Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2022. It reflects that time: brands being unable to reach private Facebook groups except through the admin, podcasts doing a lot of damage to radio, Amazon Associates’ 24-hour commission window, and Mechanical Turk transcription work.
You can treat these small business ideas as a way to earn some extra money until the time comes when you can devote yourself to the activity full-time. I imagine you’ll have some doubts when it comes to starting a business, especially if you have no experience or not much money.
That’s why I’m also leaving you some articles that may help you get a little clearer when it comes to shaping all those ideas you have.
- 41 ways to make extra money from home
- How to start a business with no money
- 18 businesses you can start with no money
The first step to becoming a successful entrepreneur is having a good business idea. In this article we’ll give you more than 20. But the most important thing for business success is, without any doubt, the execution of the idea. Two identical concepts carried out by different entrepreneurs can have very different results. Let’s get going with our list of small business ideas.
20 small business ideas you can start today
1. The handyman business
The good thing about this small venture is that you need neither money nor an official qualification. If you’re one of those people who are always fixing things at home, and even for the neighbours, like a kind of on-call professional waiting to sort out problems, this business is for you.
Consider specialising in something you’ve always been good at fixing, and keep picking up skills. The handyman is a figure that won’t disappear however much technology advances. There’s always something to fix.
One way to make yourself known and land your first customers is either online or with a small leaflet drop around the area where you live. Who knows where this kind of venture might lead over time. You can complement it by selling a few things.
2. Online dating consultant
This professional is in fairly high demand in the United States. And in fact, they’re very well paid. They aren’t the typical seduction gurus, although they do have the necessary knowledge, at least the basics, to advise on the psychology of the opposite sex and what works.
Online dating consultants help you create a proper profile that increases your chances of getting a date with the right person: the kind of text you should include and the kind of profile photos to use depending on what you’re looking for.
They usually charge by the hour, so if you have communication skills you can give in-person advice to people who are new to this kind of dating. The good thing about starting this small business is that you don’t need an accredited qualification either.
You can make yourself known through all the online channels within your reach: blogs, Instagram and Facebook ads, ads in the apps themselves such as Tinder, and your own YouTube channel. Needless to say, you can use all the customer acquisition techniques you’ll find online. Good luck if you decide to venture into the online dating business.
3. Sewing specialist: a small clothing alterations business
We’ll always need someone to adjust the sleeves of a suit, take up a pair of trousers and so on. If you have sewing experience, this can be a good business, especially if you’re available at weekends.
As you carve out a niche in this sector, and if your experience allows it, you can expand into other businesses, such as made-to-measure clothing. It’s something that is gradually disappearing, but there are still customers who miss having a suit made to their taste at a not-so-outrageous price.
The good thing about this business, as with the previous ones, is that you don’t need a specific licence to work, and if you do a good job, word of mouth will bring you more customers and you can build a profitable portfolio of repeat clients.
4. CV writing specialist
The job market has become so competitive that it’s almost a lottery, so everything counts when it comes to putting together a good CV.
From writing a good cover letter to crafting the perfect CV for a candidate, there are people who pay for the help of a professional who understands recruitment processes.
This business can also be extended to service portfolios. And if you feel prepared or qualified for it, you can also add career advice services.
5. Freelance writing business
If you like writing and have a knack for it, you have a business. There are many people and companies willing to pay you for it. You can write blog posts and magazine articles and take care of the descriptions for thousands of products.
We’ve talked about this small business before, using the example of a woman who manages to earn more than 900 dollars an hour writing from her sofa. She specialised in advertising copy and, as with any business where you’re specialised, you can charge much more money, to the point of making it your full-time business.
The secret is to specialise in a subject. For example, focus on health topics, and then health magazines and blogs will come looking for you. Or focus on advertising copy, or whatever it may be. Specialisation pays more.
6. Landscaper
Meet the needs of your neighbourhood with this small business that is very easy to start. Mowing lawns, pruning trees and decorating gardens, among many other tasks, are all in demand, especially at certain times of the year.
See also: The most profitable businesses to start the year: ideas for determined entrepreneurs
Once again, the landscaper is a figure that isn’t very common yet in Spain and Latin America, where people tend to call them “the lad who mows the lawn” or “the guy who cleans the pool”. If you manage to become a great professional and make a name for yourself in this industry, you can generate a lot of demand. In fact, demand itself will make your small business grow, and as it increases you may need to hire people who specialise in certain areas to cover peak periods.
To get started in this business, you may well need proper training. And you also need good taste.
7. Videographer business
Although the photography sector is somewhat saturated, many photographers are reluctant to specialise in video, when the truth is that video is now much more in demand by individuals and by small and large companies alike.
Video production does require you to invest some money, because the equipment needed to make a good video tends to be expensive, but that’s also why this service commands a higher price.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed that nowadays, on their wedding day, couples are more concerned with getting a good wedding video than with enjoying the wedding itself (and then they’re surprised that divorces come so soon).
To become a professional in this sector you will need training, because video editing has to be learned. Even so, if you already know photography, you’re a bit ahead when it comes to learning video.
8. Own your own clothing boutique
If you want to build a fashion empire, it’s easier than ever to give it a try today. You can generate a lot of excitement with your clothing style and inspiring social media accounts, and the community itself will tell you whether you’re on the right track.
The good thing is that nowadays you can start this small business in many ways.
If you already have experience in designing and making clothes, you can make them yourself. You choose the fabric and the quality of the product, as well as the cuts and style of the garments. That way you can start selling online or open your own local boutique (before making the leap to Madrid Fashion Week).
Alternatively, you can design certain aspects of the clothing and then send them to a factory to be made. In this case we’re talking about turning to factories in China or India.
This way you lose some control over manufacturing, but it’s a route widely used by big textile companies.
And a somewhat cheaper and cheesier business would be simply to have clothes made for you while you create a logo or a few slogans. Once the clothes arrive, you take the garments to be printed, and if customers find them funny or interesting, you can make big profits from it.
Small business ideas you can run from home
9. Transcription services company
Transcription means taking audio files and turning them into written content. It’s work that some media outlets tend to outsource, above all to transcribe interviews recorded on video.
You can find transcription jobs on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The most profitable option, of course, is to get into the English-language market. In other words, if you can translate texts from another language into English and from English into another language, your services will be in demand.
It’s a business you can easily start from home and see where it takes you. You can promote your transcription services through your own website and even invest some money in marketing.
10. Make and sell things online
You can make lots of handcrafted things yourself. Over time we’ve given plenty of examples of people who made wool jumpers and gloves, and even all kinds of handmade products such as original coat racks or living room decorations.
The investment for this business is practically zero. Only your time and labour count, and people are willing to pay more for handmade, quality products. Promotion is very easy nowadays thanks to social media and platforms such as Etsy, eBay, Wallapop (a Spanish second-hand marketplace) and so on.
You can take this business as far as your imagination and creativity allow. And best of all, you can do it from your own home.
11. Affiliate marketer: a very easy business idea to start
You don’t need to sell your own products. You can sell someone else’s products and so avoid the risk of stock, shipping and payment collection. This is known as affiliate marketing, and don’t let anyone fool you: it isn’t as easy as they say, but once you get past the difficulty it can be a very profitable business or one of the best ways to earn recurring income.
How do you set up this business so that it works?
Getting started is relatively simple. First you need to create a website focused on e-commerce. This website should focus on a particular niche. The narrower that niche, the better your chances of ranking the site, and therefore the more sales you’ll get.
To give an example of a narrow, specific niche: creating a website and trying to rank it for “sportswear” is not the same as focusing it on “tennis shoes”. You don’t cover as much of the market, but if someone searches for tennis shoes, you’ll certainly have a better chance of being found.
Your website should feature a third party’s products. One of the most widely used platforms for affiliate marketing is Amazon, but there are many more.
Then, when customers want to buy, the link takes the visitor to the Amazon store, everything that user buys is credited to your account, and you earn a small commission on that sale and on any other purchases that customer makes on the platform in the following 24 hours.
The good thing about this business is that once the online store ranks and users are buying, in the future you can consider adding your own products too. It’s undoubtedly one of the easiest and lowest-risk business ideas, since it involves practically no costs apart from the domain and the server.
12. Your own podcast
Podcasts are doing a lot of damage to radio. Clearly, anything to do with creating content online, whether written, video or audio, depends on many factors. In other words, you may succeed or you may go unnoticed. It also depends a lot on you, your charisma and what you put across.
The problem at first was how hard it was to monetise a podcast (to make money from a podcast), but if you’re interested in this business idea, we’ve already published the ways you can make money with a podcast. I hope it helps.
And by the way, I’m not going to repeat the most typical business ideas, such as starting your own blog or your own YouTube channel. Everyone already knows that option exists. They’re easy businesses to start, but not easy to grow to the point of making a lot of money easily. But it can be done.
13. Create a private Facebook group: yes, you can make money with it
If you have a significant presence on the internet, that’s worth money. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about Instagram, Facebook or any other platform. Where there’s volume, there’s money (taking engagement into account, of course).
Well, we can make money with a private Facebook group. How? If you’re the admin of a group with more than 3,000 or 5,000 members, you can quickly turn that group into a profitable business.
First, make sure you have the email addresses of all the group’s members. You can get them easily with extensions such as Group Funnels. What this extension does is that when people ask to join the Facebook group, they have to answer a few questions to be approved. It’s your group, your rules, so in those approval questions you can include that they must leave you their email address.
But it isn’t all about self-interest. Setting good approval questions is also a good way to make sure that a small, targeted group of people joins. And a clearly defined audience makes your group worth a lot of money to the advertisers who will come later.
As of today, brands can’t access private groups without going through the group admin, which makes your group a small business you can earn a certain amount of money with.
Still, make sure you’re in order with the legal side. If you’re posting something that is advertising, you must tell the group it’s advertising. If it’s an affiliate link, you must say it’s a sponsored link.
14. Online narration and voice-over service
Nowadays, as people say they’re very busy, they often turn to audiobooks so they can listen while driving or exercising. The book has to be narrated, and the author isn’t always the one who narrates it, so a third party is brought in to do it.
But it isn’t just audiobooks. Companies are constantly looking for voice-overs for all kinds of things, from marketing campaigns to online tutorials.
It’s a growing sector, so much so that some entrepreneurs who have worked in narration all their lives have even created their own courses to teach you how to modulate and improve your voice.
Of course, some have already earned a good name in this industry and charge higher fees, having worked as dubbing actors.
All you need to get started in this business is a decent microphone, a reasonably treated and soundproofed room, and plenty of visibility so people can find you. If you manage all this, you may have found a very profitable business niche.
15. Manage advertising campaigns on Facebook and other social networks
Many small and medium-sized businesses want to advertise on Facebook but don’t quite see results, or don’t fully understand how targeting the right profiles works (demographics, interests and so on).
If you understand how this works, are honest, keen to work and have some sales skills, it’s undoubtedly an excellent business idea with which you can build an excellent client portfolio.
And this business doesn’t have to stop there. You can add options such as building landing pages and all kinds of design work. This is one of the business ideas moving billions today. It’s a matter of grabbing part of the money gravitating around this sector.
16. Sell your photos and videos
There’s a lot of debate about how much money you can make from stock photos and videos. Some have tried it and say it doesn’t even earn them pocket money. Others say they make more than 2,000 a month. It’s true that, at first glance, the quality and effort of those who earn the most are noticeably visible.
Getting started in this business is simple. But right now the business is in video, for several reasons we’ll explain below.
You produce a video at the highest possible quality. Demand is now for 4K video. You upload your 15- or 30-second clips to platforms such as iStock, Shutterstock or Pond5, and your content becomes available to potential buyers.
Once you’ve built up a large amount of material on these platforms, the theory is that every month you’ll receive some passive income through licences and purchase fees.
I said video has an added advantage over photos for a simple reason: thanks to the copyright detection systems that platforms such as YouTube have, if someone uploads a fragment of your video to YouTube, iStock can monetise that video as soon as it detects it. Once a platform like iStock takes over the monetisation of the video, I personally don’t know whether the original videographer receives any income (or how much).
This has also brought out some scoundrels who upload videos to platforms claiming they’re copyright-free and that you can use them without any problem, but then you find they file a claim against your video and take over the monetisation. And this happens very often. For them, it’s undoubtedly a way of making their work pay, even if they do it illegitimately.
Other business ideas that can be very profitable
17. The antiques business
The antiques trade is still a very profitable niche. Buying old items cheaply at markets, auctions and shops and then selling them at higher prices through different channels is quite viable, especially with the internet.
You can also start this business in a physical space open to the public. Clearly, getting started requires some specialist knowledge. The range is wide: jewellery, furniture, antique lamps, rugs and so on.
It’s a business where you can start small and scale up to a certain size, since demand for certain items reaches an international level.
We talked about these and many other business ideas in our previous article: Low-investment, high-profit businesses.
18. Equipment rental business: an idea that requires a significant outlay
When a company is starting out, it’s increasingly common for it to rent the equipment it needs to operate instead of buying it. That way it avoids large expenses.
This business idea can cover all kinds of equipment and spaces. Some entrepreneurs rent out the equipment and the studio for photo shoots. Others rent offices by the hour. You can aim this business at individuals or companies. Obviously, the greater the ambition, the higher the initial cost of buying the necessary equipment.
You should bear in mind that the outlay for this business idea isn’t usually low, so you need to be very clear about what you want to do, carry out a good market study and think seriously about whether you’ll have room to grow.
You also need a physical location where customers can come to collect the equipment. In this business idea’s favour, equipment rental prices tend to be high, so if the business works, it doesn’t take long to recoup the cost of buying the equipment.
19. Car wash business
We’ve already covered how to set up a car wash business. In fact, depending on what you want to do, it can be a very low-investment business that you can set up in different places. On the one hand, many businesses of this kind are run from a single garage, where someone cleans your car inside and out and leaves it looking like new.
On the other hand, you can also talk to certain businesses to get permission to offer this service there and reach an agreement with them. Sometimes this business is done to earn some extra money at weekends. At other times it becomes a highly profitable business with several employees on the payroll, where you have to book weeks in advance.
As we always say, it isn’t about the business ideas. It’s about how we execute those ideas.
20. Removals company: among the easiest business ideas to start
Although there are a few giants specialising in this sector, there’s also plenty of room for small entrepreneurs and for more modest moves. You’ll need a suitable vehicle, often a van or small lorry, which you can rent.
Little by little, everything will fall into place as the moving work grows. You could say the big companies started out as small businesses in their day. Advertising is simple and builds up gradually: from people in your neighbourhood knowing you offer the service to the local advertising you can do for small moves.
The cost of starting this business is low because, if you need to rent the vehicle, you’ll only do so once you’ve closed a job.
See also: 25 profitable business ideas to start in 2022
Featured image: Tool Dude8mm, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
