Whether you’re considering starting up your own side hustle or already have a product or service you’re ready to launch into a full-time business, we’ve put together a comprehensive list of business ideas for creative entrepreneurs and how to launch your startup. Suppose you’re creative and enjoy working with your hands. In that case, whether that’s landscaping or designing custom jewelry, these 9 home business ideas hope to inspire a new business venture for you this year.
Starting a Fashion Brand (Online Store)
The global eCommerce market is huge, with an estimated worth of around $6.3 trillion in 2023. If you’ve always kept an immaculate wardrobe and have a keen interest in goings-on in the fashion world, then starting your own online clothing brand might be the perfect business model for you.
Unlike service-based home businesses, starting a fashion brand has a slightly higher barrier for entry, requiring you to secure a significant amount of startup capital and build strong relationships with suppliers and designers from the comfort of your own home. Having said that, launching your own fashion brand through an online store is much more accessible than using more traditional brick-and-mortar routes. It can lend your brand a level of prestige that used to be inaccessible for home-based clothing companies.
Online Tutor
Whether your specialty is maths, history, science, or anything else, working as a self-employed tutor can be a hugely fulfilling way to become an entrepreneur.
Students of all levels will often need a little extra help to hit their targets, and many will be willing to pay for it.
As an online tutor, you’ll need to build up some demonstrable experience of teaching others in your subject, which you can do through volunteering in an educational context, tutoring your friends and family, or even offering those services for free through social media groups and forums with a focus on your area of expertise.
From there, you can list your tutoring services on a simple website like Bark, and promote yourself by networking through local schools, adult education centers, and online education communities.
Food Truck
If you have a passion for making great food but you’re not in a position to start a traditional restaurant, then starting a food truck business is a great way to turn your passion into a source of income.
Food trucks are a fantastic way for passionate chefs to experiment with new dishes and test their concepts with a varied audience in places like music festivals, open-air shows, or simply in busy business districts with a lot of foot traffic at lunchtime. In these situations, it’s worth considering investing in a card reader so that contactless payments can be made – reducing queues as each customer can make their payment very quickly.
Starting a food truck business will require higher startup costs than many of the other business ideas on this list. However, there are still ways to test the waters before you seek out financing for your business, such as renting a food truck before buying one of your own or targeting smaller events with low vendor fees. One way to stand out at these events is to pick a great truck name that shows off your brand and food so that people will remember you!
As you become more familiar with the food service industry in your local area and how your dishes are being received, you’ll soon be able to form a more detailed plan for developing your business, whether that means expanding your fleet of food trucks or eventually opening your own brick-and-mortar restaurant.
Homemade Crafts
Starting a homemade crafts business is a great way to share your skills with the world and generate income from something truly unique to you. Another popular eCommerce category, the handmade crafts niche, is characterized by solo entrepreneurs who offer their customers a distinctively organic quality in their products, which they can’t find with mass-produced alternatives.
There are countless kinds of products you can choose to focus on when starting a handmade crafts business. Some of the most popular crafts include:
- Soaps: Soap is easy to make at home and can be a fun product to experiment with when trying out different kinds of shapes, colors, and scents.
- Candles: Like soaps, there’s a huge variety of things you can tweak about candles. Make your candles unique by focusing on a speciality like using sustainable materials or themed scents, and you’ll soon be able to build a strong, distinctive brand.
- Personalized gift baskets: Hampers of luxury products customized by the customer and presented for maximum visual appeal.
Online Bakery
If you know your way around your kitchen and have a creative approach to baking, you might be the perfect person to set up your own online bakery. Home baking is big business and serves a large audience of people who agree that mass-produced baked goods will never compare to the quality and care that goes into home baking.
One of the best things about running an online bakery is that it lends itself naturally to organic social media marketing. You won’t need to secure the funds to launch an expensive or complex marketing campaign to build traction for your brand after launching. Networking with other bakery profiles, creating some rudimentary branding, and regularly posting quality pictures of your baked goods can be all it takes to get an online bakery off the ground.
Landscaping
Every year, your local community will have people in need of tree pruning, lawn mowing, and help with their seasonal gardening. If you have a passion for maintaining your own garden and you’re able to acquire a few pieces of basic equipment, then starting your own landscaping business could be a great way to establish yourself as an entrepreneur.
The landscaping business has a fairly low bar for entry, and many people will be able to start with a few small projects for their family or friends’ properties. From there, you can look into building your brand’s prestige by taking formal training or joining an industry body such as the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI).
Moving your landscaping business from a self-employed model to a more “official” landscaping brand can lead you to securing larger and more well-paid contracts, while still maintaining a hands-on role that lets you keep doing the work you love.
Pet Sitting and House Sitting
Pet sitting and house sitting are two of the most accessible ways for anyone to start a business from home. Though there’s a limit on the amount you can earn with these kinds of businesses, the fantastic degree of flexibility and passive working day make them a very attractive prospect for many people looking to kick their 9 to 5.
If you have experience with dogs, cats, and other household pets, there are countless people out there whose furry friends will need care and company during holidays and shorter periods when their owners just can’t be around.
Similarly, many people will want to know that their homes are in good hands while they can’t be there themselves, and will happily pay for house sitters to water their plants, maintain their outdoor spaces, and make sure that their properties are secured. Whether you start using your own resources or through an app for networking sitters and clients, being a pet sitter or house sitter can be an easy route to entrepreneurship for many people.
Florist
Traditionally, florists have run permanent brick-and-mortar shops that people can browse in person. However, the proliferation of the internet and eCommerce has given rise to many floral businesses that can be run right out of the business owners’ homes.
Like running an online bakery, setting up as a home-based florist lends itself naturally to promotion through social media platforms. Starting an Instagram page and filling it with images of your work will give you a free and effective tool for promoting your floral services and could act as a channel for receiving your first few orders on an informal basis.
Once you’ve established your own style, reach out to family and friends who might need floral services to start off small and begin networking with wholesalers, bridal services and events companies, and other florists to integrate your brand further with the local industry.
Custom Jewelry Maker
If you have a creative mind and a passion for great-looking jewelry, you may want to look into custom jewelry making to start your home business. Custom jewelry is a thriving eCommerce niche, catering to people who love the personal touch that comes with handmade pieces made according to their unique tastes.
By setting up a custom jewelry business, you can look forward to the unique joy of sharing your creativity with the world and knowing that your hard work has helped brighten up a person’s wardrobe with jewelry that really speaks to them.
One of the biggest challenges of breaking into the custom jewelry niche is setting your jewelry line apart with a unique position in the market. Think about whether you’ll be focusing on affordable pieces or fine jewelry, whether you’ll be following fashion trends or offering a more alternative style, and whether your customers will be able to customize their pieces through consultations or an online tool.
By thoroughly researching the market and figuring out how you’ll carve out your unique niche, you’ll be able to pass one of the big hurdles of promoting a new jewelry business right out of the gate.
Business Ideas – Get Started with Your Small Business Today
Hopefully, this article has inspired you to use your creative mind to earn money and learn new skills. Finding a home business that touches on your creativity can be a rewarding experience.