How To Start A Home Based Internet Business For Less Than $100

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Last week I posted an article about ‘How To Start An Internet Business From Home‘. In it, I talked about some of the easiest and most common types of online businesses you could start from home. However, most of the ideas I presented cost more than $100 to start. So, today I decided that I would present two Internet business ideas for the extremely fiscally challenged.

Now it is possible to start an Internet business for free. Yet, I do not recommend always looking to use free resources for your online business. I have found that you often get what you pay for, so “free” often ends up being a false economy. That being said, there is one type of business that you can start free that works well.

Starting an eBay Auction Business

Now I have already explained what you need to start an eBay business so I won’t repeat it here. (If you missed it please check out the link to last week’s article above). It’s free to get an eBay account and the only real start-up cost is paying for the things you are going to sell. eBay even gives you tons of free advice at their eBay University Learning Center.

Still, to be successful in this type of business you need to have something to sell, that people want to buy. Personally, I have never had much success from eBay mainly because I don’t really know what people want to buy. Nevertheless, many people have been extremely successful from it, so if you are looking at starting an Internet business for free it is hard to beat eBay.

However, there is one type of online business I have been successful with, that can also be started for free. This is setting up content blogs. But, if you want to be really successful with them I don’t recommend using the free options. Instead, I recommend a solution that costs just under $100.

The reason I recommend blogs and not building an actual website is that blogs are much more user friendly. For a beginner you pretty much just have to write and post and the blog software does everything else for you. This gives you more time to focus on your business instead of wasting it learning HTML, PHP, CGI etc.

Starting Your Own Content Blog

There are many popular places where you can start a blog for free. Two of the most popular are blogger and wordpress. These resources are fine if all you want to do is set up a hobby or personal blog, but in my opinion they don’t quite cut it for starting a business. If you have absolutely no money though these can be a good option.

If you have about $100 to spend though I have an option I think is a million times better. First you need to get a basic web hosting account (My favorite by far is BlueHost). Then you set-up your own custom wordpress blogs with your own domain. So instead of myblog.blogger.com you get www.myblog.com. The reason why I like bluehost so much is that they give you your first domain name ‘free’ (well it is included with hosting cost) and they make it really easy to install your first blog. The cost for a full year of hosting is about $95, but I think well worth it.

Before you start though you should pick a niche for your blog. I highly recommend niche inspector but this does cost over $100 just on its own. The good news is that Myleena Phan has a free guide on the site that allows you to do everything the software does just not nearly as quickly.

Finally, if you are setting up a blog you will want to make money from it. The easiest way is to just put up Google AdSense ads on it (like the ones on this blog). Other options included using affiliate programs (I recommend Associateprograms.com to find them) and getting paid to write content, such as payperpost.com. My recommendation is to use some combination of these methods as you will make more money that way.

So there you have it, two very different types of online businesses you can start for less than $100. You own personality and goals will determine which one you choose. Now who ever said starting an Internet business had to be expensive?