Home Start - 5 businesses you can run from home

During these extraordinary times, you may have decided that you quite like working from home and you want to set up a business that allows you to do more of it.

Alternatively, you may still be commuting to work and thinking it's high time you had some of that WFH action for yourself.

Whether your plan is simply a spare-time side-hustle, or a full-time career-change, we at tsoHost are all about helping you turn your entrepreneurial dreams into a thriving business. We believe we have the online products and services you need to launch your business into orbit.

In the past, we’ve offered you advice on the importance of naming your business. We’ve also discussed some of the things small business people learn once they’ve ventured into the undiscovered country of a new business venture.

The British government also offers wide-ranging official information on what to do if you’re thinking of using part of your home commercially, or for if you’ll be having customers visiting, with their running a business from home guidance.

Is it the right time to start a business?

You may be watching the news and listening to the pundits and wondering if it’s really the right time to launch a new business. Well, it could be.

Walt Disney started his company in 1929, at the depth of The Great Depression. He correctly identified that people in crisis would still need entertaining, so he made short, funny cartoons. Ninety years later, in 2019, the Walt Disney Company generated a total revenue of almost $70 billion.

Microsoft launched in 1975 during a fuel crisis and worldwide recession. The software Microsoft pioneered has played a major part in creating the success of any number of the businesses that came after it. In 2019, according to its own investor report, Microsoft delivered more than $125 billion in revenue.

In 2008, during the Credit Crunch which became the worst financial crisis the world had seen since The Great Depression, AirBnB was set up as a way to help people supplement their income by renting out spare rooms, whilst offering visitors a cheaper alternative to hotels.

Starting up a new business is always a challenge, but nothing about 2020, and the start to 2021, has changed that.

Some businesses you can set up and run from home

Here’s our top five businesses you can run from home...

Business #5 - virtual assistant

As employers are growing ever-more accustomed to having a remote workforce, the age of the virtual assistant has definitely arrived. The roles undertaken can be wide-ranging, depending on your skills and interests, just as with a traditional PA, only virtually. You could concentrate on data entry, book-keeping, processing orders and managing your employer’s appointments and inbox. Or, if you feel comfortable being more involved in the customer-facing side of a business, your virtual assistant role could include market research, lead generation, social media management and even project management.

It all depends on the type of businesses you’re working with and the roles that you’re happy fulfilling within that business. The great thing about being virtual is that you aren’t limited to working for just one employer, so you can work flexibly and explore different market sectors.

Business #4 - copywriter

Copywriters skillfully craft everything from product descriptions to advertising copy by way of blog posts and sales brochures. If you’ve written advertising copy for your own business, you understand the rationale behind all this. Essentially, a copywriter’s job is to write clearly and persuasively about a product, to help people understand what said product can do for their life and, therefore, encourage them to buy it.

You can get people to employ you as their copywriter through networking or through any of the freelance work platforms, such as Indeed, Upwork or People Per Hour.

Business #3 - online tutor

If there’s a subject on which you are particularly experienced and you ever fancy passing-on some of your knowledge, you could put together a course of videos or webinars, where you share your wisdom. There is a particularly vibrant market for people offering instruction on subjects like coding and graphic design. Check out the YouTube channels of tutors like CodeCourse or the WordPress specialists, WPCasts to see how they go about drumming up business for their tutorials and webinars.

Business #2 - crafter

The ultimate way of turning your hobby into your livelihood is through crafting. Whether it be creating cards or carving wood, working with leather or making jewellery, there is always a niche for beautiful hand-made items.

Whilst craft fairs and art markets have long been the platform for artisans to sell the wares they make at home, this market has been moving increasingly online, which has been helpful to home workers, especially over the last year.

You can also look at selling your creations on a range of online marketplaces, such as Etsy or eBay.

But we think that, if you want your business to be taken seriously, you really need your own website. We recently talked you through the reasons why you need a portfolio website and how to make it as effective and impactful as possible. And, if you are going to build your own website, we really don’t think you can do better than choosing a tsoHost WordPress hosting package.

Business #1 - reselling hosting

Speaking of hosting, reselling hosting is a fantastic business you can run from home.

Maybe you’re a web designer or a digital marketer and you want to expand the horizons of your business. Offering to sell hosting to the clients for whom you’re already doing design, development or content work, could be the way forward.

You don’t have to invest in the hardware nor, for that matter, the software of building your own server network. We’ve done that for you.

tsoHost reseller hosting plans spare you the headache of server-side housekeeping, because we handle everything from server maintenance to uptime, so you can focus on building your business.

What business are you running from home right now?

There are any number of other viable businesses we could have chosen. Kitchen tables, garages and spare bedrooms the country over are filled with people making a go of trading on the stock-market or buying and selling specialist goods through auction sites, whilst others are building apps etc.

If you’re running a successful business from home that we haven’t mentioned, feel free to find us on twitter or Facebook and share your trade secrets.