In this article I want to share with you 5 small home business ideas.
Not everyone is at liberty to take on a full scale home business that requires a lot of time and attention.
Nor does everyone who has a job necessarily want to quit and work exclusively from home.
Either way, the methods I show you here are business ideas that require only a small amount of time to attend to each day (with some of them you won’t need to do anything for several days at a time).
If you are looking for more serious home business ideas, you may find some the articles listed below to be more useful:
Success with Wealthy Affiliate
Best Ways to Make Money Online
How to Make a Full Time Income Online
Here’s what we will cover in this article:
#1: Offer Services on Fiverr
#2: Teach on Skillshare or Udemy
#3: Invest in the 12 Minute Affiliate System
#4: Review Products as an Affiliate on YouTube
#5: Complete Surveys for Money
Offer Services on Fiverr
An easy place to start with something like freelance writing is go to Fiverr and set up an account. Once this is done, you can decide what services you might be able to offer people, such as writing articles, web research, ebook cover designing, user testing, etc. and create a Gig.
For most freelance work, you’ll need to be able to provide some kind of evidence of the skills you are offering to people. That is why, before creating a Gig on Fiverr, you should prepare some work to show as evidence of your skills.
This adds trust and will also increase your chances of being hired. Some people offer multiple services and different topics/categories writing for articles, blog posts or essays on.
For example, some people sell their social media skills, web design skills, as well as articles on cooking and pets, giving them more chances of getting a job.
If you do a good job for someone on Fiverr, they may well hire you again or even on a regular basis, giving you a kind of stability and steady flow of income.
Teach on Skillshare or Udemy
Skillshare which is similar to Udemy, is a platform for selling some kind of educational course which you produce yourself. The first step in this process is to come up with a subject you have a good bit of knowledge on and feel comfortable teaching people. The second step is to find a suitable editor to create your course with. The third step, after you have broken your content down into individual ‘lessons,’ is to upload it on Skillshare and/or Udemy.
Skillshare will pay you based on the engagement level, while Udemy allows you to sell your course to buyers on their hosting platform.
The challenges are simply in producing a good quality course that people will watch/buy. A decent enough camera and mic, and good lighting and background will be very advantageous as far as presentation is concerned.
As for the content itself, just make sure you are able communicate your knowledge on a particular topic in an engaging and methodical way.
Below is a list of editing tools that can be used for your course creation:
Mac
iMovie (Free)
DaVinci Resolve (Free)
ScreenFlow ($99)
Final Cut Pro ($299)
Adobe Premiere Pro ($21/month)
PC
DaVinci Resolve (Free)
VSDC (Free)
Filmora (Free)
Lightworks (Free + Paid Version)
Camtasia ($199)
Adobe Premere Pro ($21/month)
If you have success with one course, you may want to consider upscaling your business by producing more, and perhaps improved courses; perfection comes with practise.
Invest in the 12 Minute Affiliate System
Ok, I know this one might look quite scammy, but the truth is you can make money using the 12 Min Affiliate System, a ClickBank product made be Devon Brown.
It’s quick to set up; you’ll have it going within half an hour or less – possibly even in 12 mins!
The setup instructions are very clear. They call it a system which it is; It works by having traffic sent to it’s pre-made landing pages, captures leads, then follows up with them automatically with an autoresponder for months and months. The follow up emails are professionally written and use story telling techniques.
It allows you to choose from 3 niches: Home Business, Health and Personal Development. (You can of course buy more than one or all three).
Of these, the Home Business niche is the best and most profitable. However the system also allows you to create custom funnels and sell other things.
But within the system, there are multiple offers, all of which are ClickBank offers associated with your affiliate link.
The first step is to buy the system for and entry fee of less than $10.
The next is to set up a ClickBank account if you don’t already have one.
Then you must get an autoresponder, Aweber, which is actually quite cheap. Finally, you promote the system by driving traffic to it.
A word of warning: Do Not Buy the Traffic from 12 Min Affiliate; it’s unreasonably expensive. I recommend you go with EasyTrafficNow if you are going to give this a go and use paid traffic.
It’s much cheaper and still converts well. The idea is that when you have built up a large enough list and made a good number of sales, you will have some significant passive income from all the recurring commissions you earn from all the traffic that converts into buyers.
And the email follow-ups series (80 professionally written emails) enables you to make more money on the back end.
For a more in-depth tutorial on this, read my post on How to Build an Email Subscription List for your Business.
Review Products as an Affiliate on YouTube
There are a good number of affiliates who started out reviewing products on YouTube and leaving an affiliate link to the product in the description box.
Some invest in high quality products such as cameras, laptops, microphones, musical instruments etc. There is a common process: the first step is to join an affiliate site such as Amazon Associates. T
he second step is to order a good product according to your budget. The third is to produce a good quality review on YouTube and attract people who are looking to purchase the product.
It is sometimes possible to negotiate for a lower price, or even to borrow a product from the merchant; after all, you are selling their product and while you will get a commission, they also get paid.
This is usually what more confident affiliates do when they have already made sales. This increases their chance of the seller doing them these kinds of favours.
The idea of selling expensive products is that you will get a higher commission, but that’s not to say you can’t start out with less expensive products, or even digital products. If you start to have some success, you can always look into reviewing other products.
A YouTube video promoting an offer in the form of a positive review is a good method of generating some passive side income.
Once the video is uploaded, it’s going to be there a very long time! Forever! Years down the road you might still be making sales from it. That is quite an exciting prospect.
Complete Surveys for Money
It’s a patient job for extra cash, but paid surveys generally won’t make you rich. This is usually always the case unless you become highly qualified and spend full time hours at it.
However, since we are discussing small home business ideas and strategies, there is always the straight forward process of signing up for a paid survey, completing the tasks and getting paid.
If you’re going to give this a go, it’s best for you to think about something you’d actually like to give your opinion on.
There are also similar things such as testing Apps before they are released. But the idea is you have to become familiar with what needs reviewing and then give your opinion based on your observations.
There are always going to be numerous companies around the world looking for people to participate in online surveys. It’s really not such a bad choice for someone looking to make quick money, albeit not a lot of money.
For some ideas for where to sign up for paid surveys, the best is to do your own research in the light of what you would like to give your opinion on. Alternatively, here is a site with a good sized list of options to choose from.
Overall Thoughts
Out of these 5 ideas, I believe the best way to run a small home business is to spend some time each day putting together a course to upload on Skillshare and/or Udemy.
Once the course has been uploaded, you can go on to attempt other strategies, such as the other ones mentioned in this article. If one side hustle is making you money, you may want to consider giving the 12 Minute Affiliate System a shot.
In the end, you are the best judge of what will work best for you. As always, I wish you well in your business pursuits! Be confident and take action!
Hello Dominic,
I really appreciated your post, you had quite an easy and clear way to show some ways to make money at home, without giving the feeling that you will get rich in an instant. I was actually interested in selling courses online in Udemy and the paid surveys. I believe that when you work from home, you’d better have a portfolio of ways to make money, since every business carries a certain amount of risk. You can have these as backups for times when things are worse.
If you allow me a suggestion, just setup wordpress to identify the author name of the post, and also in your “About Dominic” page, put at least a picture of yourself. You might suffer from lack of trust because you seem to be “hiding” yourself or something. A picture of yourself in your “about me” page will surely help put people to trust you more. As a blogger myself, I didn’t realise how important that is until I saw your site 🙂
Keep up the good work!!
Sofia
Hi Sofia,
Thanks so much for taking the time to write this encouraging and constructive comment! You’re right; it never hurts to try your hand at something new and have some backup plans/ideas for some online income. I hope you will have a go at creating your own course to educate others and make money.
I’m definitely going to take on board what you mentioned about a picture. I sort of thought there was one. And the name of the site has changed since then. So thank you for brining this up – I agree that people should be able to fit a face to the writer and this gives extra credibility to the site.
I wanted to cut back the hours for awhile and try something online to be able to control my working hours. I have 2 small kids at home and want to be able to spend more time with them. But I wasn’t sure where to start. Now I do, thanks. I really like the idea of creating a course. The 12 minute thing also sounds fun but I need to read up on it, not sure I really got it. =)
That’s great you got some value and thanks for the feedback! I really hope you will take the plunge with some of these ideas. Enjoying what you do is the key to persevering! I have more serious business ideas as well. But if you do want to read up on the 12 Minute Affiliate System, here is the article/review I wrote for that:
https://ebusinesscreations.com…
Wishing you the best!
Thank you for sharing this timely advice with small home business strategies. It’s nice to have a lot of options to choose from so that new business owners start off strong with multiple channels of revenue and income. I haven’t tried putting together an online course, but it looks to be a solid, recommended choice. Thank you for the resources!
You’re welcome! Yes, I totally agree that having some extra income stream ideas is a great idea. I hope you will have a go at putting a course together for Udemy. It gives a good sense of achievement even to just get started.
Wishing you success!
Hey Dominic! This is exactly what I was looking for in my life. I am actually an affiliate marketer now, but would like to find other alternative jobs that can pay more to sustain my website as it is new. I have thought of offering classes on Udemy, but again, I don’t know what skills to offer that people actually need! It is definitely something i have to brainstorm on. Everyone is really getting onto the work from home lifestyle around the world, so it is only wise for people to jump into this industry of work too (the online business world).
I do have some questions from your article,
1. As I was a ballet instructor, do you think that it will be a good choice to offer this skill set through Udemy? Or should we stick to the something more theoretical such as SEO or Social Media Marketing?
2. I am currently looking to be freelancer at Upwork, what are your opinion on them and is there any reason why you specifically picked Fiverr?
3. Between these three survey sites, which one would you recommend? InboxDollars, MyPoints, and Swagbucks~
Thank you so much for your helpful article and also for your time in reading my comment. I look forward to your answers. Keep up the good work, Dominic!
Hello! Thank you for a positive and engaging comment! Very true about so many more people today wanting to try something online as a way to generate income.
Hey! Don’t be afraid! If dance/ballet is something you’re into and are even an instructor for, there is a place for you in Udemy and perhaps you will have even more visibility (standing out) for customers than if you did some kind of marketing course since these are already quite popular with many people offering a similar thing.
Ah yes, I had forgotten about Upwork but have heard of the site. If you are a buyer, I’d say go to Upwork rather than Fiverr because Upwork will generally deliver more authentic and better quality services. But if you are a seller, Fiverr may be easier to get started with. However, Upwork is probably better overall.
Out of the Surveys you mentioned, I’d probably go for MyPoints. I also like the idea of a free $10! But Swagbucks is a serious site with a load of relative information on surveys. So I’m not 100% sure.
Wishing you success!
Thanks for sharing these different ways of making money online.
They certainly are quite diverse so there is something to suit most people. The one that would least interest me is completing surveys. These can be very time consuming for very little reward.
I must admit though that the easiest of them is by far the affiliate marketing one, but it will all come down to individuals interests.
Thank you for the eye opening article. It is encouraging to know that , even during the challenged global economy there are still ways one can use to bring some income.What I like about these ways is that for most ,you can actually launch without capital or a very minimum if you need pay. I know however the greatest price to pay is patience.
Yes! Well said and thank you for your feedback here.
There is so much that goes into having a successful business because you not only need the right ideas but the right platforms in which to help these ideas come alive reaching your target audience. Thanks so much for a well-detailed and for the suggestion that is a great help.
Very true! Thanks, and good points there!
This is a great article, Dave. I have personally used Fiverr although I found out it’s not the easiest Freelancer platform for beginners because if you don’t have many reviews it is a bit hard to find clients. I started with Freelancer-com because you can participate in contests and once you win some of them you get some reviews and it’s easier to bid on projects and fin clients. I have also made some money with surveys in my spare time. My favorite one is Prolific. Quality surveys and good pay. Thanks for sharing this info by the way.
Thank you sir! Great to hear your thoughts on this subject.