If you think you need tons of money to start an online business, let me prove you wrong. There are so many free services for

Why You Don’t Need Tons of Money to Start Freelancing
What you need to invest in starting an online business is nothing comparable with the money you need to invest in starting a physical business. You can start working right away from the comfort of your home! Set up a dedicated space for your brand new business and make it your home office! Or just go to your favorite coffee shop and focus on your laptop while drinking a big mug of latte!
Now imagine if you were to open a restaurant, a coffee shop or a grocery store. How much money would you have to spend on chairs, tables or articles? What about fresh produce? And employees?? Imagine if your restaurant wasn’t making any money – and new businesses usually don’t. How would you pay your employees?
On the other hand, writing content is free, and content creation is the most effective marketing strategy out there. And not only that: Content creation is step #1 to attract an audience, so why not start writing?
You may be wondering what happens once you’ve created your content, right? Well, you’ll have to share it online, of course! And guess what – there are lots of options to share your content for free:
- You can post content on social media and let everyone get to know you. You can even open business pages and groups for free in most social networks – like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Pinterest, for instance.
- Blogging is a fantastic option to share your knowledge and ideas with the world. The best platform for blogs is WordPress.org (don’t confuse it with WordPress.com). Now, WordPress is free, but you’ll have to pay for web host services (where the servers that contain your blog are located). However, hosting with a company such as Siteground only costs $3.95/month for the first year.
- If you need stock images for your blog or your website, there are several free places to look for them:
- Unsplash or Pixabay – Free stock image sites
- Creative Market – You’ll get 6 freebies every Monday, even WordPress themes or logos!
- Haute Stock – They offer both free and paid monthly images. It’s my favorite stock image service!
If you’d like to create an online course for free, you can also do it with Teachable or Thinkific. Both are fantastic options, and although they also have a paid monthly membership, the free version is more than enough. You even get a free sales page and email program! Check out this blog post to create your first online course.

Other Free Resources for Your Online Business
- You can create a free portfolio on freelance platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer or About me.
- Recording videos with your cell phone
is free – and uploading them to YouTube, too! - If you’d like to learn how to code, you can also do it for free on Codecademy.
- Check your grammar with Grammarly! You’ll know what to change while you write, and for free 😉
- There are tons of blogs, videos
and podcasts with so much valuable content for you to learn new basic skills without having to rob a bank. - You can also create free pop-ups with HelloBar.
- Google offers free analytic tools for you to check how your content is ranking on Google, who is visiting your site and even which electronic device they’re using.
Recap – Free Tools to Start Your Online Business
Starting an online business doesn’t have to be expensive at all. So you can start taking advantage of all free – or almost free – services and tools. Here’s a list for your convenience:
- Web and hosting services
- Stock images
- Online course platforms
- Freelancing platforms to get jobs and clients
- Education
- Codecademy
- Grammarly
- Free content found in blogs, videos
and podcasts.
Once you start earning money, invest a percentage of what you earn and upgrade any tool you’d like to – either to use more functions or to get rid of their logo, like HelloBar or Teachable.
So forget about financial excuses and get your work out there! You don’t even need a website, so don’t let any limiting belief stop you from starting a successful business from your home office!

Alicia
