12 Profitable Home Businesses

Start a Home Business Using Skills You Already Have

Are you interested in starting a home business and making money working from home? Millions of people are now working from home and making their dream a reality. And you can too!

There are many ways you can work from home. And the Internet opened up many new opportunities to work from home.

But when you're thinking about working from home, the first question you will probably ask yourself is, what work can I do from home?

One of the best ways to get work from home is by providing a service people need. You can turn some of the skills you already have (or are willing to learn) into a money-making home business. And you can do it anywhere from the convenience of your computer.

When providing freelance services working from home, you are typically self-employed and have the freedom to choose the projects, jobs, or gigs you work on and the people and businesses you work for. You’ll be an independent contractor for a variety of people and businesses instead of working as an employee for a single company.

I'll give you ideas here of some of the most profitable services you can provide from home.

Evaluate Your Skills and Experience

Everyone has some skills they can use to make money working from home. Whether you realize it or not, you already have some skills, experience, and knowledge that can help you make money from home.

Start by thinking about the skills and experience you already have and which of those skills you can use to make money from home. When you choose a business or work based on your skills, it will be much easier to be successful.

I will give you many ideas here of how you can use your skills to start a successful home business.

Consider any experience, including jobs, paid work, volunteer work, and tasks you perform at home. Look at your hobbies as well. Skills and hobbies you can turn into a business include computer skills, typing, writing, tutoring, cleaning, organizing, graphic design, taking care of children, crafts, and cooking. And there are many others.

• A good place to start getting ideas for some home businesses that might work for you is by making a list of your work experiences, skills, and knowledge.
• List what you can do, what you like to do, and what you want to do.
• Write down any training you have.
• List the types of industries and businesses you’ve worked for. You can use your knowledge of a specific industry to start a business. For example, if you have worked for a real estate company in the past, you can become a real estate VA.
• Include hobbies and interests. Can you provide a service for people with your hobby? Teach them something? Sell them something they need through eBay, Etsy, Amazon, or your own website?
• List all the tasks you’re performing at your current job or at previous jobs. Can you do some of those tasks for other people?
• But even if you have never worked a regular job, you have skills. Being a mom or dad helped you develop your people, communication, and management skills. List all the tasks you’re performing at home. Can you do some of those tasks for other people? Planning dinner parties or birthday parties requires organizational skills. If you can fix computers, cell phones, household appliances, cars, or others, you can be in high demand. Write down everything you do as a mom or dad.

Do you have administrative and computer skills?

Are you using a computer, laptop, tablet, cell phone or the Internet to email friends or update your Facebook page?  Skills like typing, word processing, using the Internet, a computer, and a cell phone can come in handy in a home business.

Here are some ideas of services you can offer to make money from home.

• If you have good typing and word processing skills, you may consider offering word processing or data entry services or doing paid surveys. But the other services I'm mentioning here are much more profitable.
• If you have good English and grammar skills, you can offer transcription, writing, proofreading, or services.
• People with computer and organizational skills can offer VA services.
• If you have creative skills, consider providing graphic design and web design.
• To make quick, easy money, you take online surveys. Here are some of the best survey sites to get you started. Read more details about paid surveys here.

1 – Virtual assistant services

Virtual assisting is a lucrative business and virtual assistants are in more demand today than ever.

If you’re looking for a way to make money from home, supplement your income or even quit your 9-to-5 job and have the freedom to work anywhere you want, becoming a virtual assistant may be a great option for you.

The services you can offer as a VA are unlimited.  If you have computer skills or use the Internet, you can offer virtual assistant services.

The more skills you have the more business you can get and the more money you can make.

Maybe you acquired skills through a job or from specialized training. And the more skills you have, the more services you can offer.

Some of the great-paying tasks some VAs offer include social media management. You can offer one or more social media services: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, or just specialize in one.

For example, you could manage people’s Pinterest accounts. Of course, if you want to set up or manage other people's Pinterest accounts, you have to show that you know what you're doing by successfully run your own account first.

Income: Pay ranges from $10 to $100 per hour and up depending on the services you offer.

Recommended reading:

• Gina's course “Fully Booked VA” can help you to become a successful virtual assistant. The course is jam-packed with great information and inside knowledge to help you start and build a virtual assistant business. Click here to find out how to get started as a virtual assistant.
• Top 6 Tools for Virtual Assistants

2 – Transcription Services

You can get a lot of information on this site about transcription.

If you're interested in working from home as a transcriptionist, my FREE General Transcription Mini-Course will answer a lot of your questions and tell you if transcription is the right work from home choice for you.

Janet Shaughnessy from Transcribe Anywhere, mentions the following about the pay for general and legal transcription (Janet has a multi-media transcription course that is excellent!)

“The average median annual income for a general transcriptionist is currently $45,000. Legal transcriptionists can earn around $60,000. Of course, if you start your own business and hire subcontractors while working as a project manager yourself, your income can grow well beyond these figures.”

Recommended reading:

• FREE General Transcription Mini-Course
• 7 Ways to Learn General Transcription and Become a General Transcriptionist Working from Home.

3 – Freelance Writing Services

There is a tremendous demand for writing and editing services. There are many writing opportunities online. If you have the patience to build your writing business, you can make quite a good living at it.

The types of writing services you can provide range from article writing, writing blog posts, writing web content, copywriting, writing books, ghostwriting, resume writing, technical writing, and more. 

For instance, the best magazine writers can earn $2,000 or more per article, but most online writers make significantly less than that.

Resources for writers:

• Article, 8 Proven Ways to Get Your First Freelance Writing Gig.
• FREE writing workshop by Holly Johnson, “How to Build a Six-Figure Writing Career.”
• AWAI – American Writers & Artists, Inc. Learn how to begin writing for money and find freelance writing jobs with American Writers & Artists Inc.  AWAI has a variety of training programs for writers, from copywriting courses to training sessions and programs for travel writing, visual communication skills, and more. Their aim is to help writers expand their skills and their abilities to make money with freelance jobs that fit their talents.
• The Freelance Writers Den. The Freelance Writers Den is the premier online resource for writers looking to launch and build lucrative freelance writing careers. They provide courses, bootcamps, coaching, live events, recordings, templates, forums, and more for writers to help you grow your writing income.

4 – Proofreading

Freelance proofreading is a great business for people who have excellent grammar skills.

Online proofreading is in high demand and is growing rapidly as the demand for online content continues to grow.

Many freelance proofreading jobs allow you to work from home and have very flexible hours. You can choose to work full-time or part-time. Proofreading offers a variety of work.

To get online proofreading jobs you need to be proficient in using the special symbols of proofreading. To get work and be competitive in this field, it will help to take a good course.

Pay:  Proofreading can provide a great income.

ZipRecruiter mentions that the average income of a freelance editor is $51,417/year.

To learn more about proofreading work from home, how to become a proofreader, and what’s involved, check out this FREE Introductory workshop for proofreaders by Caitlin Pyle.

• FREE Proofreading Intro Workshop.
• Skills You Need to Work from Home as a Proofreader
• What Do Proofreaders Actually Do?

5 – Work from Home as a Voice Artist

Voice-over jobs can be a very lucrative career. Voice-over artists use their voice in radio, television, film, theater, and a variety of presentations. They do voiceovers for television and radio commercials and narrate documentaries. They provide voices for animated characters in television programs, feature films, animated films, cartoons, video games, YouTube videos, web videos, audiobooks, and more.

The skills required to do voice-over jobs will vary depending on the type of voice-over project you’re working on.

Julie Eikchoff is doing voice-over work from home and also teaches people how to work from home doing voice-overs. If you are interested in voice acting, voice-over jobs, or a voice-acting career, check out This free course ly Eickhoff, Intro to Voice Overs to find answers to any questions you may have about becoming a voice-over artist.

The free course, Intro to Voice Overs will show you what’s involved in becoming a voice artist. It covers, on a basic level, what equipment you’ll need (which is surprisingly inexpensive!), your recording space in your home, how voice artists get paid and lots more. The goal of the free course is to give students enough information for them to know if this is a path they want to go down.

6 – Create and Sell Printables

Turn your creativity into profit and build a successful business with printables and digital downloads.

Creating and selling printables offer a creative and lucrative way to make money from home. The market for digital products is huge and filled with opportunities.

Printables are digital files that users can download, print, and use for various purposes. They encompass a wide range of products, from art prints and planners to educational materials and templates.

One of the significant advantages of selling printables and digital downloads is the potential for passive income. Once you create your products and set up your online store, you can earn money even while you sleep. Customers can purchase and download your products at any time, making it a source of passive income.

Want to learn more about making money with printables?

Check out this free workshop.

7 – Graphic Design

If you have graphics skills, you can become a graphic designer or web designer.

Graphic artists are in huge demand. Bloggers constantly need images for their blogs and are always looking for good graphic artists.

A graphic design business provides a lot of flexibility. You can provide graphic design services from just about anywhere. If you have graphic design skills or an eye for design, you can work as a graphic designer with no formal training.

Graphic artists can design images for websites, social media, newsletters, and advertisements, and create animated images and videos.

One of the most in-demand graphic services today is designing social media images such as designing Pinterest pins, Instagram images, and more. Businesses only need one logo, but they need tons of social media images to promote their business or website.

To show off your design skills, you should set up a website and build a portfolio. You can get hosting through Bluehost for as little as $3.99 a month.

Upwork, 99designs, and Fiverr are just some of the places where you can find graphic design work. I’ve also seen some graphic design jobs posted on Creative Hotlist.

Recommended reading and resources

• 10 Pinterest Pin Design Tips to Boost Your Blog Traffic.
• Photoshop is the most powerful but more complex program. But for creating social media images, it’s so much easier for beginners to use Canva or PicMonkey.
• Do you want a website but don’t know how to get started? Read my article, How to Set up a Money-Making blog.

8 – Web Design

Web design is in high demand and being a web designer provides a great way to work from home. If you have design skills and like creative work, a web design business can be a fun business with good income potential if you know how to set yourself apart from your competitors.

You don't need a formal degree but you may want to take some classes to improve your knowledge in some areas.

WordPress is the most popular website platform to build sites and it's free so you don't need to buy expensive software to get started as a web designer.

You need to have your own website and show off samples of sites you've created. You will need a graphic design program to design, resize, and revise images you'll put on the sites you design.

There is a lot of potential to sell additional services your web design clients needs, including graphic design, search engine optimization, content marketing, editing, video creation and more. You could even specialize in one of those areas.

The challenge of providing web design services is that the web, software and technology always changes. People see the newest features and want them. You’ll need to stay current on new trends and technologies. And you constantly have to update your skills.

I was a web designer for 10+ years. I enjoyed the creative part of web design but I stopped working with new clients because the learning curve never ends and I got tired of keeping up with it.

Web design resources

• How to Become a No-Coding Web Designer.
• Ultimate Web Designer and Web Developer Course for 2021.
• How to Set up a Money-Making blog.

9 – Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping can be quite lucrative. If you enjoy working with numbers, you may be interested in starting your own bookkeeping business from your home.

Small businesses will often hire an independent accountant who is responsible for paying bills, keeping track of all income, payroll, and file quarterly taxes.

You will need a computer and accounting software. Once you get the amount of clients you want, you won’t need to keep advertising.  You’ll most likely continue to pick up all the clients you need through word of mouth.

This is a business that, once off the ground, will grow all by itself. As long as you’re good at what you do, you’ll be set for as long as you want.

Bookkeeping Resources

Free bookkeeping workshop. Take this free bookkeeping workshop to learn how to start your own digital bookkeeping business and find out if digital bookkeeping is the right business for you.

Quickbooks is the favorite software of accountants.

FreshBooks is a very popular invoicing and accounting software used by over 10 million small businesses and can do just about anything you need. You can automate invoices, track time, and organize expenses. It’s cloud-based, so customers can access it from anywhere. Pricing ranges from $15-50 per month. There is a free trial period available for all regular plans. Check out FreshBooks here.

Find out the difference:  FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks.

10 – Coaching Business

Coaching is a hot business that you can easily run from home. You can coach in just about anything. Just think about how you can help people while making money doing so.

For example, life coaches help their clients achieve more and have happier lives. Academic coaches work on strategies to help kids succeed.  Writing coaches help people write books. Dating coaches help clients find love. Sports coaches help people improve their sports skills. Business coaches assist with business planning and development.

When searching for “coaching jobs”, SimplyHired pulled up many job openings for coaches, including remote emotional wellness coach, employment coach, ILS coach, life coach specialist, success coach, remote sobriety coach, diabetes telehealth coach, remote success coach, work-from-home behavior health coach and more.

The Knight School, Sugar Land, TX, recruits after-school-program coaches and pays $17/hour to teach kids chess. At Compass, life coaches work with clients who have disabilities with plans and processes so their goals are within reach.

Income: Coaches can earn up to $500 per hour.

11 – Teaching

Many people have become quite successful at working from home by teaching others something they are proficient in.

For example,  if you have musical skills, you can teach students how to play the piano, play the guitar, and give voice or singing lessons from your home.

Many people seek private art lessons in different arts such as sculpting, pottery, and ceramics.

If you have a good-sized space, you can hold dance classes or exercise classes. Or you can teach one student at a time.

The possibilities are endless. You can use anything that you are proficient in as an avenue to work from home.

Look at what you do well and find out what is in demand in your area.

12 – Tutoring

You do not need to have a teaching degree or a certification to become a tutor. But you need to be knowledgeable about your subject, enthusiastic, empathetic, and friendly.

Tutoring offers great online jobs for many people, including moms, dads, entrepreneurs, college students, teachers, self-employed persons, and home-schoolers.

It can be a great work-from-home job if you have a great aptitude for math; or the perfect grasp of grammar, spelling, and language; or if you can explain things in a way that people understand them easily.  If you possess any of these qualities, you definitely should check out tutoring.

Parents will readily call for a tutor for help if their child needs help in a subject. Tutors can zero in on specific skills that a student has trouble with, build concrete skills, and help students with what they need to keep up with schoolwork.

You choose the subject you want to teach and the age groups of students you’ll take on. You determine your availability, the people you want to work with, and your hourly rate.

Tutors make quite a decent hourly wage. You may want to check to see what tutors are making in your area.

Tutoring Jobs with Cambly – While you chat with students, they automatically track the time you tutor. They pay $0.17 USD per minute ($10.20/hour), and you get paid every Monday via Paypal. You make your own hours. Work as little or as much as you want. You can log online whenever you have a free moment and start taking calls within minutes.

More Jobs You Can Do

Here are some jobs you can do if you're handy: delivery services, laundry services, closet organizing, house cleaning, office cleaning, planting flowers, handyman services, hauling, moving/packing, painting, yard work/cleanup/removal, grass cutting, home improvement, minor home repairs, furniture assembly, TV installation and a much more.

As you can see there are plenty of ways to use your skills to make money from home.

To find a wide variety of services you can offer, check out Task Rabbit to find gigs in your local area that you can apply for.

You Can Do It!

After listing all your skills, experience, and likes, go through the list and write down what type of businesses need your skills and experience.

You may not have all the skills needed for the home business you want to start, but if you’re willing to take some additional training or classes, you will open up additional opportunities.

Ideally, you want to find work that you like. But to build a successful business, you also want to be sure that there is a market for your services or products. You want to provide services or products that people need and want to pay for.

Once you have found one or more home business ideas that appeal to you, research the market for that business, talk to people who run the same type of business, buy a couple of books or courses,  and then go for it!

Want more ideas about services you can offer? Check my article, Best Freelance Job Sites for Beginners. In addition to getting ideas of what services people need, it will tell you which sites are best to find freelance jobs.

• FREE mini-course, Intro to Voice Overs.
• FREE Introductory workshop for proofreaders by Caitlin Pyle.
• FREE writing workshop by Holly Johnson, How to Build a Six-Figure Writing Career.
• Recommended writing course: Earn More Writing by Holly Johnson.
• FREE General Transcription Mini-Course. Free Legal Transcription Mini Course.
• Janet Shaughnessy from Transcribe Anywhere has an excellent multi-media transcription course.
• Free bookkeeping workshop.
• Free ebook, Affiliate Marketing Tips for Bloggers by Michelle.
• FREE Scoping Intro Course by Linda Evenson.
• Gina's course “Fully Booked VA” can help you to become a successful virtual assistant.