What is the most effective way to get a new business off the ground on no budget?

This article isn't as much a blog explaining what's the best way. So if you came for the answer, I'm sorry, I'm as lost as you; although my advice is at the bottom of this article. It is however my experience of business start-ups, what I have learned so far and what I have done / am trying to do to 'make it happen'. I am by no means a guy that started a business, succeeded and is now gifting his experience to the world; I am still in my early stages and trying to make my investment pay for itself with sleepless nights, relentless hard work, blood, sweat and a whole heap of frustrations.

I have been in and out of business start-ups; always coming up with an idea, starting it and falling at the first hurdle. The easy part is getting everything you need in order to call yourself a business; the hard part for me and for most is getting the word out there. This is my 2nd attempt at starting a photography business (plus a couple of attempts in other sectors), so getting my camera gear together was easy, but advertising in a sea of photographers is nothing short of barbaric.

This time however I figured I found my 'calling' in life due to the work I've been doing with Google Street View. Those 360 pictures you see on Google Maps? That's what I did for 5 years and to this day I love what I do every single day; and that's what everyone needs in life, to love where you work as if it was your 2nd home. There's just one (not even that bad of a) drawback that I'm not at liberty to publish but it made me want to take on the same roll independently. The major plus-side is that it requires specific skills, technology and 360 photographers aren't easy to find which separates me from the sea of regular photographers.

So after I created my website (￡200), bought the gear I need (￡1700), made initial promotional material (￡100), and started making online profiles and ad-boosting (￡100), I'm at least ￡2100 out of pocket before I found my 1st client. Not great when you are on a shoe-string budget! So how does a new business manage to stay afloat?

The first 3 points I'd have to advise to anyone at this point is:

1. Don't quit your day job just yet. While it's not what you want to be doing in the near future this can be a very dangerous game to play so it's always better to chip away at your new business during your spare time rather than quit everything and expect big results straight away.

2. Make sure this is something you'll never get bored of. The worst thing you can do when starting a business is get bored of it a few months down the line and all you've had to show for it is a lot of expense and time wasted. An undying passion for your product / service is ESSENTIAL in any venture down the self-employed route. It keeps you stubborn against the hard times, makes you determined to make it work and fearless of rejection.

3. Don't aim for the stars, aim for the present goals. One thing I myself am notorious for is getting carried away too soon and planning what super-car I'll be driving this time next year or which mansion I will be living in. Visualizing your dreams via your business is a good thing, but frankly it won't happen any time soon, so don't aim for the ultimate goals when you need to focus on the present which is getting your business off the ground. Not just one big payment here or there, but to make it almost self-sustaining. Which to be honest might still be looking too far ahead... The down-side to having the happy-ever-after goals obviously is that if you cling onto them for dear life and expect it to happen too soon, it will ruin you when it doesn't come.

I don't know if the road is different for a stall / physical unit in comparison to a website-based business, I can only assume it's a bit harder to make it work online than in reality? I'm not sure, I can imagine unit-owners having a different opinion, but moving on... It seems as though everything costs you when you are trying to advertise yourself. If you want to boost a website or a social media account for example, it costs you a daily amount on things like Google Ads or Facebook, ranging anything from ￡1 to ￡1000 each day depending on how much you're willing to spend on exposure; and from what I've experienced it's OK spending ￡30 for a fortnight of boosting but it doesn't help when those potential clients are on the other side of the world from you where you can't service them. Having people like your work is all well and good but likes don't pay the bills! So what's the best way to advertise on barely any budget? Here is what I have done so far:

1. Linkedin. It's free to create your own profile and a business page which is a good start. My personal page has seen a dramatic increase in views since I started interacting with it properly and I can advertise my new business via my established profile. I created a page for my business recently which obviously has a long way to go in comparison but time will tell.

2. Vistaprint. I have used this website several times in the past and it can cost you a fair amount of your budget but the speed and quality of the service is admirable. I designed a flyer on Photoshop that I couldn't design within Vistaprint's design pages, so I asked them for help via their support team. They responded saying my design couldn't be done but as a good-will gesture I received ￡25 in credit to use and print something else. That went towards a car window display so I can advertise on the go.

3. Offer free samples. Get them hooked. Samples are one of the best ways to advertise at the cost of your own product but if you sell it to the right people for free where the rate of people is high then word can spread much easier for you. I'm currently selling my (otherwise expensive) service to businesses in my area for free, and even though I know most of them won't sell my services onto others, the results of my work will still be published online and my company logo will be highlighted along with their 360 photographs on Google Maps. So for someone selling sausages on the corner of a busy city-center; doing that daily for perhaps a week enables the public to identify their product by routine and where they can get it from.

Obviously options 2 and 3 fall under your promotional budget of next to nothing, but for me that's the way to start an advertising campaign rather than spending ￡300 on Google Ads or Facebook boosts which won't guarantee local customers. I'm not saying don't use them! I am however saying use them when you have the budget to do so, maybe once your business is gaining a little bit of traction and you have sales cash to play around with.

So that's my adventure so far. I think it's fair to say advertising is the hardest part of any new business venture and there will never be a point when you could stop focusing on it; whereas buying your stock / equipment is the easy part. I'll let you know what happens next and whether these methods work for me.

I would love to read your comments on what you think are good techniques when it comes to starting a business venture in your own sector, and what you think are the best ways to get it off the ground. Maybe we can get a poll going and I will post the results in a future blog. An easy-to-read, straight to the point article stating what worked for them I think is something every entrepreneur would want to hear!

Take care my friends.