5 Best Low-Investment Business Ideas You Can Start Online
Starting a business can seem like a mountain of a task. But the amount of time, money, and risk involved all depends on the business idea you chase.
Contrary to popular belief, there are many ways to start a business that let you focus less on the logistics and upfront costs and more on getting started.
These low-investment business ideas make a great entry point for beginners, bootstrappers, or anyone with a busy schedule, letting you pick up a side business without having to drop everything else.
You still need to come up with a solid idea, build a brand, put effort into marketing, and provide excellent customer service. But you can bypass many traditional startup costs, such as initial inventory, warehousing, and retail space.
Best low-investment business ideas you can start on the side
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Partner with a drop shipper
Buy stock, store it, pick it, pack it, ship it. Managing inventory can be a big commitment when you’re running a business.
Drop-shipping is a fulfillment model where a third-party supplier stores and ships inventory to customers on your behalf. You just need to make the sales and pass orders on to your supplier; you don’t need to handle the products yourself.
You can curate products from one or more suppliers into your online store under a theme that focuses on a specific niche, like gear for yoga enthusiasts or water bowls for dog owners. When a customer buys a product from you, the order is sent to your supplier, who fulfills it on your behalf. However, you are still responsible for your marketing and customer service.
There are both local and overseas suppliers you can work with, as long as you can establish a relationship with them built on trust—and unreliable suppliers will reflect poorly on your brand.
Drop-shipping is a low-investment way to test product-market fit and launch a business before you invest in your original products. Just be sure to always order a sample for yourself to make sure that your supplier is reliable and that the quality of the products is fit for selling to your customers.
2. Design and sell print-on-demand t-shirts
Another drop-shipping model, print-on-demand, puts inventory, shipping, and fulfillment in the hands of a third-party supplier. But unlike the drop-shipping idea above, the focus here is on customizing these products with your designs to create something original.
T-shirts, hats, phone cases, hoodies, skirts, tote bags, and more become canvases for your creativity. You can think up witty slogans for developers or references that resonate with cat owners—if there’s passion and pride within a community, there’s a potential t-shirt business you can start.
Even if you’re not a designer, you can find a designer to work with using freelance sites like Fiverr, Upwork, Dribble, or 99 Designs
With many print-on-demand services, you’re paying per product, so the base price per unit will be more expensive than if you were to order in bulk. But the advantage is that if a certain t-shirt design doesn’t sell, you haven’t paid for the item yet (only the design if you outsourced it).
You can even use t-shirt mockup templates, so you don’t need to spend money on a full photoshoot for every new design.
There are a variety of print-on-demand platforms you can work with, many of which can be integrated with your Shopify store for seamless order fulfillment. However, be sure to always order a sample of your product (often offered at a discount) to make sure your custom products look good.
3. Launch your book
A book is just another type of product when you think about it. And as such, you can create one to serve a particular demand in the market.
Cookbooks, picture books, comic books, poetry books, photo books, coffee table books, and novels—if you’ve got the knowledge or the creativity, there are a variety of original books you can bring to the market.
Print-on-demand publishing is a relatively safe way to test the waters and get started with self-publishing, while giving you control over the quality and look of your book.
Lulu X press and Blurb are popular platforms for this purpose, letting you create, order, and distribute your books as digital and physical products.
While you can order one book at a time, costs naturally go down when you buy in bulk. You can consider pre-selling or crowdfunding your book idea to ensure that there’s demand and guarantee a certain number of customers for bulk orders.
Launching your book can be a great way to monetize a blog if you have one or are looking to start one.
4. Create digital products or courses
Digital products like music, courses, and templates are unique on this list of ideas. Unlike the others, they’re not tangible products. There aren’t recurring manufacturing or shipping costs to worry about, so your margins can remain high.
The trick is figuring out what makes for a good digital product. What is useful enough that people are willing to pay to download it?
The answers range from original instrumental beats to stock photos that can be licensed to other creators, to information products and templates that help people level up their skills in a particular field.
If you’ve got a talent that can be turned into a digital product, you can think about packaging it into a new stream of income.
Shopify offers a free digital downloads app that lets you offer digital products in your store as easily as physical products.
5. Sell print-on-demand posters, greeting cards, and prints
If you’re artistically inclined or know your way around a camera, you can drop-ship, using a print-on-demand business model to let others physically own a piece of your work. Just be sure you have the rights to the content you want to print, unless you’re using public domain assets that you can freely monetize.
If you’ve already got an engaged online following, say you’re a cartoonist or an urban photographer, you’re in an especially good position to give this business idea a try.
Depending on the printer you work with, you can turn your work into products such as posters or framed wall art, even greeting cards. There are plenty of digital templates and mockup generators like Place, it that you can use to showcase your products without having to print out each item and conduct your photoshoots.
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