Summary
- You can start an online content-based business for less than $23 a year, which is cheaper than a meal at many restaurants. This includes website hosting through Bluehost at a discounted rate of $1.99 per month.
- A personal website is essential, even if you have a YouTube channel, as it provides a hub for your courses, affiliate links, and personal branding. Use WordPress for your website with the Kadence theme, which helps create professional-looking sites easily.
- For website plugins, consider free options like Yoast SEO for meta descriptions, Autoptimize for site speed, Wordfence for security, and Contact Form 7 for easy contact forms. UpdraftPlus can be used for backups.
- For email marketing, use a platform like ConvertKit, which is free and helps with building your email list. Always have an exit intent popup on your website to capture email sign-ups.
- For keyword research, use free tools like Google Trends, or choose affordable paid options like Keysearch at $24 a month to guide your content strategies.
- Content creation doesn't require expensive tools due to AI advancements. You can use free AI frameworks to streamline content production and optimize for SEO.
- Starting a YouTube channel doesn't require high-end equipment. You can begin with a smartphone, natural lighting from a window, and an inexpensive $20 microphone to create talking head videos which are informative and content-rich.
- For video editing, you can use free software like iMovie, and for screen recording, QuickTime is a suitable option. VidIQ is a useful tool for researching video topics and monitoring competition.
- When starting a business, it’s crucial to understand that marketing and traffic generation are key. Without them, even the best set-up businesses may fail.
- If your earnings grow, consider setting up an LLC. Filing costs range from $50 to $500 depending on your state. Keep your finances in check by using QuickBooks and have a separate business bank account for tracking income and expenses.
- In payment processing, set up a PayPal and Stripe account to manage affiliate commissions and product sales online.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest implementing a low-cost strategy to start an online content-based business. First, create a personal website. You can get a domain and hosting for less than $23 a year using services like Bluehost with WordPress and the Kadence theme. This gives you a professional-looking site and helps with personal branding.
Once your website is up, install important free plugins such as Yoast SEO for search optimization, Autoptimize for faster site speed, and Wordfence for security. These plugins are crucial for keeping your site running smoothly without spending extra money.
For email marketing, use ConvertKit’s free version to easily build your subscriber list. Always have an exit intent popup on your website to capture emails efficiently.
For content creation, take advantage of free tools like Google Trends for keyword research. Also, use free AI content frameworks to generate ideas and write content optimized for SEO without needing pricey software.
If you want to start a YouTube channel, you can do this with your existing smartphone, a window for good natural light, and a $20 microphone for clear audio. Edit videos using free software like iMovie, and use QuickTime to record your screen if needed. VidIQ can help with researching video topics and analyzing competition, but only invest if you feel it's necessary.
As your business grows, think about setting up an LLC to separate your business finances. Keep track of income and expenses using QuickBooks, and open a business bank account for easier financial management.
By following these steps, you can kickstart an online business efficiently and affordably.
Quotes by Author
"I grew the fastest growing blog at adamenfroy.com, it's made me a million dollars three years in a row"
"You can start for less than the price of a wonderful ravioli carbonara"
"Personal branding is the best"
"All you need to do as a business is just track the money coming in and the money coming out"
"We live in an attention economy"
Full Transcript
so you want to make money online through blogging YouTube or other ways well software can get really expensive I mean a single tool like HR can cost over $100 a month and that's just one single tool then there's hosting a website there's creating content whether it's blog post YouTube videos or marketing it can add up if you're not careful that's why in this video I'm covering the cheapest and almost free setup to start a profitable business this year so by the end you'll have a full plan with the tools you need to run a legitimate content-based online business for a whole year that costs less than the price of a delicious mouthwatering ravioli carbonara from Olive Garden I mean come on or even less than a shrimp and Parmesan sirloin from Applebee's which if you didn't know is a tender grilled 8 O USDA select top sirloin topped with sauteed black and shrimp and a delectable creamy lemon butter sauce I'm looking for maybe some new sponsors but really if you're serious about starting a legitimate real online business making real money online you can do it for less than the cost of a fattening and artery clogging allamerican lunch buffet so we have a lot to cover let's get into it now if it's your first time to your channel it's kind of a weird intro my name is Adam enroy I grew the fastest growing blog at Adam enroy comom it's made me a million dollars three years in a row I have a seven figureure YouTube channel I teach dead simple content strategies where you don't have to go viral spend a bunch of money or waste your time except for this intro so let's get into it so first things first we want to make a lot of money we want to do it as cheaply as humanly possible when we're starting any type of online business like a blog or YouTube channel or content based business we know that we don't have a bunch of inventory overhead cost rent employees anything like that but we do have some different things that we definitely need in a business and the first one is obviously a website so even if you have a YouTube channel you want to send people to some type of website for links to like courses or affiliate links and things like that so you need a website and I think you should just base it on yourself so I'm a big uh proponent of personal branding I started my blog as just my name.com and it accelerated and grew and then I turned into this YouTube channel and all kinds of stuff so personal branding is the best I've talked about it before gives you an infinite amount of room to Pivot your content strategy what you're talking about different types of business strategies to make money so the first step is to get web hosting the best platform to create a website on is WordPress and what I would recommend if you're looking if we're looking for the cheapest almost free option is you can use Bluehost at my special link right here so I actually have a full guide I'm going to link to it's the easiest way to start a blog for beginners but in this you can get basically 75% off hosting so you get blue host you can get started like this so it's usually $7.99 a month most web hosts are between $3 to $5 a month up to $25 or $30 a month or higher depending on the company you go with so this one it'll automatically if you use my special link which is linked below and I have the guide linked as well instead of $7.99 you get $1.99 a month so basically all you do is you click get started you click the cheapest plan you click basic and then you put your website in so you can say if you already own a domain on GoDaddy or something you can do that if not you just put your name in so mine would be like that's my website it already is taken so I'm going to say one and that's not taken so I'm going to search for that it's going to tell me hey it's available so I definitely get your name like own your own name if you don't if you have a really long name that's still fine or if you don't if it's taken then you use a variation of your name maybe a middle initial maybe like Adam's advice or Adam's blog or something like that because we're building a business here around ourselves creating content to make money whether you're doing it through YouTube or blogging so that's the best way to do it what you see here is it gives you basic hosting 2388 domain is free for the first year so you have to usually pay for a domain but it's free for the first year automatic protection email whatever you get it for free I would just you don't even need it but you can just put it in there whatever 2388 you continue to check out you put in your information you put in your bilding information and then you hit check out and it's pretty much that simple so again you can see it's $111 normally minus 87 so you're spending $23 less than the price of that creamy carbonara this is a full year of having a website this is going to be your main and biggest expense literally the only one so for less than that you can get started and get running so again if you want the 75% off limited time discount have a website for a year for $23 make sure to click the uh my special link in the description below and you'll get access to it and then once you get into your Blu host dashboard you basically click a button and then it will get you into WordPress so this is WordPress now with a website you need a theme which is the design of it and then plugins to make it do things extend the functionality of it so for the theme I recommend Cadence so Cadence WP Cadence AI I actually have a full video on setting up a website with AI with cadence you download the Plugin or download the theme you install it and you put in a prompt it says like my website's about food I'm a food blogger or my website's about Technology reviews put a few sentences in it then creates the website for you give inputs all the images into a media library that you can just use and your your homepage is done a bunch of pages are done and you can just have that as your website so it's really simple easy to use use and I recommend Cadence AI for your actual theme so we're going to get into YouTube other business stuff you might need like QuickBooks and all of that stuff but first we got to get into just finishing the website like what plugins do you actually need so I'm just going to Rattle through these I'm not going to go in depth on each individual one and show you it's just too boring I've done it before so these are the plugins that you need for your WordPress site Yos SEO is number one that can do your meta descriptions all the kind of on page SEO stuff that you need submit your site map to Google two easy table of contents that's a good plugin that you can create table of contents in your articles to make people click around and make it easier Mammoth docx converter is a good converter that converts Google Docs into WordPress for Sight speed there's autoptimize which is free that's a good sight speed one or WP rocket which is paid you could use autoptimize word fence for security it's just a free security plugin all of these are free by the way updraft plus it's a Backup Tool easy WP super cach that caches your site makes it faster redirection is a good tool if you have to 301 redirect any URLs contact form 7 is good for just easy contact form have a contact page with the form for a business thirsty Affiliates is a good free plugin if you want to cloak and optimize your affiliate links other tools for a website for email marketing you could use kit so this is formally convert kit that's good for like building your email list so people are on your website you have an exit intent popup you always should have an exit intent popup because that's how people sign up for emails through websites it's just people aren't going to find random forums I've found that so have an exit in 10 pop up use kit it's free you just set it up and then for keyword research so you know trying to rank content online HRS is an expensive tool it's like19 or 179 up to hundreds of dollars a month there's free options so use Google Trends put things into Google Trends try to spot Trends there's something called keywords everywhere which is a Chrome extension that you can add that shows you as you're on Google what different keywords are in search volumes and then if you want a cheap paid option go with key search it's $24 a month and it does pretty much everything that would need it to do especially if you're a beginner you don't necessarily need it but you can just stick with the 2388 for web hosting but if you do want to pay for a keyword research tool this one is the most affordable and effective at that price now as for Content creation like the days of needing some Advanced SEO tools where you're writing stuff isn't really required anymore based on the recent Google algorithm update so like I have a bunch of different free AI system prompts that you can use these different framework so here's one it's a it's pretty long it's like four or five pages long it's a 5in one cont content creator so you can take this if you want this one and nine others I have 10 things that'll do keyword research content creation figure out your monetization plan even for YouTube different types of things just click the link in the description below for the free AI training and my 10 AI prompts so I'll send all the the first email you get will have all 10 at the bottom people ask where is it I didn't get it it's at the bottom of the first email so what you can do is you just paste the whole thing you can go to chat jpt or Claude you paste it in and then it will um go through a whole process so you say provide a keyword or topic you'd like to focus on for the outline so it's going to write the whole thing so I'm going to say I want to create content on like local marketing services or something like that now what it will do is it will create an entire outline for you so based on that keyword it's going to give you the full title which I optimized for like having the right target year writing it for human beings write it in a certain grade level gives you the metad description the fully written introduction the main headings that you need throughout the article and a conclusion all the keywords that you might want to add in so it's a good starting point I also have like AI prompts that'll take one of these headings and write the actual PA paragraph content so if you watch the AI Master Class it gives the full strategy of exactly how to do that how to optimize it humanize the content rank the content all of that but it's really just free like AI has kind of opened up that world where we don't need a $100 tool to optimize our SEO we can actually just have web hosting and then use free AI Frameworks that I'm providing to you to really get this thing going and speed up your content process all right let's get into YouTube so we covered like if you're starting a business you need visibility you need traffic you need views you need some type of attention in this attention algorithm economy so we covered a website how to optimize that and start creating content what about a YouTube channel what about creating videos it seems like it get expensive $2,000 for a camera lighting what are we talking here laptop all of that stuff well what's the cheapest and most effective way when we think about video creation there's three components there is the lighting there is the video and there's the audio that's pretty much it now what is the cheapest way to do it well if you think about it you can kind of cover all your bases with a window and an iPhone I think about it this way when we talk about starting a real business and making money with YouTube we're not talking about going out to making prank videos or comedy videos or lifestyle videos where we're shooting hundreds of Clips we want to actually make a consistent content strategy where we make money through affiliate marketing through courses through teaching through education through sponsors and ads and to do that we can create simple talking headstyle videos like this one I just walk into the room I turn the camera on I turn the lights on and I'm ready to go now my equipment is a little bit more expensive but if you're just starting out what you could do is literally take your iPhone or Samsung phone or Android whatever and you can use an app called camo so it's called the camo app it turns your phone into a webcam so you basically just plug it into your laptop and then you get a little mini tripod for it and you set it near a window now a window sitting next to a window where the window is you know you're facing the window it's going to give you the best possible natural light it's going to look good enough and then whatever's behind you your background's fine so literally the cheapest setup is just having your iPhone even like you could don't even need a tripod if you could set it the right way set it on something so it's flat and even that covers your video and your lighting it doesn't cover your audio audio is actually to me it's like the most important thing people really quickly recognize bad audio especially when you're creating content so for that there's like lavalier mics you can get for like $20 on Amazon simple USB microphones you don't have to over complicate it or think it just use something just start with something the thing about creating a real online business with consistent content is just improving over time So eventually you could get the fancy sure smb7 podcast microphone with this thing or whatever right there's so many different options out there but if you're just starting out for simple talking head videos if you want to make money through the four main revenue streams that I talk about in other videos then a simple iPhone and a window with like a $20 microphone is actually good enough because it's about teaching it's about the he ful content that you're providing not the insane production value that YouTube goes through phases where it's like people really like the highly edited polished stuff and then there's phases where people just want long videos where people are just talking almost podcast Style videos so with that audio is important video like iPhone's good enough editing on iMovie can be free if you have a Mac and then if you do want a tool like vid IQ is a good one so vid IQ is like a full YouTube Tool you can do keyword research here you can look for video ideas you can compare the competition you can do all kinds of stuff so if I put in something like AI how to Ai and I put in the matching terms tool it'll give me how to make money with AI how to use cursor AI whatever that is so like there's all kinds of different AI tools or I could put in something like AI tutorial and it'll tell me based on matching terms what else is in there so there's going to be all kinds of AI tutorials you can do and it gives you a competition score so like AI tutorial is high but something like cursor AI tutorial seems like probably a new tool it's come up a few times is very low the overall score to my channel this is specific to my channel is pretty good so all of these different ones you can do tons of AI tutorials where you have a screen share speaking of a screen share you can just use QuickTime your QuickTime Player to record your screen you literally just record your screen with that you can have your level your microphone going you record your screen and that's about it so when I create a video on YouTube I have a video camera the Sony a7c with a 50 mm lens you can 35mm lens there's different types but you have that I turn it on with my Sony app so I just press a button it starts recording I have a microphone that's I actually use screen flow for that so it's recording the screen and the audio as one file so I have two Files video from the camera and then the audio and the screen share as one mp4 file as well so that's how I do it again the the cheapest way when I first started was using like free video editing software the QuickTime Player to record my screen and that's it like cheap Amazon lights so it's really cheap and effective and it's really more about the content that you're teaching actually helping people then it is about creating the most entertaining videos for a business so if you're starting a business and you want to have a YouTube channel YouTube component that is how you would do it okay so we covered a website we covered a YouTube channel pretty cheap you know a we like $23 to start YouTube channels like just like maybe the microphone that's about it now if you're starting a real business we also need a few other things so when I first started my blog and the YouTube channel I didn't really have like an LLC even for the first N9 months when I started my blog I was just getting some Revenue into my personal bank and I was paying taxes on it personally it was a sole proprietorship it was messy a lot of people get really hung up on this step though they want to like create the perfect website side get an LLC do all of these things and then not take action on actually growing the business that's what I learned about growing a business I tried e-commerce I tried a bunch of different stuff but I realized like starting the business is different than running the business because running a business requires marketing it requires traffic views and attention that's the most important part I started a Drop Shipping Store back in 2015 I had a perfect looking website it looked great the product synced with the inventory it did all that stuff but then I realized like oh I actually have to get people to this site how am I going to do it I tried like Google shopping I tried paid ads I tried Facebook and I'm like oh I actually don't know what I'm doing so that's when I finally you know I learned about passive income in 2008 I didn't make money until 2019 cuz I I had blind spots I didn't know what I didn't know so you know if you want to look at other stuff on my Channel about how to start a blog in 2025 how to start a YouTube channel like I have full tutorials on all that stuff this one's just how to start cheaply and effectively so when you're ready to start an LLC or start a business what you need to do is you open a business bank account and then you file to incorporate an LLC in your state now the state pricing varies I put it into chat you it gave me like the filing fees by state so it's anywhere from $50 to $500 Massachusetts $500 Michigan's 50 so that's a fee that's something that you would pay but again this is not Financial advice or anything like that but this is just generally like you should probably have an LLC if you're in the US all you need to do as a business is just track the moneyy coming in and the money coming out now to do that it's easy as if it's from One bank account trust me in 2019 I had money coming into a personal account coming out of a personal account and then I opened the business account and then it was a mess so I had to clean it up one year so it's a lot easier if you just get a little bit ahead of it and have a business bank account have it all hooked up with QuickBooks so QuickBooks will just say is this an expense is it revenue and then categorize it so you have a report and you can see that's all you need at the end of the year right the type of Revenue you're getting the profit loss all those things it's really simple so QuickBooks you know here's $17 a month up to $49 you don't need a RightWay but it's something it's probably the most commonly used one for business to track profit and loss another thing you're going to need is like a way to collect payments so if you're a blogger and it's affiliate marketing you're going to need a PayPal account most likely so set up a business PayPal account because affiliate commissions just come in or you know if you're selling a product online whether it's a course or an e-commerce product like you need a shot you need some type of checkout thing you need to sign up for stripe you need PayPal it's pretty much it so that's all that you need to run an online business so again the first step is just starting your website $1.99 a month get it at yourname.com so you can just build a personal brand click the blue host Link in the description below for 75% off on that offer my special link and yeah if you want the AI prompts and the AI stuff and the master class you can click that link down there too hope you found this useful you know it's really hard to start a fully free online business to make money online you know a lot of people go for low value tactics they want to start a Fiverr gig or do some low value freelancing where they're really not making much money it's like a job so the goal I think you know I want to give higher value tactics where you could your Revenue ceiling is millions of dollars that you can make over time you need to increase your skills increase learning learn how to use QuickBooks learn how to build a website you're going to take these things one step at a time the great thing about building a content-based business with blog articles or YouTube videos is just you can keep learning keep adapt and keep updating over time you look back at Old YouTube videos and channels when they first start they're not that good they get better and better same thing with blog articles infinitely updatable assets but when you're starting a business you need to understand the algorithms understand we live in an attention economy and we need to know some level of marketing to get traffic views eyeballs and attention on our stuff to click on stuff to make us money that is how money is made online people click things to affiliate links or they buy your product so it's done that way and it's really the cheapest an effective way to do it where you can start for the less than the price of a wonderful ravioli carbonara or a steak Sur or all those beautiful corporate Steakhouse meals that you can eat in the United States and enjoy your freedom to try to make some money so that you're not stuck with inflation and high debt and medical bills and all of that and jokes aside I'm really passionate about this because it is a way I really want to help people build real things you know it's not easy it's not getrich quick people say start a thing for free go on blogger.com and everything's free and it's like that's not how the world works if you want to start a real business you need to spend a little bit of money but $23 isn't that much to start a full-on business that has made me millions of dollars over time so again my results are not always typical compared to the average I worked a really hard on that website for a number of years so with that I hope you enjoyed the video check out other videos on my channel on affiliate marketing SEO YouTube starting a business with real tactics real strategies for the 2020s without wasting your time or wasting a bunch of money so hope you enjoyed it please like the video if you did subscribe to the channel and I'll see you in another video
