How to Start a Small Business at Home

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Almost everyone might have dreamt someday about starting a business on their own. How difficult it is to start a small business at home? Not as difficult as it seems, I would say. In this article, we discuss about starting a small business at home. There are a thousand ways to a start a successful small business at home.

We will start the study with how to kickstart a small business at home. After that I will introduce you to some interesting home-based business ideas. We will discuss about setting up a small business at home, profitable online business ideas, cost to start a small business at home and many more.

Let me first start with a 5 Step Actionable list for setting up a business at your home. Whatever be your business idea, make sure you analyze your idea in lines with the following 5 points.

Analyze your Skills and Interests

You should be able to enjoy doing your business, so select something of your interest area.
List down few things in which you are good at. Don’t worry about this. Everyone is good at something or the other. It’s just you to put some thoughts in figuring those out.
Once the list is ready, single out the best option among them.
You will get the best results if you select something which matches your passion, skills and interests.

Start Conversing

The famous saying goes, “You are nothing but the Conversations you make.” So, start conversing about the small business at home which you have in your mind.
Discuss about your business with as many people as you can. Each person will give you a different perspective about your business.
Keep doing this activity during the planning phase and note down all the inputs.

Must See: 8 Home Business Ideas for Food Lovers with Small Investment

Check for Feasibility

Not every business can be done within the limitations of home. So always verify the feasibility of the business in your mind.
A proper estimation of the efforts, budget and other resources required to start your small business at home has to be done.
Make sure you do a thorough research about what all you need for starting a small business at home.

Business Plan and Target Customers

Every business starts with framing of a proper business plan. After gathering basic information regarding your business, next step is to document everything.
Business plan is basically a document that describes your business -the products/services that are to be sold, how it’s funded, who are your customers, operating model and all that is required for the functioning and success of your propped business.
No business will be successful unless you have customers to buy your product/ Service. So proper study about your target customers is an unavoidable step.

Pricing and Breakeven Analysis

So, you know your product, you know how you are going to sell it and whom you are going to sell it. But how much would be your customers willing to pay for it?
Also, how much should you fix your selling price so as to recover your costs and start earning profits.
Breakeven point is when your total expenses incurred becomes equal to the earning made so far. Business starts making profit from this point.

Remember: Always remember to tick the following checklist before starting your small business at home:

Your skill set and interest area matches with your business.
Business Plan is analyzed and finalized.
Target Customers are identified.
Breakeven Analysis is completed.

So far, we have seen, what are the initial steps to be taken for launching a small business at home. Now let us see some easy to start home business ideas with low startup costs:

Also See: 8 Money-Spinning Best Home Business Ideas for Pet Lovers

Cheapest Businesses to Start from Home

Blogging

This is for people who have good writing skills. Also, this is one of the best business to start with a little money.
There are a lot of online bloggers who make a lot of money writing high quality articles on a wide number of topics.
Initial investment and other operational costs are much less in this business, as most of the work will be done by you.
Initial investment is limited to domain cost and hosting charges. One important advice here is never opt for free domains as free domains are not regarded as reliable by customers.
So how do you make money through blogging? There are number ways to make money through blogging. Google has the AdSense program which Google pays you for placing ads relevant to your content in your blog.
Apart from AdSense, there are techniques like Affiliate Marketing, sale of eBooks, products or related services and many more.

Online Surveys

How exciting would it be if you are getting paid for sharing your opinion? There are a large number of survey websites which pay you for taking surveys.
Survey Junkie, MySurvey, Swagbucks etc. are some of the common survey websites which pays you money for filling out surveys.
Select few websites and start doing surveys on a regular basis.
Amazon Mechanical Turk is one genuine, scam free website where you could do surveys in exchange for money. Apart from surveys Amazon Mechanical Turk also have similar micro jobs which can get you real money.

Become a Freelance Graphic Designer

If you are a creative person, you could use your creativity to generate money. With easy internet access around the World, connecting to people looking for designs and logos for their businesses, is very easy.
You don’t need to have a physical office, instead a website would do fine. Also create a professional account in LinkedIn where you can connect with potential clients around the world.
You can also look for freelance works from sites like Fiverr.
Build a portfolio for yourself, showcase your creativity and make money out of it.

Here I am discussing both offline as well as online business ideas. But I personally prefer the one which can be done online, that is over internet. It requires very less initial investment as there is no need to have physical infrastructures. Even, if you opt for any offline business idea, its advantageous to have an online presence for your business.

Yoga Instructor

People are becoming more health conscious these days. Yoga has become so popular as it can keep you physically healthy as well as mentally relaxed. For the same reason, there is an increased demand for Yoga instructors.
If you are already someone who does Yoga, you can attend a certification program. People always prefer to learn from experts.
After you are all set, find a space where you can conduct classes. Add some unique flavor to your Yoga lessons so that people would be curious. Market yourself in the neighborhood and soon you will have a good number of students.
This is one of the cheapest business to start from home as the product here is your knowledge.

Check Out: The Benefits of Meditation: How to Reduce Stress and Anxiety

Interior Designer

Demand for interiors designers really soared during last few years. People want their interior spaces to be more comfortable and beautiful.
Apart from household spaces, places like hospitals, shops, malls etc. too are looking out for creative interior designers.
You can start your business as an interior designer, initially by undertaking small projects for your friends or family. Create a portfolio of your work, register yourself as a company, open up a website. Soon you can get a good number of clients and a lot of money.

Aquarium Designing

Everyone would have seen beautifully designed Aquariums.
Apart from the kind of fishes in it there are a lot of other things that makes an aquarium look amazing.
Different kinds of plants, structures, rocks, gravel, ornaments, lightings etc. can be used for designing aquarium.
Be creative and come up with visually appealing aquarium designs. You can build an aquarium from scratch and sell it with good margins.
Today, when aquariums have become an important part of interior designs for homes and offices, this could really work out as a small business at home opportunity.

Social Media Marketing

Social media has become the buzzword in today’s marketing industry.
Every business nowadays is putting efforts to create a significant presence in Social media sites. An official Facebook page or an official twitter handle are exciting ways to connect with customers.
Most businesses don’t prefer to do this in-house. They outsource social media marketing tasks to Social media experts. So, it would be a good business opportunity to handle social media marketing part for companies.
With Social Media marketing certificates from Google, you would have a real shot at getting works from promising clients.

One important thing to be kept in mind while starting a small business at home, is ensuring you are functioning as per the legal framework. It’s always better to register your company name. Make sure you have the required permits and licenses (if stated by law). Also ensure you pay your taxes correctly to the government for the profits you make.

Become a Career Consultant

I would say sharing your knowledge with others is an excellent way to earn money. You might be someone who has good experience in corporate and knows how recruitments happen, what are the career trajectories for various roles etc.
There would be many, entry level candidates who would be looking for guidance based on your vast experience. Launching a career counselling website would be a good idea so that you can connect with them and resolve their queries.
You can make money through the traffic in your site as well as you can charge some membership fees from candidates registering in your website.
Apart from that in some span of time, you could build a subscriber base where you can sell various products like eBooks, courses etc. Service like job search options, resume writing services etc. too can be added in the later stage.

Become a Social Media Influencer

Are you an active social media user? How big is your followers list in any of the social media websites?
Becoming a Social Media Influencer is not that easy. Companies would be ready to pay you for talking about their products in your posts.
You can find celebrities promoting various brands through their Instagram accounts, twitter handles, Facebook pages and so on. They get paid loads of money as they have a large subscriber base.
As I already said, becoming a social media influencer is not that easy. But you can do this by creating unique and quality content for your social media pages and slowly build your subscription base.

Must Read: 7 Home Based Small Business Ideas for Book Lovers

Online Teacher

Everyone has knowledge in some or the other fields. Getting money in exchange of sharing the knowledge you have is a pretty good way of making money.
This used to be a difficult task before as you must find students, find a place to deliver lessons, invest lot of time and efforts and so on.
But with the mass adoption of internet in households, becoming an online teacher has become a rewarding business opportunity.
There are a number of ways to earn good money by delivering lessons online. The easiest way would be starting a YouTube Channel and upload recorded videos sessions of your lessons in it. Also, there are websites like Udemy which allows tutors to host videos lessons in their website in exchange of money.

Final Thoughts – How to Start a Small Business at Home

So that is my list of the best small business ideas which you can do within the comforts of your home.

Until now, we have discussed most common ways of starting a small-scale home-based business. But its not the end of the list. There are many more home business ideas with low startup costs which can get you good money.

So now I guess this article was able to boost your confidence in launching a small business at home and be successful. Rather than venturing into highly capital-intensive businesses, starting your entrepreneurship journey by running a small business at home would always be fruitful.

All the best with your ventures.