6 Quick Ways To Make Money Without Spending A Dime From dropshipping on eBay to managing Instagram influencers, here are businesses that require zero investment.
By Marcus Cook
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All of us want to make more money. However, we have been led to believe you have to spend money to make money. Or we've been told to be successful, we have to be the hardest worker in the room. The truth is, making money isn't as time consuming or expensive as it's made out to be. The issue is, there aren't any sources that show the various ways you can make money quick with no risks.
These 6 strategies offer fast ways to start making money and do not require any monetary investment. These ideas are all actionable, take no more than 1 hour a day, and can be monetized within one month.
1) Dropship on eBay
Dropshipping has taken the world by storm recently and it's no surprise why. Dropshipping is when the retailer (you) does not keep goods in stock. Instead, you transfer the customers' orders to a manufacturer. They then fulfill the order and ship the item to the customer. By design, this method leaves you with a low-risk business model because you run an inventory-free business.
There are costs associated with traditional dropshipping as you need to pay monthly for an eCommerce platform like Shopify. You may also end up paying for other tools like an email service provider, lead generation software, and landing page builders. But the highest cost for all traditional drop shippers is the cost to advertise. When you launch a Shopify store, you will start with no traffic. That means you will usually have to spend money on Google ads and Facebook ads to drive traffic to your store. To avoid those advertising costs, a great platform to launch your eCommerce business on is eBay.
You don't need to spend money advertising your product as there are over 180 million eBay users worldwide. And eBay offers 50 free listings a month or up to 1000 for free with an eBay store subscription.
Now there are limitations to this business model as you can't capture email addresses or retarget customers. Still, this business model takes no money to start, and some people make 6-7 figures a year doing this.
Related: 50 Ideas for a Lucrative Side Hustle
2) Create an Instagram theme page
An Instagram theme page is an Instagram account that posts content around one topic consistently. You have probably seen this in the form of funny videos of cats or motivational quotes. Most people don't think much of theme pages, but there is serious money to be made.
Once you create an established page of around 20-30k followers, then you can start charging for sponsorships. You will see that around the 20k mark, brands will start reaching out to you for promotions. What you can also do is flip Instagram accounts. After you have built your theme page, you can reach out to bigger pages in your niche and ask them if they would be interested in buying your account.
Related: 7 Marketing Tips to Help Grow Your Brand on Instagram
3) Become an Airbnb host
If you have a spare bedroom in your house, you can start monetizing that space by becoming an Airbnb host. They make the process effortless. All you need to do is take images of your home, fill out a brief description, and upload your listing on their platform. It is entirely free to list your home on Airbnb. Just like eBay, you don't have to pay to promote your house as Airbnb already has over 100 million users on its platform.
How much money you can make through the platform depends on your location. You can use Airbnb's calculator to get an estimate of how much money you could make a day.
4) Sell used textbooks
If you want to find a goldmine of valuable items, go to a college campus at the end of the academic year. Most college students throw away perfectly good items that they don't plan on bringing home. One item in particular that they will rarely keep is their textbooks. Although the textbook may have no value to them, some businesses will pay a lot of money for it. Websites like Sell Back Your Book will buy almost any textbook and pay for your shipping costs.
To find students looking to sell their textbooks, you can set up shop in a high traffic area of a University and advertise you will buy textbooks. When someone asks if you'd buy their textbook, you look up the book on the website and see how much the website would buy the book for. From there, you tell the person looking to sell their book that you'll buy their book for a fraction of the price you can sell it for. Again, you incur no inventory risk as we have a guaranteed buyer once you acquire the book.
Related: How To Sell Yourself
5) Manage Youtube Influencers
Most Youtubers start their accounts because they love talking about their topic of interest. What they don't know is that if they build a strong following, they can easily monetize their account. What you should do is find Youtubers in a specific niche and ask them how much they would charge for a promotion in their video. Most won't know what to say as they do it more for fun than for-profit and will give a low number.
From there, with their permission, email companies in that niche and say you manage this Youtuber. In the email, ask if the company would be interested in having the Youtuber promote their product in a video. When they ask for pricing, give a number higher than what the Youtuber asks for. Make sure to be completely transparent with the Youtuber that you are making money from these product placements. Usually, they will be fine with this as long as you pay them what they ask for.
6) Print on-demand t-shirts
Print-on-demand is a similar business model to dropshipping as you only process orders after they come in. Now, all colleges have various organizations, clubs, and teams that they make t-shirts for every year. These organizations don't usually go price shopping for the best t-shirt deals, which means it is easy to undercut the competition.
First, go to a school's directory and find every student organization on campus. From there, send them a message saying you provide high-quality, custom made t-shirts and ask them for their t-shirt design and how much they are currently paying. When the organization sends you their design and price, you can input their design to your print provider and see if you can get a better price. You want to make sure that you can undercut their current provider while still making a healthy profit for yourself.
