Only Have $500 to Start a Business? Here’s Over 20 Ideas To Begin Right Away!

I got a great one for you today guys! Here is a list of over 20 of the best business ideas that you can start with less than $500. Let’s jump into it:

Doula Service

You probably have no idea what a Doula service is and I don’t blame you. But this is actually a completely legit business idea that is untapped. This is where you provide physical, emotional, and informational support to an expecting mother. You do this both before, during, and after childbirth. This, of course, is a healthcare industry-related service and it can be offered through private practice, hospitals, birthing centers, and online platforms.

Being a Doula is kind of like being a superhero sidekick during childbirth, offering unwavering support and guidance through every contraction and push. It’s very easy to get started with this. With less than $500 you can complete an online Doula training course.

Meal Prep Business

This one is likely going to be a local type of business. You could prep meals and then send them to people, but you’re probably going to start off locally, and the key here is to make sure that you niche down and specialize in a particular type of diet.

Personal Concierge Service

The way this works is, let’s say a businessman flies from New York where he’s used to being, to LA, and he’s going to spend about a week in LA and wants to be able to get work done and be efficient. He probably already has a bunch of different assistants in New York and so it’s easy for him to get stuff done, but in LA, he’s not really familiar with the territory and he doesn’t have a bunch of assistants working for him there, and so it can be much more difficult.

So what many times will happen is they will actually hire a Personal Concierge while they’re in LA. This is somebody who could help them with managing tasks all the way from running errands, to arranging appointments, to travel planning and event coordination. They can also give them suggestions on good local places to go eat food, or good places to network with people.

It’s not always just a corporate business type of thing. There’s lots of other types of concierge services out there. So do your research and get started!

Mobile Public Notary

Notaries are people who witness and authenticate signatures. They often work in different industries, such as legal, finance, or real estate. As a Mobile Public Notary, you’re going to go wherever they are in order to oversee the deal. Typically, people would have to come to you in order to do this, but as a Mobile Public Notary, you’re offering them that extra convenience and saving them that time, and in exchange, you get paid a premium price.

You’re probably starting to notice a bit of a pattern here. A lot of these businesses target people that are money rich, but time poor, and people who really like convenience. and those are honestly some of the absolute best clients you can have because they don’t care about paying the premium price. All they care about is convenience, and so you can give them an amazing service and you can get paid enough money to really focus on them.

Start a YouTube Personal Brand

Starting a YouTube personal brand is a great business decision for content creators. You can reach a large audience, because YouTube has 2.49 billion monthly active users.

Mobile Laundry Service

This is another one where, again, you’re going to be targeting people who are money rich, but time poor. Basically what you do is collect their dirty laundry, separate it out, wash it, then deliver it back to them.

Start a Cleaning Service Business

You could just start a general cleaning service business and that would probably work for you. I mean there’s a lot of opportunities out there for this, but even better than that, is actually niching down and specializing in particular types of cleaning.

For instance, you could be the person who cleans couches, carpets, and beds, which are traditionally some of the hardest types of household cleaning jobs. In fact, many different cleaning services don’t even offer those types of services, which is highly annoying to people who purchase their services. (I know this from firsthand experience).

In some cases, depending on the town you live in, you may not even be able to find that as a service. But if you start a business that specializes in that type of cleaning, you’re going to be able to take advantage of that massive gap in the market.

Virtual Educator

This is somebody who could be a teacher or a tutor, but you’re doing it online, in virtual classes. There are so many different ways that you can do this. For instance, I read about a photographer who is earning $1 million a year teaching. Online tutors typically charge between $25 and $80 an hour.

Online Seller

This is one that I’ve done before as well, and this is where you go and find different products out there, different types of physical products, maybe you buy them locally, and then you sell them online.

Amazon KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing

I’ve talked about this one before. I actually asked somebody who owns a business brokerage where they literally help people to buy or sell their businesses and I asked him last year, “If you were starting over from scratch, what is the one business model that you would start right now?” And he told me, “It’s Amazon KDP.”

And I was really shocked by that. Honestly, I thought it was a little bit sketchy, but I think the reason he did that is because of how much easier it is to write these types of books with AI, and there are lots of people reporting online that they are making money doing this.

Dropshipping

This is where you put up a store and act as the middleman between a product and the end user. Essentially, your only job is to market, that’s it! What I mean by that is, the end user will purchase a product and you don’t have to store it, you don’t have to ship it, and you don’t have to manufacture it.

It will get shipped directly from the company to the end user and all you have to do is be the middleman and market it, and then you take the difference. Let’s say the product costs you $5; you sell it for $20; that means you get a $15 profit.

Social Media Marketing

This is where you help companies market their products or services using social media, using platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, X, etc. There’s this quote that I really like, “Content is fire and social media is gasoline.” Social media is. by far. the single most profitable traffic source available right now.

Do-it-yourself Crafts and Treats

This involves creating handmade crafts or snacks. You can sell these online or in local markets. This encompasses a wide range of different products, including handmade jewelry, candles, baked goods, and more. Some websites you could sell on would be Etsy, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, etc.

Etsy is especially good to sell on, and you can make a ton of money doing this because a lot of people are actually looking for unique crafts, right?

They want to be wearing a unique bracelet that almost nobody else in the world has. It also makes for a really good present if you want to get someone else a present. A really good one to get into; definitely easy to start making money. Little bit harder to scale a business like that, but if you’re a total beginner, this is a good one to start with.

Lawn Care

This one is pretty obvious. You’d go and mow people’s lawns, maybe you’d use a weed whacker, you can also do some landscaping.

Starting a Virtual Assistant Business

In this business, you could be a virtual assistant yourself and you could get hired out, or contracted, or much better, is to identify a particular niche that needs a specific skill set. Then you can train virtual assistants in that exact skill set and then place them into businesses.

An example of this would be training people how to do YouTube script writing. It’s very hard to hire someone who can help you to research and write scripts effectively, so if you can train people on how to do this, and then place them into YouTubers businesses they are going to pay you a ton of money to do it.

SEO Writing Agency/SEO Consulting Business

SEO stands for search engine optimization and it’s how you rank at the top of Google. Ranking at the top of Google has a lot of reward because you are going to get a massive amount of traffic. What you can do is consult people on a specific niche that you’re already an expert in. Let’s say that you are an expert in software, right?

You are a software developer, you use a lot of software, and you know a lot about that. You can actually consult with different SEO businesses and blogs on how to make their content better.

Pet Sitting

This is where you go to someone’s house while they’re out of town and you make sure that their pets are well taken care of. There’s a lot of opportunity here, and it’s especially good if you live in affluent areas. You could even use a simple app like Rover.

Dog Walker

This is one where you’d go out and actually walk a dog, and of course, you’d make sure that they go to the bathroom and you’d clean it up. This is another business that’s really good. I’d say it’s actually even a little bit better, because of the fact that you have to clean their stuff up and you can make a ton of money doing this, as well.

House Sitting

Now this one can involve taking care of the people’s animals, usually you’ll get paid a little bit more for that. House sitting is where you just make sure that everything in the house is okay, doesn’t catch on fire, and you just take care of the house, in general.

Copywriting Business

For this particular one, you definitely want to focus on niching down and specializing. There’s different types of copywriting, right?

There’s email copywriting, social media copywriting, etc. There’s different types of copywriting for different platforms. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc, — you’d want to pick one of those and specialize in it. Then you’d probably want to go one step deeper and specialize in a particular niche. as well.

Maybe the “make money online” niche. Maybe you can even go deeper than that and specialize in a particular type of “making money online” and this is what’s going to make you incredibly valuable as a copywriter. Niching down and specializing is the key.

Affiliate Marketing

The big appeal with affiliate marketing is again, the only thing you have to focus on is marketing, everything else is taken care of for you. Many people got their start in affiliate marketing. It does have its downsides, but it is super super easy to start.

Pressure Washing

This is one that is a lot of hard work, you know you have to be out in the sun, you have to pressure wash things, you have to clean things all day, and a lot of people don’t want to do it. But if you’re willing to do it, you can make a ton of money.

Of course, you want to have a mobile pressure washing business, so people need their decks cleaned, they need the front of their house cleaned, the sides of their house, their roof, the gutters, maybe their garage, all of these different things need to be pressure washed. All you have to do is just buy a pressure washer, which probably costs about $100 at most, and you can get started with this.

There you have it. I’ve given you the ideas, now it’s your job to do a deeper dive and conduct more in-depth research to get started!

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⭐Kristen is a Solopreneurship Coach on Upwork. Sign up here to catch every story when she publishes on Medium

🎉🎉Kristen helps others become solopreneurs. Read Kristen’s eBook Let Your Passion Make You Money: Journey to Solopreneurship here

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