Since the creation of the world wide web, home business start-ups have sky-rocketed in number. For many, the idea of starting a home-based business can bring them a new pathway to a lucrative career without feeling that they are simply working a job that is lining the pockets of others. Many people start home businesses because it can offer them the flexibility of building a business around the needs of their growing family.By drawing inspiration from notable entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos, who started Amazon from his home garage back in 1994, we can realise our dreams of owning our own businesses and carving out our own slice of a niche market.The internet has made running a small or micro business much simpler. Modern technology has also enabled us to roll up many important business tasks into one, so we can now automate things that would have taken up a lot of our time in the past, such as bookkeeping, invoicing, banking and managing our business accounts.Social media tools and communications management apps allow us to stay connected with our existing clients, as well as take the hard work out of marketing our products or services to new customers. All these digital tools allow us to compete with the big boys on the same platforms and enable us to win a piece of the action.No matter what business idea you want to try out, or if you can see a gap in the market for a solution that you can provide, there has never been a better time to launch your own business.Let's take a closer look at some home-based business ideas that you may find appealing, especially if you have the desire to work from home, but haven't quite found your niche just yet.
Private Tutor
There are so many different educational, teaching and learning areas you can enter into. You don't necessarily have to be a trained academic that has a masters degree in mathematics either! It really doesn't matter whether you have a passion for algebra, can speak fluent French or German, can play the guitar, bake amazing cakes, love flower arranging, can turn a lump of wood into a thing of beauty or can code in five different computer languages – if you have a skill that you are passionate about, you can offer your services as a tutor for that particular subject.Whether you choose to run live online courses in real time via Skype, create a video course for subscribers to download and watch in their own time, or run weekly classes at your local community college in the evenings, there could be a niche opportunity for you to utilise an existing skill or passion for a subject that you can share with others.For some ideas take a look at Tutorful for inspiration, or check out what evening classes your local community college offer. You may spot a gap in their programme that you could fill with a skill, or you could approach a different college with a talent you have that your local college already provide.
Graphic designer
There are so many business opportunities open to a good graphic designer. The fact that you work from home usually makes no difference to the customer as they will only be interested in your results. Just about every business launched today needs a good foundation of design to work from. Graphic designers are constantly in demand to help create company logo's, come up with creative images for brand recognition and marketing design coordination.To be successful in this line, you will need to have a genuine creative spark, a good imagination and a willingness to learn and keep up with new design technology. The added benefit of being a graphic designer is that you don't necessarily need an awful lot of space to get going. Working from a spare bedroom or home office can help to keep the costs down while you get yourself established.
Florist
People love flowers and they are very popular gift choices for significant events throughout the year, such as birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduation, landing a new job, to celebrate a new baby arrival, Valentines Day, and Christmas. Not forgetting that flowers are the gift of choice to help cheer up poorly loved ones that are having a spell in hospital or recovering at home.Starting a floristry business from home is a great idea if you have some spare space like a garage or outbuilding that you can turn into your workshop. Hiring a bricks-and-mortar shop can help to get your business noticed, but they can come at a hefty price with commercial rent and business tax to pay out, let alone paying out for utilities such as water, heating and electricity.Because floristry is a very visual creative art, you should take advantage of raising your awareness on a social media platform that uses a lot of imagery, such as Instagram. With floristry, seeing is believing, so you can set yourself up a wonderful portfolio of work and keep photographic galleries of creations to suit every niche market.
Freelance Writer
If you have a way with words, then freelance writing can offer a very flexible home-based business to start up. Again, there are many different niches you could look at working within, so if you have a particular passion that you would find easy and inspiring to write about, then you could look at creating useful content to sell to others, or write your own books or guides and publish them yourself to sell.There are writing opportunities on freelance job portals that you can bid for, or you can attract buyers to book your writing services by creating a profile and outlining what you can offer. It is also worth approaching newspapers and magazines to pitch ideas and articles. Newspaper and magazine editors are always on the lookout for fresh content so they may be willing to pay you for topical articles or even hire you to write some copy for them.Look on Twitter and other social media sites for job opportunities. Quite often a company will circulate a journalism request, so if you spot one that is right up your street you could be on to a good thing for future bookings, especially if they like what you submit to them.
Virtual assistant services
If you have worked in admin and find yourself a natural at organising your workload, running diaries and communicate well with people, then working as a virtual assistant could be an ideal business idea to start!There are many small business owners, sole traders and solo-entrepreneurs that would really appreciate a hand with a lot of day-to-day admin tasks that need to be done, but can keep them from doing other important things.You can expect to given tasks such as handling customer enquiries and communications, uploading web content, managing diaries and appointments, inputting orders and more, depending on what your customer needs you to do.You will need to set out exactly what tasks you are prepared to do and what hours you will be available for work. You will also have to decide how many clients you can handle at one time.These are just a few of our favourite working from home ideas, but there are many more that you could look at, for example:
- babysitting
- cake making
- car valeting
- childminding
- cleaning services
- computer repairs
- DIY handyman services
- dog walking
- eBay seller
- entertainer
- garden maintenance
- Ironing services
- pet grooming
- translation services
- personal training
Don't let yourself become overwhelmed
While it can be a very exciting time to start your own business from home, it can also be very daunting. Be prepared to put in a lot of hard work in the early days and risk sacrificing a lot of your spare time to get things up and running.Once you start to get your business established then you may also face demand rising very quickly, which can put a lot of pressure on you. In this case, it would be wise to look at getting some help with your everyday tasks to allow you to focus on other important areas of your work.A lot of solo-entrepreneurs and small business owners can ease the pressure of managing they are everyday administration tasks by using professional virtual office services such as ours. Capital Office virtual office services can be an ideal solution for when you need to focus on your work, meet with important clients or suppliers, or while you are travelling for work and cannot afford to be tied to your office.We can take care of your everyday administration duties so that you don't have to! We can ensure that every business call is answered so you never have to miss a business opportunity because you were busy in a meeting dealing with clients.Our fully trained and experienced administrative assistants have years of business knowledge and service under their belts, so will work very efficiently for you. Our virtual office team will answer your calls with your preferred greeting and handle each call as you direct us to. We will take care of all your incoming business mail and manage it to your specifications. We offer a lot of flexible options for your mail sorting and handling needs, so you don't need to worry about missing an important business letter or mandatory notification from HMRC or Companies House.If you are quite happy handling your own administrative tasks by yourself, but you could do with a hand to manage your incoming business calls, then you should look at hiring a professional call handling service. There are many benefits to be had from using a call handling service and the main point of it is to free you up from being tied to your company phone for every hour of your working day.Take a look at our professional call handling services to see how we can support you and help your company to grow from strength to strength.
