711: 8 Online Businesses You Can Start With (Almost) No Money

0:00Let's be real. Nobody starts a business for the joy of calculating tax withholdings. That's where our partner Gusto comes in to take the stress out of payroll, benefits, and HR so you can focus on why you started your business in the first place. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So that means you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. I'm talking about automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers' comp, 401k, you name it.

0:34Gusto makes it simple and all with no hidden fees, no surprises. Plus, if you have any questions, their team of certified HR experts are standing by to help. It's no wonder why more than 400 ,000 small businesses already trust Gusto and why it's the number one rated payroll software for fall 2025, according to the review site G2. So try Gusto today at gusto.com slash side hustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash side hustle. One more time, gusto, G-U-S-T-O dot com slash side hustle. There's a lot of buzz around faceless YouTube channels, AI generated content, AI agencies, dropshipping, vibe coding, print on demand.

1:20And yes, they're all viable options. But today I want to share eight realistic ways to make money online, even if you're not an expert, even if you're not super technical, and even if you've tried some other side hustles and failed in the past. First on my list is hands down the easiest way I've ever made money online, and that's through the Amazon Influencer Program. How it works is you request to join. You do need to have some level of social media following to qualify, but you don't need millions of followers to get accepted. After that, you create short product review videos of items that are sold on Amazon.

1:53You didn't have to buy them there, just as long as they're sold there. Amazon then puts your videos on the relevant product pages and when someone buys the product after watching your video rewards you with a little bit of commission. Now I started by just looking around the office. I've got this microphone arm and this standing desk and the standing desk mat and the ring light and the teleprompter and the podcasting headphones. All sorts of stuff, right? And I'm over$2 ,000 in total earnings including over$300 this year when I haven't uploaded a single new video, I don't link. So imagine what might happen if you took it seriously and were consistent with creating those videos.

2:31Yeah, I think most of what makes you successful as a product reviewer has remained constant. It's work. You have to put in the time. You have to be fairly consistent. There were a lot of people who started around the same time I did who worked really hard for six months, made 500 videos, made$20 ,000,$30 ,000 off that, but then just burnt out. And so I think the best advice I can give anyone now is set manageable goals. You know, do five videos a week, but do that consistently over a period of several months. And then it starts to compound it. And if you're only making pennies in the beginning, just know it's a numbers game.

3:10And, you know, it might not be my best product review. I did a review in my first year. I was about six months in and I was starting to figure out what things sold better and what was trending. And I found something that popped off and it made me$17 ,000. And I have not had that kind of success since then. However, that product still makes me a few hundred dollars every single month. And if I had only done my first 400 videos, I never would have had that product. And so it's just being consistent, looking for different things and improving over time as far as your product selection and as well as the style of the videos, things like that.

3:45You just get better at it. And that's what's kind of cool here is the videos can have a really long shelf life where, like I said, only uploaded eight last year. None of them were necessarily great sellers, but the stuff from the previous year was still making sales. And so if you get something that sticks and hopefully doesn't get flooded with a lot of other videos or for whatever reason, yours is the one that gets shown, like you said, it can drive this passive income really for months or years. Yeah. And that's the amazing thing. If I stopped making videos today, I'd probably still make at least$25 ,000 this year just because I have that catalog.

4:24And that's really cool to think, you know, maybe I do need to take some time off. Maybe I've never taken more than two weeks off, but if I took a whole month off, it probably wouldn't matter at all. I'd still be making about the same amount of money. So I love that about the program. I've come across some Amazon influencers who are getting paid at least three different ways First, they built their reputation to the point where brands now reach out and pay them to create the videos. They send them the product for free and then pay them a little bit to do the review. I believe Tyler mentioned getting paid by brands to do that as well.

4:57Then you can earn your Amazon influencer commissions when it sells. And if you're posting on your own platform like YouTube, there's the potential to earn even more through creator connections. And then earlier this year, I met this guy who every few months would need to clear out his inventory. He was getting enough products in for free. He needed to resell them to make room for more. I think Tyler mentioned giving them away to his students. He was like a teacher by day job. But this other guy was actually reselling them, sometimes on Facebook Marketplace, sometimes on eBay, and sometimes through the live shopping app Whatnot.

5:31I don't know if you've used that, but apparently very popular. That is online business, no startup cost. Number one, the Amazon influencer program. Number two is freelancing and consulting, which is admittedly a really broad bucket, but solving a problem for another person or another business and getting paid for it. Really low startup costs. In fact, you can probably just raise your hand and start calling yourself a freelancer or consultant today. Now, the premise here is super simple. Like I said, figure out a problem you can solve and go connect with people who are experiencing that problem.

6:04Zero startup costs. But there's a couple parts. First, you got to identify the service. Now for that, I recommend some introspection, right? Like you got to take inventory of your skills. What have you gotten paid to do in the past? What do other people ask you for help with? What do you never get tired of talking about? For me, like dissecting different business ideas. How'd you come up with that, right? It's like kind of the origin story of the Cy Nussel show. Another way to reframe it is what do other people irrationally suck at? That's another way of finding out what comes natural to you. Now, one of my all-time favorite tactics is to piggyback on the popularity of an existing software tool.

6:39So maybe you're a power user or you're an early adopter of a particular program and could help people with that. It is a tried and true side hustle framework, and we've seen people build successful piggybacking businesses on top of SEMrush, FreshBooks, QuickBooks, Asana, Pipedrive, Salesforce, even like Microsoft Excel, something super old school, right? For Christy DeSilva, she happened to be a fan of ClickUp and HoneyBook. And even though she started out as a general virtual assistant, she quickly found that the work she enjoyed the most was helping clients set up systems and processes inside their organization.

7:17And so when she niched down to doing just that stuff. She 10X'd her effective hourly rate. I started my rates a lot lower than other people may have been charging because I'm like, I'm not like a top tier expert yet, but I know that I know a lot more about these products than the people that I'm serving and these softwares than the people that I'm serving. And so I was still able to charge more technically hourly, except a lot of our stuff is flat right now. But for example, yeah, making about 30 to 40 bucks an hour as a VA, where now I charge$300 an hour for a strategy session, like, so crazy that jump.

8:01But now being an expert in this for four years, it's really cool to see where we've been. Yeah, that's worth pausing on. Like, that's the power of niching down and becoming an expert on the thing. Yep. So that's the first part, figuring out what service you could potentially offer. The second part is maybe a little harder, and that is the connecting with clients piece of the puzzle. For that, Christy turned to YouTube. We get the majority of our leads from YouTube, and I will say like probably 80 % of the time people come on, they're like, oh my gosh, it's so nice to meet you. I've been subscribed to your channels for like two or three years, and they feel like they already know me, even though I have no idea who they are yet.

8:41But it's funny because it's a huge thing in sales is that like no like and trust factor. And we already solved that piece before we even ever get on a sales call. Yeah. You know, you're showing your face, your voice. Yeah. You build a lot of trust that way. Deciding what type of content to make, any sort of like keyword research tools or search volume that goes into it. I'm just looking at like broad Google searches, you know, 400 ,000 monthly searches for ClickUp and then 60 ,000 for HoneyBook. And so there's some decent like top level search volume. But then I imagine it kind of goes into that long tail for like how to run your agency in HoneyBook, like more specific type of searches.

9:23We actually really love VidIQ and we'll look at what performed best on our channels or like what's ranking highest. Like for example, our ClickUp dashboards video was ranking highest for like a long time. Our how to use HoneyBook and ClickUp like yearly videos, like in 2024, those always do really well as well. So we're like, okay, we'll always do those in the beginning of the year. But we'll look back at our previous content, what's highly ranking, knowing people want more of that. And then we'll really just start doing long tail keyword research in vidIQ, you know, kind of going down a rabbit hole of like, okay, How are these ranking in terms of search volume and things like that?

10:06Is there a minimum search volume that is interesting to you or worthwhile to make the video about? It's more like how it scores in vidIQ. I think we're looking over like a 60 or 70 ranking. Which is a combination of volume and competitiveness. Yeah, exactly. And so we also, speaking of competitiveness, we'll definitely do competitor research as well. because we have like a few competitors. We're very niche, but we absolutely have competitors. And so we'll look at their channels, what's ranking high on their channels. And by no means do we ever just copy their video, but we'll be like, okay, cool.

10:46They did something on this specific topic. How can we do something similar, but have our own spin? And so we'll do that research as well. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. seeing what's working out there. And then this is, you know, I probably have talked about this before, but I would come up with this content idea and it would be something super broad, like, you know, ways to make money on the internet or something. And then of course, Google that and well, shoot, there's already a dozen people have already written this article. Yep. I guess I better go back to the drawing board and come up with another topic.

11:17It's like, no, that's still viable. You can still get traffic and eyeballs and visitors and customers from this. You just got to put your own unique spin on it. You got to make something that's different and better than what's already out there. And that was a little bit of a shift here. And it sounds like the same thing. Okay. We can look at the competitor channels. We can see what's working for them and say, okay, that, and just trying to reverse engineer that, you know, followed the same people doing like a software review or tutorial type of videos, like for, you know, fill in the blanks. I was like, well, I don't use that tool, so I can't make that one, but I could do the same thing for this app or this software.

11:54It's like, here's a template that clearly worked and kind of fill in the blanks in that case. Exactly. Exactly. We also will absolutely use AI. So like chat GPT, when we're content planning, we'll be like, we're working on a series for click up for agencies, help us grab some like highly SEO ranking topics for these videos. And then it'll spit out a bunch of things. Then we know our ideal client more than anyone. so we can guide it in the right direction, but we'll also just use it to ideate and get inspiration from as well is super helpful. Do you feel the need to publish consistently or is it like, look, we got this stuff out there.

12:32It's evergreen. We've got a consistent lead flow or do you have to keep kind of feeding the machine? Right now, we feel like it's pertinent to keep feeding the machine just so we're constantly ranking. We have some videos that are upwards of 40 ,000, 50 ,000 views. So those are still bringing in us like warm leads and like hot traffic. But what we're seeing now is that we niched into systems and HoneyBook and ClickUp, but we're actually niching a little bit further in the recent months into seven to eight figure agencies. So we have a lot of really good content out there that's serving the broad audience of people looking for ClickUp and HoneyBook, how to get started, things like that.

13:17But now we really want to start focusing our content on seven to eight figure agencies and where they're having their specific troubles and hurdles in their business. And then relating it to, okay, you're having this issue. Then how do we solve that with HoneyBook, with ClickUp? And so I think that's where we could still be getting leads from YouTube, even if we stopped our content right now, our content machine. but I think we want to start tailoring it more to the ideal client that we want to bring in. So prospective clients watch your videos, they build a trusting relationship with you, and then when they need additional help, you're the one who gets the call.

13:58Again, this was attraction marketing or pull marketing where you're answering the questions your ideal customers might have in video form, and then you invite them to take the next step if they need more help. Now, other ways we've seen guests land freelance clients is through, one way would be through strategic partnerships, thinking of who your target customers are already doing business with. And it might only take one or two before you have enough lead flow to meet your goals. The example that comes to mind is Carter Osborne, who was doing college admissions essay prep consulting. And his strategic partner was someone in town who did broader admissions consulting, but didn't like doing the essay work, so it was a natural referral partnership for her to send leads his way.

14:44Now we've got more zero or super low-cost online business ideas coming up right after this. So far we've covered the Amazon Influencer Program and freelancing or consulting as some no-cost online business ideas. Number three on our list is digital product sales, And what I love about this model is it's one where you can create something once. It could be a printable file, a template, a budgeting spreadsheet, a form, a customizable chart. It could even be an online course, an e-book, or something like that. But some digital product, a meal planner, a piece of art even. But you can create it once, and you can sell it over and over again.

15:26My friend Cody is a pro at this. And last year he took a brand new Etsy shop from zero to a thousand dollars a month in sales in like three or four months. I was putting up about 20 to 30 products per week. I actually got my first sale on day three. And so for those who don't know, I actually documented this whole process like day one to 116. I took a video almost every single day, kind of just sharing live updates. I was sharing screenshots of my shop. And on day three, I had my first sale, which was great. I think I probably only had five or six products up at that point. But I was adding like 20 to 30 a week.

15:59And that's cool because there's not a lot of social proof on the channel where it's like, you know, zero sales, zero reviews. Zero reviews. I'm taking a chance on this guy. That's the beauty of this side hustle, though, is you don't need an audience. You don't need an email list. You don't need really anything. Like if you understand keyword research and SEO, that is the most important skill. You can be a 5 out of 10 graphic designer. A lot of people think they have to be like this graphic design wizard in order to sell this stuff. You can be a five out of 10 graphic designer. As long as you understand keyword research and SEO and you go after those, the riches in the niches and you go after those kind of longer tail, less targeted keywords, people are going to buy your stuff.

16:38Now the sticklers are going to note that, Hey, wait a minute. It costs 20 cents for every product that you upload to Etsy. So you're right. Not completely free, but pretty close to it. Now, Cody mentioned using tools like eRank, a software tool to get an estimate for search volume and competitiveness of your specific product ideas, which does have, eRank does have a free plan, at least as of press time. But here's how I look at it. Start to stack up these evergreen digital assets that can make sales month after month. Is there a minimum search volume that's too low to bother with? I usually don't touch anything under 50.

17:16And some people think that's crazy. Some people, some other Etsy quote unquote gurus don't touch things that are under like 200. But for me, I'm like, there's 50 people searching for this a month and there's zero competition. And I can scoop up, say, even 20 % of them, 10 people buy my$5 thing. I like to think of these each as like a little mini passive income machine. Like that's 50 extra dollars per month. And that 50 adds up. Like if you can get an army of these$50 per month products, even if they don't have a lot of search volume, you get 20 of those going. That's$1 ,000 per month and mostly passive income.

17:47It goes back to the beginning of planting these little digital money seeds. It cost you a little bit of time and 20 cents to create this thing. And now it's out there in the world and can earn passive income for you. I think that's really exciting. If that's got you excited, make sure to check out the full interview with Cody, episode 665 in your Side Hustle Show feed, or download Cody's list of some hot selling seasonal products to get your creative juices flowing, which I will link up in the show notes for this episode. But that is low-cost online business number three, the digital product business.

18:24Number four is called Rank and Rent. In this model, you build out a portfolio of websites targeting local service provider searches, like Dallas Carpet Cleaning or Gravel Driveways Boston. And once those sites have some exposure in Google, you rent them out to qualified local service providers at anywhere from$500 to$1 ,500 per month. After all, those rankings in Google can be pretty valuable. They're sought after digital real estate. So what makes a good niche here? I like something that's service-based, that you don't have a storefront. Basically, like a plumber, the concrete guy or roofer, you go to the client side to work.

19:11So it's not that people come into your office. So service-based business. The second one is I really like those high ticket type of work, like concrete, driveways, patios, earthwork, demolition, roofing, nothing sexy, nothing sexy. But those niche work. Yeah, it just, they work. And that's because the value of these jobs is worth quite a bit to the service provider. And so they're just like, if we can get more leads in, if we can book up our calendar, then yeah, it's worthwhile. We'll just add this to our monthly marketing budget. Yeah, exactly. Anything above 50K should work, the population-wise.

19:56I'm talking about 400K population-wise seems to be a very sweet spot. So it's not too big city. Your local competition is not that strong and it's easy and you have enough volume to the population produce enough leads, enough search volume that is going to help you to rent the site out. So the research is the first part. Now from there, you got to find a company on the ground that does good work and is hungry to grow their business and doesn't really want to bother with the local SEO side of things themselves. You're essentially becoming a line item on that company's marketing budget. They're outsourcing some of their lead generation to you.

20:36And as long as you deliver, those clients tend to stick around for a long time. When we recorded Meow, that was Meow Rios in that clip. She had a portfolio of like 20 or 30 of these income generating sites. So it's a model that can be pretty scalable once you figure it out. Now, for more on this, I encourage you to check out the full interview with Meow or Luke Vanderveer. we did an episode, I want to say 448 on his rank and rent business model. He also runs website rental coaching, website rental coaching.com slash SHN, I believe is my referral link for that. But I will link up both of those interviews in the show notes for this episode.

21:13And that is online business model number four. Yes, you have some hosting costs, you probably have some domain registration fees. But other than that, relatively low overhead, high profit margin type of business. The fifth online business you can start for$0 is UGC, user-generated content. In fact, you can start this with just your phone and the stuff you have lying around your house. This year, I connected with Megan Collier, a UGC creator here in the Seattle area, who said that she made four videos of products that she liked, that she already had, and that she used those to seed her portfolio.

21:46The portfolio was the main thing that I sent to brands, though, when I was reaching out. And I was reaching out to brands two ways. One is Instagram DM. I would like literally just scroll Instagram, look at the ads that I was seeing on Instagram and then go and follow the brand if I wasn't already following them. And then I would DM them and say, hey, I'm Megan. I'm a UGC creator. I've been seeing your ads. Your product looks like something I could totally use myself. And I'd love to be connected with the person in charge of handling partnerships. And I got several responses from that. That's how I landed my second UGC deal.

22:24The first one, though, that you mentioned, the$750 deal was like 10 days into my UGC journey. And that was with an app company that I just ended up emailing, cold pitching via email. And yeah, they ended up hiring me for three videos initially. And then I wanted to make more money and prove that I could actually do this and make a good chunk of money for my first UGC deal. And so I ended up, I didn't tell them, but I made five total videos for them. And I was like, Hey, I ended up having a ton of like ideas for you guys. And I have five videos if you want to buy the other two. And they were like, Oh my gosh, yes, a hundred percent.

23:01We need all the videos. So then it ended up being about $750 for those five videos. Okay. So step one, create the portfolio. Step two, start doing the brand outreach. And it sounds like I'm just going to scroll my feed and show who's showing up in the ads. I know they're investing in user acquisition and growth marketing, so they might be more receptive to this, which is my approach would have been like, well, what are the top 25, 50 brands that I already know, like, and trust and I use? And I'm going to start there. It sounds like maybe that comes down the road. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think that what works, the only way to land the deal is literally by connecting with brands.

23:44So it doesn't matter if you're going to DM, if you're going to email, if you're just going to start with the brands that you already like, because that also is super powerful because you're coming to the brand saying, Hey, I've been using this product for X amount of months or X amount of years. They've already got that. Like it's a bonus for them because they have a real customer that's going to be willing to make some really authentic, genuine content. So yeah, a hundred percent. You can start with brands. You already know you already like, you can quite literally, this is what I tell people if they're kind of having a block on who to reach out to is take a pen and piece of paper or take your notes app on your phone, go walk around your house and look at all the products that you have, that you've purchased, that you use on a consistent basis.

24:27I can almost guarantee most of those brands are posting consistently on social media. And probably a lot of them are also working already with UGC creators. Yeah. And it's not just, you know, I'm thinking of like the closet and shoes and clothes, but also food and snacks and toys and games, like all sorts of stuff. So much. And even software, like you said, the first deal was an app company. Yeah, yeah. I've worked with so many apps, software companies that I've used for years and just, you know, they just hired me to do UGC. So yeah, the it's whenever people ask me, like, what kind of brands are using UGC creators?

25:07It's truly a mix. It's across the board. I've worked with fashion, like clothing companies, software, tech companies, like you as a, you doing podcasts, like I'm looking at your headphones, right? Your mic, like you, whatever you're using as a podcaster, so many brands are using, you know, user generated content in their marketing strategies. Okay. So that's what they're getting out of the deal is we're going to hire Megan or a hundred people like Megan to fill out our own content feed. Like it's, there's always another day coming around. There's always going to be needing more stuff to post. And so this is a way to kind of crowdsource that in an authentic looking way or, you know, from actual users of the thing.