How to Start an Online Business for Free & From Home

Last Updated on November 15, 2023 by Dr. Gabriel O’Neill, Esq.

A home-based online business is an enterprise that you can establish and run from the comfort of your own home, whether full-time or as a side hustle. Online businesses, particularly those that don’t require the purchase and storage of large quantities of inventory, can even be conducted on the go. 

The result? Setting them up is practically free of cost. Now, this leads to the question, “How can one start an online business from home?”

How to Start an Online Business

Starting a business online isn’t as difficult as most people portray it to be. With the right tips and tricks, we believe anyone can learn how to start an online business for free. Below are the eleven steps you can follow to learn how you can start your online business.

Step 1 – Find a Business Idea

Every great home-based, online business begins with an idea. One of the most difficult aspects of starting a business on the internet is determining where to begin or how to come up with a business idea.

The tactics listed below will have you brimming with new ideas in no time.

Ask Yourself What Skills You Have

The greatest place to begin is with an assessment of your own abilities, expertise, and knowledge. Begin by asking yourself the following questions to generate new ideas:

• What subjects have you studied, whether at university, college, an online course, a workshop, or otherwise?
• What topics have you studied the most, whether for work, education, or personal interest?
• What was your best subject in high school or college?

Inquire With Your Loved Ones

When we fail to see our own abilities, our friends and family can sometimes help us out.

• What do your loved ones most often commend you on?
• Were you informed as a child that you were exceptionally gifted at something?

Try asking your friends and family where they believe your abilities and skill set lie. Chances are, they’ll hit the nail on the head.

Inquire With Your Old Coworkers and Employees

If you still have contact with any old coworkers or employees, get in touch with them to find out what they remember most about you. Those that you’ve worked with will generally have a good idea of where your specific skill set lies.

Create a “Skills Map”

This is similar to a topic map, except it will be used to map out all of the abilities you are cognizant of. Putting your skills on paper allows you to see them all at once, allowing you to make connections between them or select the one that sticks out the most to you.

Look for new insights by grouping your talents in this manner. Finding a unique perspective on a common skill or subject is an excellent method to generate a business idea when planning how to start an online business from home.

Step 2 – Identify What to Sell Online

Once you’ve come up with some business ideas, your next step should be figuring out what your company should sell online. After all, you can opt to sell products, services, or even your expertise!

Sell Products

These are tangible goods that have been made available for consumer use. Products, unlike services or know-how, are physical. They can, in other words, be picked up, touched, and engaged with.

You can produce your own products or get them from a wholesaler or drop shipper; both of which are viable ways how you can start an online business from home, and that too for practically free of cost!

Offer & Sell Services

Services are tasks performed by an individual or team in a professional and informed manner for the benefit of its consumers.

Services that can be sold online include:

• Online language instruction
• Consultation on fitness and nutrition

Sell Knowledge & Expertise

If you are educated about a certain issue that is of interest to your target audience, you can sell your expertise in one of the following ways:

• Podcast 
• Online course

Whatever You’re Going to Sell Must Have the Following

1. Market viability. A “viable” market will continue to be profitable for a long time, assisting your business’s progress. Will there be a need for your product or service in the future?
2. A competitive advantage in the marketplace. What features does your product or service have that will enable you to overshadow and outperform your competitors? What will you do better than them, and how will you do it?
3. The target audience is engaged. Are people looking for what your product or service provides right now? Is your product or service aimed at a specific but large enough audience to produce a lot of sales?
4. Complies with legal regulations. Do you have all of the necessary licenses, permissions, or certificates to run your business and offer your product or service?

Step 3: Legal Compliance

Before you open your business on the internet, you must ensure that you are legally compliant in order to prevent fines or legal complications. Read our article on how to register your business for more information. 

Furthermore, the licenses, permissions, or certificates you need to stay legally compliant differ based on your industry and state/country. So always check with local authorities first to ensure you know exactly what is expected of you legally before thinking about how to start an online business for free.

Step 4: Conduct Online Market Research

When conducting e-commerce research, you are simply gathering data about the marketplace you intend to enter, as well as your competitors and clients. Doing this greatly helps when learning how to start an online business from home.

This is an important step in starting your online business since it allows you to determine whether there is a solid demand for what you intend to sell.

When referring to demand, we mean:

• The demand for your product or service.
• Who wants to buy what you’re offering – the target audience?
• What are customers willing to pay?

To grasp these things, you’ll need to know where your customers spend their time online. Do they use message boards? Do they spend time on Instagram? Do they prefer reading news articles? Knowing this can assist you in gathering the best data to better understand your clients.

Step 5: Define Your Target Audience

Your target audience is a group of people who have similar characteristics or wants that your business on the internet hopes to meet. As a result, people are more likely to buy your items or services.

The simplest way to define your target audience is to divide them into demographic groups. To obtain a generalized understanding of your target audience and begin collecting information, such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Income

Step 6: Define Your Product Management Strategy

If your business model involves selling physical products, there are numerous factors to take into account and questions to ask yourself and your corporate partners.

Product management requires considering elements such as procurement, warehousing, packaging, shipment, and returns. To maintain track, you’ll need to devise a system that works for both you and your team when planning how to start an online business from home. 

Step 7: Evaluate Product Viability

We all know that some products have a higher sales potential than others, but how do you tell if your own product will be as successful? 

The best trending e-commerce products all share three key characteristics:

• One-of-a-kind, authentic, and eye-catching. The goods you’re offering should be unique, so there will be a strong demand for them. Your market offering should not be available elsewhere.
• It’s difficult to find. When a product is unique and one-of-a-kind, it is usually more difficult to find. This boosts consumer demand for your product while leaving you with little to no rivalry when selling it, thus placing you in the limelight, and onto the track to success.
• Lower prices. The ideal product is one that you can sell with a substantial profit margin, a situation in which using a drop-shipping service gets difficult because you will have to raise your prices. Is it harmful? That is not ideal, but if you do not overdue, you may actually raise the perceived worth of the goods by the customer.

Step 8: Define Your Brand Identity

Having a strong brand identity is crucial when planning how to start an online business. Here’s what you can do. 

Developing a Brand Identity

When developing your brand identity, it’s critical to consider design/business elements such as your:

• Color scheme
• Logo Design
• Typography
• Graphics
• Brand/Business Name

When starting a business on the internet, you should aim to have a specific brand style guide, which serves as a rule book for how your brand is graphically displayed. It aids in maintaining consistency with your brand’s appearance and feel, particularly when collaborating with a graphic designer.

Other crucial parts of your visual identity, in addition to graphic design, include UX (user experience) and UI (user interface) design.

Develop Content Guidelines

Your content depends upon how you interact with your consumers, engage with your target audience, and properly represent your company.

As a result, it is critical that you decide on the following content-related factors for your brand:

1. Copy Guidelines

This collection of guidelines should describe what you should and should not do while creating content for your internet business. 

Having a set of guidelines is essential in highlighting the path you and your business should take to stay true to the core message being relayed, which is the mission statement.

2. The Tone of Voice

It’s not so much about what you say as it is about how you say it. Consider your online business to have a personality and then consider how this can be expressed through your words and what kind of impression you want to make on your audience.

3. Mission Statement

This is a synopsis of your company’s goals and values. Consider the following when creating your mission statement:

• What is the purpose of your online business?
• What are your overall objectives?
• The goods or services you offer

Step 9: Define Your Marketing Strategies – Digital Marketing

Define Your Acquisition Funnel

To begin, you must understand how your target consumer will progress through the stages of the buyer’s cycle (alternatively called an acquisition funnel) before making their first purchase. The following are the four phases you’ll encounter.

• Awareness 
• Interest 
• Decision 
• Action 

Inbound Marketing Mediums/Channels

An inbound marketing plan may incorporate a variety of channels and content to bring prospective customers to your site.

One of the most difficult aspects of starting a business on the internet is customer retention. The goal should be to keep engaging and delighting consumers even after they’ve become clients. This enables you to establish a business that adds value to your audience and fosters trust.

Keep your target customers in mind when planning how to start an online business.

Step 10: What to Consider When Making a Small Business Website

There is no “one size fits all” approach when it comes to establishing a website. Before you begin, you should examine your goals so that you may apply design components and tools to meet your aim.

You should also consider the anticipated traffic to your site. If you wish to sell things online, you may get a significant amount of attention than a local firm that primarily provides in-person services. At the end of the day, it is your business’s requirements that will eventually determine which platforms and hosting providers are appropriate for your website.

Once you’ve decided on a path for your website’s aims, you can begin designing and creating it. Here are a few essential steps to help you establish your company’s internet presence:

1. Choose your website-building platform
2. Pick your domain name
3. Find your hosting provider
4. Select a theme or template
5. Install plugins or extensions
6. Add your content
7. Optimize your website for search engines
8. Publish your website

Having a business website makes it easy to work from anywhere when learning how to start an online business from home. 

Step 11: Launch Your Online Store

Once your e-commerce site is up and running, there are some critical actions you must take to ensure its long-term success. 

The actions you take following a transaction, as well as how you gauge and encourage growth, are critical elements that can make or break your online business. Therefore, this is a highly important aspect when planning how to start an online business for free. 

How to Start an Online Business – Ending Note

In today’s environment, an online business is simply a remote-friendly firm where technology can bridge the gap between you, your suppliers, your staff, and your customers.

There are numerous reasons why people start a business, such as online businesses. Launching an online business provides you with the opportunity to start small, develop quickly, and invest conservatively—especially because you can avoid the expenditures of hiring an office.

To develop a new at-home business that works for you, think carefully about your goals and what you enjoy working on, just as you would when starting any form of business. 

Certain online businesses need to be registered in the US. Now you can register your business for only $39 with Northwest Registered Agent.