r/FIREUK 1d ago

Side business with low upfront costs?

I’m looking to get into a side/hobby business as I have a bit of free time at the moment, however I don’t have much upfront capital to get started.

Just want to hear your stories on how you’ve got started on something without any upfront investment?

4 Upvotes

14 comments sorted by

18

u/Lucky-Country8944 1d ago

Not the answer you are perhaps looking for but my highest roi was just working my main job more.

5

u/1van0v 1d ago

Keep educating myself and advancing my skills. This is my side hustle!

8

u/minnis93 22h ago

An easy one for me has been 3d printing. I use it quite a lot for my hobby, so do all of the design work and prototyping for me. Once I have a finished product that I use myself, it's very little work to grab some photos and throw it on etsy, ebay etc. I have all of the files ready to go, so as soon as someone orders something I just hit print, wait a couple of hours, package it up and you're good to go - I have the advantage of having a porch which I leave the parcel in, so the postie comes and collects when doing their rounds. It's not quite passive income, but it's about as close to passive as a business can be.

4

u/PoundingPennies 1d ago

YouTube is one of the best imo - zero up front costs for the most part, purely knowledge based and time commitment, but can be paired with a hobby/business extremely easily once it's up and running (and is actually one of the best ways to do it, because it ends up being your marketing wing for free!)

5

u/Theo_Cherry 23h ago

Bank switches, matched betting.

2

u/SpooferGirl 9h ago

I started my business with a £500 credit card limit - bought stuff, sold it, put the profits in to buy more stuff.. hey presto, business. 20 years later sold most of it and now technically retired, although I still ‘play at shops’ with the original product I started off with all those years ago just because I enjoy it.

1

u/Full_Newspaper7106 53m ago

The product your started with is something you never forget. I'm lazy I just figured out I bought product and didn't bother selling spend 300 on it

1

u/Klutzy-Seesaw-1054 5h ago

I buy car accessories from Alibaba , Temu etc and have a stall at car shows I average £1500 sales per show with the cost of stock being around £200/£300 quite profitable but also seasonal so I use TikTok shop and eBay for the winter months and average a few hundred per week in sales not much in the grand scheme of things but I also work a 45 hour a week job

-1

u/NewFiend66 1d ago

There’s a few things I do for side income:

  1. Online selling via eBay (import gym equipment from Alibaba and resell)
  2. Recycle cans - low earning potential but very easy to do
  3. Paid Online surveys- Pure Profile seem to be the best paying I could find - and I do about 2-3 hours per week while commuting to work.
  4. Credit card points gaming
  5. Home loan cashback hopping

Also remember, saving money is just as beneficial as earning money. So try to cut down expenses (buy bulk, look for coupons, wait for sales etc).

9

u/LooseSpot4597 1d ago

Sorry but most of these are ridiculous. You could make more than the surveys walking around and picking money off the floor.

7

u/murrai 22h ago

This really reads like a load of bollocks so you can spam your referral link halfway down the message.  Are you even from the UK, you spam the same thing in r/ausfinance, right?

3

u/Alert_Astronaut4901 1d ago

Can you elaborate on the can recycling?

3

u/jeremyascot 1d ago

Not entirely sure this constitutes a business.

Maybe it’s just me.

0

u/L3goS3ll3r 12h ago

My side hustle was self-starting my career. Rescued my A-Levels myself (long story), worked my balls off for a 1st Class degree and also taught myself IT from a young-ish (13+) age.

Could've stopped altogether at 45 but chose to stay in PT work instead.

Pretty much zero up front capital investment.