10 Top Home Based Business Ideas
So you have decided to take the plunge a home-based business. Good for you! It will be nice to be able to wake up every day, grab a cup of coffee and walk into your office. No more rush hour, no more cubicle, and a chance to make it on your own. Sounds great doesn't it? But there is one small snag before you can open shop. You need to know just what sort of business you should be running.
There are a myriad of opportunities for your small business requiring very little initial investment. If you are stumped for business ideas, here are ten quick ideas for you to consider.
Branch Out From Your Current Job
If you are already a professional, but want to get out on your own, this is often the best way to go. Architects, air conditioning repairmen, computer professionals, and plumbers are all in demand. You simply need to start up your own little section of these burgeoning fields. All it takes is the required tools and a willingness to put your name out there. Advertise in the paper, on the Internet, and in the yellow pages. If you are a landscape designer, you probably have a drafting board already. If you are a motorcycle mechanic, it is a safe bet that you already have the tools you need. Make them go to work for you in your own business.
Handyman/Home Repair
If you enjoy fixing things around the house, you can easily parlay this into self-employment. Not everybody knows how to patch drywall, grout a ceramic floor, or install a new countertop. Chances are, most people don't even want to know. However, people do want these things done. And you are just the person to do it.
If you have worked on houses before, now is your chance to make it pay off. Advertise your reasonably priced services in the newspaper and the yellow pages and people will call. The best part is that, when you have done a great job at a good price, your customers will refer you to their friends. Word of mouth is very big for those who work on houses.
Landscaping
You already own a lawn mower. You have a hedge trimmer and an edger. You have a large collection of lawn and garden bags. You have a pickup truck that can haul them around. And you like fresh air, sunshine, and working in the yard. Well, now you can get plenty of all three.
In case you hadn't noticed, there are many people who do not enjoy mowing their lawns. Make their day by offering your services to them. Do some market research and figure out how much you should charge for your services. Get some quotes for your yard from other landscape companies. Figure out the area of your yard and translate that into the price you should charge. Then, you are ready to start. Put fliers on the neighborhood door handles and wait for the calls.
Computer Consultant
In case you have been in, say, a small plastic bubble on the bottom of the ocean for the last fifteen years or so, you may want to know that computer work is in high demand. For all the talk of the dot-com bust, the shrinking technology sector and outsourcing, computer professionals are in high demand. If you know how to program, how to repair or upgrade a PC, or how to configure a network, you can turn your knowledge into your own home-based business.
As well, web site design is an exciting opportunity for those with little programming experience, but loads of experience with the graphic arts. All you need to do is learn the very simple HTML formatting language and study other web sites for their design ideas. Languages such as PHP, ASP, Java, and JavaScript would be useful, but they are not necessary for a great deal of web design work.
Fixing/Restoring It
You already get a kick out of repairing electronics, refinishing furniture, or rebuilding Chevy small-block engines. You have all the tools that any good repairman would own. You can turn your hobby into money by starting your own small business.
There are a lot of people out there who want their toasters fixed, their vintage record player working again, or their car's body repaired for a decent price. If you can do any of these things, you can put yourself on the map with an ad in the paper and the yellow pages.
By working out of your home, you can keep your overhead down and your profit high. Be careful though. If you are doing something such as automotive repair, your neighbors won't be happy if there is a line-up of wrecked cars in your driveway. Check your zoning codes on work of this nature.
However, if you are working on smaller items, even appliances, you can easily do this work without the neighbors being too much the wiser. So start advertising and make your small business go!
Giving Lessons/Tutoring
If you have a special skill, such as playing the piano, playing tennis, dancing, or sewing, you can give lessons from your home. There are plenty of boys and girls, and even adults, who want to learn to swim, type, or speak Spanish. So translate your abilities into some dinero. You have skills that other people want to learn. They are a great place to start a home-based business.
Likewise, if you are a former teacher who wants to see the faces of young students again, tutoring may be a rewarding pastime. If you can, and if you are allowed, talk to your former teaching colleagues to see if they have any students who are interested in receiving extra tutoring.
Cleaning/Maid Service
Another option for a home-based business is a cleaning service. You already clean your own home, why not help somebody else with theirs? With a few of those household cleaners and chemicals, you can start up a nice little income. You need to be thorough, detailed, and willing to scrub everything to a shine. But with some effort, time, and patience this business opportunity can quickly pay dividends.
Arts & Crafts
If you happen to enjoy candle-making, soap-making, or designing teddy bears and decorative hats, you can make start up a small business selling your creations. Be prepared, this will probably not start out and be very lucrative. However, with some time and patience and a few church sales and flea market visits, your skills will improve, your eye for the market will sharpen and you can sell many of your original designs. The work can be fun, and some extra money won't hurt either.
Artistic Pursuits/Graphic Design
Another business opportunity that may take your fancy is in the pursuit of the arts. Whether you happen to paint, perform graphic design, take photographs, illustrate, or write calligraphy, you can start a business that caters to the needs of those who want something not merely done, but done prettily. Wedding invitations require a calligrapher and photographers. Books need illustrators. Businesses need logos that are attractive to the eye. Living rooms can be livened up with a painting. You can use your special, unusual skills and turn a leisurely pursuit into a home-based business.
Communications/Writing
If you happen to enjoy writing, you can turn your writing and proofreading skills into your own cottage industry. Perhaps you can start writing articles and send them to the magazines you enjoy. Or you can spend your time translating foreign language texts. As well, good proofreaders, book indexers, and researchers are needed by both writers and publishing companies.
Sell your skills in these areas to people who need this sort of work done. As well, if you are a writer, you may even want to sell your typing prowess to those folks out there who can't bang out 40-80 words a minute at the keyboard. Perhaps the local high school or university could bring some business your way.
These are just a few of the business opportunities available to those who wish to work from home. In fact, the possibilities are almost endless. You can get tons more information from our website.
You could buy and sell antiques, provide day care to working mothers, or a dog kennel for people who travel. You could sell house-painting services, wedding cakes, patent searching, permit filing, and event planning. The possibilities are endless.
Find the home-based business that is right for you and you will find that it can be both rewarding a lucrative. See what people need, what people want, and what they are willing to pay for it. Then, the rest is up to you!
Listen To Your Ideas
The Internet is a highly creative place. Every day people are launching new business solutions, writing new software, creating new scripts that do things we couldn't imagine just a few months ago. And in the
publishing world, a quiet revolution is taking place.
People who never dreamt of being authors are writing and publishing their own eBooks.
A key to succeeding on the Internet is your ability to come up with new ideas. But where do creative people
get their ideas?
One day in the mid-1970's a young man stumbled into a diner somewhere in the United Sates. Slung over his
shoulder was a kit-bag that contained everything he owned. He was unshaven and needed a shower badly. He
had very little money, but enough for a phone call.
He rang his bank and asked how much was in his account. A woman's voice informed him, to his amazement, that the balance in his account was four million, three hundred thousand dollars. His name was Richard Bach. Six months before, he had submitted a short story, barely 10,000 words long, to a New York publisher. For the last three months he had been living the life of a nomadic 'barnstormer', sleeping in fields under the wing of his bi-plane. He had been completely unaware that his manuscript, titled 'Jonathon Livingstone Seagull', had become a run-away best-seller.
Years later, Richard Bach talked about how he got ideas for his writing. He referred to what he called his 'Idea Fairies', silent intimations that came to him and whispered in his ear.
To capture those ideas you have to be very alert, because they're often barely audible. They'll come to you unexpectedly, early in the morning, when you're in the shower, or late at night as you're drifting off to sleep. Or they may come to you after meditation.
Meditation is an excellent way of tapping into your creativity. Why? Because in meditation you go beneath the surface level of thought, where most of us spend most of our time. In meditation you dive down into a much deeper current, a subterranean stream of creativity that runs through all of us.
As well as being alert and keeping an open mind, another key way to get new ideas is to read.
Ideas are living things, and like other living things, they meet and fertilize each other. When you read an article or a book, your ideas are coming into contact with someone else's, and something new is born. Indeed, that's the very reason the Internet is so creative; millions of minds are coming into direct contact in a way that has never before been possible in human history.
This process of cross-fertilization happens spontaneously and beneath the level of conscious thought.
Suddenly you'll have a new idea and you won't even know where it came from. So when you're feeling stuck or feeling that you've run out of ideas, read, read, and read some more.
Park Your Garage Sales On The Internet
by: Donald Lee
You have been planning your garage sale for weeks now. Your garage, as well as you whole home, is stuffed with old records, books, clothing, vacuum sweepers, and other odds and ends that you have no use for anymore. Instead of just tossing your clutter into the neighborhood landfill, you've decided to hold one of the most time-honored traditions in civilizationthe garage (or yard) sale. It can be a thankless task, becoming a pawnbroker for a day, but there's definitely good money in itif you know how and, more importantly, where to organize your garage sale.
First, of course, you need to get your sales items together. Garage sales are a great way to recycle stuff that you no longer have room for. You'd be surprised what doodads and miscellany your neighbors will wantmusty books, old silver wear, framed photos of long-lost third cousins, and other unmentionables that you've had no use for since who knows when. Even more surprising, your neighbors are willing to shell out cold hard cash for these items. That makes your garage sale a win-win proposition for you.
Come to think of it, though, a garage sale at your home can be a real chore. It takes a Herculean effort to collect and organize every last little thing you want to sell. Then you have to tag each item and keep track of it in a hardcopy log. To ensure that your neighbors show up with cash in hand, you must create, print up, and pay for flyers, which need to be distributed on telephone poles and supermarket message boards across the region. The work can seem endless and your chances of making a profit slim.
Don't get me wrong. Your garage sale was a great idea, but as you can see, there are many limitations to holding one at your house the old-fashioned way. Get with the times. The garage sale has evolved thanks to the multitude of Web sites that allow you to sell your goods online. People are selling more stuff than ever on the Internet because of the convenience of Web classified sites.
The Internet holds several crucial advantages over selling your stuff the outdated way. When you compare these benefits to the problems with home-based garage sales, you'll see the difference:
ONLINE: Your items are available for purchase for an unlimited time, until they sell.
AT HOME: Your items are available until you call it quits for the night.
ONLINE: Rain, sleet, or snow, your sales aren't affected in the least.
AT HOME: Better have a rain date or a very big umbrella.
ONLINE: No need to constantly watch over your goods or interact with uninterested customers. Just wait until a customer contacts you by e-mail when they are ready to purchase.
AT HOME: Be prepared for countless hours of staring down the street for customers to appear. When they do arrive, be prepared for too many questions but too few purchases.
ONLINE: Advertise for free to your friends and neighbors over e-mail.
AT HOME: Shell out money for flyers, after which you can get to know all of the telephone poles in your neighborhood.
ONLINE: Spend your weekends the way they were meant to be: relaxing and enjoying your time with friends and family.
AT HOME: Spend your weekend waking up early, buying and distributing flyers, lugging boxes, and waiting for customers.
As you can see, it's not an even match. An online garage sale wins hands down.
Now that you're actually excited to get started with your garage sale, you should know that there is one caveat. As easy as it may seem, your online garage sale will be even easier if you choose the right classified site.
Your best bet is to do your research and find classified sites with the most features and benefits, such as (1) No sign-up, registration, or transaction fees. (2) Free ad listing with text description and pictures. (3) Long-term ad posting and free renewals. (4) Easy, accurate, electronic, and automatic record keeping.
The best classified sites have these incredible features and then some. Not only will you be able to clean out your home's clutter with the help of these classified sites. Your garage sale will also park a profit in your pocket.
Copyright 2004 Donald Lee
About The Author
Donald Lee is the public relationship manager for Buysellcommunity.com. Buysellcommunity provides free classified listing services for individuals and businesses to market their products and services online. For global and localized classifieds, visit http://www.buysellcommunity.com.
My Top Ten Tips For Selling Travel on eBay
by: ellen mc nulty
Becoming a seller on ebay can be daunting. Becoming a travel seller can be impossible, unless you know the secrets. My tips on selling on eBay can apply to all categories of items, but some steps are unique to selling travel.
The travel industry is highly regulated on EBay, as it should be. High standards keep out disreputable sellers and scam artists, and adds to your own company's trustworthiness when you are approved by eBay..
1. Before you are even thinking about selling travel on eBay, it is important to get a username and email address just for eBay. Registration is free and only takes a few minutes. Register as a seller and you can use the same username to buy as well. Choose a name that reflects what you sell i.e., Bermudabound rather than sexyblueeyes. Other eBay members will come to recognize you by your User ID, so it's a good idea to choose one you'll want to use for the long term.
2. Your eBay name has sunglasses (i.e., read shady character) for the first 30 days, so don't try to sell anything while you are wearing shades. Use this time to buy on eBay and learn good practices from other sellers.
3. Set up a PayPal account. EBay buyers feel more confident purchasing something from a seller who accepts PayPal. According to PayPal, Listings that offer PayPal are 6% more likely to sell and experience a 5% average increase in final price. Go to www.Paypal.com. Get a business account. Registration is free.
4. In the first 30 days, buy small items on EBay, pay for them promptly. I have always found eBay sellers to offer good values, provided that you check their feedback listing first.
5. Pay your seller promptly, because then you will always get positive feedback from your seller. Your feedback profile is the most important aspect of your reputation at eBay. Feedback is extremely important on eBay, as your future buyers can evaluate you at a glance. Even one strike against you counts heavily. Your feedback score also helps later with qualifying to run banner ads on eBay, and to have eBay pay some of your advertising costs.
6. Create your About Me page on eBay. Use this page to tell other eBay users about yourself and your interests, your experience and your products.
7. While you are waiting the 30 days, also become a) ID verified and b)square trade approved.
a) Get ID Verified through eBay as an extra sign of security for buyers. When a member gets ID Verified, a third-party company working with eBay confirms the member's identity by cross checking their contact information across consumer and business databases. You'll see the ID Verify icon in verified members' profiles.
b) The Square Trade Seal is one way for sellers to show bidders that they are committed to high selling standards and have had their identity verified by a third party. You will need a credit card and your IATA, ARC, or seller of travel number. Both are requirements for selling travel, and you must place these numbers as the first lines of your ads on EBay. All members listing airline tickets, cruises, vacation packages, or lodging must be participants in the Seller Verify by SquareTrade Program. This program combines verification of sellers with ongoing monitoring. For instructions on this, go to eBay.com.
8. When you are ready to list your items at auction, sell small stuff first, building customers and credibility. Sell all items with no reserve, at the lowest price you can afford to accept, and fill all orders promptly.
9. Choose carefully what you will sell. You cannot sell some travel certificates, and all listing must list the exceptions, blackout dates, and extra taxes and shipping charges. Travel agents, and other businesses selling travel services are regulated in eBay. According to the eBay rules for selling travel, Businesses and individuals who sell and/or arrange air or sea travel or accommodations (but do not directly provide the travel service themselves) may list air and ship related travel items (i.e. airplane tickets and cruise trips), along with accommodations, on eBay only if they are licensed as sellers of travel lawfully able to do business in all 50 states and they themselves will be booking the travel for the winning bidder. Their listings should clearly set out their California seller of travel license number as well as any other license information required in other states. It is against eBay policy for travel clearinghouse affiliates, that are not actual agents booking the travel themselves, to list travel auctions on the site. Sellers are required to include the following disclaimer in all listings for travel exactly as it appears below and in a text size and color that can easily be seen and read by all bidders:
"By listing this auction I verify that I am the actual travel agent or travel provider and not a third party affiliate. The travel/accommodations in this auction will be booked directly through me and not an outside agency. I also verify that, other than the government taxes and related government fees stated within the listing description itself, there will be absolutely no additional fees, charges or after auction purchases associated with booking the travel within this listing."
For travel services other than air or sea travel, businesses and individuals may offer gift certificates or coupons that are issued by a specific provider of travel, such as a gift certificate to a particular hotel. They may not, however, offer travel club memberships or "choice travel" certificates.
10. Build a store. EBay stores are free for the first 30 days. Afterwards, they are $9.95 a month. According to eBay, Store sellers see on average a 25% incremental increase in sales the 3 months after opening their Store. Here is where you can list all those other items that are higher priced, but good value at a low listing fee - at about 02 cents, rather than $4.80 for an item over $500. Auction and Fixed Price listings appear in your eBay Store as well as in eBay Search and Listings. The store allows your buyers to peruse your other items in addition to your auction items. Go to: http://pages.eBay.com/storefronts/openbenefits.html
For examples of travel stores on eBay, take a look at: http://stores.eBay.com/Travel-Ireland-and-Britain_W0QQsspagenameZMEQ3aFQ3aSTQQtZkm
http://stores.eBay.com/Himalayan-International-Tours_W0QQsspagenameZMEQ3aFQ3aSTQQtZkm
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