Can You Really Start a Business With No Money?

The art of the zero dollar startup.

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

I’ve just been listening to Fred Lam’s audio book, Starting From Zero, outlining the process he advocates for making money online, without any initial investment.

Fred said he was encouraged to create the book after hearing from readers of another well-known book, The $100 Start Up, that many of the strategies in that book weren’t really doable for the promised ‘$100 or less’ price tag.

So the new book promises to show you how to get that start-up going for zero dollars. It’s a big promise, and I certainly haven’t used the strategies outlined in the book, so can’t comment on them, but I do know a little bit about starting an online business with no money, because I’ve done it.

Technically, you can start a business, of sorts, with zero dollars. That’s how much I spent to launch my current online writing business. While I’ve been writing (and getting published) on and off for many years (about 30), it was just over ten years ago that I decided to actually set myself up as a ‘proper’ freelance writer.

There are those who will argue that freelancing isn’t quite the same thing as starting a business, and they have a point, but what I started grew into my current online business that includes writing, publishing, various websites, content marketing services, and creating digital products. I started it from my kitchen table, with exactly 0 dollars and 0 cents of investment money. Here are the things I needed to get started as a freelance writer, and what they (didn’t) cost.

Computer $0

Because I already had one. I had recently returned to college and it was the one I used for schoolwork. It was old and slow and clunky and made me want to tear my hair out/throw it out the window/curse in wonderfully colourful ways.

If you’ve read my essential tech tools post, you’ll know how unreasonably attached to my MacBook Air I am these days, but back then that simply wasn’t a possibility. My ancient Toshiba laptop was so annoying that I did a lot of my research and writing at my local library. Their computers weren’t state of the art either, but they were better than mine, and their internet connection was quicker. The…