What are the business we can start with little investment?

Any strong business plan begins with market research. As you examine the market, consider: What types of products or services meet the demands in the current market? How can your abilities help you develop new, clever ways to meet those demands as an entrepreneur?

Once you have an idea of what you would like to offer, consider the types of business models that will best help you bring your idea to life. For budget-minded business owners, a thoughtful approach as your launch is critical - less money to spend means less money to burn as you find your path to success.

Ready to turn your business ideas into cash flow? Become your own boss and work from anywhere with these 10 low-investment business ideas:

In traditional retail models, the costs behind manufacturing, acquiring, and warehousing inventory are substantial—as are the costs of packaging and shipping your products. Dropshipping is revolutionizing eCommerce businesses by eliminating start-up costs through partnerships with third-party suppliers who manage inventory & order fulfillment.

Dropshipping is also a very low-cost way for entrepreneurs on a budget to test product-market fit and allows for business pivots without the sunk costs of wasted inventory. Because dropshipping allows for quick procurement of a product catalog, it is also a fast way to start an online business.

Based on data trends from over 700k Wix Stores worldwide, online dropshipping stores launch an average of 15% faster than other online retailers.

To start dropshipping, connect a dropshipping tool like Modalyst, Spocket, or Syncee to your Wix account. Source from millions of trusted suppliers, including AliExpress, and sell the products you choose at the prices you set on your online store. When orders are placed, they will be sent to your supplier and shipped directly to your customer. You can then begin promoting your business using SEO tools to drive shoppers to your site.

Before you start selling online, you'll need to choose products to sell from your dropshipping supplier. Take the time to clarify your vision and brand. Do market research to find out what people are buying. Assess the potential interest, pricing, and profit margin of products before selling them in your store.

Succeeding with an online store means finding a way to stand out.

To choose the best business to start with a small cash investment, think about what consumers want and how you can find a niche where your products can stand out within that market.

Explore unique products to source and sell, and try to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket by selling a variety. That said, try to group your products into collections to make your online store easier to navigate. Take the time to set up marketing and promotional efforts that will ultimately save you time and boost your sales.

The pandemic forever changed the relationship between home, work, and the outside world for millions of people. Even as we approach a post-pandemic environment, the emphasis on being comfortable at home remains, and the home goods market is ripe with new opportunities.

Consider opening your own online fitness store with equipment for living room workouts. Love dogs? Maybe an adorable shop selling puppy products, like quiet pet toys for professionals working from home?

In the vein of comfort, athleisure clothing provides a much-desired mix of stylish clothes that are also comfortable. Products like leggings, hoodies, sweatshirts, slippers, and socks remain popular categories for online stores.

Looking and feeling good never goes out of style; consider selling pretty pajama sets or multi-use cosmetics for an easy beauty routine. Your shoppers may also seek at-home beauty products, like nail kits or grooming accessories.

Home office items are also in demand as working from home for professionals and students has become a part of the new normal. Think tech accessories like laptop stands, lap desks, keyboards, desk organizers, or home storage. Ergonomic desk chairs that support posture and back alignment or comfortable seat cushions are needed additions to many people's life. As parents juggle parenting and work-life, perhaps you could include quiet toys and play spaces in your dropshipping business.

It’s not all work and no play. You can also consider selling gaming products or at-home hobby items, like game boards, trivia, or knitting tools. Shoppers want to video chat with friends or stream Netflix without holding their devices the entire time. Consider selling bedside mounts and table mounts in your dropshipping store.

Once you have added products to your store, you can focus on driving visitors to your site. This is where a good eCommerce marketing strategy comes into play. Make the most of your eCommerce platform’s business tools. To save time, automate your email marketing promotions and customer outreach. Advertise your dropshipping business with paid campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. If relevant to your brand, connect with influencers to endorse your products and promote them to their followers.

Your SEO strategy will also play a crucial part in promoting your online dropshipping business.

Online Stores that connect SEO tools experience an average 21% increase in traffic.

Crafting high-quality content and low-budget marketing will boost your visibility on search engine results. For example, increase your website’s visibility with keyword optimization. Let’s say you’re selling comfortable work-from-home apparel. If you include the keyword phrases “luxury comfort wear,” “work from home,” or “athleisure clothing” in your web copy, you’ll have a better chance of ranking on Google when people search for those keywords.

Print-on-demand companies work in a similar way to Dropshipping, in that they supply the inventory of products and provide a hands-off way to ship directly to your customers. What Print-on-demand offers, in addition, is the ability to create unique, customized products.

Add a personal touch to products with print on demand by connecting Printful or Printify to your online store. Just like with dropshipping, you partner with print-on-demand companies that supply the inventory. From t-shirts to phone cases, bags, and more—choose any customizable merchandise and add your own creative touch. Go ahead and design graphics, quotes, or photos to print on the products you selected.

Start by choosing from hundreds of unique products to customize and sell your designs on your online store. Start a t-shirt business with funny quotes. Add your cat photos to novelty socks. Create stickers with your logo or designs that match your brand. Another cool option: sell merchandise with original artwork made by you.

Still, you don’t have to be a graphic designer to sell unique designs. Hire and collaborate with freelance artists on sites like Fiverr, 99Designs, or DeviantArt to create one-of-a-kind art for your print-on-demand products.

When you receive an order, you can ship to over 90 locations worldwide. Forward your orders to your chosen supplier while managing everything from your Wix dashboard. Just think about it—shoppers will rock your unique designs all over the world.

Based on data trends from over 700k Wix Stores worldwide, eCommerce sellers with an additional sales channel can increase sales up to 12%

Think of omnichannel retail as a way to maximize your online presence and an easy way to amplify your low-cost business across the internet. By connecting your online store to platforms like Facebook Shop or Instagram, you can expand your customer reach without a large increase in your overhead costs. With Wix, you can even list and sell your products on eBay and Amazon while managing all your orders and inventory seamlessly from your Wix Dashboard.

Enhance your online store even further with AdScale. This powerful Google Shopping app introduces AI technology into your advertising by automatically creating and optimizing ads across Google Shopping, Google Search, YouTube, and more.

If you run a brick-and-mortar business, you can adapt and expand your reach by selling online without a large increase in your business costs. Create an eCommerce website to sell online, accept online payments and manage all orders.

Like many business owners, Angel Gregorio, owner of The Spice Suite, had to adapt quickly after leaving her job as a vice principal to start her online store. Angel made her brand stand out by adding her own style to the customized templates she found through Wix eCommerce. She embeds videos, images, and product galleries to her online store so customers can view her unique spice mixes in detail.

Gregorio recently told Wix how she had to move her brick-and-mortar business completely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many people at home, Gregorio recognized the opportunity to grow. She decided to convert her store into a warehouse and refocused on selling home goods and promote new spice boxes.

As a result of a successful shift to a hybrid online model, The Spice Suite has made over $2 million in sales, with their online store representing the most successful part of the business.

You can tilt your restaurant or bar toward eCommerce, too, by expanding your restaurant website. Catering company Cleverchefs shifted online by selling restaurant-standard food boxes delivered to customers’ homes.

Bimber Distillery stands out as another great example of a successful Wix eCommerce website. The London-based retailer ships its world-class single malt whiskey internationally. Their website tells the story behind every bottle and displays high-resolution photographs of each.

In a post-2020 world, industries that had traditionally relied on face-to-face interactions, like fitness, restaurants, and education, have adapted to hybrid or online models, and it appears that those changes are here to stay.

The accessibility of digital content makes it a great platform for low-cost business ideas—online creators connect to their audiences through digital instruction videos, like cooking demonstrations and workout routines that people can stream online.

Family-friendly activities are always trendy and are ripe with opportunities for starting a business. Get ahead of the competition by selling kid-friendly video content. If you’re a fitness trainer, create exercise videos for children, like P.E. with Joe. Stream kid-friendly content like workouts or baby yoga classes. Post daily lessons online to help parents homeschool their kids. You can even create an entertaining cooking show with your own children.

There are different pricing models to earn money with digital video content. You can charge a monthly channel subscription to give customers full access to exclusive content. If you work with video hosting platforms like YouTube, you can monetize your content based on the number of viewers. Another option is selling or renting your videos. Viewers can download the video or watch it on your site over a 24-48-hour cycle.

Consider offering some of your content for free to give customers an idea of your product and nudge them to make a purchase. Host live streaming or webinars with Zoom, Vimeo, and YouTube.

At-home delivery services have long been on the rise, a trend that has continued even as the world moves back to a “new normal.” ECommerce has seen a boom in the product subscription service industry (think big names like Netflix, BlueApron, or FitFabFun). Within this sector, 3 different types of subscriptions have emerged:

You can set up your own subscription-based business model delivering a box of themed surprises on a weekly or monthly basis. Do you already sell a product that you can turn into a subscription? Maybe you have a special hobby, like soap-making, hot sauce recipes, or homemade sanitizers with essential oils. Create a gift box of your products and set up tier memberships for premium access.

An eye for design is an amazing asset when it comes to home business ideas. Draw inspiration from one of the top eCommerce sellers, Kaekoo. The home decor vendor sells handcrafted textiles online. Their website contains many images so shoppers can view all the products in detail and choose items that match their personal style.

Kaekoo’s site also allows customers to buy gift cards—a great way to reduce the stress of choosing gifts and to increase your sales.

Based on data trends from over 700k Wix Stores worldwide, 69% of customers spend more than the value of their gift cards when redeeming in online shops.

Artisans can tap into this market by selling home decor, whether woodworking, macrame pieces, painting, candle-making, indoor plants, or custom mason jars. List your original pieces on your online store. Then, share your home art and craft ideas and decorating tips on your website or through video tutorials.

The spoken word has made a huge comeback—the podcast industry is estimated at $90 million as of 2019. Get your slice of that pie by launching your own podcast.

Start by picking a topic that you find interesting. Look for ways to entertain, inform and inspire. Team up with friends to join you on air. Invite guests, like comedians and thought leaders, to add value and increase exposure.

Record your podcast with audio hosting sites like SoundCloud or Libsyn. When you finish recording, use the Wix Podcast Player to showcase and stream podcasts from your site.

Once you have enough listeners, you can find sponsorship deals on Ad Results Media, Adopter Media, or True Native Media sites.

Give you revenue an additional boost. Think of ways to compliment your podcast brand with merchandise, like branded tees, socks, and other accessories using print on demand.

Have you always dreamed of writing your own book? Make this the year you finally get your book published. You can self-publish your own bestselling eBook without a lot of monetary investment and then promote and sell your book online.

For inspiration, check out Ashley Antoinette, New York Times best-selling author and founder of the book lovers. Co. Ashley uses her website to promote her top-rated Butterfly series and her upcoming Book Lovers App.

Ashley’s connection with her fans, known as the #asharmy, is a testament to the accessibility of creating community online, and the results speak for themselves: Ashley has sold over 1 million books to date. The barriers to publishing have never been lower. Unsure what to write about?

Your life makes the best content.

If you run a blog, you’ve already got plenty of content: consider combining your blog posts into a book. Put together your photos, recipes, memoirs, short stories, or adult coloring book templates. Compose content into a digital PDF format. You can also narrate an audiobook by uploading audio files.

Then, build a website so customers can find you. Choose from professionally designed templates specifically created for bookstores and authors. Personalize your website to match the look and feel of your book. Earn additional royalties by distributing your eBook or paperback through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.

Just as shifting brick-and-mortar stores online allows entrepreneurs to reach larger audiences, shifting to an online model for consultation services creates an ability to reach a global customer base.

Once you successfully launch your online store, you can help others do the same. Build and design websites or sell online courses, tutorials, and coaching sessions to share best practices and tips with other business owners.

Do you work in the medical industry? Start by setting up a website where patients can schedule and manage their meetings. Healthcare professionals, such as general physicians, nutritionists, or therapists, can provide consultations by phone and online sessions with platforms that easily integrate with Wix, like Zoom.

The best business to start with little money should fit the needs of your target audience. In a culture that has had to quickly adapt to hybrid versions or working and playing from home, consider tailoring your goods and services to accommodate those needs. Think delivery, online shopping, video conferencing, and so on.

To make the most out of a small start-up budget, it’s also wise to start with a business model that doesn’t require much overhead in the early stages and is quickly adaptable. Dropshipping, print on demand, and omnichannel retail are great ways to leverage a tight budget and jump-start a business without a lot of money.

With a little ingenuity, you can grow and nurture your low-investment business idea into a full-fledged success.