Starting an online business can be a great way to get both financial and personal freedom.
But you might not have a lot of extra money and want to know how to start an online business with no money.
Usually, articles about this topic just gives you a list of different methods but the majority of them are actually not free. And they do not give you practical ways about how to get started.
Therefore, I will in this article give you a realistic approach and also go over if it is even possible to start earning online without any investment at all.
This way you will know exactly what to expect and I will also show you how I got started myself and developed my online business into a full-time income.
Reality check when starting an online business
Many people dream about creating an online business as it can potentially make you really good money and you can work completely on your own terms.
But most people honestly end up failing because they go into it with the wrong approach.
They do not really see it as a business. They think it will just take a few weeks (or maybe even just a few hours) and very little work to become rich.
This is NOT the reality of creating an online business.
It is like any other kind of business – it will take work, time, and continuous effort to create a good income. But the sky then really also is the limit.
But it is important to approach it as you are starting a real business and be willing to work for it. Without this approach, you will most likely fail.
However, if you are willing to make a continuous effort it is completely realistic to create a good full-time income online even if you have no online experience at all.
Ways to get started without any money
Now that we have talked a bit about going into starting an online business with a realistic approach, let’s now go into how you can get started without any money and what this really means.
Because here I want to share some truths you are usually not told in articles like this. Usually, you just get a long list of options but the majority of them are not really free or cannot make you a real income.
So what is important to understand is that it is a business you are creating. To be able to really succeed long-term there will be some kind of investment.
It is honestly not realistic to think you can build a really good full-time business without investing anything at all – you would not think that about any other kind of business, right?
Luckily, it is very cheap to start an online business compared to any other kind of business. And I have found a way where you can actually get started without any money to invest.
But it is important to understand that any completely free way to earn online will not be able to create you a full-time income.
However, there are MANY free online income opportunities you can use to quickly and easily make enough to fund the investment into creating a real business.
So if you are serious about wanting to create a full-time online business and do not have any money to invest, then I will now give you a few ideas about how you can start earning already today.
It is, however, important to emphasize that these methods are only suggestions to quickly fund your investment into creating a real business online so you can get started without any money.
So here are a few ideas about methods like that:
- Paid online surveys (list of the best survey sites)
- Get-paid-to sites (list of the best GPT sites)
- Data entry
- Transcription platforms
- Freelance portals (Fiverr, etc.)
- Local micro-job portals (like Airtasker, TaskRabbit, etc.)
- Call reviewer (e.g. on Humanatic)
These are just a few ideas about completely free ways to start earning online and all of them make it possible to start earning right away.
Again, I just want to emphasize that you should NOT use these options to create a full-time income online.
That is not the point I am showing them here.
The point is they are all ways where you can start earning right away without any investment at all. But as any completely free way to earn online, it will not be a way to build it into an amazing passive income as you can with a real online business.
However, from day one you can start earning enough to cover the costs of starting your real business while it grows strong enough to cover for itself and make a profit.
That way you can start an online business without any money – this is a realistic approach that most people do not tell you about.
What would you need to invest later?
Now we have covered how you can cover the costs of starting an online business right away even if you do not have any money at all to invest.
So let’s now look into what it realistically will cost to start your real business where it is possible for you to grow it to a really good full-time income over time.
The great thing about the costs of starting an online business compared to starting any other kind of business is that you can do it really cheap depending on your chosen approach.
If you do not have any experience at all, you would need to invest in some training. Without proper training, it will be more or less impossible for you to succeed online as trial an error like this will waste a lot of time and rarely lead to success.
In addition to this, you would need certain tools – at least you would benefit greatly from investing in a website address.
Luckily all these things can be done quite cheaply. But you can also end up wasting a lot of money as many courses and tools online are very expensive and often do not deliver what they promise.
So when choosing tools and training, make sure to stay away from any course or tool that promise they can make you rich very quickly without any effort on your part.
These kinds of claims are, unfortunately, normal but they are just not realistic and will just scam money from you.
But I know from experience that it is definitely possible to get all the tools and training you need for around just $1 per day if you chose the right option.
This is very easy to earn by using the methods I mentioned earlier and thereby you will not have to invest any of your own money.
Below, I will share some information about my top recommended way that gives the best value for money in my experience – this is also the way I got started myself.
Best way to get started for free
I have just mentioned earlier that if you want to create a real online business, you need to be willing to invest at least a little to be able to create a full-time income.
Therefore, it might be a bit confusing the headline says how you can get started for free.
The reason for this is that the platform that, in my experience, gives the best value for money actually also offers something very unique I have not seen on many other platforms – you can get a free starter membership and that way check out everything it has to offer before having to pay anything.
The platform I am talking about is called Wealthy Affiliate and it is a training platform that teaches you step-by-step to build and grow an online income.
In addition to the training, you get access to all the tools you need as well as 24/7 support.
This is the platform and tools I have used to create a full-time income online myself.
The free starter membership will give you access to 10 lessons and two websites so you can get started. The first 7 days you will also have access to support from the whole community (myself included).
This is an amazing opportunity to get started without any risks and quite unheard-of on this kind of platforms.
After that, you can then decide if you want to take it to the next level and get access to even more training, more tools, and continuous 24/7 support.
If you do, you can get your first month for only $19 and then it will be $49 per month. But the best option is to get the yearly membership, which is only $359 which is less than $1 per day.
This will give you everything you need to start an online business – all the tools, training, support, etc. It is, in my experience, extremely good value for money compared to any other option I have seen online.
In comparison, I can tell you that I have before, for example, paid $350 for a very superficial 2 hours course where you had to pay extra for the tools and there was no support.
So I know from personal experience that Wealthy Affiliate gives extremely good value for money and what they teach works – as mentioned, it is what I have used myself to create a full-time income online.
Final thoughts
Starting an online business is definitely a great way to create both financial and personal freedom for yourself and your family.
The challenge many people have is, however, how to get started and that they have no money to invest.
Luckily it is realistic to get started without having any money. But as explained, it is NOT realistic to build a full-time income without investing anything at all – people that tell you this will often have an ulterior motive or leave things out.
But it is important to go into it with the right expectations and that is why I tell you what is realistic – and that is to use some of the many completely free online income options there are to quickly earn enough to cover the costs of starting a real business.
This way you can realistically start an online business with no money.
If you have any comments or questions, I would love to hear from you in a comment below.