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Certainly, high-tech startups can get venture capital funding worth hundreds of thousands of dollars almost the day after they start up. The rest of us in low-tech startups have far less glamorous options getting our businesses up and running – we have to bootstrap and otherwise be creative with our modest resources to get ourselves off the ground. If you are interested in the state-of-the-art in low-tech economizing, these are the small business ideas you can use.

Let’s start with cheap market research. People with start up businesses to take care of think about market research with a sinking heart. Getting a real consultant to to your market research can easily absorb three times your entire business capital. So savvy startup businesses have a better idea – they hire MBA students at some reputable college in the neighborhood. Let’s say, that you have an idea for a new product and you wish to know if the retailers in your state can be persuaded to consider stocking your product. Student MBAs are usually more than happy to put some of their hard-earned knowledge into practice. And they’ll be willing to work for next to nothing because the asignment will be something that will look good on their resume.

How about television advertising? That has to be prohibitively expensive, doesn’t it? Not really. New advertising businesses like Spot Runner can give you a lineup of affordable advertising spots on national channels like ESPN for as little as $50 per 30 second spot. Most small business ideas on advertising have up until now made do with second or third rate advertising opportunities. You no longer have to do that anymore. Businesses like SpotRunner allow you to put together a professional-looking 30-second advertisements for as little as $1500; and they feature a really comprehensive database of every cheap advertising slot in America. All you need to do is go through all of them, find one that fits you, and be on TV in no more than a day.

Nowhere are innovative small business ideas needed more than in the hiring area. Skilled employees happen to be the most expensive investment a small business can ever make. The hidden costs associated with hiring an employee can make a $14-an-hour worker actually cost $21 an hour. There are two ways you can go about saving costs hiring people.

Tags: Business And Economics