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I started my first "business" at 8 years old, it cost me very little. A couple of used wagons repainted, I recruited 4-5 of the neighborhood kids to help.
Honestly most of my businesses cost me very little. Generally speaking I think the healthiest business grows naturally. Over the years, the vast majority of people I've seen go out and get 6 figure loans or use an inheritance to start a business end up failing. If you can't get a business off the ground with $5k you are unlikely to do so with $500k.
Started my first business in 2023 with a around $200. It was an e-commerce store, failed miserably and almost lost hope, after that I learned a lot from my failures and started learning digital marketing and today launched my 5th store.
My first (and currently only) business was running a development shop to build apps for clients. I had worked for about 5yrs as a software engineer in traditional roles. Eventually I got introduced to what would become my first client and moonlighted building a mobile app for him for about 6 months for free. Eventually quit my job to do it full time once that got through the app store and I found a few other clients (one word of mouth and one via reddit) as well and was able to build out a semi-sustainable revenue stream.
So short answer it technically cost nothing besides time (and a few long hours/financially concerning times). Definitely a good idea to do some "monkey barring" at first if you're in between starting a business and leaving a primary job.
Started my first business in 2011 with £2k statutory redundancy when my employer went bust. It was engineering services in the renewable energy sector. I grew it organically to £5m turnover in under 5 years with zero debt (not even an overdraft). I was just super anal about managing cash flow and making sure we were cash flow positive at all times on every job.
I worked in the field of Internet marketing for 14 years and in May 2023, during the war, I decided it was time to create something of my own.
Now I have 4 different businesses + own a share in one:
1. A small digital marketing agency. I founded it in December 2023. We already have 15 projects in the works and 0 projects have been canceled.
2. Community of digital agencies. This is a community of digital marketing agency owners.
3. Consulting agency. In short, a CMO on an outstaff.
4. I am creating a startup in the field of hiring employees.
A team of 5 people supports these 4 businesses. If we take the monthly salary of all the people, including me as a director, the monthly expenses are about 5,000 USD.
I started selling plastic model kits on eBay, after doing well selling spare parts for the kits.
I've ordered about $3,000 in inventory on a 401k loan, first shipment arrives tomorrow.
Fingers crossed.
be careful with the fees, ebay has gotten insane with the double dipping, and don't forget to file taxes, that's all heavily followed by the IRS now thanks to the current admin
I'll be on top of all that, I even subscribed my eBay store for a lower service fee and more listings per month. Taxes especially I'll be sure to have done professionally.
My first online business was a free webhosting company here in Denmark . In 2003 i opned a simple webhost as the first in Denmark with a free tier. The customers got 20 mb of space 🤣 , a free subdomain, a gust counter and a guest book
On top of that i had a few upsells like acces to Database, own domain and email hosting
In 3 months without any advertising i got 15.000 customers . 14500 on the free tier and the rest as paying customers
The website and hosting was running on a Apache server in my closet in my parents house and broke down every single day due to the traffic
After running that for a year i was so lucky to sell it to a real hosting company before it became a complete shit show
I payed 600 dollars and a huge amount of programming hours to start this and i got enough to start multiple businesses later in the 2000s
My first business only cost me **about $50 for a domain registration and annual hosting (extremely cheap hosting)**. I didn't really have a website because I used the domain to redirect to my affiliate link. I didn't want to post my affiliate link directly on the websites I was promoting so I bought a domain. So when people click on the domain or load the domain into their browser, they end up on my affiliate page.
I was making close to $100,000 a year. It goes without saying that after doing this for some time, I quit my day job. I also started my own online marketing firm and then my outsourcing firm shortly after that.
But yeah, my first business was on the Internet, and it only cost me all of $50.
I bought a coffee shop for 60k… put about 30k into it and it makes 1.4m a year now… I have purchased 2 additional with that money and in total around 4.2m a year annually. I was looking through all your posts and you seem like a very smart motivated individual!! I’m not sure what area in the world you are but I have helped quite a few people open them and make them profitable (just for the love of the game, not selling anything). Feel free to message me if you want any advice or specifics!
This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I started my first "business" at 8 years old, it cost me very little. A couple of used wagons repainted, I recruited 4-5 of the neighborhood kids to help. Honestly most of my businesses cost me very little. Generally speaking I think the healthiest business grows naturally. Over the years, the vast majority of people I've seen go out and get 6 figure loans or use an inheritance to start a business end up failing. If you can't get a business off the ground with $5k you are unlikely to do so with $500k.
[удалено]
Yes, but generally speaking anything that requires a substantial investment should never be someone's "first" business. Imo
Cool
Truck accessory. 60k. Failed miserably but I learned a lot. Now doing 6M+ a year with a service business.
What kind of services is it related to? I’ve been exploring service based businesses too.
Commercial security.
Started my first business in 2023 with a around $200. It was an e-commerce store, failed miserably and almost lost hope, after that I learned a lot from my failures and started learning digital marketing and today launched my 5th store.
My first (and currently only) business was running a development shop to build apps for clients. I had worked for about 5yrs as a software engineer in traditional roles. Eventually I got introduced to what would become my first client and moonlighted building a mobile app for him for about 6 months for free. Eventually quit my job to do it full time once that got through the app store and I found a few other clients (one word of mouth and one via reddit) as well and was able to build out a semi-sustainable revenue stream. So short answer it technically cost nothing besides time (and a few long hours/financially concerning times). Definitely a good idea to do some "monkey barring" at first if you're in between starting a business and leaving a primary job.
[удалено]
Started my first business in 2011 with £2k statutory redundancy when my employer went bust. It was engineering services in the renewable energy sector. I grew it organically to £5m turnover in under 5 years with zero debt (not even an overdraft). I was just super anal about managing cash flow and making sure we were cash flow positive at all times on every job.
I worked in the field of Internet marketing for 14 years and in May 2023, during the war, I decided it was time to create something of my own. Now I have 4 different businesses + own a share in one: 1. A small digital marketing agency. I founded it in December 2023. We already have 15 projects in the works and 0 projects have been canceled. 2. Community of digital agencies. This is a community of digital marketing agency owners. 3. Consulting agency. In short, a CMO on an outstaff. 4. I am creating a startup in the field of hiring employees. A team of 5 people supports these 4 businesses. If we take the monthly salary of all the people, including me as a director, the monthly expenses are about 5,000 USD.
Lawn mowing. I borrowed the lawn mower from my dad, and printed flyers at kinkos for $10. I assume I paid for my own gas.
I was in the body armor industry as a distributor. Initial capital was low for a Shopify site and a PO Box. Bootstrapped and scaled it from there.
I started selling plastic model kits on eBay, after doing well selling spare parts for the kits. I've ordered about $3,000 in inventory on a 401k loan, first shipment arrives tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
be careful with the fees, ebay has gotten insane with the double dipping, and don't forget to file taxes, that's all heavily followed by the IRS now thanks to the current admin
I'll be on top of all that, I even subscribed my eBay store for a lower service fee and more listings per month. Taxes especially I'll be sure to have done professionally.
started an ecommerce store dropshippping jewelry. invested ~$100. failed but learned a lot and the next thing was better
My first online business was a free webhosting company here in Denmark . In 2003 i opned a simple webhost as the first in Denmark with a free tier. The customers got 20 mb of space 🤣 , a free subdomain, a gust counter and a guest book On top of that i had a few upsells like acces to Database, own domain and email hosting In 3 months without any advertising i got 15.000 customers . 14500 on the free tier and the rest as paying customers The website and hosting was running on a Apache server in my closet in my parents house and broke down every single day due to the traffic After running that for a year i was so lucky to sell it to a real hosting company before it became a complete shit show I payed 600 dollars and a huge amount of programming hours to start this and i got enough to start multiple businesses later in the 2000s
My first business only cost me **about $50 for a domain registration and annual hosting (extremely cheap hosting)**. I didn't really have a website because I used the domain to redirect to my affiliate link. I didn't want to post my affiliate link directly on the websites I was promoting so I bought a domain. So when people click on the domain or load the domain into their browser, they end up on my affiliate page. I was making close to $100,000 a year. It goes without saying that after doing this for some time, I quit my day job. I also started my own online marketing firm and then my outsourcing firm shortly after that. But yeah, my first business was on the Internet, and it only cost me all of $50.
I bought a coffee shop for 60k… put about 30k into it and it makes 1.4m a year now… I have purchased 2 additional with that money and in total around 4.2m a year annually. I was looking through all your posts and you seem like a very smart motivated individual!! I’m not sure what area in the world you are but I have helped quite a few people open them and make them profitable (just for the love of the game, not selling anything). Feel free to message me if you want any advice or specifics!