Can You Start a Business with No Money?
Almost everything you do requires a cash outlay. Even if you could harvest your food yourself, you would need to buy the seeds and obtain the knowledge on how best to grow those seeds. Based on the fact that everything cost money you may ask, can you start a business with no money?
I have some great news for you: the answer is Yes!
Okay, I need a bit of a clarification here. If you are looking to start a brick-and-mortar business or some other type of traditional business form, you won't be able to do this for free. You'll need startup capital from you or venture funding.
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The way you can start a business is to create one online. But, even with this, you will need to choose the right business if you want to do it with no money.
Eventually, you will need a bit of money for your business, no matter what type you choose. You can fund your future operations with your current proceeds.
When you choose the right business model, however, you can start it for free completely!
I know first hand, because I have done it!
If I did it, then I know you can do it.
What Type of Business Should You Start?
Let's discuss some of the common online businesses:
What do all of these business models have in common? They all require you to find products that you can sell at a profit.
I've got nothing against any of the business mentioned above. People can and do make money with these models. Some of them will require you to use a shopping cart and a payment processor. Others like Amazon and eBay will take care of that for you. But, you still need to find products.
Finding Profitable Products
It's super easy to find products online. What is extremely difficult is finding profitable products. When I say profitable, you will need to find products where the margins are high. This does happen on occasion. But, guess what happens once other sellers discover your secret?
If you guessed that they jump on the bandwagon with those products you find, you are correct. When other sellers see what you are selling and discover the profitability of those products, they are going to look to sell them, too! And, they are going to start undercutting you on price. Unless you can compete on aspects of the product other than price, it's a race to the bottom (with respect to prices).
The Best Method
I will leave it to your discretion to investigate any of the above business models. If you decide these are right for you, then my advice is to learn all you can about how to set them up. Don't just go at it with little knowledge. If you do, it's going to cost you.
The following business model will allow you to sell most products available in the world. You can do this without any payment processors, shopping carts, order entry systems, or even customer service channels. The business model I am talking about is affiliate marketing.
How It Works
The concept of an affiliate business are easy. You create an affiliate relationship with a vendor (Target, Walmart, etc.) and list their products on your website. Visitors to your website click on the links that you have included. These links are encoded with information that indicates to the vendor that sent the traffic to the vendors' websites. If the visitor makes a purchase from this link, you are credited with a commission on the sale.
This is an oversimplification. There is more to an affiliate business than pasting a bunch of links and banners and flooding the internet with you pages. All this with the hope that enough people will click and buy from your website.
Disclaimer: if you decide to use this technique of flooding your website with a bunch of affiliate links, be aware that search engines (especially Google) discourage the practice and will penalize your website. This practice is known as thin affiliate websites. Look it up!
In the early days of affiliate marketing, people did exactly that. They would set up pages upon pages of products with affiliate links. Google got wise to the practice and changed its algorithms to flag websites that use these practices. These practices are now considered black hat and may get you banned from your vendors!
There is more good news. If you follow the appropriate steps to setting up your affiliate business, you never have to resort to these methods and you will end up selling much more. You will make your customers happy, your vendors happy, and even Google will stay happy with you.
How to Set Up an Affiliate Business Correctly
You need to learn the appropriate ways to set up your affiliate business. But, if I had to sum it up in one phrase, it would be to
ADD VALUE!
If you get nothing else from this article or anything else you may read on the subject, let it be that one phrase. This will be your best guide to affiliate success, if you follow through with it.
Adding value is the secret sauce to success with affiliate marketing. This makes so much sense when you think about it. Think about what you want from a blog or website. Would you rather find a website that regurgitates buy buttons or links, or ones that give you insight on the product you are considering?
I don't know about you, but I almost always look for websites that give me insights to the products I am thinking of buying. You may even be ready to purchase and go to a site like Amazon, and then want to confirm that what you are buying is right for you. What you usually will do is search on the web for more insight. Imagine if your website appears when someone else is searching for that insight on products they are looking to buy.
How to Add Value
The concept of adding value has become somewhat of a buzz phrase. It's bandied about on the internet but so few websites give any clear indication as to what it may mean. Bloggers who attempt an explanation don't get it right, most of the time.
In a nutshell, the key to adding value is to find what others are looking for and give it to them. This may seem like a wise cracker type of answer. But, whenever you are creating a page that is going to include affiliate links, ask yourself what are people looking for with the product being sold? If you have to, go out onto forums and blogs and see if people are asking questions.
Look past the products and its features or even benefits. The benefits are a good start. But, you want to get at the heart of the problem as to why the product solves the problem your readers are having. If you do that, you never have to worry about selling again. It will come naturally to you.
Finding Affiliate Products
I will point you to the right resources on where to find vendors that offer affiliate programs. This training will also show you how to set up your website and to create the content that adds value for your readers.
Before that, however, you should have a fundamental understanding of the types of products to choose. New affiliates go trolling for products and build their websites around the products. This can work on occasion. But, it forces a market on people rather than trying to find what people want and giving it to them.
Suppose, for example, you choose to promote Product A. You spend several weeks gathering resources to support reasons to purchase Product A. However, after you spend your time setting all of this up, you discover that there is no demand for Product A.
If, instead, you were in tune with customers in our market, you may discover they need Product B. However, they don't always know they need a particular product. Therefore, you need to match what they are looking for to products that can solve the situation. Gurus like to call these pain points of your customers.
However, not every product is about solving bad problems (acne, weight loss, etc.) Sometimes, it can be an underlying want that your readers are looking for the right product. For instance, someone going through a midlife crisis may want that motorcycle they never bought when they were younger. They aren't necessarily buying a motorcycle - they are trying to hang onto their youth. The impulse buy of a motorcycle addresses that need. This is what you need to look at when figuring out how to add value.
What is it that your readers truly want? The product is usually only the tool to help them satisfy the want. When you grasp this concept, your affiliate business is going to do quite well!
How to Create an Affiliate Business for Free
Here we are full circle with the title of this blog post. I have established that an affiliate business is the way to go because it can be started for free, and it can even be run for quite a while without spending much money. I have also established that once you start earning with your affiliate business, you can use some of the proceeds to grow your business that much quicker.
Here are the components of an affiliate business that you will need to consider:
A Website or Blog
Vendors Offering Affiliate Products
Time
Of these three components, it would seem as though having a website would cost money. Indeed, if you were to follow the advice you find online, you would:
Suddenly, free just got a whole lot more expensive, didn't it?
I am going to show you how to do all of the above with $0. You will get a domain, host that domain, learn how to set that website up for free, learn how to create content for the website, again for free.
Next Steps...
Affiliate Disclosure: Purchasing via the links and banners on this website may result in the owner receiving a commission.
Note: if at any point you get confused as to what to do, reach out to me here on this page. Just leave your question in the comments below.
If you follow the three steps above, your changes of success are great! You will have an online business that can generate income for years to come!
