How To Start a Business From Scratch Online With $0 | 100% Free
Starting a profitable business from scratch online is not as complicated as most people make it look. With a few simple steps I will show you in this post, you are ready to set up a money-ready business on the internet without spending a dime! How does that feel?
An online business is a venture on the internet set up to run 100% virtually with the sole aim of generating a stable income. The essence of creating a digital business is to earn income online passively because you don’t have to stay awake to monitor it, unlike a physical business.
As we proceed, I need you to arm yourself with this mindset, that it takes time to build a profitable business in the internet space. That being said, there are online platforms highly recommended, that you can leverage to create a business online that prints dollars daily.
Things You Need To Start a Business From Scratch Online
In the context of this article, you don’t need to spend a dime to set up a fully-optimized and income-generating side hustle online. Hence, below are a few things you need to get started:
- A PC or Smartphone: It is absolutely impossible to start a business online without any of these devices. Since it’s 100% virtual, you will need either a laptop or a phone to be able to access the internet. However, in this case, a PC is highly recommended.
- Internet Connection: For the fact that it’s free, to begin with, you will need to activate a wifi connection or data to access the web.
- Consistency: Without this component, all your efforts trying to set up a profitable internet venture will be in vain. You have to build your online business consistently to be able to get the result you desire.
Steps To Starting a Business From Scratch Online Without Funds
#1 Brainstorm Business Ideas & Pick One
This is the first step to take in getting started with an online business. You must come up with an idea that is very profitable with large audience size. This initial step probably seems like an easy decision.
In any case, you wouldn’t believe how frequently potential business visionaries get out ahead to register their businesses or web design prior to having a business idea set up.
The initial step in any business plan is to brainstorm potential business ideas. You might want to do this by listing off some of the things you like or are passionate about. Or, you can simply list all the things you know about your industry and then brainstorm from there.
Once you have a good list of potential businesses, pick one that seems most promising. It’s okay if you don’t have an idea for every single type of business out there — just pick one that seems like it would work well for you and your start-up capital.
For example, if you don’t know much about the restaurant industry and want to open a restaurant, but don’t know how much money it costs to open a restaurant, then go with something else instead (like opening a bakery).
If you’re looking for a good way to your own business in the UK, check out our blog post on 6 Awesome Business Ideas To Start With £1,000 In The UK!
Here’s Why This Is Important:
You can have all kinds of wonderful business ideas. You might have an idea for a new kind of food delivery service or for an online clothing store that sells affordable garments with a social mission. You might have an idea for a new kind of online furniture store or even an online art gallery. But if you don’t narrow down your focus, it will be hard to get started because there are so many things you want to do!
If you don’t choose something specific, then you won’t know where to start and how much time it will take to create it! In addition, if you don’t start right away, then someone else will beat you to market by years!
Here Are Some Tips For Brainstorming:
Start with the end in mind. What do you want this project or business to accomplish? For example, if you’re building a website, focus on what that website will look like when it’s finished and be honest about the kind of content you’ll put on it and where it will be placed online.
Consider ways in which your business could help people who are interested in what you’re doing (such as writing articles or creating tutorials). How will customers benefit? Think about what problems your product/service solves — then think of how it can solve those problems in unique ways by providing something new or better than what’s already out there.
What Kind Of Online Business Is Most Profitable?
The best way to find out what kind of online business is most profitable for you is to start looking at the numbers.
The first thing you need to do is to look at your expenses and see if they are reasonable. If not, look at your revenue and see where it’s coming from.
Then, make a decision on whether you desire to focus more on making money or growing a business that will generate income in the long run. If you desire to make money, then it’s best if you have a product or service that people want; then you can sell them directly or through an affiliate program and earn commissions on each sale.
Whether you’re a full-time freelancer or someone who works from home and wants to make money online, there are many different ways of making money online.
There are so many options for creating your own business that it can be hard to know where to start. The good news is that there are many different types of businesses that can help you make money from home.
The best way to find out which type of business will work best for you is to research the options available in your area, then choose one that appeals to you personally. And in my opinion, affiliate marketing is the easiest business to start online without capital.
#2 Getting Started Writing On Medium
Medium is a social network that enables you to share your thoughts and ideas with the world. It’s a great place to build an audience and connect with other writers, but it’s also filled with opportunities for more personal connections.
Here are some tips for getting started:
Start a blog. A blog is an excellent way to start sharing your work and building your audience. You can use Medium as well, but if you already have a blog, you’re more likely to get more traction from readers.
Get connected with other writers. The best way to start networking is by joining the community on Medium. Follow people who share similar interests and have similar goals as you do. This will allow you to get feedback on your posts, which will help them stand out in the crowd of content on Medium!
Writing on Medium is a great way to learn how to write and publish your own stories.
Here’s how it works:
- You will be given a name and a profile picture (if you don’t already have one)
- You will start building up your posts, publishing them regularly
- You can follow other writers and learn from their work
It’s free!
When you sign up with Medium, you will start creating content on the business idea you selected or picked. In this post we will be focusing on Affiliate Marketing, that’s because this is one of the online businesses you can get started for free.
That is what a blog post looks like on Medium when it’s published from the above screenshot. Your responsibility is to start churning out quality (plagiarism-free) content that revolves around your niche. Make sure your articles are in-depth and very valuable if they must be suggested or featured for readers.
What I mean by revolving around your niche is if your posts are health-related, then focus on it consistently till your page or profile builds good authority on that topic.
Also, because of my intentions of giving you an actionable guide, we will focus on a sub-niche in the health industry called Fitness. In the fitness niche, you can focus only on weight loss and staying fit. You can further niche down to weight loss for women or losing belly fat for women above 45.
The reason I’m picking the niche is that the affiliate site you will be making money from your articles on Medium is a health & fitness product website.
The Steps To Take
- Focus on providing quality articles to first give value to your readers before earning (people come to Medium to get answers or solutions when they search on Google)
- About 33% of the American population is obese, and you can create posts around giving tips on how to lose weight or suggest some exercise routines to help them drop some fat
- Set up your profile and make it very attractive that Medium admins will push your content to its over 133 million readers.
- While aiming at sending traffic to your affiliate products, enroll for the Medium Partner Program where you get paid for every time people spend quality time reading your articles.
#3 Write On Quora
Quora is another platform with over 637 million monthly readers; which means your articles have the potential to reach millions of individuals interested in your niche.
If you follow through with consistency on updating content and posting answers to questions on Quora, you will be blown away by the result you will get in the long run.
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You should also know that to grow on Quora is a snowball effect; traffic picks up gradually as people begin to engage with your articles.
Quick Guide To Getting Started Writing On Quora:
1. Sign up for an account. It’s free and easy, but the more questions you answer and comments you leave, the more likely it is that people will see your profile page when they search for your name or username.
2. Answer some questions! Do this in order to get associated with questions and comments others have answered as well. This will make it easier for others to find your profile page by searching for your username or handle (which is how people refer to individual users).
3. Leave comments on other people’s answers! This is more important than you think, because the more questions you answer, the better chance there is that those answers will be seen by someone who wants them (even if they’re not particularly interested in whatever subject your question was about).
If someone asks a question about something interesting and profound, why not help them find the answer?
4. Comment on other people’s questions! This is especially important if there are no available answers yet — it’s unlikely that anyone will ask something similar again soon if it doesn’t get answered soon enough, so sharing knowledge about what should help your readers find what they are looking for.
Before you start embedding your unique affiliate links that will take people out of Quora to your squeeze page, you need to know that Quora does not tolerate link spamming, if noticed your account can be deactivated.
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What should you do? Post your first 5 articles before you insert links. To expatiate further, don’t include links that will take people out of Quora in your first 5 posts. You can do it from the 6th article, but sparingly!
When you keep publishing articles and answering questions, skip 2 articles and then fix your link in the 3rd article. Also, interlink similar or closely-related answers so that your readers can have the opportunity to get more value.
Looking at the image above, you will notice the red indicators showing you how to answer questions on Quora.com. When you have registered successfully and verified your email, start answering questions with detailed articles that will give your readers value.
You need to know that nobody will click your affiliate link when you indicate a call-to-action if they didn’t get any value from your content.
How To Start Making Money From Your Online Business For Free
This part or section will show you the steps to getting started with building your affiliate marketing business and making money.
2 Affiliate Platforms To Get Started
#1 ClickBank
ClickBank is one of the world’s largest online and affiliate marketplace with over 6 million clients globally. Being founded in 1998, it happens to be one of the oldest and most reputable.
Moreso, the affiliate platform has paid its affiliates consistently over the past 2 decades, and it’s recommended for you to try it out and make some decent income for yourself, joining is 100%.
ClickBank has attractive health products with high conversions you can promote and earn good money, especially weight loss products.
#2 NutriProfits
Nutrprofits is a great and yet very easy-to-get-started health product affiliate platform both for beginners and experienced affiliate marketers. It has a very clean dashboard you can navigate freely and easily, as well as products with high conversions.
To be sure, Nutriprofits is one of the largest affiliate programs in Europe. You generate income by getting your unique affiliate link and promoting beauty and health products.
Personally, I prefer Nutriprofits because it’s not as complicated to join as ClickBank and other major affiliate companies out there. Sign up HERE to get started!
How To Make Money With Nutriprofits
- Click this LINK to get started
- Register with the required details
- Click “Offers”
- Pick the product with a higher propensity to convert easily
- Click on the product link, then copy the “Geolocation” link (Affiliate Link)
- Preview the landing page or sales page you are sending people to and see how it is by pasting the copied link on your Google Chrome browser tab and load
What’s Next?…
Note, if you are publishing articles on either Quora or Medium, you need what is called a squeeze page or a landing page. Another name for it is a bridge page; this page stands in between your audience and the product page you are promoting so that you capture their names and emails.
Why this is necessary because you need to get people’s details like emails that you will later automate emails to your targeted audience. The email marketing platform I would recommend for a start is ConvertKit.com and utilize its 14 days free trial.
ConvertKit Landing Page
For you to get started with ConvertKit, see the steps below:
- Sign up HERE
- Enter your details and follow the instructions
- When you have signed up successfully, click on “Grow” from the menu list
- Then click on “Create Landing Page”
- You will now see different templates
- Pick anyone that rhymes with the color of your product’s landing page – make sure the color of the product page you are promoting blends with the squeeze page you are designing
- While you edit the page, add your affiliate link to the call-to-action button that will redirect your audience to the product page
- When you are done designing your page, click on “Publish”
- Copy the page URL
In case you are stuck along the way as a beginner, go to YouTube and search for “ConvertKit Landing Page” to get started. Let’s proceed!
Furthermore, our goal is to build a profitable online business from scratch without spending a dime, which is why we have to get things right and not incur expenses.
Curate Quality Articles In 15 Minutes
This is the final step. Now, go to Google and type in a seed word or keyword you know people search for in the health and fitness niche. For example, something like, “Weight Loss” then you will get suggestions from Google autocomplete shown below.
The image above is depicting the way searching and extracting keywords on Google works. Install Keywords Everywhere chrome extension for concise longtail keyword suggestions.
When you have extracted a bunch of keywords, go to Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator and check the level of competition or keyword difficulty in order to rank easily. Get keywords on AnswerThe Public too.
Next, paste the long tail keyword on the Google search bar and load it. You will discover thousands of web pages of blogs that have already published content on the topic. Click on (preferably the one ranking number 1 on Google) any of the search results and access the website.
Copy the parts of the article you want then head over to another site. Do this with at least 5 blogs to get ideas from different sites. After that, go to Articlerewritertool.com and rewrite the content to make it original and plagiarism free.
YouTube is also a very wonderful and effective tool to extract great articles. Make sure you take your time editing it well to have your tone. Go to Quora and search for questions people are asking on weight loss or keywords related to health and fitness.
Click on “Answer,” and then all the questions related to health and fitness will line up. Look for the ones with the label, “No Answer Yet” and publish your article. You can also contribute your answers to the questions with few answers.
Remember, when you have answered 5 questions, insert your affiliate link in the 6th one. Monitor how your articles are doing, then edit and add your link to the ones that have more views.
When you have published a good number of articles, with time you will notice a surge in traffic which will eventually or ultimately lead to clicks that will land them on your affiliate product page. Then as conversions occur, you make money simply on autopilot.
Wrapping Up
The fact is, there’s no reason to wait. You can start a business from scratch online today, and your first step is to put together a strong plan. Set a deadline for yourself. Then, grab your notebook, fire up your computer, and get started. There’s no time like the present to begin your entrepreneurial journey.
Starting a business online is not for the faint of heart. On top of the regular challenges of starting a new business, you have to deal with the unique challenges that come with being an e-preneur. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to make it work, many of which are presented in this guide.
But ultimately, there’s no one “right” way to start an internet business from scratch. Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or leading a team, you’ll find that there are always opportunities for internet-based businesses—as long as you have the drive and determination to take advantage of those opportunities.
The truth is, if you want to make money, you can find it online. By that, I mean real honest-to-goodness income that comes in month after month continually. It’s the same with creating a successful business too.
If you can create a product or service that meets the needs of your target market and solves their particular problem then you will have a winner on your hands. Creating a business from scratch requires several core components: time, energy, passion & commitment, and most importantly your product or service.
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