We’ve all heard the saying that, “It takes money to make money.”
Even when building a business online, we’re often told that while the costs are significantly lower than a brick-and-mortar store – there are still costs and we need to suck it up because this is part and parcel of doing business online.
However, this type of thinking is backdated. With free tools such as Canva, ChatGPT and Systeme.io (SIO), one can build a profitable business with $0.
With the free plan on Systeme.io, you get 3 funnels, up to 2000 contacts on your email list, a blog, a community, unlimited file storage space and more.
You do not need to get a domain until your business is making money. You don’t need to pay for hosting because SIO will host your blog and pages for you.
You won’t even need to pay for an autoresponder like ConvertKit or GetResponse since Systeme has email marketing features built into it.
So yes, you can build a profitable business for $0… but there’s a way to go about it.
* Choose a business model
When trying to build a business with a free SIO plan, your best bet will either be to promote products as an affiliate or create and sell your own products.
By doing so, you’ll be able to use Systeme to create sales pages with a bump offer and an upsell and sell your own infoproducts… or…
You could create a blog where you promote other people’s products. If you used Canva’s free plan to design the images and ChatGPT’s free account to create content quickly, you’ll not need to fork out a cent for anything.
* Go all in
Once you choose a business model, you’ll need to focus ALL your efforts into it. If you’re planning to create an infoproduct, make sure you do your research on YouTube and understand how to go about it.
The same applies for affiliate marketing. Learn how to create persuasive blog posts that convert leads into sales.
Apply your knowledge and take action.
Make sure you’re building your email list… and remember, it’s always better to build a list of buyers than freebie seekers.
Systeme.io provides you with the features, but you need the marketing skills to pull it all off proficiently – it’s all on you.
* Focus on organic traffic
To profit without spending a cent, you’ll have no choice but to leverage free traffic. The fastest way to do that will be to use free social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.
These are the big 3 and yield the fastest results. Pinterest is hit or miss… and Instagram is a tricky beast to master.
Discover where your audience congregates on social media and gradually build an audience among them without being obvious about it. Make sure the links on your social media profiles point to your landing page on Systeme.io.
Build your list and email market to them as you go along.
* Leverage free tools
As mentioned earlier, with free tools like Canva, ChatGPT, Systeme.io, etc. you have no excuses for not being able to build your business.
Most social media platforms will let you have a free account. You can leverage these to drive traffic to your offers and landing pages.
Never has it been easier to build an online business without spending a cent. While it can be argued that it’ll require a lot of time… and time is money – it could be worse.
You could be spending time AND money. But thankfully, you don’t have to because you have Systeme.io
* Sell, sell, sell!
When building an online business with $0, the goal is to profit to such an extent that you can easily afford Systeme’s $27 plan or higher so that you can scale up.
It’s almost impossible to make 5-6 figures a year online if you’re spending $0. Sooner or later, you’ll need to upgrade to a plan with more features.
Think of $0 spending like a minimum wage job. You need it to get a head start, but you don’t want to hang around here forever.
So focus on selling… selling… and more selling. Provide value, build an audience – but always remember that you MUST sell.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling your own product or promoting someone else’s product as an affiliate. You’re still selling – and you’ll only profit when you make sales.
Keep that first and foremost in your mind.
Choose one of the 2 business models mentioned above and dedicate all your time and effort to it. Get a Systeme.io account and leverage all the features provided.
Keep at it. The sales will start trickling in… and with time, your efforts will snowball and yield consistent and growing results. From here, you can upgrade your Systeme.io plan and pay for other tools that will allow you to take your business to the next level.
This is how you build an online business from scratch, if your budget is tight. It’s not about resources, but resourcefulness. You have everything you need to succeed.
The ball is in your court, it’s your game now.