Tiny investments can snowball into regular supplementary income if you have the right skills
Student loans. Rising interest rates. Sky-high mortgages. Inflated egg prices. It seems like everything is getting more expensive in 2025, except one thing: starting a business.
Interestingly, the very pursuit which you would have imagined requires six-figure investment or extensive capital, can actually be launched for less than the cost of your weekly grocery run, thanks to new platforms and technology.
Today, you can turn tiny investments into a powerful income-generating stream and bolster your salary to cover all your expenses while having enough surplus for savings and emergencies.
Whether you’re looking to launch a side hustle or are hoping to start your first full-time business venture, here are some low-cost business ideas you can start right now from your laptop, which are genuinely doable for less than $100.
(Note: For all ideas listed below, there is one cost that remains regardless of everything: your website and professional domain. Even if you have a freelance profile on Upwork or have a presence on LinkedIn, nothing beats having your own piece of real estate on the internet. This boosts your visibility and credibility. You can purchase a domain relevant to your business for as little as $10-15 on GoDaddy, or get your domain free via a premium Wix subscription that starts at $17/month.
It would also be a wise idea to keep your business looking clean and polished by setting up a business email account and connecting your domain to your email, so it doesn’t end with “@gmail.com.” This hovers between $7-8 a month using Google Workspace. With this in mind, the startup costs listed below automatically assume that your website and domain are included. Even with these costs, the investment still remains under $100.)
1. AI Content Editing And Fact-Checking Service
While AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot are helpful for speeding up the content creation process, they’re notorious for factual errors, repetition, outdated information, and grammatical inconsistencies and errors.
This is where you’d come in. As a content writer, freelance content writer, you can still leverage AI tools to create content, but you can use your expertise and subject matter domain knowledge to fact-check AI-generated content against your depth of industry knowledge and reputable trusted sources. This enables you to create credible, accurate, trustworthy information for businesses like white papers, blogs, reports, and newsletters.
You can offer this service in two ways: you could either create the content yourself using AI tools to help with the content generation, or you can be an AI content reviewer for existing content produced by AI for businesses. One such example is Outlier, which currently has freelance AI content reviewer jobs available remotely.
Startup costs: Monthly subscription to Grammarly or other editing tools like Hemingway, and a ChatGPT Pro subscription.
2. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram Video Editing for Brands
Short-form video is dominating online content consumption. In fact, many companies, including social media companies like LinkedIn, have begun doubling down on their short-form video production, making it a core feature of their platforms and an integral part of their marketing strategies for 2025 and beyond.
The more we engage with the internet, the more our attention spans shrink, leading to the popularity of Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and even LinkedIn short-form videos. Many brands know that they need to engage their followers to grow their brand, but they may not have the time or expertise to do so efficiently.
So, you can carve out your own niche by offering a quick turnaround video editing service for specific industries you may already have a background in, using free or relatively inexpensive tools such as CapCut, Canva’s video editor, Movavi, or VN. You could charge between $50 to $250 per video, depending on project complexity, and you can even offer monthly subscription packages such as 10 TikTok videos per month or a set of 8eight Instagram reels monthly so that you can predict steady income.
Startup costs: Up to $30-50 for a premium subscription to video editing software. You can create a portfolio using a drag-and-drop website builder (an extra fee), or you can go with the free option and store your projects on Google Drive or OneDrive to show clients, as well as displaying on your social media profiles.
3. Social Media Management Agency
Social media management is an in-demand skill in 2025, especially as more than half the world’s population uses social media platforms, according to Statista. If you’re a creative who understands online audience psychology, you can start a social media management business for less than $100 and scale it quickly using your revenue. You can develop simple content calendars for multiple social media outlets, create and schedule posts, and run their profiles by monitoring engagement and analytics, and managing incoming audience traffic.
To make this even more lucrative and unique, focus on a niche that you’re already passionate about or knowledgeable in.
For example, if you’re passionate about fitness, you could focus on delivering a full-cycle social media management service for fitness coaches, personal trainers, or local niche gyms who are just starting up. Or if you’re a foodie, you could offer this service to restaurants, bars, and cafes to help drive more foot traffic and online reservations and orders.
Startup costs: Subscription to AI tools like Jasper (optional, Jasper starts at $39/month) to help streamline your content creation and scheduling process; also a monthly subscription to branding and content tools like Canva.
Cut back on your spending habits and reinvest into something long term that offers more value: your … More
Are you ready top overthinking and procrastinating until “the time feels right” or you “have enough money,” and actually start building? As you build, more will come and you can reinvest into scaling. Every successful business and career starts with one small step. You don’t need hundreds or thousands of dollars. You just need to make one spending sacrifice this month, cut back on that shopping splurge or temptation to eat out when you don’t need to right now, and build momentum.
