One of my most popular articles here on About.com is Business Ideas on a Budget: 10 Legitimate Businesses You Can Start for Under $20. In these tough economic times, more and more people are wanting to start businesses on the side, or needing to start businesses without any capital.
So let's hear it - what's your best business idea that can be started on a shoestring budget, say, twenty dollars? And how would you recommend someone starting that business should spend the $20?
About.com has just rolled out a new "Readers Respond" feature that will allow you to add your ideas and have them associated with the original article. You can read the current responses or share your business idea.
These do get reviewed by me before posting, so please, no spam - it won't end up on the site and just makes more work for me. Just share your best idea(s) in the spirit of helping others.
Its not about $$
$20 can go a long way in starting a business. What costs more is the amount of time and effort you need to put into ANY new venture. And of course, you first need to have a specific focus on not only what you offer, but who needs that AND what your offering means to them.
For $20, I’d buy 2 domain names – one for a website and one for your blog.
Then populate these, use social media sites like Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn to proactively search out people to converse with and build your credibity and expertise.
Next is the hard part, turning your conversations into great discussions that lead to business.
Now is a great time to start a business – if what you offer brings value to others.
One of the best ways to start a business with a small budget is to buy a domain name (cost: approximately $10/yr) and then build a website around a niche that you enjoy and have some knowledge about. If you can provide valuable content and you work hard then there is definitely money to be made if you stick at it.
I think the most important thing you need to do before buying domain names, is to find a good niche that you are interested in, after all you will be writing about it a lot on your blog.
For other great online business ideas have a look at How To Start Business Blog