The best things in life aren’t free. But there are some things that are damn near close that get the job done, and well! For student entrepreneurs the wealth of information and help can sometimes seem as limited as the budget you have for the semester. When you look at what’s available even in a small local community though, you can take a small project and turn it into the next project that’s sapping investors left and right.
The benefits of being a student and a will for entrepreneurship in a university is the expanse of resources offered to you, and they’re gratis. In a start-up point of view the best thing your university can offer you is their legal resources. Over at Appalachian State (where I go to school) this is nicely hidden inside of the Student Conduct pages. But aptly titled Student Legal Clinic is just that. If you are lucky enough to have a problem with the law, good or bad, they can help you. The advice available comes from licensed attorney, and again, is free; it comes with all the lovely tuition costs you pay.
Considering also, are your every day professors. I once went into my finance professor’s office to ask for extra resources, I walked out with a full workbook for the finance text book (easily worth $60 or more). Are you having problems with starting your accounting books? Might have a chat with that accounting professor you just ever so loved from sophomore year. Your library is free and offers hundreds of thousands of books, I’m sure many books like The 4-hour Workweek, maybe Crush It if you’re lucky. But truth be told, as much as us students pay for our resources the best you can do is use them. So don’t hesitate to confront your professors, or ask your advisers. After all they are around there to help you.
Services vs. Products
Ideas come on a daily basis, sometimes they’re tangible items, or you have found out you can do something well. Like my friend Sarah Green (Tugende Entrepreneurship) found out, providing consulting for student entrepreneurs. A service will (mostly) always be cheaper to start than providing a product.
Products have the problem of costing way more in the start-up phase than a service does. Think about it this way; you have to pay for the wholesale product, storage, shipping (pre-sale), and recovering the shipping cost post-sale, inventory, sales management etc. However, when it comes to offering a service you look at your personal branding, marketing, and mainly publicity costs. What are you paying to be found by who you’re catering to?
The ability to now create a website for almost free – you might have to pay for a domain if you really want to – but gives you the chance to create a blog, or at least a landing page for potential clients to contact you and learn about you. You don’t necessarily need to spend all your time and effort in building an online portfolio of your work, but the best thing is to have a place for people to know who you are and what you do. When you’re able to give people an online presence and a place for them to reference you to, the level of trust instantly get raised. There is also a difference to be noted when using online social resources, and that is that fact that when online with a company or start-up you have two options: Networking or Marketing, and there is a steep difference, but one that allows you to distinguish your goals and opportunities in a much clearer way so that you don’t end up running over your own toes.
Marketing either one online consists of a careful usage of both keyword copywriting (Read: Scribe’s – “How to Create Compelling Content – PDF), consideration of online marketing plans, and as always the product or service that you plan to offer. Online there are many tools that I use, and that can help you accomplish a lot on a budget of Free.
Also read Investopedia’s – Top 5 Incentives For Student Startups
Image by KevinDooley
