If you had NO money how would you start

[Woodward82]

Ok, i know the NORMAL answers to this. Sell something, its a business , so if you dont have money dont venture into it... minus all of that.. my question is..

If someone were to be saving money but wanted a jump start on getting some content , customer report , and just a jump start before they went and got the domain name and hosting, what would you suggest?

[pro2sell]

I would read this forum.

If you absolutely don't know where to start then jump here

[rmolina88]

If you literally had like zero cash?

Start offering services on fiverr, the warriors for hire section, and advertise in your sig.

[Malcolm Thomas]

Get A Job!

[MikeTucker]

Worm farming. Definitely worm farming.

[Rickling]

Yes as someone said above fiverr is good one.. offer a gig and be good at it and you should earn like that.. writing articles is anther way.. etc
Rick Ling

[Marx Vergel Melencio]

I'd first establish sustainable sources of income, like getting a job, offering my specialized services to my neighbors and their friends and my friends and the friends of my friends and my co-workers and their friends and so on, buying difficult to find things my friends and their friends and my co-workers and their friends want at inexpensive prices and selling those things as a set at higher prices for a mark up, buying things and improving it using my specialized skills to sell it at higher prices (like assembling a computer then adding internal and external hardware components and installing, configuring and optimizing specific applications, all intended for a specific purpose, like a workstation for desktop publishing, a gaming desktop, a multimedia entertainment desktop and so on), buying used/second hand things that are quite difficult to find at excellent condition then selling it at higher prices, etc.


After that, I'd establish my credit resources. After that, I'd grow my savings. After that, I'd acquire assets that can be quickly liquidated at higher market value. After that, I'd continue growing my sustainable income, my credit resources, my savings, my assets, and also establish a good network. After that, I'd analyze my financial portfolio and study if I'm ready to invest some of my time and some of my credit resources in ventures that are fundamentally, logically and realistically profitable according to my thoughtful projections...

[ronrule]

I would put on my Batman suit and stand on the street corner with a cardboard sign that says "Need gas money for batmobile"

Made $35 in an hour doing that on a dare once. True story.

[theory expert]

Originally Posted by ronrule

I would put on my Batman suit and stand on the street corner with a cardboard sign that says "Need gas money for batmobile"

Made $35 in an hour doing that on a dare once. True story.

...but then OP would need money to buy bat outfit

[AndrewCavanagh]

I don't have to wonder how I would start if I had no money because
I did that years ago.

The simple solution that doesn't require any investment is to sell
your services.

What can you do?

Who does that skill have value to?

Approach the people your skill has value to and offer to work with
them.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[reneesbertrand]

You can provide services or start from any Web 2.0 website where you can build your pages for free and get into affiliate marketing

[JasonBennet]

I personally would get a job first to make some money so that I will be able to put some money aside for my online business. There is nothing wrong with having a job while having a dream to build a long term internet business.

The next thing that I will do is to decide on one mentor that I will follow and just take the required action.

[George Wright]

As Andrew said I'd do exactly what I did way back when.

I'd Walk down any business street near me and talk with the owners of small businesses. I would Find out what I could do to help them and then help them for a fee.

The money is instant and the opportunities unlimited.

It's nowhere near as easy as online only Internet Marketing, however it's as close to a sure thing as you can get. In fact I would call it a sure thing.

Then I would use some of that money to pay for all the things needed to go online again.

George Wright

[Abbas8]

There are tons of way to get started, just browse around the forum, tons of useful threads.

[TimK06]

Originally Posted by Woodward82

Ok, i know the NORMAL answers to this. Sell something, its a business , so if you dont have money dont venture into it... minus all of that.. my question is..

If someone were to be saving money but wanted a jump start on getting some content , customer report , and just a jump start before they went and got the domain name and hosting, what would you suggest?

Forums are normally free. Don't leave out Facebook and twitter. As well as youtube. You can build likes and youtube subscribers for your brand way before you have anything to sale.

You just have to be knowledgable on the niche you choose. So when you have the money for your domain and hosting account. You've build relationships and a sense of trust with your audience and it'll be a lot easier to get visitors to your site to sign up via opt in or buy a product from you.

Kind Regards

[vtotheyouknow]

I would offer services on the Warrior Forum.

And in fact ...that's exactly how I went from dead broke to working full time online. :-)

[Michael Ten]

If I had absolutely no money and wanted to engage in online entrepreneurship, then I would probably use Blogger, AdSense and Amazon Associates to try and earn money online.

[imacyrayy]

If you are very good at writing you could make a lot of money. I personally spend close to $300 on freelancers monthly. Become a freelancer.

[clever7]

You should begin by studying internet marketing. When you’ll learn the basics you’ll manage to make money by using free resources like Squidoo lenses, Blogger blogs, Tumbir, Hub pages, etc.

You can also provide your services.

There is a fierce competition everywhere. You have to insist and believe in your victory.

[sketchaddict]

Originally Posted by Woodward82

Ok, i know the NORMAL answers to this. Sell something, its a business , so if you dont have money dont venture into it... minus all of that.. my question is..

If someone were to be saving money but wanted a jump start on getting some content , customer report , and just a jump start before they went and got the domain name and hosting, what would you suggest?

Hey Wood! Your signature says it all - "Money is just a tool, the real reward is being able to pass on knowledge".

There are so many warriors here to help you out in the same. You dont need to spent money to get started. There are so many free ways to earn money, you dont have to buy a domain name or hosting. Create Free blogs on blogspot, create hubs and squidoo lens. Try creating videos and promote it on youtube. (Advertise them with Google Adsense and Affiliate links).

Or if you are good enough to sell anything on fiverr.com then its good to go for the start.

And you will find all the information and help regarding all this stuff on this forum itself.

[ownergolan]

hustle so hard and start making money. thats it.

[todawg_not]

What is ridiculous question.

Go find a job.

That's why you have no money because you treat this like a hobby not a real business.

Your not willing to invest in tools and education when your always wanting things for free

There you go you want the truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j2F4VcBmeo

[KevL]

Originally Posted by Woodward82

Ok, i know the NORMAL answers to this. Sell something, its a business , so if you dont have money dont venture into it... minus all of that.. my question is..

If someone were to be saving money but wanted a jump start on getting some content , customer report , and just a jump start before they went and got the domain name and hosting, what would you suggest?

I would spend some time listing what my skills are and how these skills can be of value to others by offering them a service, and then start planning how I can get the most reward for finding those who A) really need the value I can offer and B) who can pay me well in return for this value.

Just bullet point all the things you can do, many web marketers have an entire arsenal of brilliant skills that can be packed up into very valuable services.

I would focus OFFLINE on gaining these clients, I'd ignore Fiverr, I wouldn't bother advertising on the WF or any other online market place.

Some ideas:

Promo video creation & youtube marketing

Website fixing - going finding websites which have common errors and offering to fix them. (one tip, search using your local area + powered by wordpress, to find local businesses who have WP websites, email them to ask them do they know that their sites are seriously at risk of being hacked if they're not upgraded as version updates are released, and use this as a foot in the door).

Email list building and marketing. This is a GREAT one as you also sign them up to Aweber via your affiliate link which earns you a nice monthly extra...And this is obviously something that ALL businesses will benefit from.

Web design.

Landing page & squeeze page design (many offline businesses will not understand what any of this means so you will have to explain the benefits)

SEO (don't call it SEO though, I'd advise that you just see what their main search term is that you feel you can get them to page one for without too much of a struggle, and suggest that you can get them to page one for that search term, explain the benefit for them in terms of the available targeted traffic.

PPC set up and management.

And a whole list of other things that you can probably do that you might not have realised the value of, to existing businesses.

I would email local businesses, write letters to local businesses, offering to go in and meet with them, build a rapport with them, quote them for my services - and then go to town on over delivering. Go the extra ten miles, let alone the extra mile. Do everything I'm expected of and more, so that they're so impressed with me they naturally refer clients to me.

And then I'd do the same with all the clients that are referred to me.

Once I have a decent client base, I would start investing some money on my website, ensuring that I'm focusing on the kind of search terms that are likely to bring me more of the kind of clients I've already got - and I would try my very best to get a PPC campaign setup which I can prove works - so that I can pause it when I'm busy & fire it back up when I'm starting to get quiet.

I know this seems a weird thing to suggest on an online forum, to advise focusing offline - but on fiverr your limited to charging a fiverr for your services, obviously, and on here & other forums generally speaking you're quite limited by how much you can charge based on how little many competitors are charging - where as offline, in traditional business, people are used to paying MUCH more for good services.

Take graphic design for example. If you can design great logos - while you'd get $5 on fiver, and maybe you can charge $50 or so from finding clients on marketing forums - you go offline, find a few graphic designers, call them and ask them for a quote for a logo... I'm in the UK, and here graphic designers charge anything from a couple of hundred pounds (x 1.5 to the $) upwards for logo design. In fact a client of mine got some quotes recently, for just a logo design, his lowest quote was £180 ($270) and his highest quote was £450 ($675).

It's the same with everything - there are people on here who sell articles at $5 per 500 words - I know for a fact that there are people who market their services mainly offline & via referral, who charge 10-20 times this amount.

AND you will find the less and less people are bothering with old fashioned offline marketing, which means it works better than it ever did. At least this is what I find.

And I'm talking from experience as this is exactly what I did after I'd managed to very nearly bankrupt myself previously by building a very successful online business, getting too cocky & allowing my overheads to grow out of control (staff, premises, stock, etc) and to destroy the whole thing, but it's OK we have this thing called "recession" that I can pretend was to blame, to make me feel not so stupid .... so I had LESS than no money, LOTS of debt, and I managed to get one very good client, impressed the heck out of them, and they started to refer clients to me, and on it went.

The method above still works very well and it always will, because people trust referrals, people prefer to work with people locally that they can meet face to face with (at least this is the case with most traditional businesses), and because "people buy people" - i.e. once you meet with someone, and they get along with you, the quote you give them isn't all that important - it's not all about the price.

For instance, just so you can see this still works, for me at least; I've just designed a website for a PLC (public company, huge firm) from a referral from one of my best clients, and an email to local businesses last week has got me a meeting with an amazing potential client that to be honest I really did NOT expect to happen as I'd have thought they would have had their own in house web team!

Good luck!

[Sean Tudor Carter]

Originally Posted by pro2sell

I would read this forum.

If you absolutely don't know where to start then jump here

I think that thread needs to be stickied (if it isn't already) because this question comes up way too often.

[KevL]

Originally Posted by Sean T Alexandre

I think that thread needs to be stickied (if it isn't already) because this question comes up way too often.

But that thread is "what to do if you're desperate" - and the OP here isn't asking about what to do if you're desperate, he's asking for guidance on what to do if he wants to get started but hasn't saved up any budget yet - which I see as an entirely different question. Maybe I misunderstood the OP

Cheers

[Sean Tudor Carter]

Originally Posted by KevL

But that thread is "what to do if you're desperate" - and the OP here isn't asking about what to do if you're desperate, he's asking for guidance on what to do if he wants to get started but hasn't saved up any budget yet - which I see as an entirely different question. Maybe I misunderstood the OP

Cheers

I'd imagine that a person who wants to start a business on a shoestring budget isn't far from desperate. I'm sure a lot of the advice given could help considering that a lot of the advice is aimed at people with little or no money to start.

[katkat999]

I started working on oDesk.. that's where I started my career... from nothing to getting a stable career...

[wiseme11]

Borrow if you dare to open your mouth to people around you.
Those Rich and successful entrepreneur also borrow from Bank to
fund their business. Many popular name you heard today, they are
borrowing money...USING OTHER PEOPLE MONEY ( OPM) is one of the strategy.
Provided you have the right business that can sure earn with good return. Don't get yourself into trouble. thanks.

[KevL]

Originally Posted by Sean T Alexandre

I'd imagine that a person who wants to start a business on a shoestring budget isn't far from desperate. I'm sure a lot of the advice given could help considering that a lot of the advice is aimed at people with little or no money to start.

In my opinion, there's a big difference between wanting to get started without money because you have the hunger but don't get have a budget, and just want to get doing something - and being "desperate".

[travlinguy]

Get a job and save up some capital. That's actually how I started years ago.

[CS7]

You could set up a free blog or YouTube channel and try promoting Clickbank products... or as said above Fiverr or other Elance work.

Goodluck

[Kim Standerline]

Truthfully?

I'd try and find a job offline, there's no real money to be made in IM if you don't have at least a few dollars to start with.

Kim

[HelpingYouBeAnExpert]

Originally Posted by ronrule

I would put on my Batman suit and stand on the street corner with a cardboard sign that says "Need gas money for batmobile"

Made $35 in an hour doing that on a dare once. True story.

Now they are passing laws to ban there all over the planet.

[ronrule]

Originally Posted by HelpingYouBeAnExpert

Now they are passing laws to ban there all over the planet.

Batman has no limits.

[Mark72]

I would get a job, open a separate bank account for my online activities, and put at least 10% of my earnings in it.

I would then hire a (reputable) coach with a proven track record to teach me about list building, sales funnels, driving traffic etc.

Any remaining funds would be spent on paid traffic to get the ball rolling.

[FantaMan]

Build up experience in your niche and then you don't need to have money to get more clients!

Just build more and more contacts!

[Rose Anderson]

Learn a skill that people are willing to pay for.

In the past I've:

Twisted balloons - You can get a bag of balloons and a pump for $10. Watch Youtube videos to learn how to make animals and hats.

Performed magic shows for birthday parties
Bookkeeping and data entry for small businesses
Wrote resumes
Facepainting for squirming toddlers
Gave guitar lessons
Taught magic and balloon twisting classes.

Now I run a ghostwriting business.

Learn how to DO something then sell the service.
Rose

[RachelLily]

Start your own blog. You don't have to have your own Web site, or install blogging software, or even figure out how to set up the advertising. At Blogger you can set up a blog for free in less than five minutes without knowing and spending a thing about web design, and Blogger even automates setting up Google AdSense so you can make money off your blog by displaying ads and getting paid when people click on the ads.

[agmccall]

Originally Posted by theory expert

...but then OP would need money to buy bat outfit

I think a speedo and a bath towel would work

[agmccall]

Why not start writing articles and doing research, and when you can finally afford about $30.00 per month, (working part time at any fast food joint would cover most of your expenses) you can will be ready to go.

[Newbieee]

Originally Posted by Malcolm Thomas

Get A Job!

I was gonna say that. hahah
At least someone said this.

[Newbieee]

Originally Posted by travlinguy

Get a job and save up some capital. That's actually how I started years ago.

Originally Posted by Kim Standerline

Truthfully?

I'd try and find a job offline, there's no real money to be made in IM if you don't have at least a few dollars to start with.

Kim

Originally Posted by Mark72

I would get a job, open a separate bank account for my online activities, and put at least 10% of my earnings in it.

I would then hire a (reputable) coach with a proven track record to teach me about list building, sales funnels, driving traffic etc.

Any remaining funds would be spent on paid traffic to get the ball rolling.

Originally Posted by todawg_not

What is ridiculous question.

Go find a job.

That's why you have no money because you treat this like a hobby not a real business.

Your not willing to invest in tools and education when your always wanting things for free

There you go you want the truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j2F4VcBmeo

Originally Posted by JasonBennet

I personally would get a job first to make some money so that I will be able to put some money aside for my online business. There is nothing wrong with having a job while having a dream to build a long term internet business.

The next thing that I will do is to decide on one mentor that I will follow and just take the required action.

Then i realized so many others said the same.

Of cos u can make money online with low or in rare cases, 0 investment.
But i personally feel its easier to get a job and work 1st.

[MoneyMeek]

What Can You Do?
One of the characteristics that I have come to recognize in myself and most internet marketers is the willingness to learn new skills. In fact, before I take on a coaching student, one of the most important questions I ask in the interview is “What can you do?”–specifically, I am asking what skills he or she may have already acquired to help in their internet marketing businesses.


Be a DIY-er
All successful Internet Marketers start out as Do-It-Yourself-ers. Before you have the cash-flow needed to outsource certain functions of your business, commit to learn at least one of the following internet marketing skills:

Copywriting
WordPress
Search Engine Optimization
Adwords
Media Buying
Graphic Design
Product Creation
Email Marketing
Other Traffic Generation Methods (Article Marketing, Video Marketing, Offline, etc.)

Most marketers, myself included, had to learn every aspect of the business, because we simply couldn’t afford to hire a team to do it all for us when we were first starting out. This is not a bad thing either. It is actually a strong advantage that supports your success in the long run.

Once you develop one of the skills that you need to make money online, you can hire yourself out to other marketers to fund your internet marketing empire.

I have actually coached “marketers” who feel that if you actually have to “work,” then you are not truly an internet marketer. This is very lazy thinking and complete bull sh*t. Few people with that mindset even get their businesses off the ground. Most waste time and money, and eventually end up frustrated.

The truth is advertising costs money. Hosting costs money. Outsourcing costs money. When people ask me how can they make money in IM with “no money down,” my answer is always “You have to work!”

I make excellent income from affiliate marketing, product creation, and email marketing, but even now, I take on clients for copywriting and info product/course creation. Why? Because I like the challenge of offline business, and I can charge whatever I want.

I run several businesses, both offline and online. In the end, it is not the means, but the end result that matters. Each week, the money that pours into my Paypal account comes from no less than 10 different products or projects.

The more skills you develop, the better your business runs. You will know how to hire competent freelancers. You will know how to do things on your own in a pinch. You will become more and more valuable, able to charge more for your services, should you need to. And ultimately, your safety net grows, which gives you true financial security.

Good luck!

[Chad Kimball]

I'd do the same thing I did.. bootstrap it by hustling client work for a while. Then systematize the client work and outsource 90% of it while I build up automated niche sites, then SELL those niche sites for 2 years earnings and reinvest the money back in my business.

[andrej]

I was starting with designing logos for $10 and that's how I earned my first money online that I used to pay for my first domain and hosting for it.

[EPoltrack77]

Picking up yourself a free blog at either wordpress or blogger. You could make one at hubpages. If you wanted to monitize it then maybe hubpages or blogger would work best. But for under 20 bucks its worth getting a domain and hosting and setting up your own site. Then I woud personally add wordpress to the root and start blogging and doing a little backlinking. Some will tell you to leverage off of a site already getting page rank but choice is your own. I personally have no problem and I seem to get more traffic with more keywords using my own domain.

[KevL]

Originally Posted by Rose Anderson

Now I run a ghostwriting business.

Do the ghosts write back??
Sorry couldn't resist....

[KevL]

Those people telling the OP to "Get a JOB!" are assuming that the OP doesn't have a job already... Where does he state that he doesn't?

He is asking for an idea for what to do if someone has no money - i.e no expendable income. Having a job doesn't always equal expendable income, as we all know... someone could very easily have no money, but have a job - because they simply spend as much as they earn or more.

[Curtis2011]

1. Find a good product on Clickbank that you can sell as an affiliate.

2. Sign up as an affiliate and get your unique affiliate links to their landing page.

3. Write articles and/or product reviews for websites like Ezinearticles, Squidoo, Hubpages, etc, that can get you some traffic with the authority of their website that is passed onto your personalized article pages.

4. Include your affiliate link in the articles and reviews that you write.

[Woodward82]

I appreciate all of the replies. There is a lot of great information here. Once I get to my computer ill go more into detail.

On the other hand, I never once said I didn't have a job. Someone above said that already. Also it was very clear in saying if someone were saving money how would they get a jump start.

I learned a lot

Anyone know how come the mobile app isn't letting me log in?