12 Fun Home Business Ideas

So, you would like to earn a little extra cash, but don’t know where to start? It can be difficult choosing a brand new career direction, but you might be surprised to realize how many opportunities are out there.

This post will focus on 12 unique ideas for a home business. There are, of course, many more possibilities out there, but I chose these because I know people doing them successfully in real life. None of these may be quite the right fit for you, but it may help you to approach working from home in a creative way.

One of the keys to being successful is to think outside of the box and offer something special. In conjunction, you must offer a top quality service or product and never let your customer service system fail your clients.

My favorite WAHM (Work at Home Mom) Business Ideas are:

1. Mobile Car Wash: You go to people’s home or office and wash their car for them.
2. Decorative Wall Painting: Use your talent to paint murals on kid’s bedroom words or stencil sayings over windows.
3. Cooking Teacher: Offer yourself to small organizations or offices for an employee fun day or my favorite, start with a few children after school in your own home and let the word of mouth fly.
4. Handyman/woman: Fix leaky faucets, hang ceiling fans, put together furniture, etc. for your own neighbors. You just need tools to get started.
5. Personalization: Have a color laser printer? You can personalize more items than you can imagine.
6. Babysitter: Moms are always looking for someone with experience and who is trustworthy. I prefer Mommy Helpers… someone who will come in and entertain the children while I am here in the other room working.
7. House Cleaning: Offer to include windows and you’ll be ahead of a lot of the competition or have a set price just for bathrooms. If you can throw in organizational skills, you’ll probably wind up with more clients than time.
8. Home Day Care: Please check into your state’s regulations for what credentials are required and how many children are allowed.
9. Dog Walker/Pet Sitter: The local kennels do not appeal to everyone and leaving your poor dog home alone all day is not fair.
10. Photographer: Start out by offering your services to charity service events or company parties. Also, contact your local Mom’s Club to see if they would like you to attend some of their events.
11. Telemarketer: Many insurance and other sales companies contract this type of work out. Call around and then work out a proposal. Charge per appointment that you get with bonuses for closed deals. The sales force has to supply the base leads unless you already have a source. I did this for Prudential for quite some time and actually had to hire people to help me. For leads I personally got, I was paid $8 and a bonus of $12 if they closed the deal for a total of $20. This was over 10 years ago, so work the numbers accordingly.
12. Nail Tech or Hair Dresser: The first thing you do is offer house calls. I sometimes have to do back flips to get my toes done because of having to find someone to babysit the children during the day. I would love it if someone could come to my house and color my hair for me.

Like I mentioned, this is just a small sampling. Look in your local newspaper and read the ads for more ideas. Think about what you would love to do and how you might be able to turn that into a business. Let your approach be creative and have only your imagination be the limits of how far you can go.

I love helping people find their life’s passion. If there is an idea you want to bounce off someone, leave a comment or send a Note.

xoxo ~ Melissa