25 Most Successful Small Business Ideas from Home (2021)

Most Successful Small Business Ideas List (Updated)

Here is the list of profitable small business ideas that will help you to earn at least $1000 per month.

1) Dropshipping: Most successful small business ideas from home

This business type is relatively new and interesting and is an eCommerce-based business. It is kind of a retail business where you sell products that you don’t own. To simplify, here’s the breakdown of the process involved here:

• You market a product or product range,
• Buyers places an order after visiting your eCommerce store,
• You receive the order, forward it to a seller (with whom you already agree),
• The seller, upon receiving the order, would complete it and then send it out to the buyer,
• The buyer pays you and you then settle your bill (pay the actual seller).

Now you may be wondering if you don’t own a product, why someone would buy from you, more importantly, why would the seller work on such a messy business process with you. 

Answering the first part is quite obvious – the buyer doesn’t know if you own what you sell or not. Buyers usually even don’t care if they find it out. They only want to get what they see on your online store.

And to answer the second part, you first need to understand that running an eCommerce business is not as easy as one might think. 

Even when you’re selling products via Facebook or Instagram, you still need some skills to market your products. Sellers usually don’t have to get into this. And that’s why they could agree to work with you. 

You market their products using special techniques, get then order, receive the payment, and deal with the customer if there’s a dispute. While the seller would work in a normal routine, without disturbing his core business model.

Like any other business, there are some pros and cons of doing a dropshipping business:

Pros

• You save holding costs
• You save costs on hiring relevant staff
• You save yourself from the hustle of delivering the goods.

Cons

• Your seller might not have enough stock to fulfill the order
• Your seller might deliver bad quality products, damaging your repute.

Dropshipping is the ongoing business trend and it is the most profitable small business ideas from home .

2) Selling Condos: Small Business ideas with investment

Condo selling is a real estate business. As of now, the condo market in Mississauga, Canada is witnessing potential growth since condos for sale in Mississauga are much more affordable than in other areas like Toronto. 

If you’re living in Mississauga and understand how real estate work in the city (and the country), it could be a good time to dive in.

To start your venture as a condo seller, you need to:

• Have a professional degree or certification to enter the market.
• Then you need to have a marketplace like a website to display the condo listings.
• You also need to know all about the city.
• You are also required to have a solid understanding of digital marketing so that you could get more business from this real estate startup.

3) Selling Bungalows: Small Profitable Business ideas

This is also a real estate business. The reason for listing them separately is to go easy on yourself. If you’re just starting up and don’t have a solid team to work with you, it’s better to start with baby steps, selling one type of property at a time.

Selling bungalows is comparatively hot in the market since the outbreak of corona virus. People are preferring single-family homes or bungalows over condos and this is why we see a decline in demand and price of condos. 

This is also a good time to invest in freehold properties like bungalows as the previous year has seen a good jump in prices, giving huge profits to homebuyers.

So if this sounds interesting, you might want to start with getting inspirations from those already in the business. For this check out this realtor with a massive list of bungalows for sale in different cities of Ontario.

If you’re an investor, you may also think of flipping a property – buy an old house for less, do some renovations, and then sell it for a profit.

4) Print on Demand: Small Scale Business ideas from home

Fourth in the line, we have printed on demand. As the name sounds, it is a tailor-based printing services business. In this venture, you could sell your custom designs on items like phone cases, mugs, and t-shirts.

This small business idea is similar to drop shipping; you don’t provide these services but take the orders to the ones already into the business. 

For this business you are required to have a website, Shopify store would work best for such kind of a business. The process would go like this:

• You promote your business (digital marketing),
• Get orders from the customer,
• Forward the order to the actual service provider and ask them to deliver the final product to the end-user
• Receives the cash from the user, and
• Then spread it with the service provider as agreed.

These products are quite useful when someone is wishing a friend, family, or colleague with best wishes, a startup business promoting their brand name, or individuals in love with such type of artwork.

Print on demand is the Most Successful and profitable small business ideas you can start from with low investment.

5) Translation: Best Small Business ideas for Women or Men

Businesses always need someone with multilingual skills. Although, very few businesses would hire a full-time expert in this domain. Most of the others would hire on a contract basis. Here you come in.

The best way to market your translation skills is Upwork and Fiverr. Both these platforms are internationally renowned and there’s always someone looking for services like this.

6) Website Flipping: New Small Online Business ideas from home

If you’re into development, website flipping is the new business idea for you this year. With this easy task, you buy an already developed website, make changes in its design and content and then sell it for a profit.

It’s a pretty easy development task you could do with little effort.

7) Home-based Catering: Small Manufacturing Business ideas with low investment

That’s one of the age-old food businesses you could do even in 2021. As the name sound, you provide catering services based in your home.

To market your services, you don’t need a website. A simple Facebook or Instagram page would be enough here. 

So when you’re doing a home-based food catering business, you need to equip yourself with two skills; (1) food preparation and (2) social media marketing.

Your target market could be small businesses and homes. You could prepare food on order or create a food pack ready to go.

8) Virtual Assistant: Small Profitable Business ideas from home

This is another job high in demand and widely available on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr.

A virtual assistant could be a virtual cold caller, telemarketer, answering emails, scheduling meetings, preparing reports, and more.

The good thing about this type of freelance business is that you don’t need any hardcore skills. You should be familiar with computers and basic applications and good at communication.

Due to the pandemic, Online tutoring is the New Small business ideas that help to start a school or colleges from home.

9) Personal Shopper: Small Business ideas for Men or Women

If you’re a shopaholic with an eye for fashion trends, you could turn this hobby into a paid skill.

Your clients could be busy professionals lacking time or people with bad fashion sense. As always, market your skills using social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube and attract new clients.

Your clients would then tell you a little about their fashion sense and you would bring them new clothes based on their body figure, need/want, and current fashion trends.

10) Online Tutoring: Small Business ideas from home

After COVID-19, many of the things have gone online all around the globe. Even when you live in a third-world country, you could see a rising trend in online businesses. 

if you’re a student or have school-going children, you already know the importance of online tutoring.

Online tutoring is in high demand. You have various options to start this venture; become a large service provider or join a service provider or head towards Upwork and Fiverr to market your related skills and start offering your services as an online tutor.

11) Content Writing: Most Successful Small Business ideas from home

This is my favorite business idea for 2021. In fact, this service would remain high in demand for quite some time.

Content writing is high in demand and pays well if you have the right combination of skills. Blogging, website content, social media content, newsletters, etc. all come under this one big umbrella.

There are various ways to start your content writing business in 2021:

• Setup a website offering a website content writing service.
• Join Upwork and Fiverr, and capture clients.
• Reach out to companies who might be needing content writing services.

Starting a content writing business is not that hard. You first need to be a good reader and then understand the basics of SEO.

12) WordPress Support: New Small Business ideas for Startup

Another IT-based service, businesses running websites on WordPress could be looking for. If you’re good with WordPress development, it could get easy for you to give them online support.

Keep in mind, even though WordPress seems easy to use, it could get complicated if you aren’t well prepared.

13) Career Coaching: Small Business ideas after Lockdown

Soon after the coronavirus outbreak, companies started losing their business. This led the companies to release some of their staff, while some didn’t get a raise they were expecting.

And now that things are returning to normality, companies are re-hiring for vacant positions. While those looking for a job are in dire need of some expert to get them to a job. Here comes your part.

Being into the career coaching business, you would help those looking for a job prepare for the interview. 

You would also uplift their morale. And finally, you would be their guiding angel helping them get into a job related to their skills and interests.

14) Email marketing: Small Profitable Business ideas

Like said earlier, email marketing is part of content writing, it is highly dependent on what you write and how you pitch. Moreover, email marketing is a content marketing part of the bigger picture.

When you are offering email marketing services, try keeping the content more personal. Every reader should feel as if the email was sent just for him/her.

Again, use platforms like Fiverr and Upwork to tell the world about the services.

15) Affiliate Marketing: Small Business ideas from home

Again, my personal favorite when talking about small business ideas to start in 2021. I lost my job back in May 2020. I tried to do a bunch of businesses, such as becoming a small-sized food distributor, a freelance real estate agent, and an affiliate marketer. 

So, I failed to understand the distribution business (mainly because I ain’t a people’s person). I failed to continue as a freelance real estate agent, as there’s nothing like this. The only thing I was left with was affiliate marketing.

I always wanted to have at least one blog, but I didn’t have a clue where to start. Santrel Media (YouTube), guided me well to dive in, and there I created my first blog ever – connecting dimes. This blog is all about stocks (the blog is still under work in progress, as I got quite busy doing two jobs).

Anyways, affiliate marketing could be your thing. What you need is to define your interests first, then choose a product or product line, then reach out to a relevant service provider (like Amazon) to grab items, and start marketing them on your blog.

And if you aren’t into blogging, you could also think of creating a YouTube channel and start talking about the products in your videos.

16) Social Media Marketing: Small Scale Business ideas

While I believe every company should have a team of digital marketing experts, a social media marketing business still works well for small to medium-sized startups.

To start this venture, you need a website and social media pages with a good number of likes/followers/subscribers. Only then the hiring company could rely on your expertise.

One of the highest in-demand social media marketing platforms is still Facebook, then comes Instagram, and then we others like Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok.

17) SEO: Most Successful Small Business ideas from home

SEO is a digital marketing service focusing on how to rank a website at the top level on search results. This is a technical skill where you need to understand how search engines work, how do they rank a site, what factors they count to rank a site, and so on.

Though SEO has nothing to do with web development, you still need to know some basics of this skill. And you also need to stay updated.

18) App Development: Small Scale Manufacturing Business ideas

Deep down you know that this is a real paying job or business. And certainly, it’s, if you have the right skills.

If you’re an app developer, consider creating an Android or iOS app and make money via ads. OR you could create apps for businesses and then charge them for your services.

19) Stock Photographer: Small Business ideas without investment

Why the need? Ask a content market when they have to search for free images and ran out of stock before they get to the right one. The only thing they’re left with is buying a subscription from a stock image provider.

The key skill involved here is photography. Although I don’t hear people make a lot from this business idea, it still pays you enough to cover your expenses.

Stock Photography is the creative small business ideas that will you to start your journey into the entrepreunership. 

20) Event Management: Creative Small Business ideas for Women or Men

Kind of an easy-to-start business that requires little to no investment. And with time you could be making a huge amount out of this venture.

The best way to market your services is via Facebook and Instagram (the latter works far better for such a business type).

Grow your business with time to win more events and generate more income.

21) News Blog: Small Profitable Business ideas

An interesting and easy way to start earning easy money. Starting a news blog is similar to starting an affiliate marketing blog. The difference comes when you start writing. News blogs are similar to newspapers.

Choose your niche (the one you feel good about writing) and start writing. Keep in mind news is as good as it’s fresh. When it’s outdated, no one would care. So write only fresh content.

At the beginning (and most probably forever), follow big news blogs and write what they’re writing in your own words, with some research.

But make sure you don’t put yourself in trouble. I recently read a news post where Xiaomi sued a blogger for $150k for leaking information about an upcoming smartphone while he was in a contract with the company. Just make sure you don’t do anything like that.

22) Video Production: Small Scale Business ideas

Most of the business ideas we discuss here are based on online services. That’s because it’s necessary for this tech-savvy era.

That leads us to talk about videos. According to a report, 85% of users in the US prefer watching videos on their devices than reading. Such a huge chunk for video creators and low for other content creators.

Keeping this figure in mind, you could start your small-sized video production house. You could either provide services as a YouTube creator, create marketing videos for small businesses, or could even start your channel (remember we talked about affiliate marketing via videos?

Vidoe production is the most profitable small business ideas that can start everyone. You have to just know the basic things of photography and editing.

23) Graphic Designer:Best Small Business ideas for Men or Women

Similar to video creators, there’s a huge room for graphic designers. Being a graphic designer, you could create logos, banners, brochures, and more.

The friendly tools to create graphics could include Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Canva. But these tools alone won’t’ help you until you bring the creative artist out of you.

24) Online Clothing Store: Small Business ideas from home

Today, people like to shop from online stores. That’s why many businesses are going online besides having a brick-and-mortar store.

If you don’t want to start an online personalized store, you could market your clothing line on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

25) Landscaper: Top Small Farm Business ideas

Mowing, tree-trimming, seasonal décor, and more are a landscaper’s jobs. While an individual could mow his/her lawn, other tasks could be tough to perform for non-professionals. If you have a knack for this and love green spaces, this is a good business to start today.