Are you looking for online business ideas for 2023 without investment? There are a plethora of businesses you can start online and make a profit. Thanks to the internet that has given us so many opportunities. Unlike a brick-and-mortar business, you don’t need to invest a lot up front to start an online business. In fact, there are so many online business ideas that require no investment. So if you are someone who wants to start an online business with zero or less investment then this post is exclusively for you. Here’s what you’ll learn; So are you ready to discover the business ideas without investment? Let’s start. We get a commission if you buy a product through our affiliate link at no extra cost. There’s a reason why we’ve ranked starting a blog #1 in the list of best online business ideas for 2023. The reason is this: it’s the BEST way to create a brand and make a profit online. Although you can start a blog for free, we do not recommend that. If you are starting a blog as a business, you need to invest in the essentials like; Let’s break down the things above so you know how much investment you need to start a blog. So basically you just need around $100 a year to start a blog. It’s okay if you know true potential of blogging. In fact, I am a living example as I am a full-time blogger making over $13,000 a month from this BloggersPassion blog. You can read more about it BloggersPassion Earning Reports from here. Here is BloggersPassion’s earnings report for the year 2020-21 Within 12 years of my blogging journey, I went from making $0 to over $13,000 a month. Thanks to blogging. Even you can do the same if you are consistent enough and want to build a successful blog in the long run. So how do you start a blog that actually makes a profit for you in the long run? Here are some handy tips that helped me build a profitable blog making $10,000+ every month. Are you looking for a profitable online business idea without investment? Start a YouTube channel. All you need is a free Gmail account to get started. There are millions of people launching new YouTube channels and killing it with their subscribers, views and profits. Did you know that an 8 year old boy Ryan Kaji is the top YouTube earner last year with $26 million? He is one of the biggest YouTube earners according to Forbes. That’s a lot of money, right? Do you know what he does on YouTube to earn such an insane amount of money? He evaluates toys and does experiments with them. Sounds crazy, right? Not just Ryan Kaji, but there are so many other YouTubers who are making huge amounts of money from YouTube. You can read our detailed post at how much top YouTubers earn to find many more interesting details. The key here is to find the RIGHT monetization strategy if you want to make more money from YouTube in 2022 and beyond. While there are countless ways to monetize a YouTube channel, let’s discuss the most preferred ways for beginners. adsense: One of the most used monetization strategies for YouTube is the use of AdSense ads. But you cannot run these ads from day one. Why? Because your YouTube channel needs at least 4000 viewing hours in the past 1 year together with 1000 subscribers. Once you reach those numbers on your channel you can start running AdSense ads and your earnings will depend on several things such as; Sell your own stuff: This is the BEST monetization strategy for YouTube. You don’t have to rely on AdSense anymore because you can sell your own products. You can sell anything related to your channel including; Brand collaborations: Another popular monetization strategy used by most YouTubers is partnering with others including brands, people, software companies etc. A brand partnership is a strategic partnership between a brand and you where you promote their products or services in return For money. You can use influencer marketing platforms like FameBit which gives you access to over 400 active sponsorship opportunities worldwide. Dropshipping is a thriving online business. Done right, it can be the most profitable online business idea requiring minimal upfront investment with high profit margins. Dropshipping is all about selling products to your customers without storing the inventory of items themselves. That means when a dropshipping store sells a product, it buys the item from a third party and ships the item directly to the customer. To put it simply, dropshipping is all about “buying, storing, packaging and shipping a product”. The good thing about dropshipping is that when you find a product to buy from a third-party supplier, you don’t even have to store, pack, and ship it since the third-party supplier does all of these things. The reason to start dropshipping as an online business is because it involves less risk since you are not making a product yourself. That way, not only can you make money selling useful products, but you can also validate ideas to sell profitable items for more profit in the long run. There are tons of people using marketplaces like AliExpress to start dropshipping as a profitable online business. If you want to start a dropshipping business as a business, you should definitely check out AliExpress because it’s easy to find products to sell on your store without having to worry about inventory or shipping. Did you know that you can make up to 2000% profit with AliExpress dropshipping business? In fact, they offer an exclusive market platform called AliDropship to sell products. This is how dropshipping works at AliExpress; That said, here are some of the practical ways to get more out of dropshipping. Free shipping products: No matter which platform you use (such as AliExpress), you should find products with free shipping. If you target an international audience, this is the best way to make more profit. Otherwise, you will have to bear the shipping costs or raise your product prices. Find products with more orders: If you’re just getting into dropshipping, it’s always a better idea to find products that are already selling like hot cakes. Try to find products with at least 500 or more orders. Also keep an eye on the average product ratings from customers so you know if they are worth selling. Find products with low price and high profit: This is the KEY to making more profit with dropshipping: always find products with high profit margins. For example, you can find shoes worth $20 and later sell them for $50, giving you a solid 60% profit margin before factoring in your marketing costs. Did you know that we generated over 250 sales within the first 20 days of launching our very first premium eBook? Here is a earning screenshot taken from Instamojo (payment gateway) where you can see the transactions. If you want to create a passive source of income online, selling eBooks can be a good idea. Are people still paying for premium eBooks? Naturally. In fact, 38% of Amazon’s daily ebook sales go to self-published titles. People spend millions of dollars every year buying eBooks. So yes, if you have some expertise in any field, you can start creating useful eBooks to sell. Here are some useful tips for you if you want to make money online by selling eBooks. Research your popular topics: If you want to create and sell an eBook, you need to find topics that perform well in your niche. If you already have a blog or website, check out Google Analytics to see which topics bring you the most traffic. That way you can easily validate eBook ideas. Or you can also use blog forums, Facebook groups, Twitter chats, your email lists, etc. to take surveys and ask others what type of premium eBooks they want to buy. You can also use popular platforms like Amazon Kindle, Udemy etc. to browse the popular eBooks and courses in your niche. Write or outsource: You can either create your own eBook from scratch (it takes time, but if you don’t have a budget, that’s all you can do!) or you can outsource the writing to others. Make sure to spend some money on the writing part so you get what you give! Sell directly: Instead of selling your eBooks on other platforms like Amazon Kindle, you should sell your eBooks directly from your website. There are a ton of platforms like Gumroad, Shopify, WooCommerce etc that make it easy to sell your eBooks right from your website. Helpful Resources: We’ve published two comprehensive guides on how to publish eBooks. Did you know Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income earned over $1 million in revenue from online courses alone (in 2017)? Since then his income has only grown year after year. If you want to build an online business that grows every year, creating and selling online courses is the best thing to do. The best part about creating online courses is that they give you a chance to learn what you know and make a profit at the same time. But here’s the thing: you have to m Make sure you make a solid investment of time and effort upfront. Your premium courses should be worth every penny. Only then can you build a solid passive income stream. So if you want to build an online business around create online courseshere are some useful tips for you. Sell the outcome instead of features: One of the most important things to remember when creating an online course is to sell the result, not focus on the features. For example, Pat Flynn’s Power Up Podcasting course teaches its audience how to launch, market and maintain a successful podcast. So make sure you focus on what your target audiences are going to achieve once they complete your online course. This is how you build successful online courses that actually sell. Validate first: You must first validate your idea. Don’t waste your time creating an online course unless you have a solid email list ready to buy it. You can run Facebook ads, take surveys, or post your blog posts to see what your audience actually wants. Start your online courses when they ask for it. Take action, don’t wait: Most people procrastinate. They are waiting for the perfect time to launch their online courses. They consume a lot of information about creating and selling their online courses. Stop it and take action. Come up with an idea, test the idea and just start! Offering SEO advice and building an online business around it can be profitable. Did you know that SEO is an $80 billion industry? The entire internet world revolves around search engine optimization as everyone wants more traffic, leads and sales. What do most SEO consultants do? One job of an SEO consultant is to analyze, review and improve websites to improve their ranking in search engines. Their job also includes different things like; Here are the top 3 ways to bring more clients to your SEO consultancy. Useful resources about SEO: Here are some very useful SEO resources you can use to sharpen your SEO consulting skills. Affiliate marketing is probably the best online business idea to earn passive income online. It may take some time to build a solid foundation, but once you’ve built a foundation, you’ll make a ton of money. Starting an online business around affiliate marketing can also be cheap. You just need to pay for web hosting, some SEO tools and you’re good to go! Did you know we’ve made over $430,000 from the sale of one affiliate product? Check out the earning screenshot. That’s a solid number, right? Affiliate marketing works like a charm. Now if you are curious about how you can use affiliate marketing to earn thousands of dollars in passive income, here are some excellent tips for you. Helpful Resources: Starting a digital marketing agency is similar to starting a website yourself. Yes, a marketing agency also needs a website but offers different services. Thus, the investment required to start your own online marketing agency depends on several factors including; If you don’t have a huge investment, that’s okay because you can start small. Start a website, offer a service or two, hire someone to do the work for you. Once you start delivering great work to your clients, you can raise the price or ask them for referrals. Once your marketing agency starts to grow, you can hire more people and build a solid team that can complete more projects for you. That way, not only can you make more money, but you can also help others earn a decent income every month. There are a ton of companies, brands and startups investing a lot of money in digital marketing services including; If you can provide any (or all) of the above services by starting a digital marketing agency, you can attract a wide range of clients around the world to earn consistent profits every month. You can charge $5000 per month from each client for your services. The money you make from your digital agency depends on the services you provide and the ROI you put on the table. We have made an extensive guide about it launching a successful digital marketing agency all over again. Make sure to check it out to find out more details about it. Teaching online is always a great way to make money. If you are looking for an online business with no investment, you should try selling courses on Udemy. Udemy is an online learning platform with over 30 million students and 42,000 instructors delivering courses in over 65 languages. Did you know that there are currently over 100,000 courses and 30 million students with over 190 million course enrollments? Yes, Udemy is such a huge online learning platform that can be used as a great platform to make money by becoming an instructor. Udemy is definitely one of the best investment free business ideas you can try in 2022. Here is a solid plan to create an online business around Udemy to make more profit. Did you know that many social media managers who are new to the field charge around $20 to $30 per hour to start, usually between 10 and 20 hours per month per client. So even if you spend 2 hours per day per customer, you can easily earn around $600 to $1000 per month. That’s just one customer! If you are planning to start an online business dealing with social media management, you can hire more people to do the work for you. Your job is to find potential customers interested in your social media services. What should you do as a social media manager? Here are some of the regular tasks you will perform; Basically, a social media manager is responsible for managing all social media profiles, creating regular content and increasing presence on social platforms. How do you find new prospects as a social media manager? You can use platforms like Upwork, Freelancer, LinkedIn etc. to find potential clients who need social media services like managing social profiles, responding to comments etc. Aside from that, we HIGHLY recommend making a list of 50 to 100 full-time bloggers or social media influencers in different niches. You can use Twitter, Google Search, blogger roundup posts, etc. to filter out the full-time bloggers. Next, find a list of some people or brands whose social media strategy seems poor to you (or social media engagement is weak). Then you can initially contact those bloggers who offer your services for free. This way you build up a solid portfolio with which you can attract more customers in the long term. Did you know that you can set up your own VA business online just by launching a website? Yes, it will only cost you the hosting fees and domain fees to create a website and you can start offering VA related business (virtual assistant) to your clients. The nice thing is that you don’t have to be an expert to become a virtual assistant. You can offer a wide range of services ranging from; All of the above tasks can be performed by almost anyone who knows how to operate a laptop, so you don’t need any special skills. You only need a team of 3 to 5 (more or less depending on the branch and) find people who can take care of your virtual assistance business. You will need to reach out to agencies, brands, and full-time bloggers (or marketers) who want to outsource small tasks such as publishing blog posts, editing, managing emails, social media, etc. So where do you find work for your VA agency (virtual assistance)? If you want to find work as a VA, you can use the following platforms online. How can I start a business without investment? There are many businesses you can start without any investment such as YouTube channel, dropshipping, freelancing, selling eBooks, online courses, etc. What are the top 10 online businesses? Blogging, YouTube Channel, Dropshipping, Selling eBooks, Online Courses, SEO Consulting Services, Affiliate Marketing, Digital Marketing Agency, Becoming a Social Media Manager, Becoming a VA (Virtual Assistant) are some of the best online businesses you can start. What business can I start from home? Most online businesses such as blogging, YouTube, freelancing, dropshipping, etc. allow you to start from home with a minimal investment. How much does it cost to create a blogging website? To create a blogging website, you will need about $50 per year with a self-hosted platform like WordPress. How to make money blogging? Advertisements, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, selling eBooks, online courses, providing consulting services are some of the best ways to make money blogging. From starting a blog to teaching online, there are plenty of online business ideas for 2023 that require no or minimal investment. You just need to find one idea and work on it. Don’t wait for the perfect moment, start today! What are your thoughts on the online business models listed on this page? Which one will you choose? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Top 11 Online Business Ideas to Try in 2023 Without Investment
1. Start a blog
2. Create a YouTube channel
3. Start dropshipping
4. Sell eBooks
5. Create and sell online courses
6. Offer SEO advice
7. Make money with affiliate marketing
8. Start a digital marketing agency
9. Become a Udemy Instructor
11. Become a VA (Virtual Assistant)
Frequently Asked Questions
Final thoughts on the best online business ideas without investment