media geek, affiliate marketing is a business you can start with no money upfront. Even if you do not have a personal brand, you can start affiliate marketing and be successful at it. However, in the second case, you will need to work harder to find customers. The best option is to build your brand and run your affiliate marketing business.
The first step is to find an affiliate program that serves your interests, personal brand, and target audience.
Once you’ve registered for the program, begin sharing the affiliate links with your family and peers. You can further get more customers, such as posting on social media, publishing blogs, cold emails, etc. Try all the types of content you can and share them on various social media channels. Marketing is all about analysing your audience, building a relationship, and catering to their needs at the right moment.
Launch a Podcast
If you are passionate about a particular niche and believe you can communicate well enough to keep someone engaged, consider recording your voice and publishing a podcast. No doubt podcasts have yielded greater engagement than expected, and hence online multiple monetisation choices have arrived for the same.
Let’s see what you’ll require to start a podcast:
- A good-quality microphone – (priority)
- Audio recording tool
- Video call recording tool – depends on your model of the podcast.
The best way to promote your podcast is to collaborate with prominent personalities or popular content creators and have a fascinating conversation with them.
Launch an online course
If you possess deep expertise on a monetisable skill, you should consider creating an online course; it will be the best business you will ever do in terms of ROI of efforts. There are other passive income choices but in 2022, selling an online course is all the hype.
Create a series of videos teaching people a skill you are an expert at, and host them on your website. Once you’ve created your course, all you need to do afterwards is marketing. Spread it as much as you can, create sales funnels, social media strategies and build hype by being active on social media channels.
Undoubtedly, creating an online course requires a significant amount of effort. However, if you create a valuable course that will help people learn and grow, you will build a permanent passive income source as more people will keep enrolling in it.
One can launch an online course on social media marketing, programming, web & app development, music production, fitness, yoga, and hundreds of others.
Become a Freelance Writer, Designer, or Developer
Individuals having skills in writing, software development, graphic designing, social media management can start selling their services and monetise their skills. You can always grow as a freelancer if you consistently help businesses grow and make the best out of your skills; there are no limits to how much you can earn through freelancing. Everything depends on your craft, personal brand, network, and ability to market your services well.
Additionally, some people believe freelancing means committing to projects that go for months which is not true. You can also choose small projects or gigs that might take one or two days to complete.
Become a Virtual Assistant
Can you multitask efficiently, and do you like working behind the screen? If the answer to these is yes, a virtual assistant’s business can be the ideal option for you to start without any upfront investment.
Depending on the industry and the contract, a virtual assistant (VA) can be asked to perform various tasks. Having a virtual assistant is to assist entrepreneurs and senior executives in organising their professional and personal lives. A virtual assistant’s work could include data entry, scheduling meetings, managing emails, booking travel etc.
Consulting
Launching a consulting business can be one of the most profitable and risk-free businesses. If you have been around a specific role or in a certain industry for a long time, you probably possess great experience and expertise. For example – Branding, Social Media Marketing, SEO, HR, Business Consulting, and loads of other subjects. The only requirement is your expertise in that niche and businesses facing problems with the same (to confirm your potential customers).
Launch a Dropshipping Store
To start selling online, it’s unnecessary to have a warehouse, and you don’t need to manage inventory for your business. You can begin to resell products online without managing the list; maybe you’ve guessed it right – we are talking about dropshipping.
If you think you can sell products online but are initially unable to invest in the same, dropshipping could be your rescue. You buy from suppliers only when you get an order, and the supplier handles the packaging and shipping.
Develop a Niche Product
Many times, we suddenly realise an opportunity in a certain niche; it can be a product or a service. If you had such a similar idea and believe in yourself, go for executing the idea, and you never know if something blows up.
Your target niches could be based on industry, values, product characteristics, demographics, geography, etc. The main idea is to serve a small target audience exclusively.
Create Handmade Goods
Selling handmade crafts online has been high on trends in the last five years. So if you’re creative and love to play with skills, you can try creating some handmade products. Please remember that almost everything sells in 2022, so regardless of whether you make jewellery, furniture, art pieces or anything else, you can successfully sell.
How to Start a Business with No Money in India?
Once you’ve decided on an online business idea, you’ll want to start on the exciting path and, eventually, give it life. Follow the following sequence of steps for starting your own business in 2022.
- Do Your Market Research
- Develop your product or service
- Find vendors and suppliers
- Build Your Website/ Online Store
How can Bikayi Help You Start Your Online Store in India?
If you want to start an e-commerce store or launch your dropshipping business, Bikayi can help you launch your online store within minutes. Follow these steps to launch your Bikayi store today:
- Download the Bikayi app on your phone
- Signup for an account
- Create your online store – Add name, details, brand logo, etc.
- Choose your addons if you require any – like customised themes, your executive mobile app, Facebook marketing services, SEO services; you have a plethora of additional features to choose from
- Launch your online store; you also get a website for your business with your Bikayi store.
- Market your products/services and grow your business
Start Your Entrepreneurial Journey Today!
If you’ve been thinking about various ways to start a business, it’s time to pick one of the available choices relevant to you and create an online business. The good thing is there is no risk involved, and you don’t need to go all in. Start stuff at a small scale with a side hustle and elevate it. Whether you want to scale or not, every decision is yours, and that’s the best thing about having your ‘own’ online business.
