People are making small investments to earn $100K+ online. That’s insane, right? I know, but it’s true!
Just take a look at the woman in the image below. Do you want to be like her
No need to worry.
I will guide you and help you set goals to earn money online.
Everyone wants to make money!!! That’s a known fact!!!
The reasons for wanting to earn money are different for different people. They usually revolve around meeting their unique needs.
Thanks to technology, people are now able to make money from home.
Traditionally, everyone knew you needed money (capital) to make money.
When talking about making money online, people seem to assume they can do it without spending anything.
Some folks even believe they can earn money with only a mobile device and a strong internet connection.
We should not blame them for being so naive.
There are millions of bloggers and expert advisors out there saying things like:
“I made $100K from affiliate marketing with zero investment”
“I started my online business with just $1.”
It is common for people to think it’s possible to make money online without spending a dime.
The best means of making money on the internet require you to make some sort of investment.
To be honest, you can spend a little money and still make money online.
Appetizer: The Story of the Farmer Who Never Wants to Spend
Had I known! Had I known!” said a farmer, whose story you’re about to learn.
Once upon a time, two farmers had two gold hatching eggs in their homes.
One said to the other: “Let’s spend money on these hens, my friend, so they can produce money for years to come.” But the other objected, “Why waste our money on something that’s blessed already? Hens will hatch whether or not you feed or house them.”
The one with the more profound foresight cared for his hen (built a house, bought bags of feed, catered to her health, and even went as far as installing lights in the hen’s room).
In the end, the hen of the other farmer caught a disease (due to neglect) after hatching just two eggs, while the hen of the caring farmer continued hatching for months to come.
Indeed, if only he had known!!!
Here we described the top 7 strategies to generate more than seven figures of income with just a few investments.
Before we jump into the first step, remember that you have to pick one category at a time, at least in the beginning.
Otherwise, it will be challenging to focus on one method at a time, and eventually, the result will not be good, and you will blame yourself.
Dropshipping is one of the most highly lucrative businesses you can start online with little or no investment.
A dropshipping business is where a customer purchases an item from your online store, and it gets shipped to them from your supplier.
Every order is forwarded to your supplier. After that, the supplier sends the item directly to the customer under your business name. Your profit is the difference between the price you charged the customer and the price the supplier charged you.
There are two ways to start a dropshipping business.
You can buy a ready-made dropshipping business from any of the following platforms:
Want to build from scratch? Follow the steps below:
The first thing to do for starting a dropshipping business is to choose the niche you want to venture in. That is the selection of industry you want to sell.
Ideally, a niche is chosen based on its “profit-making potential and frequent market demand.”
Generally speaking, using two methods, one can identify a profitable dropshipping niche.
The first is to go with any of the traditionally profitable niches. Here are some of the most profitable niches of all time:
Secondly, you can identify a profitable niche by looking for trending keywords (products) on popular search tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, and Google Trends.
The next thing is to decide who your dropshipping supplier is going to be.
To find legitimate suppliers, you can follow the tips below:
There are two methods you can use to build the store or website you want to sell on.
You can either set up your e-commerce store using WordPress or sell on any popular e-commerce platform.
When you opt to sell on an e-commerce platform, your store will be hosted on a third-party server, leaving you to worry only about how you’ll design your store.
It doesn’t take more than 15 minutes to create a dropshipping store on an e-commerce platform, such as Shopify, Amazon, or eBay.
Here are several other e-commerce platforms you can choose from:
Below is a table comparing a zero-investment plan with a paid dropshipping business plan.
Cost of opening a store: Zero
Can use free platforms like Constant Contact, Weebly, and Big Cartel
Chances of success are lowered because of the lowered audience on free platforms. Also, they only allow a limited number of products,which means there’s a limit to how much you can make.
Cost of testing and finding winning products: Zero
Which means you can’t place a “dummy order” with a supplier to see how their service works.
Without product testing, the chances are high that you’ll end up providing below-par services to the few customers you have, which would inevitably lead to dropped sales.
Cost of advertising and marketing: Zero
Can use free strategies like local listing services, social media, online forums and communities like Quora.
Everybody knows that free marketing strategies don't generate the same pull as paid campaigns.
Cost of opening a store
Forexample, Shopify = $29 per month.
Paid e-commerce stores like Shopify are quite popular and already have the audience. So, it’s pretty easier to find customers.
Cost of testing and finding winning products
Depending on what you sell, around $50 should be enough to buy samples.
Sales and profit are guaranteed when you do product testing.
Cost of advertising and marketing
Around $150 should be enough to run a few Facebook ads, influencer marketing and the likes.
Paid ads guarantee a steady in-flow of customers
Let’s say you get a product for $20 from your dropshipping supplier, and you sell it for $40. After cutting the shipping costs and advertising costs, your actual profit over the product is $10.
If you sell three of such products in a day, it becomes $90 in a month.
$10 profit x 90 orders in a month = $900 per month
$900 per month x 12 = Approx. $11,000 per year
From the table above, the estimated starting and running cost of a dropshipping business should be:
TOTAL = $229
For a $229 monthly investment, if you're able to realize up to $900 monthly, I don't think that's a bad business.
Blogging is another goldmine for making money on the internet. But just like dropshipping, you need to spend money to make money from blogging.
I hope you already know that a blog is an informative website for discussing a particular subject in detail. It is where you can find articles to learn about some specific topics. Blogging is the process of creating unique content and frequently publishing the basis on a web portal.
Although some folks might have you believe that you can make money with $0 from blogging, we will show you why their advice is wrong.
It's quite simple and easy to start a blog.
Ideally, the niche should be something that you’re passionate about. But since you’re looking to make money off it, you should choose a niche based on its “audience revenue potential.” In other words, it must be a niche with the potential to make you money.
To get your blog online, you can do it on a freeway or find a paid plan.
Now, the decision you make at this point will determine the revenue potential (how much money you can make) of your blog in the long-term.
Below are some of the most popular blogging platforms you can choose from:
More on how free blogging platforms limit your revenue potential later.
With the free platforms, you won’t be paying for anything. Just drag-and-drop a few buttons on the blogging platform, and your site is ready to go.
However, for the paid platforms, you’ll need to buy a domain name and pay a hosting company to host it for you. Most commonly, people use WordPress as the platform and Blue Host as the hosting company.
After setting up your blog’s technical aspect, the next thing to focus on is the content.
Content is the king of the blogging world.
That’s the main thing that drives traffic to your website. So, you need to focus on creating quality content all the time. That is the gold fetching egg.
See, there will be times when you’ll have no ideas on what to write about. When this happens, do not hesitate to hire a professional writer who knows how to write a blog.
There’s nothing wrong with hiring writers. Even the best blogging platforms of this world do!
You should also consider SEO friendly content. Otherwise, it will be difficult for a search engine to identify your content and rank it in search results pages.
Once your blog is live, there are several things you can do to monetize it. They include:
Alternatively to all these, you can monetize your blog using “Google Adsense.”
Once you create your GoogleAdsense account, Google will start displaying targeted ads on your blog that are either relevant to your site’s content or users’ previous searches, based on its proprietary algorithms.
Once your blog visitors start clicking on these ads, Google will pay you a commission for it. Typically, this commission usually ranges from $0.20 to $15 per click.
You can start blogging for $0, but we do not suggest it. Do you want to know why?
We will highlight the reasons why by pointing out all the costs involved in the blogging business. There are four of them.
If you use BlueHost, you can get your blog started for as low as $8.99 to $25.99 per month. However, if you use free blogging platforms like WordPress.com, Wix, and Blogger, you won’t have to pay anything under the basic plan.
On the downside, free blogging platforms lower your chances of making money by:
For just $89 per year, WordPress themes like Divi can offer you several layout options for designing your blog to suit your tastes.
Unlike free themes where your design options are limited, paid themes are easily customizable, allowing you to design your blog in the most professional and visitor-friendly way possible.
A perfect way to make money on your blog is via email marketing. After people subscribe to your email newsletter, you can begin to send them updates about your digital products, resource materials, and other exciting offers to generate revenue from them.
With a zero-investment blogging plan, you’d have to rely on free email services to build this list. Unfortunately, free email services only allow you to add a certain number of subscribers, and they will apply a limit to how much you can monetize your blog.
When you add the prices of hosting ($8.99 for BlueHost), design ($89 for Divi), and ads ($20 for email services) together, a blog should cost around $118 to set up.
However, that does not include marketing costs like (SEO, guest posts, Social Media, etc.), which could be $150 to $300 or more.
Let’s say that you’re subscribed to Adsense and receive $1 CPC for your niche. If you get 500 visitors on your blog in one day and 25% of them clicked on an ad, Google will pay you $125. Over 30 days at this rate, you’d get $3,750.
After 12 months, it becomes $45,000.
From these estimations, it’s evident that the fastest way to make money from a blogging business is to have an audience. The more targeted traffic you get, the more likely that ads will get clicked, and the higher the commission you’re likely to get.
But to get traffic, you need to double down on the quality of your blog content and marketing efforts.
Seeing as it is, that would cost you money!
Brands, retailers, and online merchants are continually looking for more customers to patronize their business. But due to the vast competition for consumers’ attention, many of them don’t find it easy to attract customers.
So, what do they do?
They pay people to help them find customers.
These people are called affiliate marketers.
Affiliate marketing involves sending traffic from your platform (site, blog, or social media page) to someone else’s platform to buy their products or services. And once your somebody completes their purchase, you get paid a commission.
For example;
Let say you sign up for an online merchant’s affiliate program and promote their product until people start buying. Once customers purchase it, you will get a commission for each purchase that comes through you.
Think this is something you can do?
Take the quiz below to learn how sales-oriented you really are.
Below is a brief step-by-step guide on what you need to do to start affiliate marketing today.
You’re probably used to discussions about niches by now. But we must emphasize one crucial point: pick a profitable niche.
To do that, follow the same guidelines as the previous two business ideas mentioned above.
Your community can either be a blog or a social media page in practice.
You already know what it entails to start a blog. If not, go back to business #2 above and review it again.
The success of your affiliate marketing business will depend on how many people come to your community (blog/social media page) and the strength of your influence on them.
You can use the following methods to find affiliate programs and subscribe to them:
Affiliate marketing is so easy that you can run it with no investment at all. However, for the best results, you have to spend money. The table below highlights what you stand to lose when running a zero-investment affiliate marketing business against what you stand to gain when you spend money.
Cost of opening a platform: Zero
Can run an affiliate marketing business on free social media platformslike Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter, etc.
Chances of making money are lower because of the low conversion rates of social media. Followers are usually reluctant to leave a social media page to visit an affiliate website to make a purchase Although when combined with a paid ad campaign, social media affiliate marketing can yield a decent amount of revenue.
Cost of advertising and marketing: Zero
Can use free social media marketing strategies like IG hashtagging, IG Stories, Twitter thread, Whatsapp groups, and Facebook groups to promote an affiliate product
Your chances of making money will be lowered because of the limited audience available to you. In most cases, you’ll only be able to advertise your affiliate products to your friends and the friends of your friends.
Cost of opening a platform
If blog =$118 per month.
If Social media = Zero
Having a website makes you look more professional and trustworthy among both customers and large affiliate networks. And with this trust comes a lot of sales, and invariably commissions.
Cost of advertising and marketing
Around $150-$300 should be enough to draw traffic to a site or a social media page
If your marketing campaign is successful, you’ll get lots of traffic to your site/social media page, and will invariably get more people clicking your affiliate links.
Let’s say you get a blog started for $118 (to host and design) and then invest $300 in ads and SEO to get the word out about the blog.
That would put your total expenses at approximately $420.
Assume all goes well and traffic begins to flock into this site after a few months at a rate of 5,000 monthly visitors (167 visitors per day).
If your content and engagement levels are so good, it’s estimated that at least 0.3% to 1% of your traffic should make purchases through your affiliate links.
If 0.3% of your 5,000 monthly visitors end up making purchases on the affiliate site, you would have sold 15 products.
Let’s assume the affiliate program you joined is the Bluehost Affiliate Program. In that case, you would earn $65 per product you sell.
Of all the web hosting companies, Bluehost pays the best commission!
Total revenue for the month = $65 X 15 products = $975.
That’s more than twice your investment of $420!
If you calculate roughly for a year, it would be $555 x 12 = $6,660
Do you have the knowledge you think you can share? Do you have a skill you believe people might be willing to spend their money on?
Why not bring it online and monetize it?
While trying to make money with your skill online, you might be tempted to think (or someone tells you) that you don’t need money in any way.
But I tell you not to entertain such ideas.
There’s a reason why not every Tom, Dick, and Harry selling digital services online are making it. And if you don’t want to join their club, you need to be prepared to spend some money.
Think this is something you can do?
Take the quiz below to learn how sales-y you really are.
As an online coach:
There are various ways one can make money from coaching people online, and they include:
If you're a service provider, you can also sell your skills digitally using tools like:
If you have a ton of photos sitting on your PC that are of decent quality, consider selling the licensing rights to them on sites like iStockPhoto and Shutterstock.
So far, all we’ve been talking about is how to sell this and that to make money.
But let’s be candid; not everyone likes to be a salesperson.
Some people just want to sit in their homes and make money without worrying about what they need to say to appeal to somebody’s ego.
If you’re this type of person, then trading is your best bet for making money online.
Think this is something you can do?
Take the quiz below to learn how sales-y you really are.
An online trading business is a type of business in which a trader buys and sells assets using an online trading platform. Ideally, these assets may include bonds, stocks (shares), futures, international currencies, and other financial instruments.
For this post’s purpose, we’ll only explore the “international currency” option, which is otherwise known as Forex trading.
I’m sure you’ve heard your friends talking about it in the past.
Forex trading is just like any other trading business, wherein people buy and sell. And in the case of Forex, what you're trading are currencies. The GB Pounds, US Dollars, Japanese Yen, European Euro, and lots more.
To begin a Forex trading business, you need a mediator to bring you in contact with the market. These mediators are called brokers.
Currencies traded in pairs in Forex. That is, you pick two currencies and predict how one will behave concerning the other.
People would purchase a currency pair at a lower price and sell it at a higher price, and their income is the difference between the Buy and the Sell price. A broker gets a tiny commission from your trades, which is called a Spread.
For Example:
Let’s assume you open a Forex trading app to trade the EUR/USD pair with $100 when the exchange rate is 1.25. Later, you forecast that the Euro will rise against the US Dollar.
Next, you buy 80 euros for your $100 and wait for the exchange rate to change.
Let’s imagine it rose from 1.25 to 1.35 – it is a good situation for you to close the trade at this point. You can now exchange your 80 euros back to 108 dollars and get your profit of $8.
This pop quiz will help you understand how much you should risk per trade in Forex.
Due to the enormous risks involved in Forex trading, many newbie traders often wonder whether they can start this business without putting their own money on the line.
Theoretically, this is possible.
You can start Forex trading with no money at all.
But if you want to avoid heartbreaks, wasted time, and futile efforts, my advice is that you should start with a certain amount of money.
There are lots of reasons why it makes sense to start a Forex business with your own money. And some of them are:
In truth, some top Forex brokers offer newbie traders “free no deposit bonuses” to launch their trading careers.
Many of the Terms & Conditions that come with these offers are usually too hot to handle on the downside.
For instance, a broker might offer you a “Free no deposit” bonus to begin trading. But once you start making profits, they’ll prevent you from withdrawing your money, telling you things like, “You must trade your earnings multiple times before withdrawal.” It can often mean trading your $100 profit for every $1 of bonus they give you. In the end, you might lose all the money that you’ve made.
To be on the safer side, start with your own money. That way, nobody can tell you when to withdraw and when not to withdraw.
Finally, some “fraudulent” brokers also use the “free no deposit bonus” to lure people into their Forex trading scams. #Beware.
A handy tool people use to make money quickly on Forex is the Forex signal.
A trade signal is a sign that tells you what action to take, whether to buy or sell a currency.
When you have buy signals, it saves you a lot of stress, guesswork, and uncertainty. If you find a reputable signal provider to work with, you can rest assured that you’ll always make profits each time you enter the market.
For people who want to start their trading businesses with zero capital, it can be hard finding a free signal platform because almost all signal providers charge a fee, which means they’re only available to people willing to spend that amount.
Here are some of the best signal providers on the internet:
Another reason to spend money on your Forex business is to hone the relevant skills required.
Nobody becomes a Pro trader overnight. It takes a lot of smart work, learning, and practice. However, you can speed up the process by enrolling in an online trade school or taking Forex courses online. These courses will provide you with practical tips to kickstart your trading journey.
For starters, here are some of the best Forex trading courses to launch your trading business:
“ForexTrading A-Z” from Udemy
$12.99
StockDay and Swing Trading Course by 2ndSkies Trading
$375
Asia Forex Mentor – One Core Program
$997
Bizintra
$99
SixFigure Capital
₤800
Note: Here, we’ll only focus on how to make money as an Instagram influencer.
One of the solid ways to generate money on the internet is to become an influencer.
That’s what the KylieJenner’s and the SelenaGomez's of this world do for a living.
So why not you?
Let's identify your readiness to start Instagram as an Influencer Platform with a Quiz:
Influencers are people who get paid for promoting brands to a group of people within a select niche. After years of building relationships with an audience, influencers develop a hold over their audience’s purchasing decisions.
Think this is something you can do?
Take the quiz below to learn how sales-y you really are.
From the definition given above, you could quickly tell a couple of things one needs to become an influencer.
Your niche could be fashion, sport, entertainment, business, tech, etc. It must be a highly profitable one, to be precise! Traditionally, the most profitable influencer niches are:
You can be an influencer on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or other social media channels.
As we’ve earlier pointed out, we’re assuming you want to be an Instagram influencer.
Ideally, if you have over one million followers, you'd be called a Mega influencer. If you have between 100k and one million followers, you’d be called a Macro influencer. For people with 10k to 100k, they're called Micro-influencers. And folks with less than 10k get the title, Nano influencers.
In this game, the theory is that the more followers you have, the more money you get to make. If you're looking to earn millions, I'm sure you know what number you need to start aiming for.
This is where the difference between someone who's planning to run a zero-investment influencer business and someone who intends to spend money to grow their influencer business begins to set in.
Although there are lots of free strategies people use to find new followers when building their influencer business model, many of these strategies take years to produce results. Some strategies are not even guaranteed to have any impact at all.
With money, however, you can boost your hunt for followers.
And here's how to do that:
To make money from influencing, you need to engage excellently with your audience.
After you've engaged with them, you can build a relationship with them.
An excellent way to engage with your audience is first to understand the type of content that resonates with them.
For example, if you want to be a social media influencer in a sports niche, you may find that your audience prefers memes to photos or GIFs to videos.
Once you understand the type of content they like, it will be easier for you to create something they can easily relate with.
Bear in mind that you may also need to find out when your audience likes to come online. It will help you time your posts to go live at around the same time they'll be online.
Remember, you can only engage with someone when they're online! For someone on a zero investment plan, it can be hard maintaining this sort of engagement level because:
For someone with a few bucks to go on, you can buy the best phones or cameras to produce great content.
When you're out of ideas, you can buy photos/videos. You can install a chatbot system in place, ready to attend to your followers' queries and comments.
And most importantly, you can invest in a paid third-party app like Buffer or Later to schedule when your posts go live.
All these will ensure that you produce the best of content, engage in the best ways, and gain as many followers as possible.
Remember to make money as an influencer. You need lots of active followers. And the best ways to get them are via the points that I've highlighted above.
Here is a reference image from Oberlo about when you can post on Instagram to expect the best results.
Brands are paying influencers handsomely. Nano influencers – people with less than 5,000 followers – get $10–$100 per post.
Micro-influencers – those with more than 10,000 but less than 100,000 followers – get somewhere between $100 and $500 per post.
The Macro guys pocket anywhere between 5,000–$10,000 per post, while the Mega guys earn as high as $10,000+ per post.
Last but not least is the freelancing business model.
Freelancing is, by far, the most straightforward business anyone can do to make money online. And that's because all you need to get started is what you've already got or can hone.
Think this is something you can do?
Take the quiz below to learn how sales-y you really are.
A freelancer is a person who offers their services for a fee and usually with no expectation of a single permanent client.
Do you talk pretty well on the phone? If so, you could get a gig started for selling voice over services. Do you love to code like there's no tomorrow? Coders and freelance programmers make some cool cash online. Or maybe you've been a writer all your life? There are lots of remote writing jobs on the internet today.
Does every freelancer make money?
No!!!
Not everyone who dives into the ocean of freelancing comes out wet.
You know why?
Some people believe they can start a freelance business with zero capital.
Unfortunately, "free" has never helped anyone. You must spend money to make money from a freelance business.
Ideally, all you need to launch a freelancing business would be
The skill you want to sell.
Everyone says you can start freelancing with any skill that you've got.
But is every skill profitable? Is every expertise not so competitive?
NO!!!.
This is where most freelancers get it wrong.
The solution?
To make money from freelancing quickly, you need to go into a niche that's not so competitive. Like data entry, anyone can pursue this kind of skill but it does not pay well.
Before you start your freelancing career, you should invest properly in mastering your skills. That doesn't mean to spend more and more money. Here, investing means being a guru of the skills you want to offer to your customers. These skills can also be learned by online YouTube tutorials.
The market is so competitive, so you need to be perfectly skilled in whatever niche you are passionate about. Only then are people ready to pay higher prices. But, if and only you are expert of that.
I suggest selecting a profitable niche you are passionate about.
Here are a few niches which are profitable and less competitive:
For someone on a zero capital freelancing investment plan, it can be challenging to hone these skills. Meaning they would have to settle for whatever skills they have in hand, regardless of its profitability and competitiveness.
However, with money, you can hone a new skill that offers you a far greater chance of making money.
How to get freelance clients to work for
You can get freelancing clients for free. But if you want a long-term steady in-flow of clients, you will need to spend money.
Here I mentioned a list of tips on how to find freelance clients.
➽ Network with other freelancers
A free way to get freelance clients is to ask your friends and co-freelancers for referrals.
Are you a writer? Why not link up with graphic designers? Are you a web developer? Chances are your friends in mobile app creation niches have clients who need website developers.
➽ Join freelancing websites
There are many freelancing websites available, from Fiverr to Upwork, Hired to Guru, Craigslist to PeoplePerHour, and so much more. Most of the sites do not charge for registration, but they take commission per successful order.
This is the best way to start your career without investing anything. But, the competition is huge so be prepared to outrank your competitors and grab the projects.
➽ Create your own website
This is the best way to get clients from your own website and work as per your terms and availability. If you have a strong portfolio site and you are using a good marketing method then chances are very high to find very good long-term customers which pay a good amount for your freelancing work.
But, if you are looking for a long-term basis work relationship, you must be responsive and offer excellent customer support. You can even offer a free revisions and free surprising gifts in order to win the heart of customers.
➽ Networking events
You can find a freelance client or a connector (someone to connect you with a client) at a networking event. Bear in mind, though; you may need to pay membership fees, registration fees, and other related charges to attend these programs.
Make sure to check event boards like the following for networking events.
Meetup.com. It is the biggest site for friendly meet-ups along with networking events.
Eventbrite.com. This site aggregates various types of events happening near your location. It also has a "networking" events filter option in its search functionality.
➽ Industry-specific job boards
Here are a few good industry-specific sites you can check for freelance clients:
Run ads and promote your business
You can find freelance clients by running ads and promoting your business on social media.
Don't know how to get started?
Hire guys who run FB ads, LinkedIn optimization, and online forum ads. These guys will help you promote your business on various platforms, thereby placing you in front of those who need the type of service you offer.
But their services aren't free. You have to pay!
Someone wanted to start a freelance business on zero investment. Since the person has writing skills, he decided to hop on Fiverr to start bidding on article writing jobs.
Each time he bids on a job, at least 50 other persons are bidding on the same job. Meaning, the chances of him getting such a position are 1/50.
If eventually, he gets the job, his pay might be around $10-$100. That's the average pay for article writers.
Then another person (who's also a skilled writer, by the way) decided to hone a web development skill in e-commerce website creation.
The average cost of skills like these is $1,000 (courses, certification, books, and other tools). Finally, he decided to hop on Fiverr and bid on jobs from clients looking for Shopify store creators.
He submitted his proposal, highlighting his skills, certifications, and expertise. Along with him, 15 other people (usually the average for this job on the platform) bid for the job.
You get the idea. The person with certificates has a better chance of getting hired.
The average pay for e-commerce store creators is around $100-$500, depending on its complexity.
If the guy in our second hypothetical case study above gets just two Shopify projects worth $500 each, he would have recouped his original business investment.
You can execute all seven business ideas we've highlighted in this post without spending money.
However, if you want to make a massive sum of money and do it relatively consistently, you cannot afford a zero-investment plan.
You must spend money to make money, irrespective of the business you're doing online!!!
