Businesses That Make Money Right Away

Times are bleak, and it's comforting to think about building something new. But how do you decide on the right business idea? How long will it take to bring in profits? If you're looking to explore businesses that make money right away, you've come to the right place.

6 Businesses That Make Money Right Away

Freelancing or Consulting
Host Online Coaching Workshops
Selling Ebooks
Creating Online Courses
Starting an Online Store (Ecommerce)
Starting a SaaS Product or App (in Beta)

You've probably skimmed plenty of listicles by now that make it seem oh-so-easy to just start a successful blog, or sell ads on YouTube, or tap into brands' influencer marketing budgets while living the laptop life. Or you have multiple "passive income" streams while you sit by the pool and watch the sales notifications pour in.

Well, everything changed in March 2020 when Covid-19 hit. This shook up the business world in every conceivable way. Plus, a lot of those business models aren't as easy as they look, even pre-pandemic.

For many business owners, this crisis made things a lot harder, and exposed our economic weaknesses. For others, Covid-19 has opened up opportunities.

One superpower you should always hone as an entrepreneur is the ability to spot these opportunities—identifying trends in the marketplace, and solving top-tier problems that are keeping your customers up at night.

At Foundr, we stand by our motto that starting a business is easy, but building a business is hard. That said, there are some cheap businesses to start with low risk, and some have a quicker setup time than others.

Here are our favorite business models to explore right now, and how long each one really takes to start bringing in your first sales.

Businesses that make money right away infographic

1. Freelancing or Consulting

Zero to Profit: 1-2 weeks

The #1 quickest way to bring in revenue immediately is to start freelancing or consulting. Whatever you want to call it, whether it's a one-person operation or a budding agency, this simply means that you are selling a service rather than a product.

There are no startup costs, and no overhead. Literally all you need to start your side hustle in 2021 is 1. your skills and 2. an internet connection.

Solving Pain

The key thing that's important to figure out before you get into freelance work is: what's the pain point you're going to solve? This will give your business a focused direction.

Here are some easy methods to identify these pain points:

What burning questions do people often ask you? What are the things keeping them up at night, that they simply can't solve?
Scan through Quora and Reddit. What threads are blowing up? Are there specific problems people are experiencing? Questions that more than five or ten people are asking?
What questions do people often ask you in your job, friend group, or personal life? What topics are you typically the "go-to" for advice?
Look through relevant Facebook Groups, LinkedIn, and your Twitter feed. What complaints or frustrations keep popping up?
Look on Amazon, and go to the Reviews section of a given book (preferably something in the niche that you're interested in). Filter down to the 2- and 3-star reviews. These are typically the more detailed reviews, stating things that could've been better, or things that they wish the book covered. What trends are you seeing?

How Much to Charge

There are three core business models when it comes to charging for freelance services.

Hourly Rate
Project Fee
Retainer

An hourly rate is simply that—you charge a certain dollar amount for every hour worked. You keep track of your hours in a timesheet (or a tool like AND.CO) and send your client an invoice at the end of each month.

A social media manager just starting out might charge $20-$40 an hour, while a video editor or graphic designer with a few years experience might charge $30-$50 an hour (up to $100 an hour for senior level). This number shouldn't be arbitrary—more on that later.

A project fee is a simpler "lump sum" that you charge a client based on an estimated amount of hours worked. Presumably, this adds up in your favor, but feels like it's discounted in their favor. This model works out well when the deliverable is a clear singular project, like a website design or an illustration or a written blog article.

Project fees can also be helpful to simplify things and guarantee future payment upfront, rather than waiting to see how many hours you spent. For example, you might be developing a social media strategy and launch plan for a brand, which encompasses a variety of skills (copywriting, graphic design, strategy, community management, customer support, project management). This would be cumbersome to track time across five different hats, each with unique hourly rates. So instead, you estimate a project fee of $9,600 for 3 months' work (approx. 20 hours a week @ the highest hourly rate of $40), all-inclusive through to the launch.

A retainer is a monthly fee that you charge a client in order to retain you as their service provider. The retainer model is often used by lawyers, ad agencies and marketing agencies because they provide repeat service. It's uncommon for individual freelancers to have a retainer at first (you'll have to earn this trust from your client over time).

Start small with an hourly rate or project fee, then after a few months you can discuss retainer. (Editor's note: There is a 4th model in which you charge a percentage of media spend, but this is specific to digital marketing agencies so we won't get into the details here.)

Yes, you can mix and match these business models. For example, you might charge a monthly retainer fee of $1,000 to be "on call" up to a certain number of hours per month, plus an hourly rate for any time worked beyond the retainer agreement.

Or, you might start out with an hourly rate of $30/hour until you hit a certain workload capacity, and then transition into a project fee after that. Frame this to your client as "value added" or "cost savings" on their part.

For an in-depth guide on how much to charge for consulting services, check out this article.

How to Find Freelance Clients

This may seem like the tricky part, but it can be easier than you think. Finding freelance clients or people to consult is not some unsolved mystery.

There are literally hundreds of millions of people out there who are experiencing problems. These people will happily pay money to have those problems solved. You just have to connect with those people, figure out what their problems are, and present a solution to them in a way such that the perceived value is 10x higher than the price.

In other words, if your service leads to $10,000 in value for them, the price of that service should be $1,000 going to you.

Foundr has a great resource on how to get consulting clients or freelance leads.

Related: The Complete Guide to Getting Clients for Your Consulting Business, from Finding Prospects to Sealing the Deal

For now, all you need to know is 10%-20% more than the people whom you are serving. There's no need to be an expert, or have a masters degree in that particular field.

You just need the confidence that you know a little bit more than your client prospects, and the desire to help alleviate their pain.

No Overhead

This was already true before the Covid-19 quarantine and social distancing, but it's especially true now. You can run a freelancing operation or consulting agency without taking on any overhead at all.

You won't have to pay for office rent. You can start with no employees (just yourself and your skills), which means no extra payroll taxes. There's no manufacturing or product development. No physical storage of inventory.

The only recurring fees you'll need to cover as a freelancer or consultant are:

Your WiFi connection
Whatever SaaS tools you use in order to actually do the work (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite for designers and video editors, Ahrefs or MozPro for SEO content managers)
Your website builder (e.g. Squarespace) and hosting fee (e.g. GoDaddy), if you have a landing page or portfolio to bring in new business

All-in you're looking at a monthly cost of only $150-$250 at the absolute max.

Translation: 99% profit.

Not a bad margin! And definitely a go-to business model that makes money right away.

2. Host Online Coaching Workshops

Zero to Profit: 3-4 weeks

Think of this like "the new speaking gig." Remember in-person conferences and workshops? Well, you can translate this into the post-pandemic digital world by offering the same quality of content on video chat.

Use Remote to Your Advantage

The beauty of being in the comfort of your home, rather than on somebody else's stage, is that you have complete control.

You're not reliant on someone else's audio-visual system. Or microphone that wavers in and out. Or a daunting room full of staring audience members, some of which are coughing and going to the bathroom and sneaking out for calls.

By hosting a digital event in your own space, you can design your environment for success and have everything at your fingertips, with no added stress of the unknown.

Here are some thought-starters for making money right away:

Live Panel or Fireside Chat (gather up 3 experts and host a facilitated discussion)
1-on-1 Coaching
Webinar
6-Week Bootcamp
Exclusive Interview or Live Podcast (if you already have a pre-recorded podcast, do one episode "live" to make it special and scarce, and charge a ticket fee)
Standup Comedy
TEDx for _____

Treat it Like it's Still In-Person

Another thing you can use to your advantage when hosting a paid video call as an event is to over-prepare, as if it were still a physical event.

Spend time designing your curriculum or slide deck. Have your notes handy. Research your guests (if you're hosting others). Come up with fun ways to invite audience participation (e.g. "type ____ into the chatbox if you're ____").

But over-preparedness doesn't mean you should sound like a scripted robot.

Sure, you can have your second monitor or iPad with your notes on it, and nobody will be the wiser. But you should still riff extemporaneously, engage with the audience in organic ways, and create the vibe that we're all in the same room.

If you create something so memorable that people tell their friends (by screenshotting it and posting on their Instagram stories, for example), you've just tapped into a powerful marketing strategy: Word-of-mouth on steroids.

Build Your Personal Brand

In the same way that you would build up your personal brand and online presence to land speaking gigs IRL, you can leverage your social media channels to brand yourself as a thought leader in your niche.

We've seen thousands of students in our Instagram Domination training who have landed 5-figure speaking engagements and even 6-figure book deals, simply by growing their Instagram following. You can do this too!

3. Selling Ebooks

Zero to Profit: 4-6 weeks

If you're finding yourself with time on your hands, your mind racing, then writing can be a great outlet. You might just find that your words can be packaged into an ebook that's worth buying.

This doesn't have to be your life's work. Mind you, it should be good. But you don't have to make it perfect. There's always version updates!

One of Foundr's instructors, Bronson Taylor of Growth Hacking Playbook , famously wrote an ebook in one sitting at a local coffee shop. It was about a dozen pages and he called it "Growth Robot." He designed the cover himself using an online Canva template, and then started selling it on Gumroad for $20.

Bronson thought to himself, "Wait a minute… I should be getting more for this book." After all, growth hacking is his specialty, and people pay him good money to consult for their companies on an hourly basis.

So he raised the price to $30. And then $45. And people kept buying it.

He eventually capped the price at $79, which the Ebook still sells for to this day. $79 for a 12-page PDF!

Coming Up With Your Ebook Idea and Content

Let's think back to earlier in this article, when we were talking about painkillers. If you've got an idea for a service, or a passion you'd like to explore further, or a pain point you're excited to work on the solution for… why not just start writing things down and see if a book idea is born?

Jot down a list of 10-20 title ideas. Keep them punchy, like a headline. Think about the benefit you're providing to your readers. Circle your favorites. Then write 10-20 more.

Related: How To Make A High-Converting Ebook From Start to Finish For Every Budget

Or, maybe you want to start outlining the Table of Contents first, and come up with the title later. That's fine too. There's no right or wrong way to start writing. As long as you commit to putting words on the page for a certain period of time.

The key to writing is rewriting. Give yourself permission to make the crappiest first draft ever. Then the magic's in the editing.

Launching Your Book Online

The time it takes to launch your ebook is really dependent upon these factors:

How long it takes you to write
How long it takes to design (you can outsource this on Upwork or Fiverr)
A few weeks of marketing prep

Make It An "Event"

Turn your book launch into an "event" (a digital event, of course). Put a specific date on the calendar that you're working toward and pre-hype in the meantime.

Event-based marketing benefits your launch strategy in a few ways:

It gives you a tangible goal to work toward (the date is on the calendar), which eliminates procrastination and will help you power through roadblocks to prioritize your book launch.
It adds a perceived level of scarcity. You can have a countdown timer to launch to build up anticipation, which is psychologically one of the most powerful marketing triggers you can leverage.
It makes it special. Nobody really cares about an ongoing campaign that they can hear about anytime. But if there is a specific window in which they can seize this opportunity and be a part of something unique, they're much more likely to participate. (They're also less likely to get exhausted by your messaging.)
It will help you convince marketing partners to get on board. If you're soliciting partnerships to co-promote your book, it's much easier to get buy-in if there is a specific window of time that you're targeting. It's easy to get an answer—either it works for their schedule or it doesn't.
You can pre-sell before the official launch. Since there's a hard date on the calendar as to when this book will finally be available, you can offer a special pre-sale rate to your audience and existing fans, before the book is even finished.
It allows you to involve your audience in a personal way. Give your followers and subscribers behind-the-scenes updates leading up to the launch. Ask them for feedback. Make them feel special. People are social by nature, and this will increase the likelihood that they not only buy your book, but also spread the word on your behalf.

Give Away Bonuses

In addition to being 'the first to get your hands on a copy of the book,' give your audience even more to look forward to. Make it an irresistible offer for them.

Stack on a bundle of bonuses to your book offer—things that are relevant, enticing, and exclusive-feeling, but don't cost you much (if anything) to fulfill.

A great example of this comes from our friend Tim Ferriss once again when he was launching The 4-Hour Chef (the third installment in a series that became internationally acclaimed from The 4-Hour Workweek fame).

In March 2013, Ferriss created a bundle of files that got downloaded more than two million times on BitTorrent. Two million!

This bundle, according to Ferriss' blog, included the audiobook version for free, plus 10 hours of bonus content: "all of the chapters on accelerated learning, all of the ridiculous experiments and related stories, and much more…The full unlocked bundle for this release is 5.4 GB of free content (!)…HD instructional videos? Bonus PDFs? You got it."

Now, we're not saying you should copy exactly what Tim Ferriss did in 2013. The internet has changed since then, and there are new ways that people like to consume bonus content.

But the principle is still the same. Make your "offer" feel like it's 10x more valuable than the actual price.

The bonus effect of adding bonuses? You're rewarding your audience and making them feel even more appreciated, leading to long-term repeat customers.

Line Up A Strategic Book Launch Partner

Form partnerships with relevant authors to get people in your niche talking about the book. You might even only need one partner in order to pull this off.

Some call this the "Tim Ferriss Effect." Before the internet, it was called the "Oprah Effect." Get someone who is a trusted authority in your niche to recommend your book to their fan base.

You can approach this almost like you would a guest blogging partnership, and contribute an in-depth piece to their blog. Or you can treat it like traditional PR and reach out to that influencer, building a relationship with them and working out a deal that's mutually beneficial.

You can also think about this like a trade. You scratch their back, they scratch yours. Perhaps if they share a pullquote testimonial about how great your book is, you promise to do the same for them PLUS throw in some other promo?

Think about how you can make the partnership an equal exchange of value.

If you're thinking it sounds impossible to get in touch with hard-to-reach influencers, well, it isn't easy. But you'd be surprised at the bites you can get if you use a proven formula and outreach scripts.

Foundr Magazine coincidentally started this way. The first big-name interview Nathan Chan landed was with Sir Richard Branson, back when the magazine was an unknown fledgling startup, and it all snowballed from there. He used that name recognition to land bigger and bigger names and now, 300+ podcast episodes and 85+ magazine issues later, you'd never believe that the very first Foundr cover was adorned by a stock photo.

Blanket the Earth

The beauty of creating and marketing an ebook is that you can continuously promote it in an evergreen way, even after the official launch week.

Here are just a few ideas of how to promote your ebook launch:

Instagram feed posts (with a call to action directing people to the link in your bio)
Instagram stories (use the swipe-up to link to your book page)
Post it on ALL social media channels in which you have an audience
Email (write a nurturing sequence that "warms up" your audience to the launch date, giving them sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes info)
Website navigation link (make sure there is an evergreen link to your book on your website, which promotes your book on autopilot without any extra effort on your part)
Do guest podcasts in your niche to talk about the new book
Do guest interviews on IGTV or YouTube with relevant influencers in your space

If you're feeling hesitant to shout from the mountaintops about your new book, just remember—there is a lot of credibility in the printed word (even if it's a digital PDF), and you will automatically be seen as an authority figure simply because you spent the time to research and write a book on that subject.

After putting in the work, you should be proud to share it with the world!

Related: How we Generated $200,589 of Pre-Sales for our Coffee Table Book Using Kickstarter

4. Creating Online Courses

Zero to Profit: 1-2 weeks (first pre-sales); 2 months (launch)

The online education revolution is here. With classrooms forced to suddenly go online due to the Covid-19 quarantine, more people than ever are getting used to watching courses from their laptops.

This trend was already happening, but it's grown by several magnitudes in the past few months alone. (We can tell you that even at Foundr we've seen a massive uptick in student enrollments.)

Creating online courses as a business model, however, is easier said than done. That's why this article states "two months" to launch, because this is what it takes to do it right.

In order to provide true value for your students, and create an online course that's evergreen and will stand the test of time (i.e. not some fly-by-night topic that will expire with the next algorithm change or fashion trend), there is a certain technique to designing a successful online training.

That said, you can certainly bring in sales faster than two months. We've seen pre-sales for online courses ring in after only two weeks. Here's how.

Validate Your Topic Before Diving Into Production

The most powerful form of validation is when someone whips out their credit card and buys your product before it even exists. This is the thinking behind crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. And you can use it to your advantage to fuel your online course production.

By pre-selling your course topics before you produce the videos, you are effectively:

Guaranteeing that there is a market for that course topic
Separating the wheat from the chaff and curating the best topic to move forward with (killing the ones with the least pre-sales)
Securing a close-knit "beta group" of pre-buyers whose brains you can tap into throughout the process as you develop your course content
Bringing in cash right away to validate that you're headed in the right direction (this is a hell of a confidence booster, too!)

How to Ethically Pre-Sell Online Courses

Here is Foundr's 4-step framework for validating course topics, and ethically bringing in revenue before your online course exists.

1. First, send out a survey. This could be through your email list (if you have one) and/or your social following. Make sure it's not just friends and family, unless you plan to make those people your customers too.

Ask them 5-10 questions. Dig into their pain points. Find out what they really want to know. What problems and burning questions are keeping them up at night? What is their biggest challenge right now?

These insights will come in handy later as you "cook to order" so that your course's instructional design is written in their words and solves their specific needs.

2. Analyze the survey data and "product-ize" those insights. What I mean by this is, re-package the problems into semi-branded solutions.

For example, if 30 people tell you their biggest challenge right now is staying focused and getting work done during quarantine, maybe your course name has the word "productivity" in it? Or "WFH." Or "Remote work." You get the idea.

Once you nail down 3-5 or even 10 potential "products," write down three bulletpoints for each that detail the benefits of that course. What can people expect to learn if they buy this course? What are the key takeaways? What are the most exciting lessons?

3. Pre-sell those course topics. You can set up a very basic landing page and checkout cart, and email this pre-sale campaign out to the same exact people whom you surveyed in step 1.

Ideally, this process will show you a clear winner (the course with the most pre-buyers), and you can table or kill the other topics for now that didn't get sales. It's important to stay focused.

4. Refund the people who bought a non-validated course topic, or offer to transfer their credit to the course that will get produced. This is very important, so that you don't come off like you're just taking people's money.

Keep an open and honest conversation with your pre-buyers throughout the process. Chat with them on the phone to gather more insights. Craft the instructional content around their specific needs. And keep them in the loop for when your product is ready, so that they are the first people to get access!

Produce Your Course at Home with Screencasting

Gone are the days when you needed a "MasterClass quality" production with a 40-person film crew in order to provide educational value. As a video producer myself, this pains me to admit— but you can create an incredibly valuable online course with a slide deck and Quicktime.

Content is still king. And pedagogical value trumps camera skills, especially during lockdown. Even news anchors and late night TV hosts are using a very simple one-camera or webcam setup in their homes, on national television.

Related: How to Create an Online Course Like Foundr

We also recommend you watch this video below where Foundr CEO Nathan Chan reveals the inside scoop on what no one tells you about creating online courses. Foundr's business model involves offering in-depth, highly valuable online courses so he is well-acquainted with what it takes to achieve success.

What No One Tells You About Creating Online Courses

As long as you spend the time upfront to craft your educational content in a way that's clear, cohesive, and actionable, and stay focused on solving your customers' pain, you will end up with some very happy students.

Best Online Course Platforms

When it comes to hosting your online course, there are two main routes: Publisher vs. Platform.

A "Publisher" tool is where you can self-publish and host your course, and you typically pay a monthly SaaS fee in exchange for use of this tool, similar to a website builder. Publisher model allows you to keep the majority of the revenue you bring in for your course, but you are also responsible for doing all your own marketing.

Publisher Tools for Online Courses:

Teachable
Thinkific
Kajabi
BuddyBoss
LearnWorlds
PathWright
Ruzuku
Podia
Zippy Courses
CourseCats

A course "Platform" is a large on-demand education site, usually community-driven and more reminiscent of a social network than an individual course Publisher. The user experience is consistent across the site (think: YouTube or Netflix for education). For this reason, there are fewer branding opportunities to make your course stand out from the other 10,000+ on the platform. You can customize your video thumbnail, headline and description, and that's about it.

You also split your revenue with the platform, with anywhere between 50%-80% of your course income going to the company. In exchange, the upside of these platforms is that they have a built-in audience that is already expecting educational content, so you have a head-start on the marketing rather than building your audience from scratch.

Platforms for Online Courses:

Skillshare
Udemy
Coursera
Udacity

Make it 10X Better than the Competition

A lot of online course creators out there are doing a cash grab in exchange for very thin, fluffy content. Don't be that guy. In order to really separate yourself from the pack, and create a truly valuable course that people will pay money for—and get results from—it's important to go deeper.

Analyze the burning questions and pain points your audience is asking about. Work those answers into your course content. Use the specific language your audience uses, so that the videos are in their words.

Prioritize depth over breadth. Don't make a listicle style video series that barely dips its toes into 65 different topics. It's better to go deep on one topic, and break down the over-the-shoulder process of how to actually do that thing, vs. trying to cram too many topics into one course and not really providing anything of value.

For example, if your course is called "How to do your taxes as a freelancer," you should screenshare the step-by-step process and actually SHOW your audience each step. What you shouldn't do is simply offer "10 tips for tax season." This is a blog article, not a course.

Produce It Once, Sell It Forever

Perhaps the best part about creating online courses as a business model is that, if done correctly, you can produce the content one time, and sell it over and over again. If you follow Foundr's framework for producing in-depth online courses that are evergreen, you shouldn't have to touch the product again for 6-12 months, maybe even longer.

From there, it's all about the marketing—which can be a really fun process. It's especially enjoyable when armed with the confidence that you already put in the work, and have a great course that genuinely helps people.

By combining our Pre-Sale Validation Method (1-2 weeks) and a "lean" course production process like screencapture at home, you can have your polished course out there into the world and launched within two months.

5. Starting an Online Store (Ecommerce)

Zero to Profit: 3 months

This is by far one of our favorite business models in the Foundr community, and we've seen tens of thousands of students build successful online stores through our training programs.

I won't dig into too much detail on the "how" here, as we have countless ecommerce resources available to you for free:

YouTube Playlist: Starting and Growing an Ecommerce Business
Interactive Guide: The Ultimate Guide to Starting and Scaling an Ecommerce Business
Free Training: Learn How You Can Start a Profitable Online Store (in 12 Weeks or Less)

But I wanted to touch on the realistic time horizon you can expect, if this is a business model you're thinking of exploring. After all, this article is about businesses that make money right away.

Simple, Not Easy

One misconception about starting an ecommerce store is that it's quick and easy. Sure, it can be simple, if you follow a proven framework like what four-time multimillion-dollar founder Gretta van Riel has done with SkinnyMe Tea, Drop Bottle, The 5th Watches, and Skintox.

Part of that framework starts with a winning product idea. Here's some information on how to choose a profitable idea from Gretta herself:

Finding the BEST Business Idea (UPDATED)

In addition to finding a winning product idea, there is a repeatable way to do it all: validate your idea, build your brand and audience, and launch your store to paying customers.

But ecommerce requires more logistics than say, a service-based business or digital content-based business. You'll need to do product prototyping, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and a number of other physical tasks that take a bit more time.

You can do a lot of it remotely and find a 3PL (3rd Party Logistics) partner to take on the brunt of it for you. The marketing aspect can also be done 100% remotely, to the point where you can run your business from your phone if you want to—and Foundr's ecommerce training teaches you all this and more.

We just wanted to be 100% honest with you about the timing for this kind of business, in case you're in a situation where you need cash next week.

From Idea to Launch in 3 Months

Based on what we've seen across thousands of businesses in the Foundr community, launching an ecommerce store typically takes about 12 weeks (~3 months). That's from nailing down your idea, all the way through to bringing in your first sales.

It's a very exciting process, especially that first time you get to hold your product in your hand and unbox something you designed yourself. There are also a number of marketing opportunities to make your business growth easy (e.g. influencer marketing, Instagram marketing), since the product is tangible and visual.

So if you've got some savings in the bank and are comfortable spending the time upfront to plan, then starting an ecommerce brand may be the right fit for you.

6. Starting a SaaS Product or App (in Beta)

Zero to Profit: 2 months (first pre-sales); 6-12 months (launch)

I know what you're thinking. "How can I launch an app in only two months?" Hear me out. We're not talking about "launching" the app—at least not yet. You're going to bring in your first sales to start funding the product build.

Yes, this one is probably the longest time horizon out of the bunch, if you factor in development time. But there is a very strategic way to start bringing in paying customers for the software you're going to build, before it even exists.

We've seen software companies, apps and SaaS products launch in betaas quickly as 60 days from the time you come up with your idea to the moment you get your first real sales.

The Secret to SaaS Pre-Sales: Closed Beta Method

First, identify the pain point you want to solve, and find people experiencing that pain (as mentioned earlier). You can do this with SurveyMonkey Audience, or a simple Typeform or Google Form if you already have a following to reach out to.

Then, get on the phone or Zoom with those people. This is a critical step.

After following a specific series of psychological prompts on that phone call known as Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), and confirming three "yes's" from them to gradually dig deeper into the pain, the 4th "yes" should be after you tell them about your product idea: "Does this sound like something that might help you?"

If they say yes to the first three prompts, and anything that sounds like "yes" to that last one, you've got a very strong chance that they will now become a paying customer.

Now, invite those people into your exclusive "Closed Beta Group" with the promise that you'll continuously work on solving the problem for them through the software that you're building. Give them lifetime access for a few hundred dollars. Charge their credit card over the phone. And voila: you've now got a go-to goldmine of insights and feedback to help you shape the product, AND your first sales coming in.

One of Foundr's course instructors, Mitch Harper, has seen this work eight times over. He is the cofounder of BigCommerce (now a $1 billion ecommerce platform), and advises for a dozen other startups including Drift, Airtasker, and Biteable.

Mitch has a proven phone script for pre-selling a SaaS product before it even exists, and this empowers you to start bringing in cash right away, even before you find a developer or designer.

Here is a peek at a lesson from our 60-Day Startup course that explains this concept in more detail

To access the word-for-word phone scripts and secure pre-buyers for your SaaS product before it even exists, join the 60-Day Startup free masterclass and course taught by Mitch Harper.

Cash in the Bank to Fuel Your Product Build

You can then use this money to bankroll your startup idea, and pay your developer and designer to build the product for you—all funded from your customer's pockets instead of your own savings.

The best part? This Closed Beta method is the ultimate form of validation. After you get 10 or 20 or 100 people into your Closed Beta, you're virtually guaranteeing that your product idea is going to work, and that it will be catered to your customers' specific needs.

Yes, building a software business is probably the hardest and most time-consuming model out of all of these. But if you have the passion, you've identified a problem that can best be solved in a scalable, digital way, and you want to start bringing in pre-sales using only your phone and internet connection, then this is a journey worth considering.

To learn more about how to start a tech startup in record time through this method, watch this free masterclass interview with Mitch Harper and Nathan Chan.

Let's Go Make Some Money

There you have it. Those are our favorite businesses that make money right away, without having to spend a ton of time and upfront investment.

Yes, building a business is hard work, but nothing good in life was ever achieved without a bit of elbow grease and determination.

We wanted to be as honest with you as possible about what we're seeing in the entrepreneurship space, what our community is working on building as we speak, and what the realistic timeframes are in order to set up each type of business.

Now it's your turn to take the next step. But you don't have to go it alone.

If you're still on the fence about which business model you want to explore, we'd like to invite you to watch one of our free video training sessions to help you decide.

Wishing you the best of luck in your entrepreneurial journey, and remember, we're here to help!