Dream of starting your own business, but don’t have a lot of cash in your pocket?
Whenever I come across articles like this one, I always see the same jobs mentioned over and over.
If you’re reading this—and my gut feeling is that you are—chances are you’ve come across the idea of becoming a virtual assistant before.
So, I’ve tried to go outside the box a little bit with these low cost start-up ideas. However, some ideas are too low cost and potentially profitable to leave out, so apologies if you see one or two that you’ve seen before.
With that out of the way, let’s get started (up).
Start a Power Washing Business
It may not sound like the most glamorous startup, but it seems like I’m constantly hearing about people who start ridiculously lucrative power washing/pressure washing businesses just by buying… a power washer/pressure washer.
And it makes sense, given what one can charge for this type of work, and the fairly low cost of a decent machine to do the job.
Especially since you only need one (and a vehicle to haul it around with). You can generally cover, or almost cover the cost of buying a pressure washer with the proceeds from your very first job. It probably won’t take long to cover the cost of replacing your “decent” washer with a more “pro” one.
Just make sure you know what you’re doing so you don’t damage anyone’s property, get the right insurance/licenses required in your area, and so forth.
If you’re willing to put in the work—and if the work is good—this is a very low cost startup that provides a service that will always be in high demand. Until Elon Musk invents self-cleaning concrete. Grab your hose and get started!
Auto Parts Sales
Ever considered an auto parts startup? Maybe you should.
There are people who have started auto parts sales businesses online with one single car part. They then reinvested the money back into other parts, which they then sold and reinvested, and so on and so forth.
Obviously it’s not always that simple—but the point is that it may be a lot simpler than you thought.
There are tons of online tutorials that can help teach you how to get started on this using marketplaces like eBay, just do a search and you’ll find plenty.
Of course, it helps to know a thing or two about cars, and it also helps to be passionate about cars. If you’re not, this one might be a steep uphill drive for you.
Yoga Instruction
If you don’t already do yoga, I’m not saying you should get into it (I’m not saying you shouldn’t, either). But if you already happen to have experience with yoga, you can brush up on your skills and create a yoga instruction startup that’s pretty darn low cost.
No studio required, and if you already have yoga equipment all you really need is a webcam and a clean background. Especially in the plague age, customers should be more willing to receive group or private yoga lessons via Zoom or other videoconferencing platforms than they might have been a few years ago.
You could also try putting your videos on YouTube and monetizing them with ads—starting up a Patreon as another source of income might be the way to go if you try this path. I think OnlyFans wants people to do things like this on its platform, but I wouldn’t recommend that, personally, for numerous reasons.
T-shirt Design
If you’ve never considered this one, you might think it requires an investment in some specialized printing equipment to get started. In actuality, it’s fairly low-cost and simple to start up in 2022. A few years back, this required a lot more investment.
To succeed today, you just need the talent and creativity to come up with some great designs or steal curate internet memes, since there are companies that will handle basically everything else for you—printing, shipping, and so forth.
Yes, they take a chunk of profit, but you don’t have to buy any equipment, and can just focus on design and marketing.
If you’re willing to dive in, you can always look into getting your own heat press and producing and shipping the shirts yourself, but it’s a lot more up front investment, more of a learning curve, and frankly, a lot more moving parts to worry about.
Graphic Design
Now, you may posit that you’re “not good enough” at graphic design to create a graphic design startup. That may be true right now.
However, I would respond with, “have you seen the ‘graphic design’ that a lot of businesses in your area are probably paying big bucks for?”
If it’s anything like where I live, sub-par logos, boring brochures, and abysmal social media graphics abound. I think you can do better than that—am I right?
If you have some talent, or are willing to learn, a graphic design startup only requires a decent design application (Photoshop, Illustrator—even Canva) and a few people you can convince to become clients to get the word of mouth started.
If you’re able to do well enough in the beginning, you can eventually begin hiring more experienced designers and begin to take on more of a managerial role in the business. And that’s kind of Silicon Valley-ish.
Plus, these days, Adobe only bleeds you a little bit every month, instead of making you pay a big upfront license cost one time, so there’s no longer a need to spend hundreds of dollars upfront on a copy of Photoshop. You can just pay them a little bit every month, forever, instead.
But hopefully in a few years, if you know the difference between RGB and CMYK and when to use Papyrus font (never), those monthly Adobe bills won’t be an issue for your startup.
