How to Become An Entrepreneur With No Money or Experience?

All of us want to have our own business. However, there’re several factors that prevent us from fulfilling this dream. Who wouldn’t love to be their own boss? Who wouldn’t love to get rich? Then, what are these factors that are preventing us from owning a business and preventing us from fulfilling our dreams?

I will answer this question right away.

The first and foremost hurdle or obstacle to open own business is money. Yes, that’s right. Whopping 99 per cent of all people that have a good business idea don’t become entrepreneurs because they don’t have the money to invest in their dream.

The second largest stumbling block is the experience. Many of us don’t have experience in any business. Understandably, we might have had a lemonade stall at a school fair, but that doesn’t really qualify as experience for a proper business or even any sort of business acumen.

However, these two factors needn’t really stop you from opening a business and becoming an entrepreneur. That’s because there’re several ways and means to become an online entrepreneur with no money or experience.

At the same time, there’s something else that also prevents us from opening a business. And this third factor is fear.

Fears of Failed Business

Fear ranks as the third greatest reason why people with seemingly superb business ideas don’t venture into their own enterprises. They’re worried about losing money if the business fails.

Actually, this fear isn’t baseless. Depending on whom you believe, anything between 60 per cent and 90 per cent of new businesses actually flounders and fails during the first two to three years of opening.

Again, there’re several reasons for this failure.

However, with proper planning, there’s no need to worry about a business failing. Nor do you have to worry about losing significant amounts of money that you invest in the business, either one-off or over a period of time.

That’s possible when you become an online entrepreneur with no money and no experience in opening a business. How to do that? Continue reading because I will be explaining in detail how to be an online entrepreneur with no money and no experience in this article.

I strongly suggest that you read this article till the end because I will also be discussing ways and means to avoid failures and loss of money on any enterprise that you may wish to open online.

How to Become An Entrepreneur With No Money or Experience?

So, let’s start looking at ways and means to become an online entrepreneur without money or business. I will explain in simple steps how to be an online entrepreneur with no money and experience.

Let’s start.

1. Good Business Idea

One of the reasons that most startups flounder and fail is because they’re copycats of other successful businesses. It’s worth remembering that we can’t actually copy someone else’s business model or business plan. The reason is simple to understand.

An established and successful business would have started some years ago. The market situation at that time would be much different than it’s today. This means the successful business evolved over a period of years to where it stands right now.

There’re no magic formulas available for success. Simply copying the business model of someone successful isn’t the best recipe for becoming an entrepreneur.

This means you should have a good business idea to become an online entrepreneur. There’s no shortage of such ideas. You can easily find one online and use it for opening your business.

2. Explore the Market

Now, you might have a business idea that you believe is wonderful. But, the million Dollar question here is worth asking: “Is there a market for my business?”

Anyone can tell you that every business needs a market. It needs to get a good slice of the market share to make sure that the business survives for the first few years and then prospers. Unless this chunk of the market is not available, it makes absolutely no sense to open any business.

While a well-established business would have a considerable, large size of the market, there’re no guarantees that you would be able to get any of it. That’s because people may not wish to switch to your business and leave the established one.

Therefore, here’s something to consider: there’re two types of market. One is the over-catered or over-serviced market, which means there are too many companies in the same business in the same market. The other is the under-catered market, meaning there are very few companies or businesses in the same business.

There’re reasons for both. If there’re many players, it could mean there’s a huge demand, and maybe, your business can also survive. On the other hand, too few similar businesses could mean you have a better chance of success. However, these are just off-hand considerations.

To understand whether or not your business has a market for its products or services, the best thing is to find out yourself. A survey of suppliers, distributors and even customers could help.

3. Find Your Skills

Since there’s no money or experience that you have, what’re the things you can invest in the enterprise? Of course, to become an online entrepreneur, you need to invest something. Therefore, the best thing to invest in an online enterprise is your own skills.

This means finding out which are the topmost skills that you could use or “sell” for the business. For example, if you’re a software developer, there’re two options. You can work as a freelance software developer or launch an online business offering software development.

For those who are unaware, even freelancing is an online business because freelancers come under the category of “independent contractors” under US labour laws.

Some of us might be able to identify our skills easily. Others can find it fairly difficult. The ease comes when you’ve been working with one specific skill over a number of years and can do something easily. The difficulty arises when you’ve been doing several things well for a period of several years.

If you find it difficult to find your skills, here’s a simple formula. Find out what you’re best at doing. And check if there’s a demand in the market for that skill and what you can provide to people by using that skill.

In the absence of investments through money and business acumen due to lack of experience, the only thing that you can start your business is by using your skills. However, the rider is that your skills have to be the latest for this purpose. You can always update your skills through superb online courses.

Also read: Best Freelance Websites for All Type of Freelance Work

4. Make a Business Plan

Upon identifying your skills, you can get a fair idea of what kind of business or enterprise is possible. Combine this with the market survey that you’ve done to find whether or not the business can find customers. These two steps will lead you towards creating a rough business plan.

A business plan is absolutely necessary if you want to be an online entrepreneur with no money and no experience. There’s an old adage that says: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” This axiom is very true. No business has ever succeeded in this world without a proper business plan.

So, what’s exactly a business plan? It’s a simple document written either on a computer or on paper that gives every detail about the business. Ideally, a business plan should include several elements.

These elements are the nature of the business- meaning the products or services that you wish to offer, depending purely on your strongest skills, the kind of customers or type of customers that you wish to attract, the suggested price of your products and services and a realistic estimate of how many customers you can get. These calculations lead you to arrive at an approximate figure on how much money you can earn at the end of a week, month and year.

However, a good business plan doesn’t end simply there. It also considers the overall cost of operating the business, such as expenses on the Internet, software if necessary and payroll, if any.

Actually, you should be able to get a complete roadmap of how you will operate the online business and project the profits you would make at the end of a specific period in the business plan.

There’re professional business plan writers that are also available. You could discuss your plans with them. And they can create a superb business plan for you. However, such business plan writers charge a stiff fee.

5. Product or Services?

As an online entrepreneur, you have two different options. One is to offer products while the other is to offer services. That’s because offering your products as an online entrepreneur is much different than offering services.

If you’ll be offering products means you require an online marketplace. This again depends on the type of products that you’re offering. If these are products for customers, you can open a marketplace on Etsy or Shopify, among other places. Or, you can opt for the easiest way to sell, through Facebook Marketplace.

That’s because Etsy allows you to sell only exclusive and handcrafted products, while on the Shopify marketplace, you can sell almost anything as long as it’s legit. However, they charge a fee for opening an online marketplace, while Facebook Marketplace is free to use lifelong.

On the other hand, if you’ll offer services, you could work as a freelancer by creating a superb profile on freelancing platforms such as Upwork.com, FlexJobs.com, Fiverr.com, Toptal.com or Freelancer.com, among others.

You can open a free account and create a superb profile on any of these websites except FlexJobs.com because they will charge you money when you get paid for services. FlexJobs.com charges you a monthly or quarterly, or yearly fee and doesn’t take money from your earnings.

6. Type of Customers

Broadly speaking, there’re two types of customers that you can look for. One is Business-to-Business or B2B, and the other is Business-to-Consumer or B2C. These words are self-explanatory, but I will describe the difference between the two briefly.

A B2B enterprise means that you would be selling products or services to an organization. It can include stuff like machinery, raw materials, stationery or something else that companies require and use on a daily basis.

In such cases, you will require an independent website to advertise your products online. A B2C business means selling directly to consumers, which can be done through a marketplace, as I mentioned earlier in this article.

However, if you’re offering services only, then the best option is to enter freelancing since it doesn’t involve any significant expense. You can also opt for a website which costs $9.99 per year and upwards, depending on the type of domain name and hosting that you choose.

7. Consider Amazon and eBay

If you’re planning on becoming an online entrepreneur and offering products or even a few services to consumers, I would suggest that you also consider selling through Amazon and eBay. As you would know, Amazon is the single largest online retailer in the world, while eBay is very famous for old and new products that people barely find somewhere else.

Anyone can register as a seller on Amazon. They don’t charge any fees for this registration. However, you will pay a small fee when someone actually buys the product from Amazon. This fee is affordable if we consider that your stuff will be seen worldwide and by millions of people every day. This increases the chances of bagging customers for your products.

Should you wish to sell used or antique goods, eBay is a superb option. You can sell used parts of cars and antique furniture, among others, through eBay. To sell over eBay, you will have to open a free account. However, an advantage of eBay is they allow certain kinds of goods to be sold for free. But they charge a small commission from what you get from the sale.

Regardless of whether it’s Amazon or eBay, you can get the money only after the returns window for the stuff has passed. They pay you once a week. You can get the payment through direct bank transfers or PayPal and other payment systems.

8. Business Blog

Generally, all good businesses have a business blog too. That’s because market research shows that consumers of all types tend to check blogs and trust content written by bloggers. The same content from a business is however seen as a form of advertising.

By starting a business blog, you can actually advertise and influence people to buy your products or services. You can also offer affiliate marketing-type links that direct people to your business website or online store.

Blogging helps you to describe the pros and cons of your own products and services while keeping your identity a secret. And that attracts more people to your blog as well as your business website or online store.

9. Tying Up with Providers

You can also become an online entrepreneur with no money or experience simply by tying up with providers of various services. For example, you can become an online travel agent by offering ticketing and reservations. This means you’re not actually doing the ticketing and reservations work. Instead, you’re simply attracting people to your website.

Once these people come to your website and indicate an interest in an air ticket, hotel reservation or some other service, you can simply ask the main travel agency to make the bookings on your behalf. In exchange for your services of finding customers, you get a commission.

This system of finding customers for a third party also works for network marketing and affiliate marketing, among other ways. Additionally, tying up with providers doesn’t cost anything. Nor does it require many skills, because someone else is doing the work for you. The job you’re doing to get a customer is sufficient to earn a commission.

10. YouTube Channel

For those who’re unaware, YouTube is also now a major source of earning money by becoming an online entrepreneur. You can post reviews of various products and services of various companies. For these reviews, which are usually positive and a form of indirect advertising, the brand owners pay some money.

The other way is to promote products for others as an affiliate marketer. Affiliate marketing means that you will provide only links to a particular product or service on your website, blog, YouTube channel or social media page. Whenever anyone clicks on any of these links and makes a purchase, the business owner pays you a commission.

Amazon, for one, has the world’s biggest affiliate marketing program known as Amazon Associates. As a matter of fact, some 43 per cent of all sales of Amazon come through its associate network or affiliates. They promote these products through video reviews on YouTube as well as independent blogs, reviews and social media posts.

Additionally, you can launch a YouTube channel to become a vlogger. Once you have a specific number of subscribers on your channel, it’s possible to subscribe to Google AdSense and make money. Subscribing to Google AdSense means you’re allowing Google to display ads on your YouTube videos. You get money for every video shown by Google and those that viewers watch fully, without skipping.

11. Dropshipping

Dropshipping is yet another business you could consider to become an online entrepreneur without money and experience. It involves opening a website and promoting products for manufacturers and suppliers.

Once a customer places an order on your website and pays, the payment for the goods automatically goes to the supplier with the details such as the mailing address. There’s software available to deduct your commissions before the money is sent onwards to the real seller. The seller, who’s usually a manufacturer or wholesaler, will ship the product directly to the customer.

In fact, drop shipping has become a full-blown business in the USA. A lot of dropshippers sell their goods through marketplaces on Facebook Marketplace and Shopify, to name a few. You, too, can read a comprehensive article on dropshipping and become an online entrepreneur with little money and no experience. It’s simple and easy, and almost anyone can enter the business if you’re willing to exert some extra effort.

12. Social Media Presence

And finally, we come to social media presence. If you’re planning on becoming an online entrepreneur with no money and no experience, the best thing to do is learn as much as you can about using social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and, to some extent, LinkedIn.

That’s because social media can serve as both a marketplace and a venue to advertise the services of your business and sell products where possible. If we observe closely, nowadays, even the biggest businesses in the US and worldwide have a strong social media presence. That’s because it allows them to reach millions of customers within a few seconds.

You, too, can use social media and become an online entrepreneur. It is the most economical way to launch a business or advertise your products and services. Social media is known to help companies increase their lead rate by at least 110 per cent over a period of three months.

Things to Avoid in Online Business

Here’s something that you should avoid when you wish to be an online entrepreneur with no money and experience. That way, you can start a business that could succeed fairly well.

• Never try to cater to a big market when you start.
• Avoid making tall claims about your products and services.
• Don’t engage in a price war by lowering your prices.
• Try not to avoid questions from customers and leads.
• Never say no to free trials

In Conclusion

These points should help you become an online entrepreneur with no money and no experience. In fact, millions of people are successfully operating online businesses that they have begun with almost zero investment and no prior experience in anything except their own skills. There’re no limits to starting your own business. You can use any idea to launch your own business, as long as you know there’re enough buyers.