46 Ways To Start A Business With No Money

IN: BUSINESS IDEAS|EDUCATION|HOW TO BY: BRIAN ARMSTRONG

16May2008

Most people who want to start their own business don't have a ton of money laying around and it's probably one the most common questions I get emailed about: How can I get started without a lot of cash?

Well I've put together a list below of the best ideas I've heard and personally used. I hope you find it useful!

The three basic strategies to starting a business without much money are:

• Delay the normal "business starting" activities like incorporating, hiring, renting office or retail space, etc until AFTER your business has started earning money. This is known as bootstrapping.
• Doing everything yourself and spending your personal time instead of hiring an expert. (Takes longer but costs less.)
• Using some neat tricks and little known deals below.

Start With The Easy Stuff: Eliminate Expenses

1. Don't rent an office! – work from home. Or better yet work from the best free office with locations everywhere: Starbucks. If you need to meet with a client and are worried about seeming small time without an office, don't be. Just meet them at a restaurant for a lunch meeting. This is what people with the nicest offices do anyway.

2. Don't hire any employees! – do it all yourself until you have some $ coming in the door.

3. Don't hire lawyers, technical people, graphic designers, or assistants (see below)

Legal Stuff and Incorporating

4. Get a free lawyer and legal advice from the mentors at Score.org

5. Find a website with a similar legal document and modify it to your needs

6. An LLC is probably the best business structure, but don't worry about incorporating until you're earning money, just do a sole proprietorship, you can always incorporate later (you can get it setup with the IRS in just a few minutes by calling them at 800-829-4933)

7. Learn how to do your own financial statements for your business in Excel instead of hiring a CPA or bookkeeper (again you can do this after you're making money)

8. Take a Quickbooks class at your local community college

Make a website for your business

9. Don't pay a premium for a top end domain name, there are plenty of good ones left

10. Test out your ideas by writing to a blog, you'll get feedback on what people like and don't like

11. Get a free business website at www.wordpress.com or tumblr.com. It won't be your own domain (it will be something like yourbusiness.wordpress.com) but…

12. When you're ready to have your own domain, register it at domain.com and add this as a custom domain to your WordPress or Tumblr site.

13. Get a professional website design for free with a wordpress theme that you can install with a few clicks (no programming knowledge needed)

Getting a Logo

14. Don't hire a fancy graphic designer. At least not yet. Use LogoYes to create your own logo (or at least get ideas that you can recreate on your own for free)

Accepting Credit Cards

15. Don't bother with a full merchant account to start off with, they are complicated, come with monthly feeds, and require programming expertise. Instead try a simpler (and much cheaper) solution like Google Checkout or Paypal

16. For a more professional look and a complete shopping cart for only $5/month use E-Junkie, its great and I use it on this site

17. If you have lots of physical products, try a Yahoo Store

Starting a service business where you consult, coach, teach, etc

18. Create several pages on your wordpress site: one for your experience, testimonials, rates, availability, etc

19. Pick a domain name with your #1 keyword in it! (Assuming it isn't a very competitive keyword you'll rank on the first page of google within a month or two for that keyword which means customers!) here's some more info and an example

Creating Info Products

20. Use an ebook template like these from Eben Pagan

21. For print books, self publish it at www.lulu.com and use print on demand (they don't print a single book until someone buys it which means you have zero up front cost for inventory!)

22. Use a $20 webcam or digital camera to create educational video products

23. Use camtasia ( $200 for PC) or iShowU ($20 for Mac) to record your screen and make great videos like this one. Or record powerpoints and do the voiceover to make great educational products. Update: even cheaper use ScreenToaster.

24. Use a mac to edit your videos (iMovie is free) and you can even produce DVD's

Before investing in a retail location…

25. Go to a local fair or festival and rent a booth to see if anyone buys your product. Talk to potential customers and get feedback.

26. Try selling it on ebay

Always be learning about business

27. Go to a meetup.com groups in your city related to business/entrepreneurship

28. Read all the best business books by getting them from the library

29. Get 3 of the top 10 books on building wealth for free in PDF

30. Make friends with other entrepreneurs and share material

31. Install the stumble upon toolbar and choose business/entrepreneurship as one of your interests to find all the best videos and talks out there (this is literally like going to a free semester of business school, you get to see all the best speakers and thinkers of our time, and those of the past)

32. Read blogs like this one in google reader

Marketing, free website traffic, and getting your first customer

33. Get 250 full-color business cards for free to hand out to people you meet

34. Post an offer on craigslist

35. Post videos on youtube with links to your website

36. Post the same video to all video sharing sites (Google Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Revver, etc) at once with TubeMogul (this is some of the best free marketing you can do)

37. Generate leads by offering an incentive on your website for people to give you their contact info (some incentives that work well: Top 10 reports like the top 10 myths about…the top 10 thing you should know before…etc, videos, audio interviews, one page cheat sheets, free ebooks)

38. Write a good article and send it to more popular websites (include your byline at the bottom). This is also known as doing guest posts and is the #1 thing I used to grow this blog when it first started out.

39. Learn how to use google adwords and spend $10 and see if it brings in at least $10 (if so keep going!)

40. If you can't afford to get links from expensive directories like Yahoo ($299) useDirectory Submitter to get links from hundreds of smaller directories for free

41. Pick a good domain name with your keywords in the domain (use hyphens if necessary). This will help you rank in Google for that keyword and get visitors to your website.

42. Do some basic on page SEO

43. Research what keywords will bring you the most traffic (and are least competitive) with keyword discovery, Wordtracker's Free Service, and (probably the best option)WordTrackers free trial of their full service (just have to remember to cancel within 7 days to not get charged!)

44. See which keywords are likely to bring buyers (instead of tire kickers)

45. Get more incoming links to your site by creating a Squidoo page (these rank very high in the search engines for some reason!)

46. Send an email to everyone in your email program's contact list with a short friendly note letting them know you are starting a business and ask if they could forward it to just one or two people who might be interested. Offer something free for the first 10 people. This has an exponential effect because it not only reaches who you know, but everyone who knows who you know (an order of magnitude bigger group of people.)

What did I miss? Please make a comment below.

WHY REJECTION WORKS FOR YOU – DATO VIJAY

WHY REJECTION WORKS FOR YOU – Courtesy DATO VIJAY

THIS IS THE MOST POWERFUL EXAMPLE I CAN GIVE YOU AS GIFT. This business is based on SW Principle (Some Will, Some Won't, So What,Someone else Waiting for you)…………CHEERS

Rejection is a central platform of all networking endeavour. Anyone who doesn't understand why rejection is such a powerful and yet intricate tool of learning does not really understand networking. Take the word `networking' . Ultimately its about working a net. If you see aspider building a cobweb, in essence that's where the term net/web originated from. It's a concept we have pulled from nature per se.

First the spider pulls one single thread from point A to Point B.And this is the most difficult, most strenuous, most daring, most imperilled venture by the staid spider. Because it is one thread and hanging by that single thread it generally it fails about 99 times  before connecting. Because it's so tenuous The actual percentage of success is about 1%.

But the web itself upon completion can be an extremely powerful and extremely intricate construction. In nature, there is nothing that comes close. Man, despite all technological progress cannot match the intricacy and strength of a single cobweb even today. The strength of a single spider thread is still far stronger than the strongest steel cable known to man, if one were to measure it proportionately.

Hence, it is the ideal example to use to describe networking. The first thread fails 99 times out of 100. But yet, this is the basis of the entire network that is yet to come and it will be the strongest thread that spans that space. Upon that single thread being achieved the spider goes back to its centre and then drops again to create another thread. Hence, you eventually see the entire cobweb over a period of time.
Now how does this affect the term rejection? The spider has no ego, it has no pride. It has no intellect in terms of counting how many times it fails. It is focussed on the objective and keeps on striving and trying until it's objective is reached. It can only focus on one thread at a time. But this is how the most complex, intricate, dynamic networks are built.

Hence, you would find that some of the most successful networkers per se, who have been able to completely build huge networks, i.e.50,000/80, 000/ 120,000 people, have done so because they have never looked beyond the next thread/person that they are building upon. This so called simplistic approach is so powerful because there is no expectation, there is no pride in achievement, there is only the next step forward.

So why this fear of rejection? Rejection does not demean you. It does not deride you. It does not deny you. It certainly doesn't defeat you. It doesn't even defy you. So why let a single rejection or a 100 rejections stop you.

In the words of a good friend of mine, who is a great networker:

"Rejection is just another gust of wind on my face. It cools my brow and is gone in the next instant. If I know it not, how can it affect me?"

Through rejection though, there is so much to be learnt. In every rejection there is a new lesson.
A rejection teaches you what you should not do next. A rejection teaches you where you went wrong. And therefore teaches you if you care to learn from it, what you should do right. If you can only remove your expectation out of the way; if you can only remove your ego out of the way, then rejection becomes a gift divine. It becomes a true teaching tool.

There is so much more to be derived from rejection than there is from success. Embrace it and it would guide you. Repel it and you will be forever entwined.

21 Settings, Techniques and Rules All New Camera Owners Should Know

As so many new camera owners are starting out with photography in the new year I thought I'd compile a list of photography tips and techniques that new camera owners might like to work through in the coming weeks.

by Darren Rowse

Some are very basic while others go a little deeper – but all have been selected from our archives specifically for beginners and new camera owners. Enjoy.

Introductions to Useful Modes and Settings on Your Digital Camera

1. Digital Camera Modes Explained – I spoke with a family friend recently who had just bought a new point and shoot camera. She came up to me with her camera when no one was watching and embarrassedly asked me if I could tell her what all the little icons on the dial on top of her camera meant. This article explains what each of these most common digital camera modes means and does. Knowing them can take your shots to the next level.

2. Aperture and Shutter Priority Mode – this introduction talks you through these two very useful settings that can be found on many digital cameras. Aperture and Shutter Priority modes take you out of Automatic mode giving you more control over your images – but don't thrust you fully into manual mode – they are great settings to explore and master.

3. Introduction to White Balance – one of the most common problems that I see in beginner photographer images are shots with incorrect color. We've all seen them – portraits where your subjects teeth and eyeballs (and everything else) has a yellowish tinge. Learn what causes this and how to combat it with this tutorial on White Balance.

4. Understanding Histograms – 'histograms are scary' – this is what one reader said to me recently when they discovered that they could view these little graphs or charts on their camera. While they might seem a little technical it is amazing how simple a histogram is to interpret. Know what you're looking for and with just a glance you'll know if your image is under or over exposed. It's a useful tool to master.

5. Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) – this feature is another of those often unexplored settings that many cameras have built into them that will allow you to get well exposed shots in even the trickiest of lighting situations.

Other Basic Camera Techniques

6. How to Hold a Digital Camera – this beginner tutorial covers a topic that most camera owners skip over without realizing that it is a foundational lesson in photography. Get this wrong and it can impact the quality of your shots.

7. Shutter Release Technique – another 'basic' or 'beginner' type tip that many do intuitively – but which can drastically improve your photography if you don't do it.

8. How to Use Focal Lock – yet another beginner technique that many of us take for granted yet which is at the core of how all digital cameras focus automatically. Get this wrong and you'll take a lot of shots of out of focus subjects and in focus backgrounds!

9. How to Take Sharp Digital Images – 'my shots are fuzzy' – it's a common problem that we're asked about at DPS so we wrote this tutorial to refer people to to help them get the sharpest images that their camera can take.

10. Shooting with an In Camera Flash – flash photography with an in built flash can lead to some terribly blown out images – here are a few tips on how to avoid them. On a similar topic – here's 7 Strategies for Avoiding Flash Blow Out.

11. How to Get Shallow Depth of Field in Your Digital Photos – a great technique to learn if you're into many types of photography (portraits, macro etc) is how to control the depth of field in your shots and make your main subject 'pop' out by making your background nicely blurred – this tutorial talks you through how to do it.

12. Understanding Exposure – this post talks new camera owners through the three main elements of Exposure. Once you've read it also check out our introductions to ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed.

Camera Care and Maintenance

13. How to Avoid a Dirty DSLR Sensor – one of the fastest ways to ruin every single shot you take with your new DSLR is to end up with a dirty image sensor. This tutorial gives some basic tips on how to ensure it stays as clean as possible.

14. How to Clean a DSLR Lens – as much as you try to protect them – lenses tend to get a little grimy over time. This tutorial shares some basic tips on how to clean them up so that your shots will be as clear as possible.

15. 7 Digital Camera Predators and How to Keep them at Bay – this tutorial talks you through 7 of the most common ways that digital cameras get damaged – what to look out for and what preventative action to take to avoid them.

Composition Tips

16. The Rule of Thirds – whether you know it to follow it or break it – it's something you should at least know about.

17. Points of Interest – an image without some visual point of interest in it is unlikely to hold the eye of anyone viewing it.

18. Getting Horizons Horizontal – the perfect way to ruin that lovely sunset or landscape shot is to make it lean to one side. Get your Horizon Horizontal!

19. Fill Your Frame – this is not applicable to every shot you take but many photographers could drastically improve their photography by getting in close to their subject and filling their frame.

20. Getting Backgrounds Right – the background of your shot can make or break your image. This tutorial talks you through a number of things to look out for and techniques to use to get them just right.

21. Adding Randomness to Your Photos – learn how to set your images apart from everyone else's by injecting creativity, variety and a little randomness into your shots.

Of course the above 21 Settings, Techniques and Rules for beginner camera owners just scratch the surface of all there is to learn about the art of photography. Subscribe to our blog here (via email or RSS) to get more free daily tips to help you keep improving and learning.

iReader

Daren Hardy - Now Explode Off the Starting Line

Now Explode Off the Starting Line

Last week I discussed the half-dozen ways people stumble on their New Year's resolutions and goals right at the starting line. It generated a healthy discussion and I appreciate everyone's contribution.

This week I'd like to offer you the half-dozen ways you can explode off the starting blocks and set yourself up to not only stay in the race (this time), but actually finish victorious!

1. Big 3

If you are using Living Your Best Year Ever, it guides you through making several goals in all 8 key areas of life. It then helps you reduce your plethora of goals down to your Big 3. I know you will want to accomplish ALL your goals, but it is critical you reduce it down to just 3 to supremely focus on.

Pick the 3 goals that are most important to you and would have the most dramatic impact on your life and lifestyle. Resist the urge to chase after other shiny objects that come into your field of vision.

2. One Thing

As Curly in City Slickers said, "Find your 'One Thing'." In this case, it is the one key behavior that is most important to you accomplishing each of your Big 3 goals.

Examples:

Goal: Liberate 20 pounds to become ideal weight of 180.
Key behavior: 45 minutes of exercise, 3 times per week at a sustained target heart rate of 175.

Goal: Earn $200,000 in sales income.
Key behavior: Collect 5 "no's" 5 days a week.

Goal: Deepen intimacy with spouse.
Key behavior: Say something appreciative or acknowledging 3 times per day, (at least) 6 days a week.

3. Installation

You can figure out your Big 3; you can even identify your One Thing that will be key to making it come true, but remember this very key point:

Goal achievement doesn't come down to dreaming, writing out and planning. It comes down to the day-to-day decisions and behaviors of DOING what you said you were going to do, long enough for you to make it to the end point.

In order to ensure, as best as possible, that you will actually do, and keep doing, you will need to install your One Thing into a routine that you can do, eventually without thinking about it.

In The Compound Effect (page 99) I talk about Routine Power and then how to Bookend Your Days. The key point is you need to find a place in your day that you can install your One Thing for each of the Big 3 that will be regular and as predictable as possible.

In the book I discuss how I needed to stretch more, but never found a way to do it consistently. Then I installed it into my routine (the 8 minutes while the coffee is brewing first thing in the morning) and now I get it done religiously, without any thought.

Figure out where it can be installed and what your "trigger" is. What are you already doing that when you do it now, will remind you to do your new behavior? For me it is when I put the coffee on; that is the trigger for my stretch routine.

4. Track

This is the key of these key points. As mentioned as one of the stumble points: You can't improve what you can't measure. Tracking your One Thing is the key to keeping your awareness on it and continuing to improve on it. If you have Living Your Best Year Ever,there is the Weekly Rhythm Register for each week of the year as part of the Achievement Management System. If you don't have the program (gasp!) you can download the WRR by itself here for free.

5. Reinforce

This is a big tip to staying on track past where your willpower normally wanes and fails: Find reinforcements. This can be a peak performance partner, a mentor, a mastermind group, public accountability (blog or post your goal and progress on website, blog or facebook) or join a group to stimulate competition and/or camaraderie.

6. Have Fun

Mike jumped the gun on me in the comments from last week's post. It's true—lighten up and be sure to celebrate your day-to-day victories. Bring joy to the journey. We are pleasure-seeking creatures. If you neglect yourself for too long you will crack. You have to let some steam out of the kettle.

No matter the goal I always have a lax or cheat day. Yes, even if it is positively acknowledging my wife. One day a week I am not going to track and monitor my behavior, and whatever flows, goes! 

This past weekend my wife and I completed our best year ever planning (yes, we just got our copy too!). We always go on a heart pumping hike before we begin. We like to find a quite and spiritually uplifting vista to do our designing process. Then after a couple hours of work we go to one of our favorite spots to complete the process and celebrate the beginning of our new journey into our new best year ever!

Which of these tips was the best for you? Which will make the biggest difference in helping you stay on track with your goals? Any other ideas, please share in the comments below.

An A-Z List of the Most Powerful Words You can use in a Sales Letter

by Jim Conway
SmallBusinessSalesSolutions.com

There are a number of things that a good sales letter will do: Generate interest, build rapport and confidence, inspire a reader to set and appointment.

But have you ever tried to write a sales letter and the words just didn't seem to have any pizzazz? They just didn't seem to jump off the page? It is a common enough problem. The following is a list of almost 300 words and phrases that will really snap up your sales letters and make them shine so that potential customers take notice.

A

Amazing, Announcing, Attention, Advice, Approved, Authentic, Attractive, Astonishing, Alert

B

Best, Breakthrough, Bargain, Big, Better, Beautiful, Bonanza

C

Cheap, Confidential, Challenge, Colorful, Colossal, Compare, Competitive, Complete, Chance, Compromise

D

Discover, Discount, Daring, Destiny, Download, Direct, Delighted, Delivered

E

Easy, Enhance, Excellent, Extraordinary, Exciting, Expert, Exclusive, Endorsed, Enormous, Exciting, Exploit, Emerging, Edge, Energy

F

Free, Fantastic, Fundamentals, Focus, Fortune, Full, Fascinating, Famous

G

Guaranteed, Genuine, Greatest, Gift, Growth, Greatest, Gigantic

H

Hidden, Hottest, Hurry, Huge, Highest, Hurry, Helpful

I

Incredible, Insider, Improved, Important, Imagine, Introducing, immediately, Interesting, Innovative, Imagination, Informative, Instructive

J

Jealous

K

King Sized

L

Learn, Love, Limited, Luscious, Lowest, Launching, Largest, Lifetime, Latest, Last, Lavishly, Luxury, Liberal

M

Master, Magic, Millionaire, Miracle, Modern, Money, Mammoth, Mainstream, Monumental

N

New, Notice, Now, Noted

O

Opportunity, Obsession, Offer, Odd, Outstanding

P

Powerful, Proven, Profits, Private, Profit, Perfect, Professional, Popular, Practical, Promising, Portfolio, Pioneering, Profitable, Personalized, Pizzazz

Q

Quality, Quickly, Quality, Quick, Quickly

R

Revealed, Results, Revolutionary, Rare, Reduced, Remarkable, Revealing, Revisited, Reliable, Rare, Reward, Refundable

S

Shocking, Scientific, Save, Special, Secrets, Startling, Strange, Success, Superior, Surprising, Safe, Scintillating, Secret, Security, Sex, Simple, Sale, simplistic, Suddenly, Shrewd, Skill, Survival, Spotlight, Soar, Sensational, Surging, Sampler, Security, Simple, Sturdy, Special, Strange, Startling, Successful, Selected, Simplified, Superior, Strong, Scarce, Sizable, Surprise

T

Tremendous, Tricks, Terrific, True, Tested, Timely, Technology, Tremendous

U

Uncovered, Unbelievable, Ultimate, Unconditional, Unusual, Unlimited, Unlock, Useful, Urgent, Unique, Unsurpassed, Unconditional, Unparalleled

V

Valuable, Value

W

Wanted, Wonderful, Willpower, Weird, Wealth, Wonderful

X

Xanadu

Y

You, Yes

Z

Zamboni...no, just checking to see if you were on your toes.

 

But don't forget that the sweetest word for anyone to hear is their own name. The more you can use a customer's name the more powerful the letter will be.

 

 

Jim Conway is a freelance journalist and business development professional who has worked in the Printing and High Tech Industries and has been involved in venture capital negotiations for entrepreneurial ventures. View his blog athttp://smallbusinesssalessolutions.blogspot.com/.He can be reached at smallbusinesssalessolutions@gmail.com

Originally published on SearchWarp.com for Jim Conway Saturday, December 08, 2007
Article Source: An A-Z List of the Most Powerful Words You can use in a Sales Letter