So you’re thinking about starting your own business and you have a great idea, something unique and brilliant; but absolutely no money to get it off the ground. Setting up a new business even when you have money behind you is difficult but with no money may seem impossible.
But in this blog were going to give you some tips and tricks to help you earn the capital needed to get your brilliant business idea up and running.
Testing your business idea
First of all, you may think your idea is a work of genius and something that’s never been done before, but, you must do your due diligence and research your idea as much as you can. See if its been done before or a version of it has been done before.
Start small
When you first start out you’ll want to test out your business idea first of all. We recommend starting out small with friends and family, asking them for feedback and sharing either your products or services on their social media channels.
Word of Mouth
Starting small with family and friends can help you graduate to advertise your business for free with word of mouth. This is still a powerful tactic that many businesses use to create hype around a product or launch.
Marketplaces
Once there’s a tug on the line so to speak, you may want to take your business idea from selling to friends and family to an online marketplace. There are plenty out there to choose from but may depend on what kind of product you’re selling.
Etsy for example, only allows handcrafted items to be sold on their platform while on others like eBay you can sell pretty much anything. Again it will all depend on who you’re targeting with your products, where they are likely to shop etc. Do be aware that even though marketplaces like these are extremely useful for selling your products online, they can also become your competition too.
Our CEO Antony talks about how marketplaces can become your competition in his latest video which you can view here.
Funding
Another great way to get your business off the ground is to look at funding options. There are a wide variety of funding programmes out there that you can apply for and some even come with mentorship. If you’re interested in learning more about funding for your business, you can read our small business grants in the UK blog here.
You can also look toward a more traditional route and apply for a business loan at your preferred bank. If this is the first time you’ve applied for a business loan, remember to try to keep your expenses on this account as small as possible and going forward, try to fund other expenses with the revenue your business creates.
There are also other ways to raise the capital needed and those are becoming more popular and large brands like Tile and Revolut found their start on websites like Kickstarter and CrowdFunder.
Setting up on your own
Once you manage to get some capital behind you business idea and perhaps you’re even making a little profit, going back to what Antony mentioned in his video, marketplaces can become your competition and the best way to combat that and stay competitive is to set up your own online shop and grow your brand.
Moving to your own online shop
Setting up your own online shop can have some upfront costs but the long term benefits far outway any initial cost. As an example, our plans here at EKM start at just £29.99 +VAT and that plan gives you all the tools you’ll need to start selling through your own online shop.
If you decide to take the leap into opening your own online shop, there are hundreds of resources online to help you out but you can always speak to our experts.
The post How to start a business in the UK with no money appeared first on Ecommerce Blog.
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