15 Small Business Ideas You Can Start From Home

Ben Zaino
Last Updated November 25, 2024
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Want to work for yourself and work from home? 

I was in a similar position about ten years ago. I had a good job but wanted the freedom and flexibility to work from anywhere and be my own boss. I was inspired by an idea I found online, and I never looked back. 

But today if you search the web for home business ideas or how to make money from home, 90% of those suggestions don’t fit the description. They might tell you to start a dog walking business, become an event planner, or be a personal chef—all jobs that require you to leave your house. 

This list is different. With one or two exceptions, the small business ideas below all fit the following criteria:

  • You can actually work from home (or anywhere with internet access).
  • You can do it alone without hiring any employees.
  • You can start these businesses with little to no investment.

Best of all, you can make real money with these ideas. 

This isn’t just for college students who need some extra cash or stay-at-home parents looking for a side hustle. So no, I’m not going to suggest that you sell old clothes or flip items purchased from a thrift shop. These are real careers with six-figure income potential. 

1. Become an Online Personal Trainer

The online fitness space is exploding in popularity—generating $14.82 billion this year in the US alone. This number is expected to reach $20.2 billion by 2029.

What’s more impressive is that there’s still so much more room for growth. Currently, user penetration in the digital fitness world sits at 54.86%, and it’s poised to eclipse 65% within five years. Surveys suggest that 70% of people prefer the flexibility of exercising online compared to traditional gyms. 

The best way to penetrate this space is by becoming an online personal trainer

While it obviously helps to have a fitness background, you actually don’t need any formal licenses or credentials to be an online fitness coach. 

You can simply develop your training programs and sell them to people worldwide. 

From meal plans to video tutorials and 30-day challenges, the possibilities here are virtually endless, and so is your reach. It’s cheaper than a gym membership, and you can still generate monthly recurring revenue in the form of digital subscriptions. 

2. Sell Mobile Apps to Businesses

With Buildfire’s reseller program, you can create mobile apps using the same exact platform we’ve used to build over 10,000+ apps—all without writing a single line of code. Then you can sell those apps to other businesses for sky-high profits.

The key to success here is landing your first client. 

Once you build that first app, you can simply clone it and make small adjustments for other clients in the same industry.

For example, let’s say you build an app for a church. The features and functions of that app will be virtually identical for every other church and religious organization that needs a mobile app. You’ll only need to make small changes to the branding and content, which is what makes this idea so profitable. 

3. Sell Online Courses

Following the trends is always a good idea when you’re looking for profitable small business ideas, and there’s tons of money to be made in the online learning space. 

You can start with a single course, which shouldn’t take more than 30 days to create. Then it’s just a matter of packaging your materials and putting them into the hands of your target audience. 

Think beyond traditional classrooms here. You can create an online course about anything.

  • Online cooking courses
  • Music lessons
  • Chess or poker strategy
  • Home gardening secrets
  • Basic DIY car maintenance

Any useful skills or knowledge you have can be turned into a course. If this interests you, We have a guide on how to create and sell an online course that you can reference for step-by-step instructions. 

4. Web Design / Web Development

There’s a huge demand right now for both web design and development. Pick one. I’ve packed these as a single idea for simplicity, but they’re actually two completely different roles. 

The best part about starting a web design or web development business is that you have endless potential clients. 

Rather than looking for businesses that don’t have a website, you can look for websites that are truly awful and in desperate need of a facelift. 

Once you redesign or rebuild the site, you can always look for opportunities to charge an ongoing maintenance fee. Or you can take things a step further and upsell those clients on a custom app (refer back to idea #2).

5. Create a Mobile App

If you have a cool idea for a mobile app, you can turn that idea into a profitable business. 

There’s a misconception out there that app development is super expensive. While this might have been the case a decade ago, that’s no longer the case today. 

No-code app builders like Buildfire make it easy for anyone to create an app without any technical skills. Plans start at less than $100 per month, which is a marginal investment when you consider the revenue potential. 

For those of you who want to create an app but don’t have an idea, we have a list of 50 app ideas that you can use for inspiration. 

Sign up for your 30-day free trial of Buildfire to get started. 

6. Sell Products Online Without Ever Touching Them (Dropshipping)

I’m not going to bore you with the latest ecommerce statistics to try and pitch you on this idea. It’s no secret that retail has gone digital, and more people are buying stuff online today than ever before.

If you want a piece of this market share, dropshipping is the easiest way in.

Rather than having to purchase inventory, fulfill orders, and print shipping labels, you can just start a dropshipping business without ever touching the products or leaving your house.

With dropshipping, all you have to do is run your ecommerce site or app. When a customer places the order, all of the fulfillment and shipping gets handled directly by the manufacturer. 

The manufacturer charges you the wholesale rate for the item, and your profit margin is based on whatever price you’re selling to the customer. 

Dropshipping profit margins are a bit slimmer compared to traditional ecommerce. But the startup costs are much cheaper and the risk is significantly lower. 

7. Freelance Writing

I became a freelance writer in 2017 and it changed my life. As long as you have a laptop and an internet connection, you can work from anywhere. 

But there are a couple of prerequisites that people often overlook—you actually need to be a somewhat decent writer, and you must be willing to write a ton. 

I can’t tell you how many people have approached me over the years asking for advice on how to become a writer and how I got started. Once I start explaining what I do and how it works, the most common responses I hear are, “I stink at writing” or “That sounds like a lot of writing.” 

If those thoughts enter your head, then this job isn’t for you. But if you’re willing to write 10,000 to 15,000+ words per week, there’s a huge demand for quality writing out there. 

AI hasn’t changed this at all. In fact, it’s made freelance writing even more in-demand because businesses are looking for a human touch to rise above all the AI-generated nonsense. 

8. Start Your Own Podcast

Truthfully, this might be the most challenging idea on the entire list. 

While starting a podcast is easy, growing your listener base can take years. So just keep this in mind before you jump in.

One thing that makes podcasting so appealing is that you can record episodes on your own time, and you have tons of flexibility with how you want to structure your show. 

If you have great ideas that you want to share but you’re not a great writer, podcasting is the logical choice because it’s just talking. And once you start getting views and listens, there are so many different revenue models that you can apply to your show. 

9. Become a Podcast Editor

Inspired by the previous idea, you can still start a small business within the lucrative world of podcasting while keeping yourself behind the scenes. 

As a podcast editor, you can work with multiple podcasts without ever speaking a word into the microphone.

Podcast hosts can just send you the raw audio or video files for their show, and you can cut everything together nicely before those episodes get published. 

The only investment required is quality editing software. But with over 3.2 million podcasts out there right now, you’ll have an endless list of potential clients who are seeking better production quality for their show. 

10. SEO Specialist

Search engine optimization—better known as SEO—is all about getting organic traffic to a website or app.

Companies are willing to pay a ton of money for help with this, as SEO has proven to be one of the best long-term investments that a business can make because it doesn’t rely on paid ads to get visitors. 

Brands pay SEO agencies anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000+ per month for link building, content creation, technical SEO, and other SEO services. 

You can market yourself as a cost-effective alternative by offering your SEO services for a fraction of this price and focusing on a specific industry or niche.

For example, you can differentiate yourself by marketing solely on SEO for physical therapists or SEO for AI searches. Or you can help businesses get more app downloads by selling app store optimization (ASO) services. 

11. Career Coaching

Have you climbed the corporate ladder and made a successful career for yourself? You can start your small business around this premise, teaching others how to do the same. 

There are a few different ways to approach this.

  • 1:1 coaching
  • Group coaching sessions
  • On-demand courses and tutorials

You can start with one or offer a combination of these coaching services. 

Regardless of which path you take, selling your coaching services through a mobile app is going to be your best bet. It increases your reach, as people can access your advice from anywhere. 

This approach also ensures that you can run this business from home. Plus, it gives you a unique differentiator compared to other career coaches that are strictly web-based or just available through phone calls. 

12. Buy an Existing Small Business

This is the one exception on this list that requires more than $500 or $1,000 to get started. But even if you don’t have tens of thousands of dollars saved, you can always try to get a loan for the difference. 

It’s obviously a very broad idea and requires tons of due diligence to be successful, but you can find some real winners if you’re looking in the right places.

I suggest looking for strictly digital businesses. Browse online marketplaces like Flippa, where people buy and sell websites—searching for existing websites that have a simple yet profitable business model.

13. Marketing Consultant

This small business idea actually targets other small businesses.

There are so many second-generation and third-generation businesses out there using outdated marketing tactics that just don’t work the same way in the digital era.

While there’s nothing wrong with being part of your local chamber of commerce or putting coupons in a local newspaper, brands today need to have a well-oiled digital marketing presence to survive.

You can help these businesses create a Google Business Profile that’s optimized for local searches or grow an email list that actually generates conversions—and you can do all of this from the comfort of your own home, communicating via email, phone, and video chats.

14. Monetize Your Skills and Expertise

What is something that you do really well? Maybe it’s something you’ve been doing for years, or maybe it’s a skill that involves some type of formal training or certification you’ve received.

Now get creative and think how you can use that skill to make money.

In some cases, this is really straightforward. You’ve been a social media manager working for an agency for the last five years. Now you can go out on your own and start your own social media management business.

Other times, it takes a bit more creativity. For example, maybe you work in HR for a mid-sized enterprise. You know the pain points associated with onboarding and training new hires, so maybe you want to develop a standardized system that you can package and resell to other businesses.

Take out a piece of paper and write down the three things you’re best at, and start mind-mapping from there. Dedicate 30 minutes to brainstorming, and see what you can come up with. 

15. Become an Affiliate Marketer

I’ve worked with websites that generated millions in affiliate commissions. If you can find the right partners and drive traffic to your content, you can earn a ton of money as an affiliate marketer.

For those of you not familiar with how this works, it’s actually very simple to understand.

Affiliate marketers are paid to promote products or services. You earn a commission each time someone visits a website, downloads an app, signs up for something, or completes a purchase. The specific action and payout structure depends on the program, but it’s the same basic concept across the board. 

Next Steps

The only thing holding you back from starting your own small business from home is you. 

You can make excuses or tell yourself it’s not the right time. But if you really want financial freedom and to be your own boss, you need to start taking steps in the right direction.

I’m not saying you have to quit your job just yet. But here’s a checklist of quick wins that you can start working on right now:

  • Form an LLC
  • Register your domain name
  • Open a separate checking account for your business
  • Write a business plan

The vast majority of the ideas on this list are super low-risk. So you can try them and rest easy knowing you won’t be losing a ton of money even if the idea fails.