How To Start A Business With No Money In 2025

You don’t have venture capital, private investors, or enormous savings.

Good.

You don’t need them. Oftentimes, having less resources actually challenges us to be resourceful. Did you know that there are so many ways to start a business without having any money to invest in its growth, at least when you’re kicking it off? If you’re transitioning from working full-time as an employee, to launching a freelance business so you can pursue your passions, explore your skills, and get paid more for your expertise without being inhibited by corporate culture–here are a few tips on how to start your business and freelance career, even if you’re strapped for cash.

1. Use Other People’s Platforms

To gain traction and mass visibility relatively quickly, partner with influencers, leading voices, and small-to-medium size businesses within your space so you can effectively “borrow” their audience without needing to spend a dime on advertizing.

2. Set Yourself Up On Ready-Made Online Platforms

If you’re not quite ready to pay for your own website yet (even a cheap drag-and-drop one), create profiles on ready-made platforms where your potential clients will already be looking for services. Think freelance marketplaces (Upwork, Fiverr) and other places like LinkedIn’s Services tool, Etsy (they charge a tiny sign-up fee to set up your online storefront), Gumroad, etc.

3. Start With Services Before Building Products

Most products require you to have an inventory before you can start making money, resulting in you experiencing financial deficit and causing greater risk. Instead of creating a product, start by offering services that target the same niche or market. You can also offer digital products like printables, planners, templates, guides, kits, and journals, which are inexpensive to create using tools like Canva.

Having a low-lift digital service or offer is a great way to reduce your expenses, start straightaway, gain traction quickly, and test the waters before committing to developing a product.

4. Focus On Clients, Not Aesthetics

When you have no money, or very little of it, everything you do in your business becomes vitally important to your business and career success, as well as financial success. This is not the time to create several iterations of your logo or focus on vanity metrics or vanity achievements, like purchasing a CRM for all your clients and business transactions. Definitely not when you don’t even have any clients yet.

When starting out in business without any money, you need to evaluate all your tasks and seriously ask yourself what tasks or activities directly contribute to revenue generation. This is what’s most important right now. Your fancy logo or personal branding photoshoots can wait. What you need is at least two or three clients, not only so you can make money, but also so that you can build testimonials, reviews, case studies, and a portfolio.

You can then reinvest your earnings into expanding your business. Start small. Concentrate on obtaining your first handful of clients and then look into the other ancillary items.

5. Build A Content Engine

Regularly produce thought leadership in your area of expertise. This attracts potential clients, builds their trust in you to solve their problem with your paid solution, and also increases Google traffic.

Find ways to diversify your content marketing production as well as where it gets shared. Shoot reels and short videos, jump on a podcast, host your own podcast, write a newsletter, or guest-write for a blog. Produce daily thought-leadership style posts and schedule them throughout the month across your social media.

This is how you start your business with no money. You don’t need capital. You need an in-demand skill. a smart solution that can be executed quickly with low overheads, and the right platform.

By Rachel Wells, Contributor