We will go into 6 businesses with low start up costs that can generate you 10K a month but without a lot of upfront money involved to get it started. When you are bootstrapping your business, it’s important to find a business with low start up costs that doesn’t require a lot of start up capital.
For the sake of respecting your time, I’ll just walk you through a quick timeline of events so that you can understand the first business idea that actually took me from 0 to 420K in my first year.
I’ve never shared this on here before, but here’s the sequence of events that will lead into the first business that has low startup capital.
About 8 years ago, I was barely making it by and decided to start getting into real estate by wholesaling houses.
Well, a little while into it we were doing about 10 houses a month, I decided to scale by marketing on radio, PPC, direct mail and even hired a company to run the ads for us.
Well Harvey hit Houston and we had no deals for 6 months, but we still had all the overhead from marketing. Well, we stopped the business and took a loss, but around that time we found a house that we decided to flip. It was recently flooded, but the numbers look good. To make a long story short, the house sat on the market for a while and we went negative on the flip.
So here I am, broke again, I have no money, and my wife is pregnant now with our second baby girl and I remember thinking to myself, you have to make something happen.
So out of sheer desperation I started looking around the house for things to sell to bring in some money. This brings me to the first business that I started that made me multi 6 figures in a single year, with low startup capital and that’s…
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What businesses have low startup costs?
After trying many businesses, here are some of the businesses that have low startup costs that can earn you $10,000 a month. Some business ideas to consider are reselling, Youtube, some forms of real estate, digital products, mobile car detailing, and pressure washing.
Reselling
This may sound more like a side hustle, but I treated this as a business and consistently year over year have made multiple 6 figures doing something as simple as reselling. We have 2 team members that we hired that have been with us ever since. This requires grit, consistent action taking and making deals happen.
But anyone can do it and it doesn’t require much upfront money to start. I started with some old music speakers I had and an old canon camera. I sold those and made about $800. I then took $800 and found more items to sell. I kept reinvesting every penny. Eventually I had a lot of inventory but was low on cash, so I got a high interest loan, and bought even more stuff to sell online.
I didn’t even realize how much I was making until I looked back at the year and realized I had grossed $420,000. This changed my family’s life. So, for you to duplicate this, you can start with stuff you already own and list it for sale online on FB marketplace or eBay.
You can go to local auctions, online auctions, thrift stores, estate sales and garage sales and find deals there. Once you find something, look it up on your phone and see what it resells for and negotiate your offer price. Remember to factor in supplies and the cost of shipping.
The next business idea, I’m doing right now, that has low startup cost is..
YouTube
Look, YouTube can be an amazing way to build your brand and audience. It can change your life and you can monetize it in so many ways.
Compared to many other businesses, starting a YouTube channel requires very little upfront capital. You can get started with just a camera, microphone, and basic video editing software.
YouTube has a lot of ways from which you can get paid from, like ads, channel memberships, sponsored content, and merchandise sales. That’s just from the YouTube side, you can also monetize it by selling digital products, memberships, or coaching.
Starting a YouTube channel is only a good business idea if you’re willing to put in the effort, consistently upload, create high-quality content, and engage with your audience. It’s important to approach it with a business mindset, focusing on growth, monetization strategies, and building a brand beyond YouTube as your channel expands.
Making 10K a month on YouTube is very obtainable once you have a decent size audience, but working on getting there will require dedication.
Next, we have…
Some Forms of Real Estate
The 2 real estate strategies that come to mind are wholesaling real estate and buying and selling land. This isn’t limited to these, because with flips and other real estate strategies you could always partner with someone or find private money.
But if you strictly wanted to self-fund this start up then you will need money for marketing to get in front of sellers.
Back to the wholesaling story, when I started I barely had that much capital. So I would print the letters, stuff envelopes and send about 200 mailers a week to sellers. If you don’t know what wholesaling is..
It’s a real estate strategy where you find off market properties, negotiate a purchase price with the seller, lock it up under contract to purchase a property and then assign your equitable interest to another buyer that has the capital or will use hard money to close on that contract. The wholesaler essentially acts as a middleman, without actually taking ownership or buying the property and make an assignment fee for the difference. So if you put it under contract for 100K and assign it to the cash buyer for 110K, you would make a 10K assignment fee.
So, the steps would be.
- Finding a property.
- Negotiating and putting it under contract.
- Assigning the Contract to an investor.
- Collect your Assignment Fee once you close with title.
With flipping land, you can also wholesale and use the same steps as I just mentioned, but if you want to take these down yourself then start marketing to landowners, negotiating and signing a purchase agreement, opening title and buying the lot. Once you own the lot you can flip it for more or seller-finance it and make some passive income.
This will have some higher startup costs, but you could focus on lower priced lots and your overhead would be the acquisition and marketing costs.
Next, we have…
Digital Products
This is a really low-cost way that has the potential to make you a lot of money.
A digital product is created and available online and consumed in a digital format. It’s delivered electronically, so there isn’t any physical production or shipping. The best thing about a digital product is you can create it once and sell it over and over again. Here are some ideas on digital products that you could create and sell.
Online Courses: Educational, coaching or training programs delivered through online platforms, like your own website, click funnels, Kajabi, Gumroad and a lot others. There are influencers making millions from their online course with very little overhead.
You could also create…
- Software Applications
- Mobile Apps
- Digital Art
- Music and Audio
- Templates and Themes
- Stock Media: So digital content like photos, videos, illustrations, or audio clips that are licensed for others to download.
- Subscription-based Services
- Digital Downloads: like documents, spreadsheets, fonts, presets, or software installers.
Digital products are instantly delivered, very scalable, and you have the ability to reach a global audience. They can be created once and sold repeatedly without increasing the cost of additional production or distribution costs.
Next, we have…
Mobile Car detailing
I remember thinking about starting this business a long time ago. This is a great low start up business because you don’t need a location. Only the cleaning supplies and a car to get you to your customers.
To make money with a mobile car detailing business: you should first.
- Define your services and set competitive pricing.
- Invest in quality equipment and supplies.
- Create a strong brand and market your services online.
- Network with local businesses for referrals.
- Provide outstanding customer service to create word-of-mouth.
- Efficiently schedule and plan your routes.
- Upsell additional services or add-ons.
- Track your profit and loss and scale
The average cost for a complete detail is about $250 a car, so to make 10K a month you would need to detail 40 cars a month, 10 a week or 2 a day. This is very achievable if you brand your business and grow your client base and repeat customers.
The next low-cost business you can create is…
Pressure Washing
This is similar to the car detailing business but you’re offering a different service. This is also a low startup cost business that you can make 10K a month if you take it seriously.
To make money with a power washing company and to have the greatest chance of success you should.
- Offer a range of services.
- Price your service competitively.
- Invest in quality equipment.
- Build a strong brand and market your services.
- Provide excellent customer service.
- Form partnerships with local businesses.
- Expand your services if possible.
- Focus on repeat business.
- Keep track of your profit and loss and scale
After doing some research online upflip stated the average pressure washing business made nearly $96,000. That’s pretty impressive because most power washing companies are one-person operations.
You can start small and as you get paid clients; you can reinvest into better equipment and scale to 10K A MONTH.
TO START you may need to invest in a:
- Pressure Washer
- Vehicle: to get to your appointments
- Auto Insurance
- Website and social media pages
- Nozzles and Hoses
- Marketing expense to get your name out there
- And Cleaners and chemicals
