Best 5 Online Business To Start Now With Almost No Investment

If you’re considering what online business to start now with minimal investment, you’re in the right place. Let me show you the five best options for successfully starting and growing your business online. There are no buts or excuses anymore! Many free tools online allow you to start with no economic investment, only time investment.

All the options below require time and for you to be constant. But if you really want to earn money online and invest almost nothing when you start, these are your best options.

1. Create and Sell Notion Templates

If you don’t know what Notion is, let me introduce you to one of the best online tools ever created. (You can see I’m a super fan). Notion [affiliate link] is a versatile productivity tool for professionals and students. By creating custom Notion templates, you can help others organize their workflows more efficiently.

I’ve gone a step further with Notion. I not only sell my templates here, but I also sell courses fully made with Notion, and I’ve set up a digital magazine completely made with Notion! This digital magazine is called AI Mixer and works with a “freemium” model. You can subscribe for free and get the magazine, or you can upgrade to a paid subscription and get access to all my templates, or if you choose the founder subscription option, you can also get all my courses for a full year.

This business requires minimal upfront costs and leverages your creativity and understanding of productivity tools.

How To Get Started With Notion

Learn Notion Inside Out: Understand Notion’s features and functionalities deeply. This will enable you to create useful and attractive templates. The cool part is that Notion offers all pieces of training for free! Check them out here.
Identify Your Target Audience: Who will benefit most from your templates—students, freelancers, entrepreneurs? Who do you want to help the most? Start thinking about who is your dream client.
Sell on Gumroad: I love Gumroad. Setting up your store is super easy! There’s only a hunch: you need to sell products for the value of £10 to see your goods in the Gumroad marketplace.
Market Your Products: Promote your templates using social media, blog posts, and YouTube tutorials. Share tips and tricks to attract potential buyers. If you need help in knowing when your posts might be more successful, use Metricool [affiliate link]. Their free subscription gives you a lot; if you decide to pay, it’s the holy grail.

2. Transform Your Hobby into a Business

Turning a hobby into a business is a fulfilling way to earn income doing something you love. However, many people shy away from trying because they think that it’s impossible. Let me tell you: it’s only research and choosing the medium that’s stopping you! So, what about checking “Papa Google” and researching what others have tried in the area of your dreams?

I’m going to give you an example: Tarot. I love Tarot and I have a great collection. I also love Oracle cards, of which I have another collection. I’ve always dreamt of having my own games and selling them to get some moolah. I researched and researched. I tried some venues and failed. And then I hit the holy of holies! You can find all my babies here and how to have your own card game in the world, here (avoiding all my nightmares).

Wait, but what about if my hobby is crocheting? YouTube videos teaching or sharing your uniqueness is an option. Selling templates for others to replicate your designs? Totally doable! Are you getting all the marketing you need to sell them, like hotcakes? (Coming soon here.)

How to Transform Your Hobby into a Business Online

Choose a Hobby: Determine what hobby you want to monetize. Don’t choose too many things at once; go one by one. If you try to do too many things at once, you’ll spread yourself thin.
Market Research: Analyze the market to understand the demand and potential competition for your hobby-based products or services.
Create a Business Plan: Outline your business model, target audience, pricing strategy, and marketing plan. If you don’t know where to start, you can check out this course and learn how to do it.
Set Up an Online Presence: Did you know you can create a webpage with Notion!? If you want to invest very little initially, that’s a great option!
Promote Your Business: Leverage social media, blogs, and local events to reach your target audience and build a customer base.

3. Freelance Services Using AI Tools

The rise of AI tools has opened new avenues for freelancers. You can offer competitive and efficient services by utilizing AI for tasks like writing, graphic design, or social media management. If you look at this site closely, you’ll notice that all my banners are made with DALL-E (at least during 2024), and I’ve written two books about AI so far.

I don’t just sell Notion templates, card games, and courses online, but I also have a super cool digital magazine with a great subscription freemium model as an option to bring in all the pennies. (Please, let’s get some drumroll noises!) I also serve clients who want me to help them with online marketing and content created with AI, as well as setting up Notion solutions for them, and also coaching them! If you need help with any of that, you can contact me here.

How to Showcase Your Services

Choose Your Niche: Decide on the freelance service you want to offer. Start with one. I’ve chosen a hobby to monetize and also offered my services related to that hobby.
Learn AI Tools: Master AI tools relevant to your niche. For instance, Grammarly for writing, Canva for graphic design, DALL-E or Midjourney for images. This will require some investment. If you’re in the low-budget frenzy, I highly recommend the combination of Canva and ChatGPT (you get DALL-E if you pay).
Build a Portfolio: How do you do that? Here’s the magic: create products online! Choose one thing to target, create a product about it, and then go to social media and shout out to the world about it. Once you have enough goodies behind your back, dare to showcase them on LinkedIn.
Seek Clients: Although you can sign up on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer to find clients, what has worked for me is LinkedIn and me being a pain on Instagram. I know Upwork works well with many people, but I find my connections online in those two venues. Also, don’t hate me: go and network in person!
Market Your Services: As we said above, shout to the winds all your crafts! And if you don’t know how, don’t worry—a course on it is coming soon!

4. Self-Publishing

Self-publishing is a lucrative way to share your stories, knowledge, or expertise with the world. With platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), you can publish and sell your books with little to no upfront cost. I just love it! You can find all my official books here.

I wrote my first book a lifetime ago! And I self-published it on Lulu. Then, I discovered KDP and never looked back! The investment is minimal if you want a paper version of your book. If you want to target digital books, then it’s even lower! It’ll depend on how you format your book. You can do it yourself or use a software like Vellum. Alas, Vellum only works with Mac, and it’s quite expensive.

That said, one of the most fruitful genres you can choose is romance, not AI books! Not a crappy-written romance done by AI. Please don’t do that! Romance is very lucrative but also very competitive. However, if you like fantasy or any other genre, go for it! You won’t get any moolah if you don’t get your book out there!

How To Get Started

Write Your Book: Choose a topic you are passionate about and start writing. Since writing a book takes time, I’d choose a genre I’m super passionate about. If you struggle with envisioning how you can make it after work and taking care of your family, consider Write Your First Book Draft Effortlessly (For Super Busy Parents with a 9 to 5)
Edit and Format: Ensure your book is well-edited and properly formatted for e-readers. KDP has tons of guides on how to do that. If you struggle, consider investing in software if you intend to keep writing more books.
Design a Cover: Create an eye-catching cover that reflects the content of your book. You can use tools like Canva. If you were wondering, all my covers have been done on Canva, except one where I hired an artist to do it.
Use KDP: Investing in ISBNs can be daunting. If you want to be covered, choose Amazon’s KDP. They give you one for free.
Promote Your Book: There is no time to be shy! Tell everyone, online and offline, about your book. Take pictures of it and share them online. Create videos and go wild!

5. Creating and Selling Digital Courses

Why not share what you know in a digital course? The topics are endless, really. Look at this side. I’ve got Tarot and Oracle cards, and courses on how to publish your own too. I’ve got a digital magazine, but a course on how to have a digital magazine too! Everything you choose from the four best options above can be replicated as a course!

Do you sell hand-made cosplay dresses? Why not create a course on how to do a business like yours? Digital courses allow you to share your knowledge with others and expand the products (and mediums) you offer. There’s only a catch: they take time. Ecourses work very well, but they need some examples (hint to your products) and patience to create them.

How to Start?

Choose Your Topic: Decide what you’ll teach. The best course of action is to choose something you know in and out and you can showcase examples of it.
Create an eCourse: You can create your course with Notion and sell it on Gumroad just like I do. It’s fast, it allows you to have a super cute design, and even practical examples students can play with. Or, you can set up something in WordPress. It also works well, but for that, you’ll need more investment.
Customer Support: You’ll need some sort of customer support. If you use Gumroad, you have everything you need set up in place. So, if you’re just starting out, instead of having a combination like me (WordPress & Gumroad), start with just Gumroad.

Still Not Sure Where to Start?

I got you covered! Transform your hobby into a thriving business course will help you setting yourself up for success.