But while you might feel ready for a new venture and passionate about your idea, you might be looking for some direction. To help get you started, here's a list of small business ideas separated into three major sections:.
The first step to becoming a successful entrepreneur is finding a business idea that works for you. Image Source. Are you always fixing things around the house? Often on-call when friends need small projects completed? Similarly, if you have a passion for crafting beautiful furniture or other home goods out of wood, that could be a small business niche for you.
Get started by listing a few of your pieces on sites like Etsy. Once you build a following, consider starting a website, accepting custom orders, or expanding to refinishing work and upholstery. Dating consultants usually charge for their time. This might be the business for you. People will always need clothing hemmed and buttons mended — and you could be the person to do it.
If you love sewing, start by offering simple services like those mentioned above and expand your repertoire to dressmaking and design as you build a customer base and demand.
From building websites for other small businesses to providing technical support for certain projects, quality web development is in high demand right now. As a web developer, you'll naturally have a technical skill set. Distill your knowledge and expertise so customers who don't have your experience are able to understand what it is you'll be helping them achieve. Offer in-home consultations, personalized nutrition and exercise regimens, and community boot camps to get the word out.
For instance, MOURfit is a personal training business in Indianapolis that started in a shared gym, then grew to a private gym that offers group fitness, personal training, and nutrition services. From website design to blog graphics and more, many companies seek out experienced graphic designers for support on a variety of projects.
If you have experience navigating career, personal, and social transitions successfully, put it to good use as a life or career coach. Many of us are looking for guidance in our careers — and finding someone with the time to mentor us can be tough. After all, everyone needs some uplifting advice from time to time. Looking for inspiration? Nariah Broadus has dedicated more than 20 years to helping people create better working environments and navigate change successfully as a career and leadership coach.
Check out her story for more inspiration to get started with this small business idea. Creating a resume, cover letter, and — when necessary — portfolio for a new job can be tough and time consuming.
Assist clients with tailored resumes, beautifully edited cover letters, and carefully-crafted portfolios that make it impossible for employers to ignore. Write blog posts, magazine articles, and website copy galore — just make sure you have a body of work built up to share with potential clients.
Speak a foreign language? Start a translation service. Consider specializing in a specific genre of translation, like medical or financial translation, as you might be able to fill a niche need in your community.
Many people have the willingness to do the dirty work in their backyards, but few have the know-how to complete the first part of this process — designing and planning the backyard space.
Do you create, collect, or curate anything special? Consider starting an ecommerce store and turning your hobby into a full-time job.
Mowing, tree-trimming, and seasonal decor are all neighborhood needs. If you have or can acquire the equipment, a landscaping business can be a lucrative affair. Video production requires you to have invested in the equipment up front which can be quite expensive. Make sure you have a reel of your work to share or create a website with several selections of your work available for interested viewers. Start by conducting photo shoots for your family and friends. As you build a body of work, ask for referrals and reviews.
Photography businesses often grow by word of mouth, so create a Facebook page where you can tag recent clients. You can also ask them to leave reviews on your Facebook business page. Her advice? Give yourself a firm deadline to turn a profit. The time of the travel agent might be passing, but people are still looking for those with a knack for more nontraditional travel coordination. If you always plan the perfect vacations complete with beautiful hotels, the ideal location, and a bevy of delicious restaurants lined up for every evening, consider advertising your services as a more modern approach to travel planning.
The devil is in the details and you can be too. With this business, your clients only have to pay and the service will be done for them before they know it. Just make sure you have the flexibility, transportation, and equipment to take your business on the road.
Working as a home inspector requires a certification and a great deal of expertise, but it can offer a flexible work schedule and stable income.
Confirm the licensing requirements in your state before getting started with this type of small business. With a low barrier to entry, house cleaning can be a great way to start doing what you love — soon.
Consider advertising to homes in your neighborhood and get more bang for your buck by earning a few small businesses as clients as well. Need some inspiration? This small business cleaning service grew virtually overnight on Instagram after their content went viral during the pandemic. We all love to eat, but few of us have the time or energy to cook healthy, delicious meals.
Advertise your services to local families and businesses alike. To save on start-up costs, consider scheduling certain groups of clients together — say, vegetarians — so you can cook larger quantities of the same dish. His clientele niche consists of athletes, corporate businesses, and local gyms. As a property manager, you can help a property owner ensure their home is being well taken care of, handle small fixes as they arise, and serve as a liaison to renters.
Moving is always a pain, and many people hire the entire packing process out. Want to have a steady stream of clients? Partner with a local moving service who will refer new clients to you. Soothe aching muscles and promote peace for your clients as a massage therapist. Look into training and certification courses in your city and state and invest in a portable bed to take on client visits. Creating novelties by hand is a fun and unique way to start a small business.
Tap into your audience with creative marketing on social media and search engine optimize your website for the unique products you make. This is another business venture that will require you to research the correct licensure from your state, but it will be well worth it to see your dreams come true.
Consider what guests will be traveling to your area and create special packages and themed stays that coincide with their interests in your locale.
Similar to landscape design — there are many people who have the ability to buy the furniture and home decor they need to fill their rooms, but few who know where to start. It might take some time to build a portfolio but documenting your projects and sharing them online can build a fanbase beyond your wildest dreams.
Need inspiration? If you dream of devoting your life to a cause you believe in, it might be time to start a nonprofit. Love the local history of your city or state? Consider becoming a tour guide. Advertise your services through local schools, community colleges, community centers, and even social media to get the word out and build a customer base.
The next step you might want to consider is to design your own goods and arrange for a manufacturing company to produce them. At the end of the day, this will allow the largest profit margins and provide the most sustainable and solid long term business model.
You can try BusinessTown for free. Dog walking might be a very simple business but you can be quite successful with it. I have a young niece who started her dog walking business and almost immediately grew it into a lucrative full time business. She also makes extra money doing occasional dog training, dog sitting and overnight dog boarding.
You can get started walking one dog and grow it from there. What makes dog walking a really great business? Most of all you have regular repeat customers. So if they like you, they will keep using your service forever and they will recommend you to their friends at the dog park.
As you build up your list of loyal customers you are not only increasing your income, you are also building the value of your business. That means if you get tired of walking dogs, you can sell your business for a good bit of money.
A number of dog walking businesses have been sold for over a million dollars. Keeping your clients happy and finding new customers — which means digital marketing! Dog walking is the perfect business for digital marketing — you have a very specific and highly passionate target market.
You can target social media and online ad network ads directly to dog owners in your zip code. And you can develop content they would love to read about like the best dog parks nearby, great places to take your dog for a walk, local Vets, pictures of local dogs and more! To learn more about how to start a dog walking business see my course Start-a-Business You can start watching this course and all the other courses for free on BusinessTown.
A moving company is another great business that you can start small and grow at your own pace. You can even keep your day job and focus on the highest demand moving days — weekends and holidays. Most moves are local, so the market for local moving services is huge. You can start this business with no money by renting vans or trucks as you need them. This will allow you to get the exact size vehicle you need for each move. Truck rental services like U-Haul will also sell you insurance and provide supplies.
You can hire helpers by the day or the hour. I recommend you charge by the hour rather than by the job. This way, if the customer underestimates the number of items to be moved, you still earn the same hourly rate. Offering packing services is a nice add-on for extra income. Larry began his career as an engineer but wanted to try something different. Today his moving company has 20 locations in major cities coast-to-coast, over trucks and almost one thousand employees.
How has Larry been so incredibly successful in this highly competitive field? For starters, he chose a great name, Gentle Giant. A great name can serve as a built-in advertisement for your business for years to come. Larry also set out right from the beginning to clearly set his company apart from his competitors, including building a strong employee team, and building a premium level of service.
This allowed him to build a loyal base of repeat customers, enhanced word of mouth promotion and allowed him to charge premium prices. To learn about starting a business see my course Start-a-Business And today there are seemingly unlimited venues for selling your jewelry. You can sell your jewelry on websites like Etsy and eBay. Some people get started selling at craft fairs and flea markets. Whatever sales approach you take I would recommend you also support it with your own website and marketing efforts, including building an email list and a social media presence.
This will help you develop repeat customers, add new customers by word of mouth and build credibility. Holly Christensen is an example of someone who changed careers to pursue her passion by starting her own jewelry business. Holly began by making jewelry on her kitchen table and personally selling it at local craft shows. Her unique touch was to include sand from popular beaches within her jewelry. People told her it was a crazy idea.
However, Holly stuck to her vision of beach sand jewelry and has been very successful. She has developed a solid base of repeat customers, has over 20 employees, and sells through retailers throughout the world. Want to learn more about Holly and her jewelry business?
Watch her segment in the course, How to Succeed as a Woman Entrepreneur. Ariana Huffington started a blog with her friend Ken Lerer in after a failed political race for governor of California. They pulled together news stories and gave political commentary naming their blog The Huffington Post. A blog is a great example of a business that you can start small and grow at your own pace. Popular blog topics include fashion, food, travel, music, sports, local interest, hobbies and much more.
Choose a narrow or specialized topic and stick to it. Let your personality shine and include specific, actionable advice or pointed commentary.
My experience with blogs is that great topics and writing is seldom enough to build a sizable audience. You should learn basic SEO search engine optimization techniques so that your posts rank well in Google search results.
To monetize your blog there are a number of options. The easiest is to sign with an advertising network such as Google, Facebook or Outbrain and let them do all the work for you.
You will have to have a lot of traffic however to make much money by selling advertising. Another popular option is affiliate marketing. You provide links on your blog to other businesses that sell products or services and they pay you a commission on each sale.
You can approach affiliate marketers directly, such as Amazon. You can also sell your own products or services from your blog. For example, you could sell your own webinars, courses, ebooks, handcrafted goods, or consulting or coaching services. An avid photographer, Gene filled his blog with fresh photos, developed a strong following and sold ads to local businesses. You can succeed with a blog business. One of my wealthiest friends is a car nut who loves nothing better than to spend a Saturday morning washing, waxing and then taking a spin in one of his exotic cars.
His older son developed an interest in cars too and while in high school got a job cleaning up and detailing cars at an auto dealership.
Still in high school he later started his own car detailing business, making great money. People who love cars love to keep them in great shape. And if you love cars too, and are incredibly meticulous, then this could be a great business for you.
But let me be really clear. These customers will pay you good money. But they will not compromise on quality. And you have to try to please them. If they like you, word will spread quickly and their friends will want your services.
If you are just starting out I would not try to hide that from your customers so that they will have realistic expectations. You will be surprised how understanding your customers will be if they understand you are just starting your detailing business. This business is a natural for digital marketing because you can really target your most likely customers — owners of high end cars. Executive transportation companies may be another possibility. You can also do some guerilla marketing — walk around parking lots and stick a brochure or your business card on the windshield of sports and luxury vehicles.
To learn how to start your car detailing — or any other business — see my course Start-a-Business A coffee shop or tea salon can be a profitable and fun business.
But with all the competition in this space today, you need to carefully think out this business before you start it. Just being nice to customers and working hard is not enough to guarantee success. Will you offer special craft coffee? Will you offer exceptional pastries? Will your interior design be particularly inviting?
Next you need a great location. A great location is not necessarily a cute little shop that happens to be vacant or a large space you can get a great price on. In this business you want traffic.
Lots of traffic. And ideally foot traffic. Before you lease a place, I suggest you personally go over there and count how many people walk by your potential location during the key time periods. One of the most successful independent coffee shops near me is Diesel Cafe in Somerville, Massachusetts. They even have a pool table, a black and white photo booth and all kinds of funky items. The coffee is great. Plus they have some solid food choices including avocado toast, bagels, sandwiches, salads, and smoothies.
From my observation, the nearby Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks have only a fraction of the business that Diesel Cafe enjoys. If you want to learn more, take a look at my courses including Start-a-Business and How to Create a Business Plan, which you can try for free on BusinessTown.
These eBay sellers take pictures of the items, set up the listings on eBay, and arrange for packing and shipping. They might charge sellers either a commission or a flat fee. To start an eBay selling service, first try listing some of your own unwanted belongings. And then next expand to family, friends and friends of friends.
To expand further start promoting your service with digital marketing. A completely different eBay business is trading — in other words buying and selling items. The key to this is to develop some sort of specialty, learn the pricing and then buy cheap and sell at a fair market price. A trading business might take some time to really master. That being said, you can make a lot of money trading items on eBay. To learn how to start your business check out Start-a-Business You can try this course for free on BusinessTown.
Can you really make good money selling custom T-shirts? Yes you can! A friend of mine, Jeff Jacober, started a custom T-shirt business right after college. Then he sold the business when he turned 40 and made enough money to buy a sailing yacht and cruise around the Caribbean for a year, buy an airplane, and invest in several new business ventures.
Custom T-Shirts are perfect for selling online, but you could sell them locally too. Even if you are going to focus on your local market you might want to initially skip the cost of a storefront and try running this business from your home. You could approach local businesses, social groups and sports teams. You can learn how to print T-shirts in minutes. If you are really feeling lazy you can even contract out the actual T-shirt printing and focus exclusively on making sales and customer service.
But I recommend you take a little time to learn how to print them yourself. Of course instead of doing custom T-shirts you could try to sell your own designs.
This is a riskier approach but the upside potential is huge! Initially they struggled selling their T-shirts on college campuses. They lived out of their van to save money.
To find out more about beginning a business, start streaming the courses on BusinessTown including Start-a-Business And if your skills are more advanced then you can tutor at higher levels.
Or you can just hire other people to do all the tutoring for you! You can tutor almost anywhere. You can tutor online via video, such as on Zoom. Or you can meet in a coffee shop or a library. The demand is huge. We hired tutors to help my kids improve their college entrance test scores. The tutor was an MIT college student who had never tutored, but nonetheless was fabulous. Tutoring is still another example of a very easy-to-start business.
Yet you can grow it as large as you want by hiring additional tutors and ramping up your marketing. For example, I sold a career magazine business that I started to Kaplan Inc. Kaplan has grown into a world leader in tutoring with over 12, employees and over 1 million students. Like any business you will be more successful if you first learn about business and then plan it carefully.
If you want to find out more, consider my courses including Start-a-Business , which you can try for free on BusinessTown. Want to express your creativity and make some money at the same time? How about a craft business? Years ago my Great Aunt Betty made and sold a variety of creative craft items.
She sold them both through a small shop on her property and also directly to a few stores. Today the opportunities to sell your crafts are seemingly endless with the expansion of the Internet. With websites like Etsy. But if you really want to turn this into a business, you should develop your own online presence.
I would suggest starting with a website. Then adding an email list. Also consider social media. You can also sell your craft items offline. You can start by selling at local art and craft fairs. And you can also approach retail stores yourself. Or once you have a good product line put together, you may want to consider contracting a sales rep firm that focuses on the gift trade. I successfully used sales reps firms to sell my books into the gift trade.
You can find these firms at the larger gift shows or you can approach them online. To learn more about how to start a craft business — or any other business — check out my course, Start-a-Business You can try it for free on BusinessTown. This is another perfect business that you can start small, even part-time, and then grow at your own pace. You can start with just a basic lawn cutting service. You can grow this business quickly by both adding customers and adding services.
Typical add-on services include leaf collection, yard clean up, edging, weeding, snowplowing, and applying fertilizer. The next level of services you could offer would be flower, bush and small tree planting.
You can make big money cutting small lawns! Even just cutting a few lawns yourself you will likely be able to earn more per hour than many people earn at professional jobs. Add in a few basic services and your income can quickly add up.
They did grass cutting, yard cleanup, and snow plowing but nothing fancy — I hired other services for fertilizer application and irrigation. So how do you get going with a landscape business and how do you get customers? Of course you start with a business plan. Then give a lot of thought to marketing. I would suggest you use both online and traditional marketing.
You can try this course and all the other courses on BusinessTown for free. You can get started selling on Amazon with very little money and even a single product.
And you can customize the look and feel of your Amazon online store front. You also have the option of having Amazon fulfill your orders and ship your products.
The fee structure changes frequently and varies by product and country. While it is relatively easy to set up an Amazon store and start selling some products, it is more difficult to build a sustainable, highly profitable business. Selling on Amazon or anywhere else online is super competitive. To develop a great plan for your store, first evaluate your market, your target customers and your competitors. Next seek out opportunities where you can develop a true competitive advantage.
Then, take the time to develop your thoughts into a cohesive strategy and a well thought out business plan. You can also pay Amazon for additional advertising and exposure on their website but you need to make sure that it is cost effective for you.
Consider doing your own digital marketing beyond Amazon such as through your own website, through social media, through email marketing or through online advertising. There are all kinds of ways to turn photography into a business.
You can do portrait photography, commercial shoots for businesses, real estate photography, or wedding photography. You can sell photos through stock photo services. You can even do photojournalism or sell your outstanding photos in the photo art world. When we decided to get pictures of our kids, we went to a local portrait photographer who used one of the rooms in her house as her studio.
She charged a significant price — but the great pictures made it worth every penny of it. Excellent lighting, good positioning and getting the kids to smile made a difference! A common myth is that anyone who has a smartphone can be an awesome photographer. But the photos I have taken certainly prove otherwise! You could start your photography business as a side gig but to be sure it turns into a real business instead of a hobby, you need to be serious about it.
So write up a business plan that includes the specifics of what kind of customers you will target, what services you will offer, what your marketing message will be, what packages and pricing you will offer, and how you will get your marketing message to your audience. If you want to find out more, take a look at my courses including, Start-a-Business and How to Create a Business Plan.
You can try them for free on BusinessTown. Let me tell you about my first business — a story that has valuable take-aways for any business you are considering starting. It was a little scary because I had no idea what I was doing.
Then, I arranged to have a motel, a gas station and a sporting goods store serve as rental locations. But my competitors had better rental locations already lined up.
And they also had shiny new bicycles. Almost no one was renting my bikes and my business was going nowhere. So, unlike my competitors, I tried offering free delivery of bicycles to customers at their motels and campsites.
My customers loved it and my business took off! This example shows why it is so important in any business to develop a unique business model. In other words you want to design your business around a true competitive advantage. To design a business with a competitive advantage, you first need to evaluate your market, your target customers and your competition and then seek out new opportunities.
Then, you want to put together a solid strategy and develop it into a complete business plan. A good related business is bicycle repair. The demand is constant providing you with a strong, steady income. You could start by only taking on the easier repair jobs.
Then for more complex repair jobs you could contract them out to other repair shops and keep a percentage of the repair price. You could also try selling bicycles. If you are operating out of your house I would recommend you focus on buying and selling used bicycles.
I found it difficult to sell new bicycles out of my home. But I discovered that I was often able to sell second hand bicycles for quite a bit more than I paid for them. To learn more see my courses including Start-a-Business and How to Create a Business Plan which includes a complete business plan for a bicycle rental business. You can try these courses for free on BusinessTown.
A consulting business can be very lucrative and rewarding. He prefers to do his consulting work only hours a month and spends the rest of his time doing volunteer work for non profits and avidly following outdoor athletic pursuits such as mountain hiking and cross country skiing. I know a lot of other consultants who have done well with specialities including sales, logistics, human resources, executive coaching, small business coaching, international business customs, facebook marketing, website strategies, email, accounting, logos, and more.
I have also hired a number of consultants for my various businesses. So what does it take to become a successful consultant? The path I have seen many people take is to start an independent consulting business after many years of working in the field. By that point in time they have not only developed a lot of expertise but they also have built up a network of industry contacts.
However, today I increasingly see many people becoming successful consultants much earlier in their career — sometimes right out of college. Why the shift? If you've got chops in SEO, content marketing, pay-per-click, web development or social media management, you could have a business opportunity that allows you the freedom to work from home.
Digital marketing is an important part of a brand, so it's critical for you to respond to developments in your clients' marketing strategies. Social media management entails watching for comments and messages around the clock, not just scheduling posts in a "set-it-and-forget-it" mindset.
If you enjoy strategizing and implementing plans meticulously, digital marketing could be the right business for you. You may also consider becoming an affiliate marketer, which is another form of digital marketing.
With indoor dining limited in many locations right now, aspiring restaurateurs might find more success with a food truck. Food trucks come in all shapes and sizes, serving up a wide range of snacks and cuisines.
Take your favorite style of food on the road and sell your culinary passions directly to hungry customers. Sure, you'll be working, but you'll be in a space you're passionate about, with a chance to connect to people who have similar interests.
Food trucks might sound like a wild idea, but the industry is growing. The overhead and upkeep for a truck costs significantly less than owning a restaurant, and you have the added benefit of mobility. If you're interested in serving up smiles, get more information in our guide to getting your food truck business rolling full speed ahead. If you grew up with a lawn, chances are your parents made you take care of it.
For many of us, lawn care is bothersome, but for some, it offers a sense of peace and serenity. Working outdoors with your hands to tame and beautify the natural landscape can be a rewarding experience, and since so many people find the work tedious, it can also be profitable.
Lawn care services require little more than some basic equipment, a trailer and perhaps some staff, depending on how many clients you have and how big the jobs are. You can quickly grow a small lawn care service into a full landscaping company by offering premium services and establishing a reputation as a brand that does a thorough job with a smile. If you like working outdoors and creating elegant landscapes, this could be the business for you. If starting your own business seems daunting or too much of a risk, you can always use your car to become a rideshare driver.
The overhead and responsibility of running the company falls on the rideshare service, giving you the freedom to work as much or as little as you need. Rideshare applications such as Uber and Lyft have enabled people to start side hustles that pay well and require little more than a willingness to drive people to their destinations and make occasional friendly conversation.
Rideshare drivers have the independence of a small business owner without the heavy workload required to manage the logistics behind the scenes. If any of the other business ideas seem like they require too much effort or upfront capital, ridesharing might be a great way for you to dip your toes into the world of entrepreneurship. For many people, navigating the housing market is overwhelming.
As a real estate agent, you can help people find the home of their dreams at a price that fits their budget. In many states, you simply need to complete a few months of classes and pass an exam to qualify as a real estate agent. Even with a certification, you'll get nowhere without basic people skills, so if you're not a people person, this might not be the route for you.
Corporations, small businesses and sole proprietors all need eye-catching promotional materials, but not nearly everybody has an eye for what looks good. If you've got an artistic streak and know how to organize content into a visually pleasing format, you can start a graphic design business to provide flyers, digital ads, posters and other engaging visual materials.
Graphic design also has the benefit of requiring few physical tools beyond a laptop and a desk. Just like with graphic design, you might enjoy launching a T-shirt printing business if you've got a sharp artistic sense — or maybe you just enjoy taking someone else's visuals and screen-printing them onto a blank shirt.
Either way, if you have space for a T-shirt printing setup, you can easily get the necessary tools and start your small business. Not all companies that sell goods store them onsite. In dropshipping, people who run e-commerce sites go to a third party to fulfill all orders.
The third party is likely a wholesale retailer or other entity that runs a warehouse and shipping operation. The minimal inventory and tools needed for dropshipping make it an especially great startup idea if you're worried about overhead and physical space. About two-thirds of U. When these families go away for extended periods and need someone to watch their pets for them, your pet-sitting small business can give them peace of mind. As a pet sitter, you'll watch over your clients' dogs, cats or other pets at their house, making sure to feed them, give them water, play with them, spend time with them, and with dogs walk them as needed.
You'll also need to regularly update your clients on how their pets are doing. If you have other sources of income that require merely an internet connection and a laptop, pet sitting may be an especially apt small business idea. Almost all pet owners will be glad to let you do work on your laptop while you spend time at their home with their pets, meaning that you can run two income streams simultaneously. Small businesses that involve website design, a subset of digital marketing, tend to be among those that make the most sales and bring in the most profit.
People now learn about businesses on the internet more often than via other avenues, so finding clients and a steady income stream isn't usually difficult. Cleaning services and real estate businesses also have high success rates, which makes sense — all people need homes, and they prefer them clean.
Key Takeaway: Some of the most profitable business ideas are website design, cleaning services and real estate. If you're concerned about maximizing your profit while minimizing your workload, a good small business to start might be any of the ones that most frequently prove successful. However, if you're more interested in incorporating your passions into your work while earning enough money to live, a good small business to start is any that fulfills you, requires you to use your skills and offers you a good work-life balance.
There are so many great business ideas that this question has no objectively correct answer — you know better than anyone what small business ideas will bring you happiness, success and stability. You don't need money to become a small business owner.
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