For many decades, the American Dream has been earning over 6-figures from your own business so you never have to answer to a boss, worry about paying for your basic necessities, or have to say "we can't afford it" to your kids when they ask you for something.
However, due to a variety of reasons, more than 90% of Americans have settled for low paying jobs that they hate with a boss that they can't stand, and the thought of starting their own business scares them about as much as asking them to jump out of an airplane without a parachute.
The main reason for this intense fear is because of all of the scary statistics that come along with the start-up business world.
More than 80% of start-up businesses don't make it past their first year.
And from the remaining 20%, another 80% don't make it past the second year.
Those definitely are scary statistics.
And the reason for all of this failure is quite simple actually.
The grand majority of business owners invest their entire savings into a business that they have hardly researched or prepared for.
They don't anticipate what would happen if they don't get sales for a few months.
They don't sit down and create a legitimate, full-fledged business plan.
And they don't study their target market before they spend all of their time and money on that business.
These are very basic, and very stupid mistakes to make as a business owner.
And thankfully, these are mistakes that can now easily be avoided due to the amazing revolutions that have been made in the business world.
With free tools like the Google AdWords keyword tool, you can research the activity within a certain market before you actually invest your time and money into it.
And what's even more amazing, you can start a legitimate business that can yield you a multiple 6-figure income for less than $500.
Which brings me to the main point of this article.
Below you will find a list of 3 very awesome business ideas that you can start with less than $500.
1.
Information Marketing - Through Amazon Information products have the highest profit potential than any other product.
In its most basic form, you can do the research necessary to write a 100 page book, write it in Microsoft Word, and turn it into a PDF file.
Then you can sell that PDF file as an eBook for $5 - $10.
Now, a $10 price tag might not seem substantial enough for you to make a large income but if you combine it with the massive reach that Amazon has, you can make a very healthy income from book sales.
It's pure math...
Amazon will keep 30% of each sale so you'll walk away with $7.
If you have 100 sales per month, then you're making $700 per month on autopilot.
That's $8,400 per year.
Now, take some of that income and use it for promotion, and you can turn your automated $700 per month into $7,000 per month.
That's $84,000 per year.
The most important part of this process is that your book needs to be in demand.
Since it doesn't cost you a single penny to write the book in MS word, and convert it into a PDF...
you'll need to spend your $500 in market research.
Either through surveys or Google AdWords campaigns, you have to find out what your target market actually wants and then just give it to them in the book.
This concept is called Product Market Fit and there's a great book on it written by Ryan Holiday called "Growth Hacker Marketing".
Once you have your eBook written, you can simply create a free membership account through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing and watch the money come in.
I did this myself for the relationship niche.
I interviewed over 350 women to find out what they want from their partners and took all of their feedback and turned it into an awesome, content packed book that is now consistently selling on Amazon.
2.
Information Marketing - Through Your Own Site & List Building This process is a bit more complicated than using Amazon as your distribution source, but the profit potential is much higher.
In this system, instead of selling the eBook for $10, you give it away for free in exchange for your prospect's name and email.
This will add them to your list and you can follow up with them whenever you'd like.
And if you've actually given them a valuable book for free, then they'll trust that you want to help them.
So the next time you actually promote something to them, you can charge way more than $10.
The way that I do this for my business is I give them the eBook for free, and about a week later I ask them to buy an audio course from me for $67.
And if they buy the audio course, I'll upsell a video course to them for $127.
So let's do the math.
Approximately 20% of my prospects buy the audio course, and from those guys another 30% buy the video course.
I average about 100 audio sales per month, which adds up to $6,700 per month, and from those 30 buy the video course which adds up to an extra $3,810 per month.
That's $10,510 per month on complete autopilot.
And what's beautiful about this is that I can keep upselling to them over and over again.
The only catch is that you HAVE TO deliver value to them.
If you don't, they won't buy any of your other stuff.
And if you study free traffic generation methods, then you can generate your leads for free.
Just with some sweat equity.
3.
Network Marketing Network marketing has gotten a pretty bad reputation because there have been so many people that have abused this model so much.
But if done correctly, it is an excellent business model.
You can start a network marketing business with an investment that ranges anywhere from $67 - $1000 to start.
My first network marketing business cost less than $500 and it was in the financial services industry.
I didn't have to sell juice, or lotion or coffee to anyone.
I was opening retirement accounts and selling various types of insurances.
Even without recruiting a single distributor I was making 6-figure from that business because the profit potential was so high.
If you rollover a 401k that has $250,000 in it...
you can stand to make anywhere from $17,000 to $22,000 from that single transaction.
But what's cool is that because it's a network marketing business model, you can recruit distributors to do the same thing as you and you'll make an "override" from their actions.
They'll get their 70% commission, but from the remaining 30%, the company will forward you a bonus.
If you have 100 distributors, you're making a small percentage from every single one and at that point, you can completely stop working and your income will never stop.
And before you even think about it...
this is NOT a pyramid scheme.
Let me explain...
A pyramid scheme works like this: When you recruit someone, you get paid.
In network marketing, you can recruit a million people but you will never make any money unless those guys actually distribute the product to the consumer public.
And in my example...
when you get involved in the financial services industry, you have to get licensed with the government and you're highly regulated.
The government will NOT allow people to get licensed to do a "scheme".
Feel free to do your research to see which one of these models would work best for you.