How You Can Start a Business Right Now With $1,000

Can you actually do something with $1,000? This is usually what it costs for a one week getaway to a warm destination. This is what you might spend on going out over a few months. It’s roughly what a college course might cost you. One grand is also the amount that you can spend on getting a nice side business off the ground.

I don’t think that everyone should be a full blown entrepreneur. I do feel that all 20-somethings can benefit from a side income or from trying to create something cool.

[Quick note: I don't want to be one of those people that blog about blogging or ramble on about blogging, but today I wanted to show you guys how inexpensive it is to get a blog running. Once you get a blog running, you can get your voice and ideas out there to the rest of the world.]

How you can start making money on the side with less than $1,000 to invest:

Sign up for hosting.

I pay $6.95 monthly for my hosting. I signed up and just decided to fork over the 2-year discounted rate in one shot. I didn’t put any thought into this decision to be honest as I signed up with the first hosting company I could find. I just wanted to register my domain name and get started with helping others with their finances. I’ve had a few minor issues with hosting over the years, but no major complaints.

Buy a domain.

With Blue Host I purchased my domain for $10. A domain name is cheap to register, the only problem is that all of the good names are all taken by now. Unless you think of a unique name (Studenomics!) or you want to start a blog about yourself using your full name, you’re going to have to play around with domain names for a bit. Once you find a name that fits your mold, you can begin with the actual work.

Get a slick logo/design.

This is where you’ll spend the majority of your money. Some will tell you that this doesn’t matter. I personally really can’t see you getting a new blog off the ground without making it look somewhat interesting. I played around with a few free themes until I finally realized that my site looked like shit! I then decided to invest the $87 for a premium theme from Thesis. At this point I came to the conclusion that I had no patience or artistic skills to actually put a respectable blog design together. I reached out to my good friend Larry of Empty Cabin Media to put find a way to make my site look good. What you see now is the end result of what paying money for a blog design gets you. At some point I want to change the design, I’m just not sure of what I want the next look to be.

Work your butt off.

Now you need to invest some time and lose some sleep. I think that every 20-something can benefit from starting a website of some sort. We spend so much time online on useless stuff that we can easily spare an hour here and there to work on something more meaningful than updating your Facebook relationship status. You can start off by writing about the topic that you talk about the most or even about yourself. Let’s break down these two options:

Writing about your favorite topic. This will guarantee that you stay motivated during the slow times. When you try to follow the money by focusing on lucrative topics it’s easy to get burned out or become disenchanted when the dollars don’t start rolling in. Immersing yourself in a topic that you really enjoy will make it a lot easier to forget about the lack of money.

Writing about yourself. This isn’t as conceited as it sounds. I’ve seen many creative folks on the internet use a blog as a resume. Twitter should hire me is an example of this. This beats any resume that I’ve ever seen.

There you go, with less than $1,000 you can have your own blog/potential side business up and running. What are you waiting for? Before you say you have no time please remember that if you had enough time to read this post, then you have enough time to work on something on the side.

(photo credit: sweethappychick1985)