How to start a business for free online

Looking to start an online business? Don’t have a dime to spare? Let’s look at how to start a business for free online!

Here’s the thing, you can start making money online without investing a cent. Now I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying I have done it myself. But I have read people doing it and I do have one great idea for anyone willing to try.

I want to make it completely clear this is not the way I started my business myself. My business is still (as of writing this post) in its infancy and it’s just starting to produce traffic. I’m still holding on to a day job, so I have some cash to spare and I have invested few hundred bucks in to my online business.

But if you are in a situation where you have some time to work on an online business but can’t really invest any money on it just yet I might have solution for you.

I’ll have to warn you, it takes work. It always does. And when there’s no money involved there usually a bit more work involved. That’s just how it goes in life. If you can’t invest money, you have to invest time.

How is it possible to start a business without money?

Yeah, I know it sounds crazy. That you could actually start a business without investing a dime?

Because of the internet, it’s possible. Of course establishing a real registered business is going to include some paperwork and fees. The great thing about making money online is the fact that you can start making income before you have to worry about that stuff.

Here’s the thing. Any conventional business takes a crap ton of money to get started. From a coffee shop to a machinery to a IT consulting firm it takes thousands and thousands to get everything going.

You need facilities, machinery, employees, computers, cars, inventory and god know what else before you have made a dollar.

This is not the case with online business. It’s about selling information or marketing other companies products as an affiliate and getting an affiliate fee.

One way to start making money from scratch is to get affiliate referrals through free to register channels like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram etc. Any place that allows you to share content for free with you followers.

Once you have made enough referrals to earn $50 or so you can reinvest that money to buy a domain and start creating content.

Since Wealthy Affiliate offers everything you need to run an online affiliate marketing business, I will use them as an example for using this model.

You could in theory replicate this by promoting almost anything from Amazon products to customer leads to companies. You could then reinvest that money to either buying a domain on some other service to create a niche website or maybe just buy some direct traffic to an offer.

The ways are many but this is the one I’m familiar with so It’ll have to get the point across.

Step 1: Register at Wealthy Affiliate for free subscription

The first step would be to create a free account in Wealthy Affiliate. You automatically join the built in Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program.

The free subscription allows you to complete the first chapter of both trainings in Wealthy Affiliate and also to host two free .siterubix sites. These are possible, but hard to rank in Google so you could in theory make money with them for free as well.

You also get to do 30 keyword searches on Jaaxy lite. This is enough to get you started in content creation if you use it wisely.

I wrote an extensive review here, so you might want to check that out so you know what you are getting yourself into.

Registering for the free account doesn’t require a credit card. Just you email and they are not aggressive with the marketing so it really isn’t a big deal to register to check it out.

If nothing else, check out the free courses to get some ideas about how to make money online.

But for our current objective, I have something else in mind.

Step 2: Get at least four referrals to Wealthy Affiliate

You see, as of writing this, you get $11.45 for every referral that upgrades to premium. That means if you can get 4, just 4 referrals, you will make enough money to pay for the monthly premium subscription.

How do you get referrals if you don’t have a website with traffic?

Well you have to get a bit creative and it probably takes some work.

There are plenty of free channels to use these days like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. If you have a channel with any kind of following that could solve you problem.

If you have no accounts and no followers, then it’s time to start working. Create something that interest people of socialize in YouTube channels.

You could even employ real life marketing. You could market the service to you friends, family or colleagues. I know this can seem a bit awkward, so make sure you know the service and trust it so you can recommend it with clean conscience.

But that’s how you get started without ANY money. If you have even a few bucks to spare you have much more options.

Step 3: Invest you affiliate fees to a monthly subscription

So you have now referred four people to WA that have gone premium. Great. The next step is to invest that money to go premium yourself.

As a premium member you affiliate fees are doubled, so you need to refer only two people that go premium to pay for you monthly subscription.

Going premium allows you to complete the training the teaches you a lot about making money online. It’s not the be-all-end-all solution, but it’s a model that works. You should focus on learning one thing at a time.

The premium membership also includes the keyword ressearch tool Jaaxy lite version. Which gets us to our next step.

Step 4: Buy a domain and do keyword research

Once you have you premium membership set up follow either the Affiliate Bootcamp or the Internet Entrepreneur Certification and choose a niche.

At this point it would be wise to invest $13.99 – $15.99 to buy a domain for you own site. You could accomplish this by getting one extra referral if you really don’t have cash to spare. This is a once a year fee so it’s actually dirt cheap.

Once you have you niche and domain figured out it’s time to activate you site and install WordPress on it.

After that it’s time to start creating content and follow the training.

To create meaningful content that can rank in Google, you need to do keyword research with Jaaxy lite which is inluded in you premium membership.

Jaaxy allows you to do unlimited amount of searches, so it’s time to get creative and start coming up with keywords that are related to you niche.

Step 5: Get referrals from other sources until you site start producing traffic and money

You now have you own website set up and you have created a bunch of posts on low competition keywords.

Since it takes time for a new site to start ranking in Google, you will need a source of income while you are building you site.

This means you have to keep getting two more referrals to WA every month to cover most of you expenses as you get $22.5 per referral as a premium member.

If paying $49 a month is too steep for you I’m guessing you don’t have a job. This means you probably have more than average amount of time (I get there are situations where this isn’t true) to dedicate to creating content and building you business.

Otherwise, I honestly recommend getting a job while working on you online business. It takes time and you must have other expenses as well.

This means you might achieve better than average results but don’t expect to start making any money at least before the 6-month mark. Give it a year if you want to be conservative.

Step 6: Profit!

So you now have you own site, you have enough content to start ranking in Google and you are receiving traffic to some profitable keywords.

It’s time to find a way to monetize you site! You could drive traffic to Wealthy Affiliate if you are following the Bootcamp or for example sell Amazon products related to you niche. The ways are many.

At this point you should be making enough money to cover you hosting and membership costs at Wealthy Affiliate.

At this point the sky’s the limit. Just keep creating high quality content to scale you business up. If you wish to continue with Wealthy Affiliate you can. You get a great hosting service, a keyword research tool and a great community to share you problems with.

Conclusion

There you have it. A way to make money online for free.

I’m not going to lie to you and say it will be easy. To succeed with this you would have to dedicate some serious time marketing WA memberships through other channels. It’s not as easy to get people to convert to premium membership as you might think.

It also requires you to create high amounts (several per week) of high quality posts if you wish to start making money at the 6-month mark.

I’m going to go as far and say that it would be easier to get a part time job to cover you expenses than to try and pull this of. If you growing business depends on the affiliate fees, you whole business is extremely vulnerable.

So get the resources, start working hard and succeed! This is just an idea.