If you want to start a business on a tight budget, look for something you can sell without buying stock first. A service, skill, or digital product business fits the bill: You sell what you know or something you create once, so you don’t need to buy inventory or rent a warehouse.
With lower overhead costs, more of each sale stays with you as profit. You can also run low-investment business ideas—like tutoring and freelance writing—from home.
Below are 24 low-cost business ideas with high profit potential, plus five questions to help you choose the one that suits your budget and lifestyle.
24 low-cost business ideas with high profit potential
- Launch an online store
- Offer online tutoring services
- Participate in affiliate marketing
- Launch a marketing consulting business
- Sell branded merchandise
- Become a personal trainer
- Produce online courses
- Start a dog-walking or pet-sitting business
- Perform social media management services
- Become an event planner
- Create a car wash business
- Start a photography business
- Offer freelance writing services
- Start blogging
- Try content creation
- Explore career coaching
- Sell digital downloads
- Start a mobile notary business
- Rent out things you already own
- Offer bookkeeping services
- Become a personal chef or caterer
- Offer virtual assistant services
- Become a real estate agent
- Resell vintage clothes
Earning high profit margins takes work, but it should also be satisfying. Luckily, aspiring entrepreneurs can start a business on a budget in several ways. Check out these affordable business opportunities, prioritizing the ideas that best reflect your interests and skills.
1. Launch an online store
Start an online business using an ecommerce platform like Shopify. Use customizable themes, accept payments, and track sales and customer behavior with built-in analytics.
Start by brainstorming online business opportunities that suit your strengths. Create a product or service that meets market demand, and write a detailed business plan. Before you invest, validate the market with a small batch or preorder. Determine your target audience, define your brand, and develop marketing materials to build your online presence.
You can also try your hand at dropshipping, a business model where a third party fulfills orders so you’re not holding stock or managing inventory.
Shopify Collective is a free-to-install app that lets you import products from other Shopify brands into your store. Product details, pricing, and inventory sync in real time, suppliers ship each order, and supplier payments process automatically when orders ship. For more sourcing options, including print on demand and wholesale, browse product sourcing apps in the Shopify App Store.
Once your store has a few months of sales behind it, you might be able to get funding through Shopify Capital to restock bestsellers or invest in growth.
2. Offer online tutoring services
Another side hustle idea is tutoring. Depending on your skill set, you can tutor subjects like English, math, and science, or technical skills like computer programming and video editing. Or consider starting a test-prep business for standardized tests such as the ACT or SAT.
Marketplaces like Wyzant and Preply connect you with paying students, but they take a cut. Wyzant keeps a 25% platform fee on lessons with students they find for you. Preply keeps your first trial lesson with each new student, then takes 18% to 33% commission, starting at 33% for new tutors.
With your own online store, you pay a flat plan fee and payment processing instead. You’ll need to find students yourself, then take bookings with an event or appointment booking app.
3. Participate in affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing means promoting another company’s products with a unique link or code and earning a commission when someone buys or signs up through it. You can share your links in a blog, newsletter, YouTube channel, or social media posts.
Shopify has two ways to get started. The Shopify Affiliate Program is free to join and pays up to $150 for each referral who buys a full-price Basic, Grow, or Advanced plan, with amounts varying by the referral’s location.
To promote products from Shopify brands instead, join Shopify Collabs as a creator. You’ll share affiliate links or discount codes and earn commission. You can also compare other affiliate programs that fit your niche.
Whichever program you choose, tell your audience you earn a commission. The FTC’s Endorsement Guides say to disclose affiliate relationships clearly and as close to your recommendation as possible.
4. Launch a marketing consulting business
If you have existing expertise in digital marketing strategy, consider offering consulting services. Services can include search engine optimization, email marketing, market research, and social media marketing.
Start by offering your services to local businesses, and build your résumé and reputation over time. Launch a portfolio website that has your résumé and allows potential clients to contact you directly.
5. Sell branded merchandise
Selling branded merchandise like T-shirts, water bottles, and USB drives is a good option for graphic designers, social media influencers, artists, and podcast creators with preexisting audiences and clear brand vision.
For example, on an episode of Shopify Masters, entrepreneur Gourmet Délice shares how selling merchandise through Shopify benefits his record label, Bonsound. “There are only 24 hours in a day, and if your mind is only on the business side, then it’s tough to create,” Gourmet says.
To start selling merchandise, design your products and create mock-ups. Then, find a print-on-demand service like Printful or Printify. A print-on-demand model lets you offer a wide range of products without investing in inventory upfront.
6. Become a personal trainer
If you’re passionate about health and wellness, consider starting a personal training business. Personal trainers assess clients’ fitness levels and goals, build personalized training programs, and track progress. Some train clients at home, so you don’t need gym space to get started.
Before you start a business and advertise, check your area’s certification requirements and secure the appropriate insurance.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), personal trainers usually must be certified before working with clients. The median annual wage for fitness trainers and instructors was $47,160 in May 2025, and the highest-paid 10% earned more than $83,100. These figures cover employed trainers only, since BLS wage data excludes self-employed workers, who hold about 15% of jobs in the field.
7. Produce online courses
If you know about a particular subject, consider launching an online course business. You can create online courses in various formats, including written, audio, and video. Creating your curriculum takes time and energy, but once established, online courses can generate scalable passive income.
8. Start a dog-walking or pet-sitting business
If you’re good with animals, start a pet-sitting or dog-walking service with low startup costs. Start with pet parents in your network and grow as you earn positive referrals.
Dog walkers earn an average of $19.69 per hour, while pet sitters average $17.18 per hour.
9. Perform social media management services
If you have a knack for creating social media content, consider offering social media management to local businesses.
The work can include planning and publishing posts, replying to comments, and reporting on results. Fortune Business Insights valued the social media management market at $32.48 billion in 2025, and projects it will reach $164.52 billion by 2034.
To build recurring revenue, package your services into monthly plans that clients pay for on a set schedule. A starter package might cover a fixed number of posts per week, while a higher tier adds community management and a monthly performance report. Because clients pay the same amount each month, you know roughly what’s coming in and can plan your workload around it, as long as they renew.
10. Become an event planner
Event planners organize weddings, birthday parties, conferences, and corporate events. According to the BLS, the work includes setting an event’s budget and location, collecting bids from venues and vendors, and coordinating services such as catering and transportation.
The BLS describes the job as fast-paced, with tight deadlines, and reports that many planners work more than 40 hours a week as major events approach.
11. Create a car wash business
A mobile car wash lets you clean vehicles at customers’ homes or workplaces, so you don’t need to rent a location. You’ll need cleaning equipment, a vehicle to carry it, and a lead-generation strategy to find customers.
Before you take bookings, check which licenses and permits your state, county, or city requires, and get general liability insurance, which covers property damage claims. Many areas also prohibit wash water from reaching storm drains. For example, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection recommends drain covers, mats, or berms to collect water for proper disposal, so check your local rules.
12. Start a photography business
If you’re a skilled photographer, turn your hobby into a business by launching a website with your portfolio and services.
Another way to sell photography online is to license photos to stock websites like Shutterstock and Getty Images.
13. Offer freelance writing services
Freelance writers create content for paying clients who need original material aligned with their SEO and content strategies.
You can write blogs, emails, advertisements, press releases, website copy, and product descriptions. If you enjoy creative writing, you could also offer ghostwriting services to clients who want to bring their book ideas to life.
14. Start blogging
To start a blog, you need a domain name and hosting. From there, you can write about your interests, whether that’s travel, food, technology, personal finance, or anything else.
Once you have a readership, you can make money through affiliate links, sponsored posts, and ads. If you earn a commission or get paid by a brand, tell readers clearly and close to the recommendation. The FTC’s Endorsement Guides suggest plain wording like “I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post” or “Sponsored by [brand],” and note that a disclosure only on your homepage isn’t enough.
15. Try content creation
Content creation means making written, visual, or video content for the web. You can start with a smartphone, posting to platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, or freelance as a content creator for other brands.
Each platform sets its own bar for paying creators. YouTube’s Partner Program shares ad revenue once you reach 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months, or 10 million Shorts views in the past 90 days. TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program pays for videos more than a minute long, and creators must be 18 or older with at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 valid views in the last 30 days.
Once your YouTube channel is approved for monetization, you can tag your products in videos and live streams with YouTube Shopping. Connect your Shopify store through the Google & YouTube sales channel so viewers can shop from the video. Eligible US stores can let viewers check out without leaving the YouTube app.
If a brand pays you or sends you free products, you need to say so in the video itself. The FTC suggests clear wording like “Ad” or “Gifted by [brand],” and notes that “Gifted” alone, or a platform’s built-in disclosure tool, may not be enough.
16. Explore career coaching
If you’re good at helping others navigate their professions, consider career coaching, especially if you can establish a niche.
Decide whether you’ll coach recent graduates, professionals switching careers, or executives looking to improve their leadership skills. Once you’ve identified your target audience, you can market your services through social media or networking events.
As you gain clients, you might offer one-on-one coaching sessions, group workshops, webinars, and online courses.
17. Sell digital downloads
If you know a subject well, like gardening or graphic design, you can turn that knowledge into digital products such as digital art, music, templates, PDFs, or ebooks.
To sell them, start an online store and install Shopify Digital Products, a free app that emails customers a link to their files after purchase. You can also set download limits on each file.
Because you create each file once, you won’t pay for inventory or shipping on each sale, but you’ll still pay for your store and payment processing.
18. Start a mobile notary business
A notary is a public official who witnesses the signing of important documents. As a mobile notary, you travel to clients instead of working from a fixed location like a bank or shipping store.
To get started, you’ll need a state commission, which may require a course, a background check, and a fee. Most states cap what notaries can charge per notarial act. California’s maximum is $15 per signature (rising to $20 on January 1, 2027). Some states, including Florida and New York, let notaries set their own travel fees on top.
19. Rent out things you already own
Turn high-value or in-demand items you own into passive income with a rental business. Because you’re renting what you already have, you don’t need to make new products or services. You could rent out photography gear, tools, party supplies, vehicles, and more.
Some platforms to help you start:
- Hygglo: For renting out electronics, tools, or event supplies.
- Turo: For renting out your personal vehicle.
- Airbnb: For renting out your home.
- Neighbor: For renting out your garage, driveway, or other unused space.
Before you list anything, check the rules that apply to you. If you rent your home or belong to a homeowners association (HOA), Airbnb recommends checking your lease and HOA rules for restrictions, and looking up any local permits, registrations, or business licenses. Ask your insurer whether your policy covers items or property you rent to others. Rental income is taxable, and the IRS says you must report it even if you don’t receive a tax form for it.
20. Offer bookkeeping services
If you’re organized and good with numbers, consider starting a bookkeeping business. Bookkeepers help small business owners track income and expenses and keep their financial records accurate.
The BLS projects that employment of bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks will decline 6% from 2025 to 2035 as software takes over routine tasks like data entry. The BLS expects the role to move more toward analysis and advice, like reviewing clients’ books and pointing out ways to work more efficiently, so consider building those services into what you offer.
The median wage for these clerks was $24.36 per hour in May 2025, though that figure excludes self-employed bookkeepers.
21. Become a personal chef or caterer
If you love cooking, you can turn that skill into a business as a personal chef or caterer. Personal chefs prepare custom meals for families, professionals, or small private events, often in clients’ homes. Caterers prepare food for larger events, such as weddings and corporate gatherings.
Check food licensing before you take your first booking. Cottage food rules let you sell some foods made in a home kitchen, but the Association of Food and Drug Officials recommends limiting them to shelf-stable foods like baked goods and jams. Regulators may cap your annual sales.
If your menu doesn’t qualify, you’ll need a licensed commercial kitchen. In Los Angeles, for example, caterers can rent shared or private commercial kitchen space for a few hours a week, and everyone who handles food needs a food handler card.
Personal chefs who cook in clients’ kitchens may face different rules than caterers, so ask your local health department which permits apply to you. Get liability insurance before your first job, too.
22. Offer virtual assistant services
As a virtual assistant (VA), you can offer remote services like email management, scheduling, social media support, and customer service from home.
To find your first clients, create a profile on a freelance marketplace or network in professional online communities in your niche. Marketplaces take a cut of what you earn: for example, Upwork charges a variable service fee of 0% to 15% per contract, so factor the fees into your rates.
Rates vary by skills, experience, and location. Upwork reports median VA rates of $10 to $20 per hour on their platform. For experienced VAs in North America, rates run from $12 to $20 or more for administrative and data entry work, $20 to $35 or more for marketing, customer service, and accounting support, and $38 to $50 or more for executive-level and consulting work.
23. Become a real estate agent
Real estate agents help clients buy, sell, and rent properties. You don’t need to buy products to sell, but you do need a license. Every state requires one, and you’ll need to complete real estate courses and pass a licensing exam. Once you’re licensed, you’ll work with a licensed broker, since only brokers can manage their own real estate businesses.
Agents earn commission on each sale rather than a regular paycheck, so income can be irregular. Realtors earned a median gross income of $59,200 in 2025, according to the National Association of Realtors’ 2026 Member Profile, but members with two years or less of experience earned a median of $8,000. Plan to have savings that cover your living costs while you build a client base.
24. Resell vintage clothes
If you love hunting for fashion finds, you can start a business reselling vintage clothing. Set a sourcing budget, such as $200 to start, and look for stock at thrift stores, flea markets, and estate sales.
Then, create an online store, photograph your products, and promote your business. Here’s how the numbers might work. Say you buy a vintage dress for $10 and sell it for $35. Shopify Payments charges 2.9% plus 30¢ per online card sale on the Basic plan, or $1.32 here, which leaves you $23.68 before shipping, packaging, and your monthly plan fee.
How to determine your business idea
Use these five questions to narrow down which idea fits your budget, skills, and schedule:
- What’s your starting budget? Every idea has some upfront cost, whether that’s licensing, a website, or stock. Service businesses like virtual assistance skip inventory but may pay marketplace fees, while product businesses like vintage resale need money for stock first, such as a $200 sourcing budget.
- What skills or credentials do you have? Some ideas, like notary work or real estate, require a course or license before you can earn. Others, like pet sitting or blogging, have fewer barriers, but check your local permit and insurance requirements first.
- Do you want to work from your laptop or meet people in person? Decide whether you’d prefer a home-based setup, like affiliate marketing or freelancing, or a hands-on business, like catering or car washing.
- How do you want to be paid? Monthly packages for services like bookkeeping or social media management bring in recurring revenue only as long as clients renew, while project-based work like event planning pays once each job is done. Commission income can vary the most: Realtors with two years or less of experience earned a median of $8,000 in 2025.
- How soon do you need income? Plan for a gap before your first payment, since you’ll need to find clients or build an audience first, and some platforms keep early earnings, like Preply taking the full fee for your first trial lesson with each student. Audience-based businesses also have thresholds: YouTube shares ad revenue once you reach 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 watch hours or 10 million Shorts views.
7 helpful resources for starting your low-cost business
Use these Shopify guides and free tools to plan, name, and promote your new business:
- 72 Small Business Ideas To Start. Browse more business ideas grouped by type, including businesses you can start with little money.
- 8 Proven Million-Dollar Business Ideas. Get inspiration from another list of profitable business ideas.
- How to dropship on Shopify. Learn how to sell products online without fulfilling orders yourself.
- AI business name generator. Brainstorm names for your business with Shopify’s AI helper.
- Shopify’s free AI logo maker. Design a logo for your new business.
- Free business card maker. Create on-brand business cards to share with customers.
- How to write a marketing plan. Plan how you’ll reach customers and make sales.
Low-cost business ideas with high profit FAQ
What is the cheapest and most profitable business to start?
The cheapest and most profitable business to start depends on your resources and skills. Several low-cost business ideas have high profit potential. The list includes tutoring, affiliate marketing, launching ecommerce through Shopify, and more.
What business has a 90% success rate?
No business type has a guaranteed 90% success rate. As of March 2025, 77.9% of private sector establishments that opened a year earlier were still operating, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Before you launch, set aside a cash reserve to cover costs while you build sales.
What business makes $1,000 a day?
Any business can make $1,000 a day in sales, but it depends on your pricing and sales volume. For example, you’d need 50 orders at $20 each, or 10 hours of client work at $100 an hour. Keep in mind that $1,000 in daily sales isn’t $1,000 in profit, since platform fees, payment processing, and other costs come out first.
What is the best business to start with $1,000?
The best business to start with $1,000 depends on your background, interests, and available tools. Low-cost business ideas you can start with as little as $1,000 include virtual assistance, social media management, and tutoring.
How do you start a small business?
Start a small business by brainstorming ideas, researching the market, defining a target audience, and refining your product or service. For online businesses, launch an ecommerce store on a platform like Shopify.
