50+ Freelance Business Ideas You Can Start With Little Capital Today

Over the years I’ve built quite a bit of business knowledge (was a Director of Operations and helped build a company from 5 employees to 100 and $2.5 million to $16 million in revenue; also was a five-year member of Vistage, a business mastermind group) and wanted to leverage that.

Get started with something inexpensive that interests you. Then keep going as you try things and learn.

I started a website through an online marketing/website building course and began blogging on business and career topics. But I found monetizing that to be difficult. I wanted to do business strategy consulting and paid $1,000 for a three-month insert in a coupon mailing that did nothing and found trying to get that type of consulting off the ground part time around my day job wasn’t working.

Gikken’s foundation was laid in 2011 or so. I don’t remember the exact year but I was in high school. I was amidst my most active English learning years. I was trying to read as many articles, blogs, essays, etc in English as possible. At some point, an idea that it’d be great to double click on words to get them translated right there struck me. It was the early days of Google Chrome that wasn’t the most popular browser yet. And, I think it already could translate pages entirely, but it was totally useless for me because when I can understand 80% of the text, why would I translate it entirely? It’s also terrible for mastering a language. Guessing the meanings of words from the context works better for memorizing new vocabulary. The more effort your brain takes, the stronger neural connections are.

So, physiology aside, I wanted a fast way to translate single words I didn’t understand or double-check sentences. The previous flow involved copying it, switching to a new tab with Google Translate opened there, translating it, and then switching back. Terribly inefficient and annoying when you have to do it 10 times per article, 100 times per day.

By the time I was obsessed with this idea, I could already easily implement anything I wanted on the web. I started coding at 13, so I had already at least 2 or so years of experience with copycatting news portals, trying to build my social network (who didn’t!), and reinventing a few popular JavaScript libraries. It was the early days of not only Google Chrome but also Chrome Web Store—the extension store. I made an extension that I needed for my own needs, called Instant Translate, and uploaded it to the Chrome Web Store. Uncunningly, the timing was perfect for organic growth through the store as Instant Translate happened to be one of the first extensions there. The 15-year-old me knew something only about building apps but absolutely nothing about turning them into a business. Thus, I relied on "organic growth". In other words, routinely checking analytics and praying that it grew. I did nothing more than that for the first few years.

Growing up, I went to private school and was very blessed that my parents cared about my education. Somewhere around 9th grade, my perspective on the education system changed. I realized through books and YouTube videos that the life trajectory of a lot of the people I looked up to, was not aligned with what I wanted in life.

I was never a fan of what was taught in schools. Instead of religiously following what was being taught in high school, I self-educated in business, personal development, and leadership. When I was fifteen, I tried out various online businesses. I failed miserably at first. At this time I was very much into Fitness and I tried to sell training and diet plans. I managed to sell a few plans to my classmates for like $50, but it never really amounted to anything and most importantly it wasn't scalable.

After that, I tried stock trading and the likes. That too didn’t really work for me. One day I stumbled across SMMA. I was so intrigued by the concept, so I went ALL IN. I didn’t care what people thought. I was going to make it big here. I needed some proof of concept, so I convinced my dad to make me run his restaurant's Facebook Ads. I watched 100’s of videos and read tons of blogs, to know how to run successful ads and we were both pretty stoked about the results.

I knew it was the right business for me, but it was not all gold and green forests. In fact, at the start of my “agency journey,” it was so hard getting my feet on the ground and getting my first few clients after my dad.

I grew up in Omaha, NE with four siblings and parents who’ve started probably around 20 companies. So new companies, employees, clients, and everything that goes with starting new companies were normal dinner table topics. Not that we as kids were asked our opinions, more that we got to listen to our parents talk things through that were front and center for them at that time. Which were things like who to hire for what jobs, who to let go, where to start a new office or location, and if they should borrow more money for expansion or not.

We had front row seats and that has helped more than I would have ever guessed it would when I was 10 years old bored out of my mind not being able to join the conversation at dinner.

At the same time I was learning at dinner by osmosis I started playing tennis almost every day. Then I was able to go to an all-boys prep school for high school. Both of those things also contributed considerably to me ending up being a business owner.

I’m the son of a therapist and an artist, and both sides of that upbringing prepared me well to manage a creative business! I was always playing with code and design growing up, and was lucky enough to have my dad’s tech hand-me-downs to learn on.

I regret bootstrapping because it forced us into making decisions based on the fear of running out of money, rather than on trying to find long-term value.

I majored in Mathematics at NYU, but while in classes I started to get the itch to design again. I did some portfolio pieces in photoshop but needed a website. I taught myself the basics by spending hours in Barnes & Noble reading every web design and development book I could find (even though I couldn’t afford to take them home) and got hooked.

I am a licensed attorney in India and right after my master’s in law, I started working with a leading company as a lawyer. I worked there for about two years before I quit my job to become more location independent.

Choose a niche in whatever you start. It is critical for streamlining your efforts and make money.

My job paid me well but I worked 12 hours a day, I was exhausted by the end of each day, spent my weekends sleeping and I almost quit the things I liked to do - for example, sketching, yoga, traveling, etc.

Back in 2013, I had already discovered my passion - personal development - and had realized writing is the best way to express myself. So I combined these and started a self-improvement blog.

Starting the blog was the best decision and not giving up on it over the years (even when no traffic or money was coming in) was what helped me move forward.

It was first just a hobby and I knew nothing about blogging. Over the years, after publishing a ton of content, gaining traffic, learning about SEO, email marketing, social media, and all the ways to monetize a blog, it became a real business.

I was unhappily working in marketing for a Fortune 500 insurance company when I started looking at ways to create a new income stream. I became interested in ecommerce and invested in a course to learn more. I compiled a list of keywords for products that had decent search volume and not terribly competitive to rank for in organic search. I used Long Tail Pro to get ideas--I had so many when I first started!

My business is a small, mostly passive income stream and I’m okay with that. There is so much more I could be doing with my store, but right now I am loving the extra income stream that allows me to work part-time at my day job and spend more time with my infant daughter.

A bunch of keywords in the dollhouse miniatures space fit the bill. I used Long Tail Pro and looked for keywords that were competitive--which on there is a score in the twenties or low thirties. I also wanted them to have at least 2,000 searches per month. This is not a ton, but five keywords with that search volume that are not that competitive can lead to a decent number of organic traffic if you build your site the right way. My advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to find a niche with a nice handful of keywords you can rank for with quality content and a nice backlinking strategy. Don’t try to be number one for some saturated keyword that has a million searches a month. Go for keywords where you stand a chance of ranking--this is usually so-called long tail keywords that are really phrases--for example, “wooden dollhouse furniture” instead of just “dollhouse.”

Hi! My name is Tsour Lee Adato and I am the founder of Pro Photo Studio. I started my product photography business over 5 years ago while living in New York. Pro Photo Studio specializes in high-end commercial photography and also caters to the average eCommerce online seller who sells on platforms like Amazon and Etsy.

The company began realizing a profit very quickly, in the first quarter after opening and year over year profits have increased while the cost of customer acquisition has decreased. Currently, the company makes approximately $350k per year and is on its way to becoming a 7 figure business.

Before Cape Whoopies was conceived, I was enjoying being the mom of two kids in high school, the wife to an airline pilot, and an aerobics teacher at my local gym.

When my kids had gone off to college and my husband was in the air, I had much time on my hands. There was only so much time you could spend at the gym, so with the newfound extra time I splurged in one of the things I always loved doing: making delicious baked things for friends.

My husband and I spend time a local restaurant as a hangout when he was home, so we would go to DiMillos and take our server friends whoopie pies. Why whoopie pies? I had tasted the Maine creation and thought, "good idea, not great execution".

I started my career as a researcher at NASA where I helped scientists visualize data. It did not take long before I realized that research is not a place for me. I thought to join a big company would make it exciting for me, I then joined Intel Corporation only to realize that's not a place for me. It took me 10 years to realize that being an entrepreneur is where I felt more fit and excited. I always knew, If I had the right mentor I would not have wasted 10 precious years.

All this made sense to me, when I met my co-founder over a beer, he mentioned an interesting data point to me. The ratio between a high school counselor and students is 1:500, which means the amount of time, a student gets over their entire high school is 38 minutes. That clearly is a huge problem and interestingly of all the high school students that get into colleges, 40% of them either end up changing majors, colleges, not graduating on time or not graduating at all.

I think that's a very serious problem. I instantly connected with that problem and we decided that we will certainly fix it. That’s how we started on this journey.

I have always been an entrepreneur. When I was in high school, I wanted to start my own business, so I took to one thing that I knew how to do- mow lawns.

Afterward, while I was in college, I started a mobile DJ business, which was a great way to earn some extra cash in college. After graduating from NDSU with a degree in Computer Science, I took a full-time job working as a software developer. While working as a developer, I really wanted to start a SaaS Company, which translates to “Software as a Service”, so I did just that. I created Midwest Streams - Simple Funeral Webcasting, which helps funeral directors webcast their funerals.

I ended up spending too many hours working on Midwest Streams while I was at my software developer job, so my employer fired me. (If you are reading this, I really am sorry!) This happened in February of 2014, and Midwest Streams was only making $400 a month. I decided not to go back to work and try my hardest to grow my company. I had some savings, but burnt through it pretty quick, as it’s really hard to survive with only $400 a month.

I’ve studied IT until 2006 and afterward worked as a developer, first for a few years in Stockholm and then since 2008 in Berlin. I was always a regular employee, but when I came to Berlin, I started working for a small startup, and all other developers there were freelancers, so I decided to become a freelancer as well.

It wasn’t so much a thought-out decision but just seemed like the right thing to do at the time, since I didn’t know how long I was going to work for the startup (or how long it would exist).

After that, I worked as a freelancer for the next 8 years for different startups, agencies and media companies here in Berlin. During that time, freelancing became more and more common for developers, and many companies who couldn’t find permanent employees chose to work with freelancers instead.

I began my business career with the family in-store sampling business, C.A. Courtesy, in the 1990s, while at the same time attending college at Johnson and Wales University, where I pursued a degree in Web Management & Internet Commerce.

I’ve always had a knack for marketing and technology, and when I left C.A. Courtesy, I was the Vice President of Marketing and Technology.

People don’t remember what you say as much as they remember how they felt when you said it.

I came up with TeamFFLEX seeing the massive trend of everything turning online and want to help as many people as possible achieve results. In a traditional gym format trainers job, there are only so many hours you can work in a day and a limit on clients you can actually work with. For example, if a client does a 60-minute session and you work an 8 hour day you can see 8 clients within that day. There are also of course training teams, and classes as well as small groups but still even if I could have worked with 100 people a day in a gym it would not have been enough.

I wanted to find a way to help people all around the world. The people that couldn’t get to the gym or didn’t have the money to hire an expensive trainer. I wanted to make sure that no matter where people were at the gym or at home they had the ability to take action on their health and fitness and get results.

Seeing in today's world how basically kids are born with an iPhone in hand it all just made perfect sense. Take personal training online and help people all around the world. The thing about today's society is that we want it now. We don't want to wait. We don't want to go into a building, meet with some trainer, get sold on all the different expensive packages and then pay basically to have a really expensive cheerleader. I honestly believe that within the next 10 years we won’t see trainers in gyms anymore. The quality of training in gyms continues to drop due to the fact that not enough people get training and also that trainers can’t even make enough money to sustain a living. I knew that if I could go online with everything not only would I be able to impact people to a much larger degree, I would also be able to live a life on my terms.

I have been building websites and doing SEO since around 1998 (yes I’m 39!) which was pre-Google. The good old days of Alta Vista, Excite, keyword stuffing and transparent text on pages!

I studied Software Engineering at University and helped fund this by building websites and doing SEO in the evenings and spare time.

After a few years of employment after leaving University, I co-founded a business that built tools and extensions for Microsoft SharePoint. Part of my role in this business was looking after the marketing website and so I continued to work in the SEO space.

I went to school for audio engineering, initially wanting to produce records for bands and artists. After graduating in 2012, I interned at a big studio in my hometown of Vancouver, and while I learned a lot, I quickly realized that I didn’t have the drive (or financial ability) to show up at the studio at 8am and work (for free) until 4am six or seven days a week for a year or more before moving up into a position that might pay $10/hr and actually start getting paid to work on music.

I went home that night, started a profile on UpWork, got my first client three days later, and within six months had quit my landscaping job and was working for myself full time as a podcast producer.

After interning just a couple of days per week for over a year, while also working full-time at a retail job, I quit the internship and put my dreams of working in the music industry behind me. I worked a number of manual labour jobs including landscape construction and maintenance, tree planting in northern Canada, and others before taking a year off to travel, bicycling across Europe, and backpacking through the Balkans, and Asia.

Finding my first drop shipping supplier was by searching over AliExpress and looking for the supplier with the best reviews and years in business and most importantly communication reliability I would get on skype calls with the suppliers and do a mini-interview to see if they fit the criteria I was looking for, also another important thing was making sure my supplier had a license to sell these products I was marketing/selling.

My supplier would handle all the logistics like inventory and fulfillment that’s how the drop shipping business model works.

I set up an LLC in the US I got an accountant to manage the books using a Shopify app called Taxjar.

I work with a group of artists and developers who are making tools for other artists. If you need royalty-free music, video effects, graphics, or sound assets, we’ve got you covered.

ProductionCrate got its reputation from our VFX library, FootageCrate. That’s our flagship product, and where most of our million-plus users first found us. Filmmakers don’t just need one asset, though. As soon as our users realize we have all kinds of production resources, they’re downloading everything they need to make their project awesome.

Hello! My name is Brooke Schrager and I am the founder and studio manager of Lessons By Brooke & Company. We provide customized, in-home, private music lessons to students of all interests, ages, and ability levels.

We have also been able to expand our offerings to include lessons in arranging, bass, brass, composition, guitar, piano, sound engineering, viola, violin, and voice. I could not be more proud of and grateful for my team and our community of incredible students and families.

We have been running a design agency for the past 10 years as a side business. After gaining inspiration from some of our competitors in this domain providing a productized service, we came up with an idea for an even better process that is more optimal and efficient bringing out better results at a more affordable cost comparatively.

The most effective method we tried for our validation was initiating a conversation with every person who visited our website to understand more about what they were looking for and what would make Draftss an ideal provider for their needs.

We wanted to productize the design and code service domain, where a design team is like a product subscription. You buy a Design or Code subscription and equip yourself with a design or/and development team that can get everything done for you. Subscribe when you require projects to be completed, unsubscribe once you are done.

Ok, this has the potential to be a long one, so maybe grab a cuppa or a coffee ☕.

I'm a first-time entrepreneur with a fairly eclectic background.

I studied French and Russian at uni (Oui, Я немного говорю по русски!) and began my career in policy design for the UK government. After 2 years of trying to fit in and failing terribly, I decided to jump ship and retrain as a UX designer.

I was terrified, but also fired up. I had zero experience of anything to do with being self-employed, I had literally never sent a manual invoice the day that I quit my job. I don't even think I had a business bank account by that point.

My name is David Tile. I own and operate a Content Writing Service, under the banner Article-Writing.co.

We don’t consider ourselves a content marketing firm. But a firm dedicated to the business of writing. Project management offers most often attached to marketing agencies. We work against marketing briefs delivering content on time and under budget.

Hi! I’m Jamey Stegmaier, and I run Stonemaier Games, a tabletop game company based in St. Louis. We publish strategy games like Wingspan, Scythe, and Viticulture.

Stonemaier Games started with a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 that raised $65,980, and in 2020 our annual revenue eclipsed $18 million. Our latest game, Red Rising, is shown here (photo credit: Tim Chuon).

I'm Vaibhav Kishnani, an engineer but a passionate writer by profession. I established Content-Whale in 2017 when I was in my third year of engineering. Going by the maxim that quality writing is everything, Content-Whale caters to 42 different content types that form the backstory of every company’s digital presence and marketing efforts.

I started this content agency with a mere sum of Rs. 2,500. Today, we have drawn a revenue turnover of Rs. 4 Crores! In my opinion, it is not individual progress. Instead, a start-up is about connecting with the right individuals at the right time, who keep the show running ahead with their strife for perfection.

Hi everyone! I’m Lindsey Allard, originally from Boston and currently living in New Hampshire. I started PlaybookUX just over 3 years ago. Our goal was (and still is!) to help businesses quickly get feedback on their digital assets.

We achieved profitability within the first year of business. As of early 2022, our revenue was $150k/month, and currently, we have 1,100 customers.

Hi, my name is Mony Raanan, and I’m the founder of Voice Crafters, a multilingual voice-over agency and marketplace.

Voice Crafters operated as an agency until early 2020, at which point we launched our online marketplace. This move essentially helped double our revenue to over $765,000 in 2022 with a bottom line of around 30%.

Manoj: Kamlesh Ramchandani and I (Manoj Tulsani) are the founders of Rayna Tours and Travels. Fueled by our deepest interest in travel and entrepreneurship, we kicked off our business journey a decade ago from a small travel counter inside a five-star hotel in Dubai.

Kamlesh: We’ve been in the industry for over a decade and have now become a niche provider of destination management services in Dubai. As a one-stop, customer-oriented business for all travel needs, our main organizational goal is to design and craft travel services and packages in such a way that each of them ideally responds to the dynamic market trends as well as our clients’ specific travel requirements. We offer our full suite of travel solutions through our wholly-owned Rayna Group.

I'm Vaibhav Kishnani, an engineer but a passionate writer by profession. I established Content-Whale in 2017 when I was in my third year of engineering. Going by the maxim that quality writing is everything, Content-Whale caters to 42 different content types that form the backstory of every company’s digital presence and marketing efforts.

I started this content agency with a mere sum of Rs. 2,500. Today, we have drawn a revenue turnover of Rs. 4 Crores! In my opinion, it is not individual progress. Instead, a start-up is about connecting with the right individuals at the right time, who keep the show running ahead with their strife for perfection.

My name is Courtlyn Jones and I am the CEO and the founder of The Design Database, an online platform, and community designed to be a support system for Creatives (designers, artists, writers, photographers, architects, etc.) by connecting them with clients who are looking to hire now.

Since launching in late July, over 200 Creatives and 25 companies have created accounts on our platform, we have received grant funding from the HerRise Pitch Competition by HerSuiteSpot, and we’ve raised over $10,000 crowdfunding on Kickstarter. We are off to a very exciting start!

I founded TenantCloud as a way to help landlords manage their rental properties and assist with finding tenants. There are over 15 million DIY landlords in the U.S. and they own 21 million rentals and house 60 million tenants.

Our first revenue was in 2018 and currently, we are on track to do near $15 million at the end of 2021.

Hi, I’m Prof. Jed Macosko, and I have the privilege of telling the story of how AcademicInfluence.com got started. I serve as president and academic director under the capable leadership of our CEO, Wayne Downs, and alongside an incredible team that includes Prof. Robert Marks, Drs. Winston Ewert, Brian Carlson, and James Barham, and Dave Tomar, Jenn Finley, and Dan Edelen. Our website helps parents and students find colleges that are a good fit. But more importantly, we strive to connect learners to leaders, which is why a large portion of our site is devoted to highlighting the works and lives of influential people.

We launched the current version of our website in August 2020, and as of the time of this writing in August 2021, our traffic, as measured by SEMrush, has grown to over 100,000 organic search visits per month. We monetize by generating leads for universities and college consultants and by licensing our proprietary ranking algorithm to other sites.

I’m Dave Thornton and I am the Founder of Thornton & Lowe. I started the company 10 years ago, at the age of 23.

• Sales over $130,000 per month
• Complete over 400 tenders each year with a win rate over 75%
• Train over 500 delegates
• One of the largest UK databases of Bid Professionals
• Highest customer satisfaction in the industry

I’m Pranesh Padmanabhan, 33, a first-generation entrepreneur and the Founder of Studio 31, a 12-years-old creative wedding photography and film company, that has been recognized by many premium publications in India. Studio 31 captures over 350 weddings every year and more than 90% of our customers are NRIs who travel to India for their weddings. On average, our annual revenue is about a million dollars.

One unique thing about why couples book Studio 31 is the overall customer experience that it provides, which is largely missing in the wedding photography industry in India.

Hey! I’m Brice Gump, the founder, and CEO of Major Impact Media, a hybrid agency/education company.

We’ve worked with dozens of companies over the years – from business coaches to international personal development gurus – to implement traffic systems that have acquired thousands of customers and generated over $5,800,000 in online sales for their businesses.

My name is Albert Williams. I am the President and CEO of The Best Deal Group of Companies. located in the Boogie Down Bronx. Best Deal is a transportation company, who specializes in local community transportation, Corporate Transportation as well as Non Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT).

Below is a picture of our cars gathered to pick up 30+ passengers for one of corporate accounts

My name is Chelsea Rhoads and I am the CEO/Co-Founder of pup-eeze, the smartest device on four legs. pup-eeze is a wellness tracker for dogs that tracks activity, monitors location and automates our dog’s lives by connecting them with hundreds of smart home devices giving ourselves and our dogs the ability to monitor, maintain and change the environment of the home if we’re concerned about separation anxiety or well-being.

We’ve had great success speaking with and testing the wellness tracker among those who love their dogs and love technology. We thought, “we bring our dogs on every other journey with us, why not include them in the technology journey as well?” With the overwhelming support from the technology community we were able to strategically partner with an emerging leader in the IoT enterprise solution field; Fathym.

We are Eugenio Ferrante and Ahmed Nizar, co-founders of Casa Mia Coliving.

Today, we have 150 bedrooms in central Singapore across popular neighborhoods such as River Valley, Tiong Bahru, and Orchard. We have reached an annualized revenue of $2.5M, and we’re growing fast!

We are Taylor Hood and Gretchen Bayless, founders of ROAMERICA. A company that specializes in adventure vehicles, including 4wd campervans.

In the late 1980s, Darrell and Geoff Manchester established Intrepid as a brand new way of exploring the world.

Intrepid Travel offers more than 1,150 trips on all seven continents that are sustainable and experience-rich.

They didn't set out to build the biggest purpose-led adventure travel brand in the world, but they have done so now, by generating $43 million in annual revenue.

They are the biggest adventure tour operator in the world, operating a network of 26 DMCs and a nonprofit foundation.

Since 2002, their nonprofit organization, The Intrepid Foundation, has raised over AUD 12 million for 135 charities worldwide.

Read the full story on forbes.com ➜

My name is Nick and I’m the founder of Qoders Family. Qoders Family is a family of different services & products all dealing with different aspects of website building.

Other than that we have multiple free WordPress Plugins that have been downloaded more than a few hundred thousand times, and a coffee blog, which is my current passion project. What can I say? I love drinking coffee!

Hi, I’m Theresa the owner of the blog DIY Lifestyle. On my blog, I share dozens of gluten-free, vegan, paleo, raw vegan and healthy recipes, fun crafts & DIYs, helpful life hacks, and travel tips. I started my blog because I was looking for a place to write down useful information to share with people all around the world but it quickly turned into something more.