Transcript
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends show.
What's up my Bloggy friends?
Name is Ashley Grant here and today we are talking all about whether or not you can start
a business for five bucks.
You know, it's kind of funny that people are talking a lot about inflation right now and
how everybody's trying to figure out how they can make money.
And so it got me to thinking, can you actually do it for less than five dollars?
And I think the answer is yes.
So that's what we're going to talk about.
I know when most people think about starting an online business, they assume it requires
deep pockets and expensive tools and courses and all that jazz.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
With just a few low cost resources, you can actually get the ball rolling and start bringing
in revenue, then reinvest those earnings back into your business as you grow.
So in a very quick episode, we're just going to quickly talk about all the different things
that you can do right now to start bringing in revenue.
Let's dive in.
So first up is education.
And that might seem a little strange to talk about whenever I'm telling you about how to
start a business for less than five bucks.
But the truth is when you're starting out, when you're first starting out, you want to
resist the urge to spend big money on courses and coaching because there are tons of free
resources that you can use to learn the fundamentals.
And the first place that I would recommend starting is YouTube.
There's so many amazing YouTube channels out there that teach all kinds of different things.
For example, Baddie in Business.
She has an amazing channel that teaches how to make money on TikTok, how to make money
on Instagram, how to make money with drop shipping, like all kinds of different things.
I'll leave a bunch of links to all the YouTube channels I'm about to mention.
But I just wanted to at least start with her because I've been consuming her content a
lot lately.
And the things that she teaches, like some people sell these courses for a lot of money,
but she's teaching how to do it completely for free.
Graham Stephan is another really awesome one.
And he teaches budgeting, investing, side hustles, building multiple income streams.
And his channel is completely free.
In fact, every single channel that I'm about to mention is completely free.
And if you want to get it without ads, of course, you'll have to pay the premium fee.
But you can get it for free if you don't mind going through a few ads to watch these different
YouTube channels.
So another one that I highly recommend is Sunny.
I always forget how to say her last name.
I'm going to say it wrong.
And I'm so sorry, Sunny, if you ever hear this.
I think it's Leonardousie.
Basically, she focuses on monetizing your passions through YouTube, blogging, social
media marketing, selling digital products, all the things.
She actually teaches people how to make money on YouTube with her YouTube channel.
And I friggin' love it.
Another great channel is Seradici.
She teaches a lot about YouTube monetization specifically, like getting views, getting
sponsors, growing a channel, all that kind of stuff.
And Sean Kennel, if you were thinking about starting a YouTube channel, definitely check
out his page.
He runs Think Media, and he explains online video webinars, how to grow a personal brand,
all that good stuff.
He's awesome.
Another channel I definitely recommend is Jessica Stansberry's channel.
She also goes by the name Hey Jessica.
She teaches a lot of people about how to create digital products, and she built one of her
income streams all on digital products.
She makes several thousand dollars a month making various digital products, and she actually
teaches people how to do it themselves on her YouTube channel with amazing resources.
Some of them, some of the resources she mentions are also free.
Another channel I have to recommend is Mission Side Hustle.
Basically, this guy Cory from Florida, he had this mission to turn $500 into a million
dollars.
In one of his very first episodes, he even talks about how he got the $500 to get started.
It's kind of fascinating that you can take some of the stuff that's in your own home
and sell it on eBay, sell it on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or whatever to get
the capital to begin a business.
It's been wild watching his building of his business in real time, and he's actually showing
people every single episode what it is he's doing to make money.
If you're into that kind of thing and you want to watch the glow up, I definitely recommend
it.
It's an awesome, awesome channel.
But every channel that I mentioned here is fantastic, and I'm sure there's a bunch more
that I'm blanking on right now, so I'm going to leave more in the show notes.
If you go to famousashagrant.com backslash five bucks, and that is five spelled out,
five bucks, you will see all of the resources that I talk about in this episode that you
can check out yourself.
In addition to looking at YouTube, I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend podcasts.
Podcasts are a great way to learn a lot of information.
In fact, every single time that I am considering a course from a coach or someone who's big
in their industry, the first thing I do is I look and see if they have a podcast.
The reason for that is several of the things that they teach in their online courses.
For example, Denise Duffield Thomas, she sells a $2,000 course on how to fix your money mindset.
It's a great course.
It's a fantastic course, but a lot of the things that she teaches in that course, you
can actually learn for free on her podcast, Chill and Prosper.
Chill and Prosper is a wonderful, wonderful podcast if you're trying to figure out how
to get your money mindset right.
It's geared for all chilpreneurs, like all people that are wanting to make money but
do it easily.
She teaches so many amazing things in her episodes, and I highly, highly recommend it.
Hers and Amy Porterfield's online marketing made easy.
If you're trying to learn how to build an audience and sell to them, highly recommend
her podcast.
Also, is Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income.
Got to check that one out if you're trying to learn about how to not just make passive
income, but how to make any income.
She teaches so many amazing different things.
Finally is Entrepreneurs on Fire by John Lee Dumas and his partner, well now spouse, Kate
Erickson.
She also has a lot of episodes that she does under that umbrella of Entrepreneurs on Fire.
She does Kate's Take and several other different podcast series that I highly recommend.
If you're trying to learn stuff about entrepreneurship, how to be a scrappy entrepreneur, definitely,
definitely check out that podcast.
If you're still trying to find additional resources to learn different things, different
industries that you're trying to consider starting, go to the library.
That is a great place to get all kinds of free information.
So definitely go there.
On Kindle, I don't know if you know this, but every single day there are thousands of
books you can get for free on Kindle.
I will leave a link in the show notes for that as well because they have a really awesome
resource inside the Kindle bookstore where you can see the top 100 free books in every
single niche that they sell books for, like everything from cooking to photography to
crafting and heck, even sports or travel.
There's all kinds of free books that you can get access to.
So definitely check out the resources that I put in the show notes.
Like I said, it's famous-lagrant.com backslash five bucks and that's five spelled out.
So next you want to carefully choose your niche or niche, depending on how you're feeling
that day.
It could be niche or niche.
It's the same thing, but basically you want to have something that aligns with your interests,
but that doesn't require large upfront inventory or purchases or investments.
You want to be able to start earning money as quickly as possible.
So do some basic market research online to assess the demand and potential profitability.
One of the one things that you can do that I talk about all the time is you can start
blogging about whatever niche it is that you are excited about.
And once you have your niche set up or selected, then it's time to set up your online hub.
And there are only three real things that you need to start a blogging based business.
And that's a domain name, which you can get for as little as 99 cents on something like
go daddy.com.
You need web hosting and a lot of people are going to get very mad at me for saying this,
but the truth is you can take that 99 cent domain and actually hook it up to googleblogger.com
and you can create your website for free using something like that.
And then you need an email list service, something like MailChimp or ConvertKit or one of those
other ones that starts for free.
And I highly recommend you choose a free one first because if you're not making money yet,
you don't want to put out a lot of money, right?
Right.
Once you have these things in place, then you can build a simple website, start creating
content and then launch your email list so you can start having a place to connect with
your audience.
So if you are going to start a website, let's talk traffic and monetization.
Here's some budget friendly strategies to start earning fast.
And I mentioned a lot of these in my last episode about how to turn your blog into a
business, but just for shits and giggles, let's go through them again.
Display ads through Google AdSense.
That's a quick and easy way to start getting money into your website immediately.
Offer freelance services like writing, design, virtual assisting, or promote affiliate offers
that are related to your niche.
Sell your own low cost info products like eBooks or video courses.
And finally, network and collaborate with other marketers.
The sky really is the limit.
And I'll definitely leave a link to last episode so you guys can check that out if you want
a little bit more in-depth information about what I'm talking about.
The key is to get multiple income streams up and running so you have cash coming in
right away to reinvest into your business.
So you might be wondering though, what do I do if funds are extremely limited?
I don't even have 99 cents for a domain.
Now when this happens, you can still kickstart your online marketing efforts using just free
social media platforms and an email list service.
For example, create accounts on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok, et cetera.
Then build up your following by consistently posting valuable content every single day.
But no matter what you're doing on any of those platforms, always be driving people
back to sign up for your email list.
Most of the email list services that you can sign up for, they will give you a free link
that you can use to drive people to your list.
Use that so you can start contacting people immediately.
Engage with your audience often.
Reply to comments, reply to messages.
Reply to anything that people are saying to you so that you can start actually building
a community of people to talk to.
Then you can monetize all of your social media accounts in a few ways without spending money.
For example, you can link to affiliate offers and products that are related to your niche.
Direct people to buy all kinds of different things like anything that you're talking about.
Let's say you have a Facebook page that's all about football.
You could do some aspect of that niche and talk about football and link to different
affiliate offers.
Let's say you're about to talk about the big game that's about to come up and you want
to talk about how to throw the perfect football party.
You could link to the napkins, the cups, the food, anything.
All of that can be affiliate links that you can sign up for and drive people back to,
let's say an Amazon or a Walmart or a Target or whatever.
Then you will get a commission for any purchase that is made through your link.
Like I said, you want to create a free account with an email service like MailChimp or ConvertKit
and then set up opt-in forms on your social profiles.
Offer a compelling lead magnet like a template, a checklist, a mini course, whatever.
You can do these with free resources like Canva.
You can actually create a free template on Canva that you link to in your email list
so that when people give their email to you, you link to that Canva checklist or whatever
it is that you want to create.
You could create an ebook.
You could create, God, there's so many things you could create.
In fact, I'm going to leave a list of all the different digital products that you could
create completely for free and how to do it in the show notes as well.
If you have skills, just with the time invested in social media platforms and an email list,
you can start building an audience and generating income without any upfront costs.
But if you have skills, you can start making money for free that way too.
For example, you could start freelancing on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr.
You can create a profile completely for free and you could sell things like writing and
editing, graphic design, video and photo editing, voiceovers, bookkeeping, virtual
assisting.
The list goes on and on and on.
I highly recommend that you follow Alexandra Fasulo.
Check out her past content about how to freelance write.
She had a podcast called The Freelance Fairy, some awesome episodes on that.
I will link to a couple of her different articles that I highly recommend you check out if you
are interested in freelancing on Fiverr or Upwork.
On those websites, then you can provide details about your expertise, your experience, and
even share a portfolio if you have one.
If you're trying to get started as a writer, for example, create an account on Reddit,
create an account on Medium or Quora or whatever and just start writing content that you can
immediately start putting out there and show people what it is you do.
And then you can use that as your portfolio so you can start bidding on projects that
align with your abilities.
For fixed price gigs, you can name your rate for hourly jobs, set up an hourly wage that
you prefer, and then the platform handles the payments.
Yes, they take a small commission and that is one thing that really sucks, but you'll
have no upfront fees so you could start your business completely for free.
And then communicate professionally with clients and deliver high quality work.
And as you complete these projects successfully, you'll start gaining good reviews, which
will help you win more business, and on and on it keeps going.
And then eventually, as soon as you can afford it, get a website, get a portfolio, get all
the things that basically make it easier to keep making money and keep getting your name
out there.
So to close things out, here are some other quick tips that I highly, highly recommend.
First one, prioritize building your email list from day one.
Trust me, this will pay off big time.
I still suck at it.
I'm still working on it.
Hopefully by the time you guys are listening to this episode, I think this episode comes
out in March or April.
So hopefully by then I will actually have an email list.
But if you don't have one yet, get one.
And then create valuable content consistently on a blog, social media, somewhere that you
can actually get in touch with your ideal audience, attract them, and engage with them
regularly.
Next you want to take advantage of free marketing tools like Canva for graphics, keyword research
tools, even AI.
Even AI chat bots.
I mean, I'll leave a couple links to a couple of my favorites down in the show notes below.
But there's no need to spend money on any of it yet.
And then automate what you can through your website, your email provider, and even your
social media platforms.
This will save you time as you scale up.
The bottom line though is yes, you can start a business for $5 or less.
You can.
The bottom line, oh, let me try that again.
The bottom line is yes, you can start a business for $5 or less.
You don't need a fancy huge budget.
You don't need fancy tech or anything like that to build a successful online business.
You can even start a podcast completely for free.
I'll leave some links in the show notes for that as well.
But the key is if you are going to start a business at all, start small, but take consistent
action.
Then provide real value to your audience on a regular basis.
And don't be afraid to experiment and learn as you go.
You've got this.
I believe in you.
And if you found this helpful, please share it with somebody.
I'd really appreciate it.
It'll help the channel a lot.
And that's all I've got for now.
So if you are a blogger, until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce
right below.