Small Business IDEAS with no Money
You can only cut your spending so much. The fastest way to a bigger bank account and eventual financial freedom is earning more money.
If you want to get serious about starting a business—perhaps online like Money Under 30 and thousands of other successful blogs, courses, and membership sites—I strongly encourage you to check out Ramit Sethi’s materials like his free PDF guide, 30 successful online business ideas.
Ramit’s flagship course, Zero To Launch, is a big investment, but I would consider it the definitive training for creating an online business. Even if you don’t enroll, Ramit’s free materials are worth signing up for.
1. Concierge service
If you live in an affluent area, you would be amazed at what some people are willing to pay to not have to do boring chores themselves.
From grocery shopping to dry cleaning runs to booking travel and doctor’s appointments, you can become a personal assistant to the super-busy, and super-rich.
2. Mobile auto detailing
How many people do you know who have decent cars but drive around with buckets of junk in the backseat and French fries stuck to the floor mats? Gross.
With a vacuum cleaner you may already own and a few cheap bottles of automotive cleaning products, you can offer to come to anyone’s home or work and make their car’s interior look like new. Professional shops can charge up to $100 or more for this service.
3. Dog walking or pet sitting
If you love animals, there are plenty of people who will pay you to watch after their critters for a few hours. Depending on your schedule, this could be a part-time gig or very full-time, and you could probably start working without spending a dime.
4. Fact-checking and research
Did you know that nearly every major magazine and many websites obsessively check and re-check every fact and source in their story?
Best of all, very few employ in-house researchers to do this critical task. Yes, it’s tedious, but it only requires a laptop and a telephone!
5. Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping and accounting is perhaps one of the most in-demand services that small businesses will farm out to part-time freelancers. And you don’t need to be a CPA to keep a company’s books—most of this work is routine data entry and paying bills.
No experience? You can find evening or online training pretty easily.
6. Association manager
Every day, people form new professional networks, community associations, or groups of like-minded hobbyists. The only problem is groups like these take a lot of administrative work to maintain.
There are websites to build and update, newsletters to write, dues to collect, meetings and events to schedule, and mailing lists to maintain. Think you’re up to the task? By creating templates and protocols, you could easily begin managing several groups and start raking in the dough.
