How To Start Your Online Business For Free Or very little money

[zanzibarjones 1]

So you have a great idea for an online business but have no money for startup. So here is a small tutorial on how to get started.What you will need to get started:1) Computer2) Internet Access3) Office Suite Software4) A Website5) Marketing6) Financial Software7) Email8) Other various applications to get your business up and running9) A logoand other services to get whatever idea you have up and running.So where do you get all this great stuff for free or very little cost?Well computers are not that hard to find. You don't need to have the top of the line either, because most of what you will be doing, will be done on the web. Unless you are doing graphics, I would recommend seeing if a friend or acquaintance has an old one you could have. I can tell you I have found dozens of computers in dumpsters need office bldgs.Internet Access. This is going to be your only cost out of pocket. Unless you live in an area where you can piggy back on someone open wireless connection. Which I highly recommend BTW :)Ok so you have a computer, you have internet access, what's next. An office Suite. Yeah but MS Office is like $200 and up. Ok so do get that. Go download OpenOffice from http://www.openoffice.org/. Their software is as compatible and works with all the file formats that MS Office produces and save sin those formats as well. And it's 100% and community supported.Ok now you need a domain name and a website. Here is an easy solution. Xisto.com. Post and keep posting quality posts and you can get both for free.Marketing: This one will take a little work, but it does work. Try posting ads on Craigslist.org, it's free. Post ads in other forums and open websites that allow comments. Try setting up fan pages on facebook, and creating a twitter account. ALl good marketing for free. Make a video for your site and stick it on youtube....Email, Financial software, other software, etc. Goto Zoho.com. Sign up for a free account and get access to, your own wiki, your own financial software for billing, presentation software, chat software, contacts, a CRM (Customer Relation Management software), and much much more, including email.And a logo. Now this one may seem hard to come by, but there is a myriad of people out there that will design you a logo for free. Just so they can add it to their portfolio. All you have to do is ask. Try multiple forums, posting sites, and college forum sites.Pretty easy huh?Oh yeah, need a phone number for your business, google voice. It's free and you can forward it to any phone you want. Need 2 numbers? Sign up for 2 google voice numbers, change the options to land or work, and you can forward 2 numbers to the same forwarding number :)Enjoy!

[sellstuff123 0]

Hi, Thats a great run through. Google voice is amazing, well I dont use it everyday as others do in their business or day to day lives. I usually keep in touch with the app during the weekend and its pretty flawless so obviously its pretty much a good choice for use in an online business.The thing with openoffice, its CTRL+F doesnt works when I first used it, but later the function seems obsolete and I dont know if that is a common issue with open office.

[k_nitin_r 8]

I would like to add that you can also put together your own logo by drawing something on paper, scanning it, and cleaning it up using PaintBrush. With a little more skill, it would be possible to use Gimp or PaintBrush.NET, both of which are free software.Marketing is tough to achieve and you would have better luck hiring sales professionals to help out. You would be hard pressed to find customers without having a general idea of who you are targeting because you do need to build your strategy based on who you want to reach out to and on whose needs you intend to fulfil. Read up on a couple of websites and you will get to know how to put together a basic marketing plan for your business.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

You forgot one of the most important things, which is to be aware of taxes as well. This should be one of the top priorities, as (at least in the US) you can lose your business if you aren't on top of it.