The PR Girl Toolbox

10 Online Businesses You Can Start For Under $500

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There was once a time when everyone had to stand in the queue and wait for their turn to have a test or interview and get granted with a job! The times of standing unnoticed in the queue have passed and technology has set in to help millions generate an income from the comfort of their homes.

Today’s Internet offers a huge platform to carry out your own business, be it large or small. With a little bit of dedication and hard work, you can setup your very own online business with a very small investment of just $500 or less. Millions of people are using the Internet to create some some form of income. There are a total of 10 business ideas discussed in the following paragraphs with which you can start your own online business for less than $500. So, Let’s have a look.

1. Start Your Own Blog

More and more people are becoming self sufficient by starting their own blogs. Starting a blog can be a great way to earn money online whilst still doing something that you enjoy. You can choose the topic and if you do something that you enjoy writing about then it won’t really be like working at all. Gardening, Celebrity Gossip, Shopping, Shoes, Travel, Food, where ever your interest lies, you can blog about it and turn it into a part for full time income.

Now, you might be thinking “How do I make Money” by running a blog! Well, there are a number of ways to make money from blogging. You can simply place ads alongside your content. services like adsense.com makes this simple and offers handsome payments for posting their ads on a blog or website.

You can also earn from blogs by recommending products and services alongside your content. Doing so will earn you some cash as commissions or as referral fees.

Want to get started? You can have your very own blog up and running in no time with our step by step guide on how to start a blog here.

2. Create A Website About A Topic You Are Interested In

Creating a website is the most preferred way to do business online. If you are planning to establish a business online, you need to have a face to represent and a website is essential. With a website, you can earn by advertising, product recommendations, direct sales or selling your services.

You can also make very good money by creating websites and then once they are established selling (or flipping) them to other owners or investors. Websites like flippa.com have made this process much easier in recent years.

However, while running a website you should always try to provide valuable information. People search the internet to look for solutions, so if you can provide solutions to your readers you will be rewarded with more traffic and more earnings.  As traffic flow increases, your website’s value does also, so what are you waiting for. Check out our step by step guide to creating your own website.

3. Become a Freelancer

There are many websites over the Internet that act as a meeting place for freelancers and clients.Whether your skills lie in web design, coding, app development, graphic design, resume writing, you name it, there are people out there right now who will happily pay you for your help.

You can register yourself on sites like elance.com and Freelancer.com and declare your areas of specialization. Clients will hire you on different projects relevant to your area of specialization.

4. Write Content for Other Businesses

If you are fond of writing or have writing as your passion, writing content for different websites and online businesses can be a profitable way to earn some money. Millions of people are making full time and part time earnings from writing articles, books and web content for different websites and online businesses.

There are thousands of websites that offer you the opportunity to earn money by writing general and SEO content for different companies. You can even become a ghost writer and write for bloggers who don’t have time to skill set required to do the job themselves.

Websites like iwriter.com have made it easy for wanna be be writers to get started, you can simply register and start writing, and as long your content is of a decent quality, you can earn good money doing it.

5. Become A Video Blogger on Youtube.com

How Do I Make Money? Video blogging or vlogs have become a successful way to earn substantial amounts of money. And Youtube.com provides the best platform for the operation. You can develop videos about anything that interests you, and post them on the site to start getting noticed. Once you get into the eyes of the users and earn some popularity, you can make money in a lot of ways.

Following are the ways in which you can earn money from video blogging:

• Simply by creating a popular video or channel you can earn a % of the ad revenue that YouTube.com generats from your videos.
• Create a video to provide information on a particular product or topic. In the end, provide the viewer with options to purchase or request for more info.
• You can put on advertisements or promote products of other companies through an affiliate link at the end of your video.
• You can find sponsors who would like to put their ads on your video.
• Accept sponsorships of companies that want to reach to your viewers.

6. Create And Sell Gigs on Fiverr

Fiverr is an online marketplace that allows anyone to sign up and sell their services for just $5. Your service can be anything from creating a logo, doing a voice over, creating a video testimonial or product review, social sharing of content. If you are interested it is well worth spending some time browsing through the gigs other people are offering on fiverr and seeing which ones are selling. Then you can create your own offer that reflects what you have to offer.

Plenty of people have used fiverr to generate thousands of dollars a month in additional income, and some have even turned it into a full time income.

7. Import Products Cheaply From China & Sell Them On Amazon

Sites like amazon.com and even ebay.com offer the perfect platform to carry out your own buying and selling business. You can simply buy the most preferred products from China on lower prices and resell them on these sites on higher prices. This business can be easily pursued from home and requires very little initial investment if you start small and build your business over time.

Amazon even have a service that takes care of all your product warehousing and fulfillment services for you, so you don’t even have to worry about that. Just buy your product, ship it in bulk directly to Amazon then market it and sell it, and they will take care of the rest.

There are thousands of people who are running a full or part time business doing exactly this. Some even generate up to 6 figure incomes per month with this business model.

8. Become a Freelance Photographer and Sell Your Photos on Stock Image Websites

Another way to earn money over the Internet is by selling your photographs. If you are a freelance photographer or even am amateur photographer , you can sell your shots on various stock photograph-selling websites and make quite a handsome earnings. Companies from all over the world need photos of just about everything imaginable. road signs, landscapes, doors, balls, grass, trees, beaches, sky-scapes, you name it, people need them and are happy to pay for them. This very website you are reading spends money every month on buying stock images to help illustrate our articles. Someone has to take the photos and get paid for it, so why not make it you?

Check out istockphoto.com and bigstockphoto.com to learn more about selling your photos.

9. Build An Income As An Affiliate Marketer (no need for a website)

As mentioned under point 5, you can earn a lot of money simple by becoming an affiliate marketer. The most interesting fact is you can do the job even if you don’t own a website. You can obviously take advantage of social media sites and video streaming sites, Press Releases and other Web 2.0 sites. Whilst, we personally believe that you will earn better money by having your own website, there is no reason you can’t get started using these methods, and then once you start making some money “upgrade” to your own website or blog. There are many websites that offer opportunities of becoming an affiliate member and earn money by marketing their products and services.

10. Design Smart, Funny or Catchy T-Shirts & Sell Them Through Facebook (TeeSpring.com)

A creative way to do business is by creating t-shirts and selling them on teespring.com. Start by creating a t-shirt with your own ideas and sharing their pictures on Facebook. Once you get enough likes and people interested teespring.com will produce the product and start selling them for you. Then every time one of your t-shirts sells, you earn a percentage of the profit without having to invest even a single penny. There are people earning tens of thousands of dollars a month doing this, all you need to do is come up with the ideas and slogans and see what people like and don’t like.