35 Profitable (and Fun) Home Business Ideas You Can Start Today

Looking for home business ideas that you can start today? Get inspired to launch your new business venture and be your own boss with one of these 35 profitable small business ideas. When selecting the best small business ideas, consider profitability, current market trends, and your personal skills to increase your chances of success.

There are business opportunities are all around — whether you’re looking for a full-time or part-time job, to earn extra cash with a side hustle, or to become a fully-fledged entrepreneur. All you need is a great business idea, a business plan and a dash of entrepreneurship!

Starting a home business is an exciting way to transform your passion into a rewarding career, all from the comfort of your own home. With the rise of digital marketing and the ease of setting up an online store, launching your own small business has never been more accessible. Whether you’re interested in freelancing, building a side hustle, or creating a full-time venture, there are countless opportunities to explore.

The key to success is having a solid business plan that outlines your goals, startup costs, and strategies for reaching your target market. By leveraging digital marketing and understanding your audience, you can set your home business up for long-term growth and profitability.

There are plenty of reasons why starting a home business is a good business idea. One of the biggest advantages is the flexibility to set your own hours and work in a space that suits you best. This allows you to balance work with personal commitments and enjoy greater control over your daily routine. Home businesses also offer the chance to earn extra income, pursue a passion, or even build a full-time career as your business grows.

With a good business idea and a well-thought-out plan, you can start small and scale up as demand increases, minimising risk and maximising personal satisfaction. Plus, you’ll benefit from reduced commuting costs and may be eligible for tax deductions, making it a smart financial move as well.

If you’re ready to consider some ideas to help you become a business owner, you now have a choice! You can either read the list top to bottom or skip to the industry area that best suits you and your personality.

Before you dive in, remember that choosing the right business idea is crucial. The right business idea should align with your interests, skills, and current market trends, especially if you’re starting a business in a specific location.

What makes a successful business idea?

• You have the skills to create the product or service.
• You can afford the startup costs.
• You are passionate about the idea.
• You can make a profit.

Test your business idea by asking yourself key validation questions: Do you have the necessary skills? Are you passionate about it? Do you have enough time and cash? What is the growth potential? Who is your competition?

Many successful businesses begin as side hustles, allowing you to learn and test your idea with lower risk.

Jump to the ideas that will best suit if:

Caring-orientated home business ideas suit people who ultimately want to help others. These businesses can provide that feeling of fulfilment when you know our work has helped someone else.

These ideas are people-focused. Hence, personal contact with clients and customers will be central to doing good business. Some businesses will do this through online video call programs, while others call for home visits.

Pet ownership is on the rise, leading to increased demand for pet grooming and mobile pet care services. Invite pet owners to drop off their furry friends to you or offer home visits, and consider offering mobile services to provide on-site grooming at clients’ homes or at events to reach more customers. Get started with an animal care course.

Mobile services are a great way for beauty therapists and pet care providers to expand their client base. By offering on-site treatments at locations such as assisted living facilities, offices, or events, you can differentiate your offerings and meet clients where they are.

Starting a cleaning business is a profitable small business idea with low startup costs. You can offer services to both residential and commercial markets, and there are opportunities to diversify into organising services as well. Many households are willing to pay for professional home cleaning and organising services. Cleaning services are a growing opportunity for startups, especially with a focus on sustainability.

Offer parents the opportunity to place their kids in a safe, homely environment while tackling other life responsibilities. Please note that your home must meet the Australian government’s Family Daycare Requirements and Regulations to operate as a legal daycare provider, and you’ll need a Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care.

Provide clients with the guidance, education and services required to achieve overall wellbeing. A home-run naturopath business will most likely need a mix of online and in-person contact. You may need to offer home visits to perform alternative therapies, coupled with virtual check-ins and education sessions. Find naturopath training.

De-stress, de-knot and help the wellbeing of your clients. You can either set up an at-home studio or run a mobile service and perform home-visits. To start and grow a massage business, you will need the right qualifications and a strategic plan for expansion.

This business idea relies heavily on good computer skills to conduct most of your work over the phone or video chat programs. Offer the same supportive experience as an in-person counsellor, while allowing your clients to stay in the comfort of their own home. Get trained in counselling.

If your motto is ‘the devil is in the detail’, these ideas will be a great fit. These home business ideas involve ensuring the background operations run flawlessly.

Many of these ideas require you to register as a ‘sole trader’ (or freelancer) and allow you to offer your services remotely to other companies. The perk is that they can be incredibly low-cost to run.

Complete administrative tasks for other businesses or professional individuals, such as emails, scheduling meetings, and digital filing. This business requires you to be tech-confident! You can start solo and later expand into a virtual assistant agency, hiring others to offer a wider range of services.

Offer bookkeeping or accounting services to businesses or individuals from the comfort of your own home. You can start a bookkeeping business by managing client services, handling their financial records, and even building passive income streams through ongoing contracts. Once again, confidence in the relevant software required for these professions is necessary. Luckily, there are plenty of flexible online bookkeeping courses.

Start a rental business by renting out a spare room, equipment, or other assets you own. Platforms like Airbnb make it easy to get started with minimal investment, and you can explore different rental ventures depending on your resources.

Create, design, package and deliver stunning blooms to your clients from your at-home florist. This business idea requires you to have a supporting website or social media presence to connect with customers.

Help your clients design, book and organise their dream holidays by offering an online service. This business requires you to be tech-savvy in your customer communication and research skills. Check out travel & tourism courses.

Update and maintain the back and front end of business websites from your home computer! All you need is backend access to the relevant platforms to help others keep their online presence in tip-top shape. To get your first experience, you can always volunteer your time to a nonprofit or community organisation.

Are you lucky enough to have a spare room in your home and live somewhere close to popular travel destinations? Airbnb hosting can be a relatively easy way to generate income. Once you’ve decorated the room attractively, you’ll just need to keep up with communications and house cleaning. Some hosts contract a house cleaning service to make life easier.

Remember, it’s important to manage your cash flow, especially during periods of lower occupancy or economic downturns.

Sell goods online, like t-shirts or home decor, without a storefront or inventory by working with a supplier who will dispatch individual items to order. You can even use print on-demand services to add custom prints or logos before they ship. Using Amazon or eBay is common, and digital marketing skills will benefit you.

While dropshipping businesses (a business model in which the retailer does not have any goods in stock but transfers orders to a manufacturer or wholesaler) are all the rage at the moment, drop servicing is slowly starting to emerge as one of the best ways to make money online. So what’s all the fuss about?

If you’re looking for an opportunity to let your creative flair shine while making an income, a home-based creative business is just the thing for you. Creative home businesses usually involve setting up an eCommerce shop (online store) to sell your products; or creating an excellent portfolio of your work to impress potential clients. Most often, you will work as a sole trader.

Design, create, sell, package, and send handmade goods — like ceramics, jewellery, soaps or candles — all from your living room. Etsy and eBay have long been mainstays for crafty sellers. However, you may actually have more luck reaching people on Instagram, and you can now sell directly from your page.

Develop and sell digital products such as templates, e-books, music, or online courses. Selling digital products allows you to generate passive income, as you only need to create the product once and can sell it repeatedly without managing inventory or shipping. This business model offers flexibility, low startup costs, and a broad reach.

Curate and deliver subscription boxes that cater to niche markets by sourcing high-quality local products. This model allows you to build a loyal customer base and support local makers.

Design and create workable products within your speciality for other businesses. Multimedia designers work with videography, animation, social media and illustration. Explore courses in digital media.

Start your home photography studio and attract your type of client as a freelance photographer! To make this work, you’ll need a high level of skill behind the camera and some business savvy. Remember to create an eye-catching portfolio to show potential clients. You can also offer custom art and design services, such as portraits and digital art. Read more about professional photography careers here.

Make an enjoyable living as a creative copywriter and content writer. You’ll work on writing projects with in-house marketers and other small businesses, crafting impactful writing that conveys a specific message. High-quality content for marketing materials—such as websites, blogs, ads, and email campaigns—is in high demand for business promotion and brand messaging.

Freelance graphic designers often work on multiple jobs simultaneously. You will need an eye-catching portfolio to attract potential clients and a computer with all the relevant programs required to get the job done. If you’re a beginner, might want to get started with small jobs on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. High-quality marketing materials, including website graphics and ad creatives, are essential for business clients. Find a graphic design course to get started.

Help small businesses thrive by steering their social media so they can connect with the right audience. You could spend your time develop influencer campaigns, create content and report on performance. Compare your study options for social media marketing courses.

Having your own website to sell products, digital downloads, or host online courses gives you greater control and branding opportunities compared to third-party platforms. Online selling through eCommerce platforms can also be more profitable than physical stores in the early years.

Thinking about starting a business, but worried about making serious missteps? Learning from those who came before you is a great way to prepare for what’s to come. Find out what seasoned small business owners wish they’d known before starting, and make your own startup phase smoother.

If you thrive in people-facing roles and have a knack for connecting with others, these business ideas are for you. Many businesses under this category are sales-oriented and require significant interpersonal interaction with clients and customers. These businesses need a good knowledge of virtual communication methods.

As a licensed real estate agent, you can register your home-run boutique real estate agency as a sole proprietorship. Complete all the administrative duties from the comfort of your home office, while travelling to meet clients at locations as you see fit.

Help companies find suitable candidates for their vacancies as a short-term contracted recruitment consultant. Just follow the company’s brief and get researching!

Leverage your professional expertise to start a consulting business, offering advisory services in areas such as communication strategies, SEO, content marketing, sustainability, fitness, career coaching, and business strategy. Online coaching and consulting businesses allow experts to reach clients globally, making it possible to build a broad client base from anywhere.

Start an event planning business that organises corporate events, weddings, and festivals. Event planning can be a lucrative business, especially if you have strong organisational skills and creativity. Corporate events are a key segment within the broader event management industry, alongside other types of events.

Give your clients the power of fitness anytime, anywhere as an online personal trainer. Provide video call consultations, video exercise sessions, and programs all from your computer or phone. Read more about setting up an online personal training business.

Work for several businesses as a freelance sales representative. Answer customer questions online and via the phone to better help everyone understand the provided product or service.

These ideas will be a great fit if you enjoy analysing, researching, educating or guiding others in specialist areas. These businesses aim to help others via more practical skill-based means. They can offer both virtual and in-person contact, depending on what you enjoy.

Support people through their education journey from kids through to adults. Choose your speciality and get teaching. Starting a tutoring services business can be highly profitable, requires minimal startup costs, and can be conducted remotely using online learning tools. Find education courses.

Help businesses raise awareness to boost product sales by generating more web traffic. This one’s a great one to start small (you could even use a credit card for the low upfront costs) and scale up by reinvesting the profit. Digital marketing skills are essential for this type of business. Read more about affiliate marketing.

Content marketing is in high demand, yet many businesses find it hard to pull off. Help drive business’ content marketing efforts, which usually include running a blog, but may also encompass social media or email. You can work solo or bring on multiple freelance writers to head specific content creation that you oversee for your clients. Niche marketing is important in this field, as targeting a specific audience can lead to less competition and more effective results. Explore marketing short courses.

Have a knack for languages? Become a translator for companies and individuals who need help deciphering important documents or communicating with important clients in languages other than English.

Provide your expert advice in your areas of expertise to businesses small and large. Contracts can be short and long term. Personal development is a key area for online coaching and consulting services, alongside fitness, career coaching, and business strategy, and can help attract clients and create new income streams.

Aid companies (usually in the legal or medical field) clearly and accurately transcribe important videos, recordings and live events for their records and future use.

Share your thoughts online, interview interesting people in your space, and add to the conversation on a topic you care about. Earn money through fan support on Patreon. Niche marketing can help you reach a dedicated audience and stand out from the competition.

In almost every field, from professional-level skills to hobbies, people want to learn online from an expert — could that be you? If you’ve got the know-how, it’s easier than ever to turn it into an online course. Many platforms and companies are designed to help you do just that, like Skillshare or Podia.

Use market research methods, such as mystery shopping, to gather consumer insights and evaluate customer experiences for businesses. This can help companies improve their services and better understand their target market.

These online business ideas are for those already skilled or looking to become skilled in anything computers or technical. Often, technology businesses aim to provide tech support and services to other companies. Get your start in this lucrative business by becoming a freelance service provider, often providing service to multiple clients simultaneously.

Write and test code for your clients to ensure their applications and software run optimally. Knowledge of numerous coding languages is imperative. Get started with a programming course.

Combine web and graphic design to create an on-brand, user-friendly product for your client. Functionality and aesthetics are central to a successful job as a web designer. Some web designers find success working with specific WordPress templates. You can also offer web development services to help clients build and maintain their online presence. Find a web design course.

Take the hard work out of showing up in search engines for businesses of all sizes. Increase your clients’ web ranking, functionality and traffic by improving their SEO tactics.

Organise, clear and shift companies’ paper data to a usable digital source. Knowledge of numbers and digital tools are imperative for starting this service. Read more about affiliate marketing here.

Work with companies and businesses to perfect the user interface of their digital presence, whether that be in app development, websites, or software. Customer interactivity and user- satisfaction are essential for modern companies to stay ahead of the curve, and your service helps them do this.

Running your own business from home is cheap, and the startup is easy. For most home-run companies, the most important considerations are a good Wifi connection and self-discipline. They can also be fantastic for stay-at-home parents who need more flexibility than a part-time job can provide.

Most of these ideas are online businesses, so some tech knowledge is highly recommended. Here are some significant pros to starting the next chapter of your professional life from home:

Starting your own business is more achievable than ever. From choosing a business model to creating get word-of-mouth marketing and referrals, here’s how to take an idea you’re passionate about and turn it into a successful business.