Small Business ideas for Men and Women at Home

December 27, 2019 Technasite

It is not an easy job to become a successful entrepreneur and a good business idea is very important. It is even harder to start a side-business and work on it from home part-time. There are a lot of people who starts a business and work on it part-time while working on their full-time job. Others may choose to quit their full-time job and focus on their business full-time. No matter which one you are, a good business idea is crucial for the success of your business. In this article, we will discuss some small business ideas for men and women at home; these ideas can be done both full-time and part-time and it can be done at home with ease.

Blogging

Making money through writing about topics that you care about is amazing, isn’t it? Many people have their own personal blogs, but they do not know how to monetize it properly, so they are unable to earn money from it. There are multiple methods that you can use to monetize your blog such as placing banner advertisements, affiliate marketing and sponsored reviews. The most common method is probably simply placing Google Adsense on your blog but with the rise of adblockers, this method has become relatively ineffective. Most people use adblocker these days and they are good in what they do so it is very difficult to earn money through this method.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is also another common method; this is when you advertise other companies’ products and services on your blog with an affiliate link. When someone clicks on the link and purchases something, you get commission. This is a much more effective method because you can embed the links in the content of your article and links do not get blocked by adblockers. Reviewing products can be a very powerful tool for affiliate marketing. If you review products or services on your blog, you should include an affiliate link there because people who read your reviews may end up purchasing the product and if they do it via your affiliate link, you will get paid.

Using affiliate marketing, some good small business ideas for women can be setting up a makeup blog and promote makeup or skincare products. On the other hand, some good small business ideas for men can be making a gaming blog and promoting games or even writing about gambling tips and promoting online betting websites with their affiliate links.

How to create your own blog

At first, you may not know what you want to write about but it is important to choose a topic that you know a lot about and have products or services that you can advertise on your website. For example, you may create a blog teaching woman how to effectively put makeup on or where to buy cheap but legitimate makeup products. This is a good small business idea for women because you can do this part-time on top of your full-time job if you want.

The niche should be something that you are interested in, otherwise you will have trouble writing topics on a regular basis. A lot of people earn a living by turning their hobby into a full time job. I know so many bloggers who didn’t intend to make money through their blog initially but then realised the potential of their blog and end up earning $100,000+ from it. After all, a small business idea can end up turning into a big business idea.

Creating a blog is very easy and it requires no programming knowledge. Firstly, you will need to get a web hosting account from a reliable web host like SiteGround. It is important to take a look at the features that the hosting account will give you. When you are just starting up your blog, you won’t need an expensive hosting plan. Once you have a hosting plan, you will need to get a domain name. Your web host will most likely offer domain names as well so you may decide to purchase it from them. Alternatively, you can use a reliable domain registrar like NameCheap. When you have both a hosting and domain, you will need a blogging software like WordPress. Some hosting plans offers a 1-click installer like Softaculous which allows you to install your blogging software with ease.

Blogging ideas

To summarise, here a list of small business ideas for men:

Gaming blog: You can review games, share your gaming tips or gaming experience. There are many gaming affiliate programs like GameFly.
Sports blog: You can write about sports like Football, Rugby, Badminton and review sports equipment.
Gambling blog: Gambling is popular for men and if you share gambling tips, review bookies, share special offers with your affiliate links, this may convert well.

Here are the small business ideas for women:

Beauty and Makeup blog: You can share your tips on makeup and beauty. Include affiliate links to products that you use and share them with your audience.
Travel blog: You can share your own travelling experience and recommend places to go to for vacation. There are multiple travel related affiliate programs like Booking.com and Trip Advisor. This may be a good idea for men too.
Cooking blog: Teach people how to cook and share your recipes with them. There are many cooking related affiliate programs; some which you can find on affiliate networks like Commission Junction and Share A Sale.

Teaching online or Vlogging

Similar to blogging, vlogging is another good small business idea for men and women. You may not be the type of person that likes writing articles; in that case you can create videos related to your niche and earning money from that. If you use YouTube as your vlogging platform, you can use the YouTube Partner Program to earn money via Google Adsense. Just like blogging, this method has been less effective due to adblockers. Therefore, it may be a better idea to advertise affiliate products in your video or do sponsored reviews.

If you are teaching people something via your Vlog, you can also offer premium courses which require a payment to view. You can use Platforms like Udemy to sell your online courses and it is often a good idea to have both free and paid videos. The free videos will be used to build up loyal subscribers and then once you have a certain number of traffic, you can then set up paid videos to earn extra money. Starting a blog or vlog is quite easy and it is a very good micro business to start. You do not need a lot of funding and you can do this part time; once you earn enough, you can then do it full-time if you prefer this over your full-time job.

Here are some examples of niches that you can start your blog/vlog on:

Make-up
Fashion
Travelling
Parenting
Sewing
Health
Lifestyle
Home Décor

Teaching online or vlogging is a very good small business idea for both men and women as you can do it during your free time and there is very little maintenance required.

Become a freelancer

Another very good small business idea for men and women is becoming a freelancer. Whether you are a stay-at-home mum or simply just want a bit of extra income, freelancing is a very good way to start a side-business. Firstly, you will need to ask yourself, what skills do you have. It might be writing, graphics design, proofreading, web design or even sales and marketing. There are many companies out there who want to outsource their work temporarily and find freelancers for this. The biggest advantage with being a freelancer is that you can work 10 hours per month or 40 hours per week. You are your own boss so you can choose your own working hours.

There are many platforms out there where you can find freelance work and you do not need any connections to be able to find work. Here are some platforms you can use:

There are many more freelancer marketplaces out there and here are just a few. Freelancing isn’t for everyone as it is a very competitive market because there are people from third-world countries who can offer services for one-tenth the price of someone in the United States or United Kingdom, so you need to be able to offer good quality work to compete with them. You may like writing, but you may not want to dedicate your time to a blog; in that case being a freelancer is great because you can work whenever you want. The downside to running a blog is that you need to constantly update it and it requires a lot of dedication to constantly write new content.

Some small business ideas for women and of course men as well:

Graphics design
Writing
Proofreading

Dropshipping

Just in case that you never heard of dropshipping before, dropshipping is where you open an eCommerce website and sell products without actually managing the stock. When someone purchases an item from you, you would order from another retailer or wholesale business and they will ship the product to the client. This is another micro business idea that you can start during your free time; due not needing to manage the stock yourself, your time commitment to the project will be reduced massively. Nowadays, it is very affordable to start an online eCommerce store using software like Shopify or WooCommerce.

You should sell something that you know about. You may consider yourself a makeup expert and you may want to sell products that you use yourself. If you like the products, other people may like it too. Another good strategy is to sell products that already have a good reputation within the industry; you do not want to sell new products that no one knows about.

When running a dropshipping business, you need to get products for cheap in order to sell at a competitive price. If you sell above the market price, no one will buy from you. Here are some dropshipping suppliers:

AliExpress
SaleHoo
Wholesale2B
Dropship Direct

There are many more wholesale suppliers and here are just four of them. We are not by any means recommending any of these suppliers and the important thing is to do your research before buying from them. We take no responsibility for any losses that you incur due any of the links on this page.

Here are some dropshipping related small business ideas for women:

Female accessories like necklaces, handbags or purses
Makeup and skincare related products
Shoes or clothing

Here are some dropshipping related small business ideas for men:

Technology related accessories like phone cases, gaming keyboard our mouse
Technology products like gaming computers
Sports equipment

Social Media Marketing

You may have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media like Twitter, Instagram or Facebook but you may not have earnt a single penny from it. Just like a blog, you can earn money from your social media accounts. Even if you don’t have many followers, you can start sharing useful content to gain new followers. This is another good micro business because you can create social media accounts dedicated to your interests and grow it while sharing things you care about. For example, this Instagram account is someone sharing his weight loss journey and he has 171 thousand followers at the time this article was written. Once you have built a certain number of followers, you can share affiliate links or advertise branded products. You can even sell your own merchandise on your social media accounts.

Some large social media influencers can charge $1000+ for a sponsored post as long as they have good engagement rates. If you go for this option, make sure that you optimize your account for high engagement rate rather than high number of followers but if you have both then that is perfect.

The biggest challenge with this method is acquiring your followers. You may often see a lot of social media pages with millions of likes but they often started early or have something unique to offer. Building a social media page requires dedication and patience.

Sell on Amazon

Are you someone who likes shopping? You can find cheap products and resell them on amazon for a higher price. By using Amazon’s Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) program, you can get Amazon to deal with all the packing and shipping for just a small fee. This makes it very similar to dropshipping because you don’t need to do the shipping yourself. However, you will need to purchase the products beforehand and deliver it to amazon so they can manage the shipping for you when there is an order. Due to this, there is a much bigger upfront cost because you need to purchase all the items beforehand. With Dropshipping, you do not need to purchase any stock until you get an order which reduces your upfront cost.

When selling on Amazon, you need to decide whether you want to sell low competition or high competition products. Low competition products will most likely have less buyers, but you can price it higher since there are less sellers in the market. With high competition products, you might still be able to compete with the other buyers if your product is slightly cheaper than your competitors. Make sure you do your product research before you start selling in Amazon. For example, it is important to research the best timing for selling certain products. You don’t want to be selling T-shirts in the Winter, right?

Become a Writer

High quality articles are very important for websites because the usefulness of the information is what differentiates a useful website to a useless website. Its very easy to create a website these days but its very difficult to create a useful website that can attract new readers and make existing readers come back to your website. Therefore, a lot of big websites or blogs pay writers for their contributions if they decide to publish your work. Some would pay $100 for your work, while others would pay $1000+. Before you think that this is easy money, you should also consider the fact that they will only pay for high quality work and you will be required to spend countless hours refining your work before you can submit something that will get accepted.

The good thing about this is there are many websites that pay for articles, ranging from fashion and beauty blogs to gaming blogs. No matter what topic you want to write about, you will be able to find a website that will accept submissions for that topic. Here are some websites that pay writers for their contributions:

ListVerse – $100 per accepted List
Early American Life
VQR
AMC Outdoors Magazine

Teaching

Knowledge sharing can also be profitable. There are many people who earns a living from home by teaching online. There are multiple ways that you can do this:

Selling an eBook: You can teach in the form of writing using an ebook. The advantage with this is that you only need to write the ebook once and then you can sell multiple copies of it so it becomes a passive income for you.

Video Course: You can create an online course in the form a video. Similar to selling an ebook, you only need to create the video once and then you can offer it to unlimited people and earn passive income from it. You may also be required to provide support to your students and answer any questions they may have but the time commitment for that is normally not too high. There are many platforms where you can sell the course like Udemy.

Online Tutoring: You can also offer one to one tutoring online via video call using instant messaging software like Skype and charge your students on an hourly basis. Due to the fact that this is a guide for small business ideas for men and women at home, we will not mention face-to-face tutoring but that is another thing you can do.

Here are some small business ideas for women:

Teach Yoga
Soap Making
Teach sewing

Here are some small business ideas for men:

Teach computer building

Virtual Assistant

It would be cool to be able to work at home full-time, wouldn’t it? There is no need to commute during rush hour and you can wake up at 8:30am and start work at 9:00am. Being a virtual assistant will have all these benefits. There are many companies who want to hire remote virtual assistants for certain tasks to reduce costs. This may be tasks like replying to emails, providing customer support or even in some case creative work like graphics design. As a virtual assistant, you will most likely only work for one client and the job is likely to be longer term than freelance work.

Even though we mentioned many small business ideas for women, some of those ideas for also suitable for men as well. Sometimes it just about doing something that you like and you may end up making enough to quit your full time job. However, it requires dedication. Hard work will pay off.

Have you tried any of these business ideas? Comment below and let us know your thoughts.