You can start a creative business with $10

You can start a creative business with ten dollars. Less even. Under the right circumstances, you could probably start a creative business for zero dollars, and some imagination. What is a creative business? A creative business is a business that generates capital, or dollars, via a means of creativity. A creative business can be anything. A creative business is a lemonade stand, a creative business is a fashion brand, selling your art, or starting a business for a craft or the trade you work on. A business doesn’t have to be a billion dollars yet, or ever. A business can be something where you start small and grow into a self sustaining income, over time.

How can a creative business that can sustain someone’s living expenses be created for $10? By starting with an idea and $10, you can grow to become anything you want to be, with effort and focus. If you want to create a business selling art, you can purchase a good amount of art materials from Walmart, and list you art works on Etsy for $0.20 each. If you want to create a fashion brand, blank t-shirts can cost as low as $3-4 (from, again, Walmart) or you can curate ideas (and make money) by thrifting and reselling on Depop. If you offer a service, you can create a month’s worth of Google Ads for $10 and teach what you love to do.

If you have a lot of friends or a well developed social network, you can sell directly to people that you already know. You can also tap into the global e-commerce market of billions of people by selling online. By utilizing online marketplaces, social media to promote your work, and in-person events and networks, you can jumpstart a creative business almost overnight.

The idea is where to start. What do you want to do with your business and where do you want to end up? Is this something that you’d like to become your main source of income, or keep as passive income? Is there something specific that you’d like to accomplish with your business itself? What do you want to work on?

If you’re already making things in the world, these answers may be more clear. If you’re just starting out, these are things to think about and ask yourself. The answers will guide yourself to where you want to go.

Ten dollars is all you need, and again, probably even less. Even just thinking about what you’d like to do is technically working on your business, and thoughts are free, so I guess you just need to think about what you’d like to do. You don’t even need a name or LLC for your business yet. Formalizing your business costs a bit more, but you don’t need to do that until you want to start making more money, or make your business your primary income. So what do you want to work on?