Starting a business without capital, in my opinion, really doesn't make sense in a time where every business definitely uses capital, as you said, affiliate marketing, this still uses capital, where the capital we use is a quota and our brains think about how to get lots of affiliates.
So in my opinion, capital is not just money, but there are many supporting factors that can actually make the business run smoothly
Affiliate marketing is not a business run by us. If I start doing affiliate marketing, I'm basically helping other businesses with their sales and everything and getting a commission for that, and that can't be called a business but it's sort of a job that I'm doing to get some money. So people who say that you can start affiliate marketing without capital need to understand that you can do any job without capital because, in a job, you spend your time and provide your services to get paid and you do the same thing in affiliate marketing.
A business is something you start yourself from scratch, and you are the one who earns money if the business runs well, it could be anything from a small fruit stall to a big restaurant, it could even be an e-commerce platform you start online, and none of these things can be done without capital because that is the first question as we think of starting a business.
Anyone can think of starting a business, might even have some ideas, but to turn those ideas into reality, they need capital.