There are a lot of people looking for any business idea from home. Working from home ticks a lot of boxes after all, you can work around other commitments, be your own boss, choose your own hours and avoid the daily commute. But what business idea will suit you best and where do you start? Here are a few ideas which I have had some success with over the years:
1. Ebay – Finding Miss-spelled items. There are thousands of items floating around on the giant auction site which don’t get the exposure they should. The reason is that they have been listed badly either with a wrongly spelled word or with some main keywords missing. By finding these items, and bidding on the ones which offer the biggest opportunity for profit, you can relist them with better keywords in the title, better pictures, description and a correctly spelled listing. Just by doing this in the right way you can make a profit. Take a look at my misspelled ebay auctions guide here.
2. E-bay – Finding local bargains on E-bay. There are plenty more bargains to be had on e-bay which are sold only locally and which only have a few interested parties. The reason is that they are too bulky to be sent by post, or the seller just doesn’t want a trip to the post office to weigh the item and post it. You can find bargains local to you and even re-list them with a postage fee to make a profit. Alternatively you can list them in the papers or sell them elsewhere. Take a look at this ebay local bargain finder guide.
3. E-bay – Bulk buying an item from a wholesalers and creating a single listing to sell multiple items through. This is probably one of the best ways to make money from e-bay and the one the major players use to make a living from the auction site. Although I haven’t personally done this, it is something I looked into. You need to purchase a lot of items from a wholesalers like alibaba.com and make sure you have a listing which offers an attractive price. There is a lot of competition on e-bay but if you find the right niche you can do well. Take a look at this seller who has listed a single fancy dress item and sold over 5000 of them.
4. E-bay – Drop shipping. You can also use this same method but without having to purchase stock up front. By creating a listing and selling items from a drop shipping company which you partner with, you can avoid having to hold any stock or even send anything personally. Here’s a review site of some drop shipping companies.
5. Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is a good solution for many people looking for a home run business idea. Affiliates basically promote and sell other people’s products online. They do this through a variety of methods. Affiliate marketing allows anyone to work remotely given an internet connection and a laptop from anywhere in the world. By creating content such as blogging, creating videos and placing adverts, affiliates attract people to their website or platform online and offer various products and services. There is no stock to hold and there is no need to talk to customers or sell anything over the phone. Â Learn more about affiliate marketing with this video course.
6. Adsense – Bloggers and website owners use Google’s Adsense program to earn money from their visitors clicking on their adverts. You can also use this program in conjunction with YouTube by creating videos and uploading them. When your visitors click on the adverts on your videos or articles, you make a small commission. By building up your following and sending more and more website traffic to your content, you can earn a nice semi passive income over time if you put the work in. Join Adsense here. Online marketers, bloggers and website owners often use a combination of Google’s Adsense program with affiliate marketing in order to make money from several sources.
7. Starting a blog – Blogging is a simple way to earn money from home which is monetized in either of the two ways above – affiliate marketing or Google Adsense. You can of course sell your own digital or physical products from your blog. It takes time to make money from blogging, depending on your particular business niche. There are blogs about various topics all over the internet. take a look at some of these affiliate marketing examples which show a few blogs monetized by affiliate marketing products. If you are thinking of starting a blog it’s best to choose a topic which you are passionate about so you can continue blogging about it for the long term.
8. Selling High Ticket Products – High ticket products falls under the category of affiliate marketing. The difference is that by selling a high ticket item you can make a larger commission on just one sale, than you would by selling a small value item. In addition you can sell memberships which bring in commissions every month once you have made the initial sale. By selling products which offer high ticket items and monthly memberships, you can benefit from a more sustainable model compared to the odd sale here of a low value item. Find out more about high ticket items and promoting memberships here.
9. Selling physical products – Again this falls under the affiliate marketing category. Sites like Amazon and Ebay both offer the opportunity to promote items which are sold through the sites. Your links are tracked and you are given credit for the sale. Affiliate marketing  is similar to recommending to a friend a particular restaurant. With affiliate marketing you can recommend and review products and services and receive a commission if the product sell through your affiliate link. See this site for more details.