8 Home-Based Business Ideas That Pay

When starting your first business, it’s not always the smartest idea to dive in head first, especially if you don’t have the money or expertise (yet) to dominate a brand-new industry. Luckily, there are great home-based businesses not many people take advantage of early on in their careers that can provide the perfect launch pad. Why not start out small to make it big?

To learn more, we asked eight successful entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC):

Q. What’s one home-based business idea that aspiring entrepreneurs can use as a jumping-off point for something bigger?

Their best answers are below:

1. Start a Service-Based Business

Service-based businesses are a great jumping-off point for newer entrepreneurs. In college, I began a digital marketing company out of my apartment. It was a great business to start with because there was minimal overhead, and I used my network of independent contractors to expand my bandwidth and service offerings as needed. Use your business to generate revenue and build your network.
- Kevin Tighe II, WeBRAND

2. Sell Products on Etsy

If you’re crafty, make things at home and sell your handmade goods on Etsy. It’s free to set up an account and only costs $0.20 to list an item. If what you make is interesting, it can fetch a good price. It’s a great way to test the market for an item you make and want to turn into a real business. Clothes, jewelry, gifts and decorative items do particularly well.
- Matt Ehrlichman, Porch

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3. Build a Following

Start blogging, and build a following with your blog and social media networks. Having a blog not only makes you more influential as an entrepreneur, but it also makes it easier for you to establish yourself as a thought leader in the industry. Where is your passion: education, technology, startups, payments? Learn about that industry and write about it. Your idea might just come naturally!
- Sarah Ware, Markerly

4. Clean Homes With Green Techniques

If aspiring entrepreneurs want to target a more specific niche, they should try green home cleaning. This is a business that can literally be launched out of the trunk of a car without a huge amount of startup capital.
- Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

5. Produce an E-book

Tim Ferris’ “The 4-Hour Workweek” was the first to showcase information products to the mass market as a viable way to generate cash. Today, there are innumerable success stories (e.g., Nathan Barry and Sacha Greif, Pat Flynn’s blog and Chris Guillebeau’s “The $100 Startup”). It can be a very fruitful path, but for some reason remains unknown to many.
- Michael Simpson, DJZ.

6. Start an eBay Store

One home-based business idea that I think is great for aspiring entrepreneurs to use as a jumping-off point is starting an eBay store. The site is extremely intuitive, and the cost of entry is cheap. Start in an area you feel knowledgeable, and start looking for deals. For instance, if you know about boats, you should start buying and selling small accessories that you would buy for yourself.
- Jay Wu, A Forever Recovery

7. Help Friends Sell Their Products

I’ve seen this model work particularly well on Etsy, but it also works on most e-commerce platforms. Everyone has friends with cool projects that they aren’t prepared to monetize themselves. You can quickly learn how to set up an online store and manage it for your friends, acting as their representative for a percentage of the store’s income. You can run several stores easily.
- Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

8. Find Niche Online Communities

It’s easy to say Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can help you find like-minded individuals and connect with your friends and acquaintances. But don’t you wish there was one place you could congregate with those same like-minded people who could get to know each other and have constructive conversations and build, share or do great stuff? That’s a killer idea worth pursuing.
- Danny Wong, Blank Label

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Google Sparks Censorship Fears

Google is at the centre of controversy on social media after it removed a seven-year-old article criticising a former Merrill Lynch chief executive. It was removed from the search engine on Thursday, and now the Internet giant is facing heavy criticism from all quarters due to its apparent censorship.

Source: velocityagency.com

Google responded to the EU ruling on the “right to be forgotten” by removing various articles from its Europeansearch rankings, and this action led to accusations of censorship and over-reach. The blog post that hascaused so much controversy was posted by Robert Peston and titled “Merrill’s mess,” it described how Stan O’Neal left the US investment bank after it suffered massive losses on high risk investments.

Mr Peston acknowledged that Google had banished his article from the Internet, and he stated that the company had in effect removed his article from the public eye, “given that Google is the route to information and stories for most people.”

Before the Internet giant had removed the article, he had received a “notice of removal,” telling him that his article would no longer appear in the results of Google searches. All this comes after a court hearing in May, when the European Court of Justice, ruled that individuals had the right to request the removal of search results if they deemed it “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” This rule will now be upheld even if the information was originally published in a legal manner, and it now poses the question, when does something that was relevant once become irrelevant?

Google opposed the decision that the court ruled, and responded by introducing an online form giving visitors to its European sites a formal route to make removal requests. As a result of this tactic by Google, within the first four days they received more than 41,000 requests.

Ben Bradshaw who is a former Labour culture secretary said that Google seemed to be over-interpreting the courts decision: “Mr Peston is right to say the information he published is still relevant […] I can’t see why Google would do this. It is either a mistake or could be an attempt by them to whip up a storm of indignation against the regulatory authorities in an attempt to influence the bigger battles to come.”

Source: digitaltrends.com

In the end, Mr Peston conceded that he could be “the victim of teething problems,” as Google begins to implement the new rules. He later added: “There is an argument that in removing the blog, Google is confirming the fears of many in the industry that the ‘right to be forgotten’ will be abused to curb freedom of expression and to suppress legitimate journalism that is in the public interest.”

This is maybe the start of a transition period on the Internet, where free speech will be slowly drowned out. It is a worrying concept for many, as the Internet has long been seen as a space where anything goes, and where alternative opinions could be voiced. If rulings such as the one above continue, the Internet will be as regulated as the life that people lead away from the screens, and eventually people will feel claustrophobic, and the consequences could be dire for society.

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8 reasons to start an online business and work from home

As always, I’ve probably missed all of the important ones! Feel free to add a comment if you run an online business or work from home and have something inspiring to share.

1. Avoid the office politics bulls#@t

Whenever I catch up with my real-world friends I find that the conversation always turns to how annoying their office is in one form or another. A bad co-worker, a micromanaging boss, not enough pay, etc.

The sad thing is, sometimes these issues are really quite serious. I know several people who have taken stress-leave after being pushed to the limits by managers or board directors. I know of people who get so depressed because they don’t see any way out in such a sub-optimal economic climate.

Well, when you run your own business you have a lot of other problems but you don’t have that one. You can choose who you work with and who works for you. You might have to put up with some annoying clients in the beginning but as you grow you can “filter” it all out.

2. Put your energy into your own asset

While you’re kissing the butt cheeks of that Michael Scott-style manager/owner you’re also working on someone else’s asset. It might even be his asset! That creative thinking and after hours sweat that you pour into your work does nothing for you in terms of ownership and equity.

Now this might be the entrepreneur in me but I find that idea really quite abhorrent. I’d rather work harder and earn less if it meant that I was building my own asset vs another guy/girl’s.

If you feel the urge to create something for yourself and see it grow or fail but do it because it was your own thing then the online space could be for you.

NOTE: This goes for starting a blog as well. Set it up on your own host instead of a free one so you are in complete control.

3. The internet is the modern Gold Rush

Now to some serious financial reasons. The internet is booming. And it has been booming for a long, long time. And if you start to think about stats like the fact that there are more smart phones on Earth than toothbrushes and that whole nations are moving to high speed fiber networks, you’d be wise to invest in the internet while it is growing so fast on so many platforms.

Please don’t take this to mean that making money on the internet is a really easy thing to do. It isn’t. I imagine it’s probably a bit easier than mining for gold (or bitcoins!) but it is still a lot of work.

The great thing about the internet is that you aren’t just doing one thing. There’s shops, forums, Apps, websites, blogs, software, tools, etc. You can jump on the rush and find something new or something to compete with.

4. The barriers to entry are really low

If you’ve ever been to an economics class you’ll hear a lot about barriers to entry. They present serious problems for many industries and even entire countries. Think about all the things you have to do if you want to start a physical business like a factory: get capital investment, purchase machines and vehicles, hire staff, get insurance… the list goes on.

Online businesses, on the other hand, have relatively low barriers to entry. You really just need a domain name and some hosting to get started. The major outlay, at least initially, is your own time. Sure, you can invest money and hire designers, coders, writers, marketers, etc. but you don’t have to.

This particular point means that you can start an online business while you’re still working and leave your job once it starts to take off.

5. You can be who you really want to be

I could be wrong but I don’t see many people who work in offices being themselves. You have to jump through so many hoops to please clients and seniors and usually that means doing or saying things that aren’t totally consistent with the person you’d like to be.

Well, when you work from home you can forget all of that. Don’t shave if you don’t want to. Don’t wear that pencil-skirt if you don’t want to. In fact, my friend Mayi Carles usually works in her pyjamas!

More importantly, working for yourself means that you (hopefully) never again have to compromise on the kind of person that you want to be. You set yourself up so that you’re surrounded by people and things that are important to you.

6. You can go after the things that matter

Okay, so now we are really getting into the deep and furry stuff! When you work for someone else you are severely limited in the other activities that you can pursue. You might get some weekend time and after work time but what if your son has a thing on when you need to be at work? What about if you want to go overseas or do some charity work (Break: I have something VERY different happening in this regard soon) while you write your blog?

Well, when you work have a truly online business you can set yourself up to make those things possible. One of my closest friends quit his job and started an online business so he could spend more time at home with his boys. He works late but he has most of the day with them. That is priceless.

Again, these things are not just “givens” for any online business. You need to make it happen but, unlike the traditional workplace, it is possible.

7. Your industry is changing (and might not be around long)

I don’t want to sound alarmist with this point but an actual consideration for workers these days is that their job might not be there when they wake up tomorrow. It happens all the time.

This is both a result of new technologies, the economic climate, and the changing nature of globalization. So, in this regard, your job might get taken over by a computer or robot, made redundant or outsourced to a cheaper workforce in China, India or the Philippines.

The great thing about starting a blog or an online business is that it can be a very part time affair. That means you get a few extra dollars in the door but also set it up in a way that you could expand if things go pear shaped in the “real world”.

8. You can play video games at lunch time

I couldn’t end this post without the obligatory work from home smugness. Yes, you an set your own hours. Yes, I usually play Battlefield 3 at lunch time. Sometimes I finish work at 4pm to go play tennis with my brother.

The “do your own thing” that comes with owning your own business can, however, be a double edged sword. If you aren’t disciplined you will wind up not being very productive. And if you aren’t very productive you might not have enough money to eat.

When it is all said and done you can have a long lunch break or go to a movie if you want. It might mean you have to make up the time at 11:02pm (like I am now) but at least you have the choice.

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Truth about online businesses

Push button millionaire programs do not exist - there is no such thing as get rich quick, unless it is a scam or you are lucky enough to win the lottery.
You CAN make money on the internet and a lot of it - but it will not be overnight - you must treat your online business as just that - A BUSINESS!!
It does not have to cost you a fortune, but you do have to invest a lot of time, or you invest more money to save you the time (i.e. outsourcing)
Certain software can help you , but again, it costs money.
The customers you gain online, MUST be treated the same as if you were face to face with them.
Form a business relationship, based on reliability, trust and honesty.
If you want to sell something, make sure you have checked it out thoroughly first - if you just sell something on its' owners recommendation and it falls short of what is expected - you look bad to your customers, and they will not rely on you the next time they need something.
Many years ago, I worked in a mobile phone shop - then the local supermarket started selling cheaper than we could - but people came to me as I knew what I was talking about, I was friendly and helpful, and they were confident that if they did have a problem, I could sort it out for them.
I treat my online customers the same way - and you should too.
Think of the standards you expect from other people, and show the same respect to your customers.