If you’re planning to own and operate a business, you might be thinking about things like renting commercial real estate, commuting to an office, or managing employees. But starting and running a company from home is easier than ever.

Ahead, discover 15 home business ideas to kickstart your entrepreneurship journey along with guidance on how to make it work for you.

What are the pros and cons for starting a business at home?

A home-based business is a venture—whether full time or run as a side hustle—you can start and operate using your own personal residence as your base of operations. A few home-based businesses, especially those that sell online and don’t buy and hold lots of inventory, can even be run on the go, without the need to be bound to your home.Click here to start selling online now with Shopify

Naturally, there are pros and cons to consider when deciding whether a home based business is right for you.

Pros of home-based businesses:

• A small business has fewer overhead costs (such as warehousing fees), plus potential tax deductions you can claim.
• The option to sell products or services locally or internationally.
• Flexible work-life balance, which is ideal if, for example, you’re a stay-at-home parent or a retiree.
• You can create a family business where your relations or your spouse can chip in as needed.

Cons of home-based businesses:

• You may need to convert space in your home to support the needs of your business (e.g., holding inventory, creating a home office, or storing equipment). The challenge can be doing this without disrupting your life at home.
• You still have to comply with any regulations that pertain to the business you want to start (e.g., you may need to rent a commercial kitchen if you plan to sell food products, or a license/permit to hold inventory).
• Your business may outgrow your home and require you to rent additional space and hire employees.
• Working from home offers you a lot of freedom, but it can also be lonely. This might be difficult if you enjoy being around other people.

While there are plenty of ways to go about starting your home business ideas, the following are some of the most approachable paths to creating a profitable business for yourself.

15 profitable home business ideas

---

1. Buy products in bulk and sell them online

Many businesses center on the simple concept of importing products in bulk and selling them individually for a profit.

Maybe you recently traveled abroad and came across unique products that aren’t readily available in your market but that you sense an appetite for. Or maybe you’ve zeroed in on a niche market and know the perfect way to serve it.

Either way, if these products are relatively easy to store and ship, you may have some solid home-based small business ideas on your hands. 

You can even initially use your home as a showroom to sell locally, giving you the option to expand with additional storage space and employees as you validate your idea and sales start to ramp up. This is how Artemis Design Co. got its start.

“I was living in the south end of Boston, and I had my living room just full of these products,” says Milicent Armstrong, owner and founder of Artemis Design Co. “I would have people come over if they wanted to look at something or try something on, and that’s how I made my first sale.”

2. Sell homemade products 

If you’re a maker yourself (or know someone who is), consider turning that hobby into a business. Even if you have to create your products elsewhere—in a studio, commercial kitchen, or workshop—you may be able to store and sell them in your own home.

When you control nearly every aspect of the products you sell, you can make them more cost effective, improve their quality, or cater them to a certain audience by targeting demand in the market.

Josh Pigford already had a thriving home business in a business analytics startup, but wanted to find a way to flex his creative muscles. He started printing succulent planters at home with his 3D printer—and a new business was born. Cedar & Sail now carries planters, coasters, and other small desk tchotchkes.

Whether you choose to start on a marketplace like Etsy or build your own branded storefront, selling your creations is a great way to share your passion with others and make money too. Just be wary of regulations concerning products that people ingest or put on their skin.

Best of all, producing your own products doesn’t have to be overwhelming. When you’re ready to scale, you can establish a process and onboard new employees to help with production.

3. Start a dropshipping store

So far, we’ve covered business ideas that require you to hold inventory in your home. But there are a variety of online businesses ideas to pursue that don’t involve worrying about inventory and shipping.

These businesses employ a dropshipping model, where a third party produces, stores, and ships your products on your behalf, leaving marketing and customer service as your chief responsibilities. Retailer Subtle Asian Treats is an example of a home-based business that uses a dropshipper.

Your dropshipping supplier can be local or overseas, but you need to find a supplier you can trust to deliver a consistently great customer experience after the sale. Always do your due diligence or you might put your business’ reputation at risk.

There are even Shopify apps, such as DSers, that can connect you with suppliers to import products into your own store while streamlining order fulfillment.

This model can easily make your products a commodity with limited opportunity to brand your customer experience. Luckily, there are a few different ways you can still compete, even when there’s no shortage of your products in the market you’re selling to:

• Curate products from different suppliers to create a store that serves a specific niche.
• Compete through quality content and customer service, creating value beyond your products.
• Target an underserved region of the world (be sure to pay attention to your shipping costs).
• Target a new audience with the same products (e.g., LED shoes can be marketed to music festival goers or runners).

4. Start a print-on-demand business

Using a similar dropshipping model, a print-on-demand business doesn’t require you to hold any inventory or ship anything yourself. Print-on-demand even offers you more flexibility to customize white label products with your own creative designs.

Rebecca Lee Funk launched The Outrage, a women’s rights activist apparel brand that sells print-on-demand t-shirt designs, from her home. The business donates a portion of profits to non-profit organizations that work toward social causes like gun control and women’s rights. Her launch campaign went viral, and The Outrage turned into a thriving ecommerce business.

There are many other print-on-demand products you can sell: books, hats, backpacks, blankets, pillows, mugs, shoes, hoodies, phone cases, watches, and more, depending on the supplier you choose to work with.

Many print-on-demand businesses focus on serving a specific niche or, better yet, a shared identity. What are people passionate about and proud to share? What about yourself?

From pet owners to vegans to gamers, there are plenty of passionate communities you can create products for. If you have the skills, you can create your own designs. But if not, you can always hire the talent you need.

5. Offer online services

Services are even simpler than products to start selling at home, but the challenge is allocating your limited time. “Time is money” is never truer than when you’re running a service-based business.

Creative professionals, like designers or marketers, might freelance or consult with other companies, juggling multiple clients, often remotely from their own home office, with occasional travel. Others might operate based on appointments and bookings to offer their services to individuals directly.

Service-based home business ideas include:

• Freelance writing
• Virtual assistance
• Marketing
• Designing
• SEO consulting
• Web design and development
• Graphic design

Service-based businesses often require a lot of networking and word-of-mouth referrals to find suitable clients, but satisfied clients will likely retain your services over time.

For this reason, you don’t necessarily need a large number of customers to do well, as you would with a product-based business. Depending on the service you’re offering, a handful of high-quality clients can be enough to support yourself full time while working from home.

6. Teach online classes

Chris Carey, one of the founders of MAPerformance, started his automotive parts and services business from the comfort of home. He began by teaching car maintenance and repair tips to online users in forums. After establishing expertise and trust, people started heading over to his ecommerce site to buy parts. 

If you have a teachable skill, you not only can share that knowledge in forums to get your name out there, you can also turn it into online courses. There’s an audience for just about any desirable skill, whether it’s English as a second language, advanced marketing, or everyday home maintenance hacks.

If I Made is Emily Newman’s home business teaching classes to creative professionals. When you teach classes online, you have the flexibility to do it from home and you can offer live or pre-recorded teaching and training. For example, you might offer the live courses at a premium rate, while customers can purchase the recorded sessions at a discounted price.

That’s what Yegi Saryan, founder of Yegi Beauty, does with her business. After establishing a successful online beauty brand, she turned her talents into passive income. Now, aspiring entrepreneurs can purchase lash classes to kickstart their skills and add it as a service offering in their business. Classes are available both online and in-person.

You can also choose the class size and length. If you like small groups or even one-on-one, consider tutoring, mentorship, or masterminds. If you like larger groups, do bigger training sessions and courses. Teach a one-time all-day summit, an hour a week, or somewhere in between.

Not interested in human interaction? Create a fully downloadable course for purchase. All you need is the content, be it a video walkthrough, templates, articles, or how-tos. Use a screen-recording tool like ScreenFlow or Loom to capture your screen and voice while you walk students through the material. 

Whichever way you slice it, teaching online is a profitable home business idea because it requires low overhead—just an investment in time.

7. Productize your service or expertise

As we just discussed, one of the biggest downsides of running a service-based business is that you’re paid strictly for your time, skills, and effort. Emily Newman of If I Made productized her classes into digital courses, packaging the recordings from her live sessions and selling them at a lower rate.

“Productizing” your service—creating physical or digital products that package up your expertise and streamline or complement the service you offer—can add additional revenue streams to your business. You can cater to your current customer base or even find a new target customer in the same space.

Gabriella and Andrew Morrison started their home-based business by packaging up their expertise around tiny-home living. They sell courses and plans on StrawBale—operating everything from the comfort of their cozy, non-traditional house. 

And here are some ideas for adding products to your own business:

• Courses
• Designs
• Licensable assets (stock footage, photos, music, etc.)
• Downloadable reports
• Digital templates
• Merchandise
• Ebooks

As you can see, most of these ideas involve digital media packaged as products, which means no inventory to keep around the house. If you’re running your home business on Shopify, you can sell digital products seamlessly using the Digital Downloads or SendOwl apps.

In some cases, though, productizing your expertise is more literal. That’s how Bullet Journal came about. Ryder Carroll created his own methodology to journaling that morphed into a home-based business idea. Now, he sells physical journals on his website. 

8. Grow an audience you can monetize

If you’re a content creator, have a sizable online audience already, or have always thought about starting your own blog, YouTube channel, Instagram account, or podcast, then you can potentially grow and monetize your following using any of the previous ideas on this list.

Andrew Finn co-founded Wait But Why, a blog-turned-business. After amassing more than 371,000 subscribers and millions of visits, the brand created digital content products tailored to an already loyal audience. Today, Wait Buy Why is a full-blown ecommerce site with digital and physical goods for sale.

Jordan Ferney, founder of Oh Happy Day Shop!, also built an audience via blogging and later turned it into a full-fledged business from home. She designed her business around her life and being able to spend time with her family and now sells products on her ecommerce site. 

Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark used Facebook groups to develop and nurture a community around their podcast, My Favorite Murder. This group of Murderinos, armchair investigators who are true crime fans, grew to more than 200,000 members before the podcast sunset in 2018.

My Favorite Murder then created its own paid community, the Fan Cult forum, charging members an annual fee. Capitalizing even more on its fandom, My Favorite Murder even launched an ecommerce site with branded merchandise (it also sold event tickets there). 

You can also explore becoming an affiliate—selling other products or services for a commission—or accepting payment for sponsored posts to give brands a chance to connect with your audience.

Building a loyal audience requires patience, consistency, and focus. This isn’t the easiest way to start a home-based business, especially not in the short term, but if you’re able to build a following around something you love it can be one of the most fulfilling, giving you the flexibility to pursue multiple revenue streams at once.

The potential to monetize your audience often depends on the niche you choose to serve. If you’re starting from scratch or are in the midst of growing your own audience, be sure to check out the following guides to learn how to best grow and monetize the most popular channels:

9. Buy an existing ecommerce business

If you’re more interested in investing in a source of income you can maintain while at home or on the go, consider buying an established ecommerce business.

Prices vary greatly based on a variety of factors, including total revenue generated, profit potential, available assets (like an email list or social following), inventory, and more. Some sellers will even onboard you and teach you the ropes of running their store.

Maybe you want to buy a proven business and are willing to invest more money to acquire it. Or perhaps one with untapped potential that you’d like to build on catches your eye.

10. Start a subscription box business

The online subscription box industry is forecasted to grow at 20% each year from 2021 to 2026. That explosive growth has led to the emergence of new direct-to-consumer brands targeting this niche, as well as the adoption by major brands like Sephora and Walmart. 

You can start a subscription business from home. Ashley Reynolds bundled surplus products into subscription boxes to sell via her ecommerce site, Cloth & Paper. If you already run an ecommerce business at home, you could do the same to make use of what would otherwise be dead stock. 

Subscription boxes don’t have to necessarily be about selling. Haverdash is a subscription box company that rents clothes. When customers are finished using the items, they send them back—and Haverdash rents them out to another customer to generate even more revenue. 

11. Turn your pet into an influencer

Pet influencers are all over social media, promoting brands like BarkBox and inspiring thousands of likes with their cuteness. If you’ve got a pet of your own, you could turn them into a social media influencer and work with brands to promote their products online.

Bodhi the Menswear Dog—a.k.a. the most stylish dog in the world—has made a name for himself on Instagram in particular. Browse his feed and you’ll see collaborations with several brands like Booking.com, Spotify, and Poly & Bark.

No pets at home? Take care of other people’s pets. Apps like Rover opened up the sharing economy to pet sitting and dog walking. The pet care industry was valued at $280 billion in 2022. If you’re looking to make money from home, offer pet owners a place to drop off their animals when they head out of town.

12. Sell unwanted items

As consumers become more environmentally conscious, they’re also looking for ways to adjust their shopping habits to support sustainability. Resale clothing is a $15 billion industry in the US alone.

COAL N TERRY is one successful home-based business selling vintage finds. And while the business didn’t exactly start from a home—it was a college dorm room—it has since grown into a brand with a loyal following and celebrity fans. 

You can start small with your own home-based business—sites like Poshmark and Mercari are great places to sell your unwanted clothing. You can even use Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. 

Unwanted items aren’t limited to previously used clothing. Food waste is an unwanted item that also presents a viable home-based business opportunity. 

13. Play video games

While many may think video games are a waste of time, it’s a hobby that can actually turn a profit. And there’s nothing more home-based than sitting on your couch in front of your TV.

Esports and video game streaming platforms like Twitch have opened the door for gamers to gain notoriety—and eventually money—from their talents. The esports industry alone is worth more than $1.2 billion, and a Twitch streamer can get up to 100,000 viewers at a time.

So how do you monetize this? Sponsorships are one of the best ways to start a home-based competitive gaming business. Companies will pay you to play their games and stream it to your audience. You can also sell merch on Twitch to your audience.

Video gaming is even known to be a great résumé booster. Note, though, success requires some level of gaming skill.

Here’s a unique spin: Twitch isn’t limited to just gaming anymore, and Maxx Burman and Banks Boutté used the platform to launch an online festival where they featured 12 top video game art directors.

They repurposed this content for other digital channels like Instagram and YouTube. After building a loyal audience, the two launched KitBash3D, where they sell 3D assets for video games and movies. 

14. Sell NFTs

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have garnered a lot of attention as a lucrative creative business you can start from home. If you or someone you know and can partner with have artistic skills, creating and selling NFTs can be a great way to generate income from home.

Artists like FEWOCIOUS have managed to make money selling their art as NFTs to the tune of millions. While those might be outlier success stories, there are plenty of other artists selling NFTs they create at home. And you can get creative, even if you’re not an artist. Take the story of Brittany Pierre, a struggling Chicago-based resident who made $109,000 selling her own art pieces and photography as NFTs, as well as flipping others’ art as NFTs.

To get started, get familiar with the minting process first. You need to have a general idea of how cryptocurrency and blockchain technology work. That way you can confidently create NFTs to sell on marketplaces like OpenSea, SuperRare, and Foundation. 

To make a living selling NFTs, it’s key to stay active on social platforms where NFT communities gather. As you get your name out there with your own social media presence, making connections with like-minded sellers and collectors is key to ongoing success.

15. Become a virtual event planner

With the onset of the pandemic and the shift from in-person to virtual events, there was a boost in need for virtual event planning skills. And though many companies are returning back to the office, some changes have become permanent—with more remote workers and dispersed teams in a post-pandemic world.

The best part is you can start with a smartphone, a laptop, and an internet connection while keeping expenses relatively low as you operate from home and find your niche. Virtual event planning spans many different needs, whether that means planning for:

• Corporate conferences
• Work meetings
• Virtual parties
• Fundraisers
• Trade shows
• Webinars
• Educational conferences 
• Group trainings or workshops

Maybe you’re really good with organization and love creating schedules. You might have a natural ability to network, negotiate, and bring people together. If so, these skills are invaluable when you’re trying to market yourself to potential customers.

Getting familiar with virtual event platforms like Hopin, Cvent, or Whova can help arm you with the know-how to successfully win over your first customers. To illustrate the marketing process, businesses like Virtual Events Creator use Instagram to get the word out about what they offer. 

As your virtual planning business grows and your skills grow with it, repackaging your services and selling them as toolkits can add an extra revenue stream for steadier income.

Wrapping Up:

We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences. We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.

Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses! If you would like to know more details about us, please contact us:  blog.shopshipshake.com. If you are interested in cooperating with us. Please register on: https://shop.shopshipshake.com/shop/register/business

The article reference: https://www.shopify.com/blog/home-business