Home Businesses You Can Start Fast for No Money

Five Home Business Ideas That Don't Need Money to Start

There is a saying that states you need to spend money to make money. With a home business, that isn’t necessarily true. It is possible to start a business from home without having to invest much money. Sometimes, all you need to supply is time.


eBay and Amazon

Ebay Reports Quarterly Earnings
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One of the great aspects of eBay and Amazon is that you can start by selling the items currently cluttering your home and attic, and you don’t have to pay anything until after you've made a sale. 

The trick to success on eBay and Amazon is to find what sells well and at a good profit, and then find a resource for more inventory. For example, if you have name-brand children’s clothes from your kids that sell well, you can take the money you earn from eBay sales to buy more at the local thrift store or consignment shop.

Finally, eBay and Amazon are not your only choices. There are many websites where you can sell your used and unwanted items to make money from home.


Two food vloggers making video while prepping vegetables in kitchen
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The most successful bloggers invest in a domain name and web hosting, which, of course, isn’t free. However, many of them started their blogs on free blogging sites, such as Blogger.

Once they started making money, they bought a domain ($10-$15) and forwarded it to their free blog URL. When they made even more money, they bought hosting and moved the site.

Along with affiliate income, you can make money blogging by using ad feeds, such as Adsense, through an email newsletter (you can get free email list services at MailChimp), and creating your own information products, such as ebooks and courses. All of these can be done free.

Service-Based Business

Dog licking face of female interior designer working at home office desk
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You can take nearly any skill you have and start selling it simply by telling people you can help them.

Are you handy around the house? Let your friends and family know you’re available to help them with repairs, painting, and other honey-do items. As long as you have the equipment already, it costs you nothing to access your network. 



Serious young student writing in book while studying at table in university
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While you can offer writing as a service as mentioned above, you can also write and sell your own works. This includes writing books, information products, and home-based courses. People go online for information and they’re willing to pay for it if it’s something they believe they’ll enjoy or that will help them.

Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing allows you to publish your digital or print books for free (or for a fee if you want more services). Plus you can sell them from Amazon's site. Amazon can also distribute your print books to other retailers, such as Barnes & Noble.


A young person with his feet on a desk
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Microwork isn’t a home business as much as it’s freelancing, but it still allows you to work from home on your own schedule without paying money to start. While microwork seems like a lot of work for little income, it’s free and there are reports of people making $1,000 to $2,000 a month. 

What is microwork? Basically, businesses need small, time-limited projects done, such as researching, proofreading, writing, and data entry, and they crowdsource the work to hire someone to get the work done. 

There are many microwork sites, suck as Mechanical Turk and TaskRabbit. To maximize your income, you’ll want to join and work at several microwork sites.