We have been sharing quite a few unique home-based business opportunities in recent months. Here is a quick rundown of those we featured and where you can get more information.
Career Consultant
If you have experience in hiring, recruiting, training and interviewing, you may be able to offer career consulting services to those looking for a new job. Career consultants are often able to charge fairly high rates because the service they offer is so valuable.
One way to establish yourself online is to start a blog sharing some of your advice and answers to common questions. Appearing on podcasts is another great way to get your name out and share your wisdom with the world, while building your own business.
Travel Agent
If you love to travel, why not help others create the perfect excursion? Some at-home travel agents provide general booking assistance while other focus on specialty vacation packages like Disney or cruises.
Big vacations are the highlights of people’s lives, and helping make these dreams come true can be a really fun way to make a living.
Photo Tour Guide
Not only do people want to travel to exciting destinations, they want to capture those memories in images. This unique home-based business opportunity will have you showing the local tourists the best spots to capture those moments in time.
Take it a level further and offer your services as a destination photographer. If you live in an area where tourists come to get married, celebrate major events, or attend a fantastic annual event, you can be the local tourist-oriented photographer of choice. If you have the skills, equipment, and know-how, this is a great way to work from home on your own schedule.
Welcome Service Business
Moving to a new city is one of the most stressful events a person can experience. Welcome Service Businesses help connect new residents with the critical (and not-so-critical but oh-so-important) services they will need in a new town.
You can be the official welcoming agency for people new to your area, and help them get set up with things like healthcare, automotive services, reliable repairmen, and more. If you’re the person all your friends go to for recommendations about where to find the right such-and-such — or if you know who that person is — you’re already off to a great start.
Voice Over Artist
Do you receive compliments on your voice and articulation? There is a large demand for voice over artists of all ages, genders, ethnicities, styles, and more, and many of these folks work from home.
Gigs may include narrated books, radio advertising, video ads, spoken parts in video games, podcast intros, corporate phone messages, and countless other possibilities. You’ll need to come up with your own recording equipment, but you can find decent options on Amazon that won’t break the bank.
Recipe Development
If you’ve got a knack for cooking, coming up with interesting meals, or sniffing out the very best version of anything to eat, you might have a shot at becoming a recipe developer. These gigs are all over the place in terms of payments, but once you find a niche you like, you could be getting good money for doing something you really enjoy.
Being a recipe developer goes hand in hand with having a food blog in many cases, but not necessarily. That said, it could open some interesting work-at-home doors for you!
Home Stager
Home staging is a fun business to get into, especially if you’re into interior design or you’ve just got a good sense of what should go where to accomplish a desired effect. But the best part is, you’re no longer limited to doing in-person consultations and services.
Technology like Skype has made it possible to take your staging services and consultations online, which means you can work from anywhere in the world, serving anywhere in the world. Home stagers fill the gaps between completely bare walls and full-on interior designers, and the start-up costs are minimal. You’ll need a computer, a good camera, and ideally a smartphone that can snap and send photos to clients quickly.
Diapering Service
Most moms would like to cloth diaper to cut down on their costs, protect the environment, and keep sensitive-skinned babies comfortable. Unfortunately, it takes a lot more time and effort to use cloth diapers than disposables. This has opened an opportunity for those who know a lot about maintaining all the different types of cloth diapers and who don’t mind the dirty work.
Diapering services deliver clean diapers and pick up the dirty ones, usually weekly. If you’re willing and interested, this could be your way of making a living. If you’re at home anyway, you can keep the laundry running all day. You could also be specific about what types of cloth diapers you’d offer, e.g. only doing prefolds and covers (which can be washed in a standard cycle) or only doing all-in-one diapers (which need no “reassembly” once they’re cleaned), to make the process more efficient.
Foraging
The “farm to table” craze in fine dining has placed an interesting spotlight on foraged food — things like wild herbs, berries, and mushrooms. If you know your way around wild edibles, you could earn up to $30 per hour foraging and selling your goods to local chefs.
Franchise Owner
There are numerous home-based franchise opportunities available, ranging from website design to children’s photography to cleaning services and beyond. The great thing about franchises is that a lot of the business has already been figured out for you. You just need to decide on the best business to join, and keep it afloat using the proven systems that come with the franchise.
Some franchise opportunities that work great for the work-at-home crowd include these:
- Motiply, which would let you create and sell apps to local businesses. If you’re into tech, startups, or generally making people’s lives better, this is a neat opportunity.
- HRN, or Home Referral Network, sets you up as the go-to person to screen and refer home improvement professionals in your area. You’re paid a commission by the contractor for each referral you make, and you can do as much or as little work as you want.
Social Media Manager
Social media for business falls under the umbrella of “digital marketing,” and this is something that traditional marketers are grappling with. Online businesses and “micro-businesses” (one-person enterprises like bloggers, direct sales consultants, and coaches) also need social media, but the finer points aren’t always easy to master.
That means there’s a huge opportunity for anyone who’s interested in social media marketing. You can specialize in one platform, or offer services across several platforms. It’s a great way to have some fun, work from anywhere, and get paid.
Researching
Being an online researcher might never have occurred to you, but if you’re one of the many people who enjoys learning new things, researching could be right up your alley.
Freelance researchers make it their mission to answer questions for businesses and individuals who need to outsource their information-gathering. The pay is decent, with top researchers earning a couple thousand dollars per month.
What’s more, it comes with all the perks of working from home (setting your own schedule, avoiding a lengthy commute, etc.) with the added bonus of lifelong learning.
Stylist
Whether you’re into clothes, jewelry, or everything fashion-related, there are tons of ways you can work from home while pursuing your interest. Here are a few that I really like:
- Fashion stylist (no specific brand) with Operator or Stitch Fix
- Jewelry and accessories with Stella and Dot
- Clothing direct sales, with any number of interesting companies
What unique work at home ideas would you add to the list?
Kate says
I have a college friend who is currently located in Sweden now, she is working as a supervisor and one of her side hustle is a voice over artist. She really makes good money from it and also she loves her side hustle.
Angie Nelson says
Very cool, Kate!