Platonik Blog 20 best small business ideas to start at home or online with low investment

The 20 best small business ideas to start with minimal investment based upon the keyword research I’ve done. These ideas are online based as opposed to physical retail businesses that have higher running costs. These businesses are suitable as a part time business for a student, graduate, stay at home mum or someone looking for a side business to work on at the evenings or weekends. For each unique business idea we have summarised who the business suitable for, what’s involved in starting up, the opportunity analysis, a business forecast, the risks, a start up strategy and likely costs involved. Links to these 20 business ideas Start a design business selling Google Slides Themes Start a home security business Start small business from home Sell bathroom mirrors online Online business kitchen doors Start online fuel business How to start copywriting business How to start a recruitment consultancy business Start part time wedding planner business Start tattoo removal business Start a coffee business Start an energy business or website Start a photography and event business Start a guitar lesson business online Start a handyman business or website Start a grass or home improvement business Curtain business start up Start a career advice business Start an accountancy or legal practice Start a nail or beauty business Start a carpet or flooring business Start a design business selling Google Slides Themes Back in the late 90’s I recall being pitched by design agencies trying to sell me PowerPoint designs for company presentation. If you want me to rewind the clock back even further I recall getting photo studios to produce slides for carousel and projector presentations. As the world has moved towards ‘in the cloud’ Google launched their suite of business tools to compete against Microsoft Office. Google Slides, part of Google Drive, is their competitor to PowerPoint and I find myself using Slides more than PowerPoint now. There are some nice free Slide templates than are stored in the template section of Google Slides by default and they are good. But there are also designers selling paid for Slide Themes in a few online marketplaces. I would look at Qwilr and create themes for sales proposal, seo proposals, website proposal, branding proposals, copywriting proposals, business proposals, design and photography proposals etc. Graphic or web designers are suited to selling Google Slide Themes Obviously the opportunity is suited to a designer and someone with some technical knowledge on how to install themes. Starting a graphic design theme business You are going to have to produce a series of free themes; creative, simple, start up, social and business related themes. You promote these themes to offer as an incentive for users to opt-in to your mailing list. Then off the back of your mailing list you promote and sell your paid for themes. Additionally, you a offer custom and bespoke theme design for brand owners. Country: USA Keyword phrase: Google Slides Themes Organic searches per month: 40000 Keyword Difficulty : 16 Backlinks to rank in top 10: 18 Domain Rating of weakest site in top 10: 49 Competition: Graphic Rover, TutsPlus Organic Traffic Per Month: 64000 What does this research tell you? With over 40,000 searches a month and a low keyword difficulty score, this is a very attractive business opportunity for a savvy designer. Yes you are up against some strength competitors but all the websites in the top 10 search results are earning a good volume of organic search traffic to make this a good business opportunity. The biggest threat to designing and selling Google Slide Themes Google could up their free template section would probably be the biggest threat. Business Forecast and Projections Let’s take the website with the lowest number of links to their page in the top 10; 5 backlinks. That website is getting 2063 organic visits per month. A 10% opt-in rate to download your free themes would equate to 200 subscribers per month; or 2400 per year. Selling your paid for themes at $15 and getting a 10% buy rate is $300 a month. But the real money is designing custom themes for brands. You could easily charge $200 to $300 per client. 2 or 3 sales per month is another $400 to $900 per month. So anywhere between $700 to $1200 a month. Now that projection completely changes when you rank in position 1 or 2; those websites are getting 40,000 and 60,000 organic visits a month. That’s could be some serious revenue potential. Low start up costs Register a domain name: $20 WordPress theme from DryThemes: $59 GoDaddy monthly hosting; $8 per month Email Marketing Automation from GetDrip for $49 Use GetDrip for capturing subscribers Gumroad to accept payments: zero Time to create high quality content costs in time and money Time to earn high quality links. Your time: your time to design free themes and paid for themes One of the difficulties you may have is ranking a new website and earning domain authority; you will be competing against 49-72 rated domains. So perhaps consider this opportunity as an add on to your existing website that has good authority. Back To Top {module_contentholder,name="Subscriber Box - Online Small Business Ideas"} How to start a home security business on the side This is a business start up opportunity that arose from some personal experience. My parents had a company install CCTV a number of years ago and it cost them over £2000. The installation occurred after an incident happened and not before. Think about that. A few years ago CCTV was exclusively for retail stores, businesses, company offices and warehouses. But today, home-owners have CCTV installed for home security purposes. Who is suited to starting in home security? Ideally someone with IT experience such as an IT manager or someone running an IT related business; even a computer retail shop. What’s involved in starting up Start up costs for this business are low and you should start by getting friends and family interested in you installing domestic CCTV systems for them. There are no data protection requirements for domestic use and the cameras can only be pointed at the home owners’ property; so no peering into the neighbour’s garden or driveway. You would charge an installation fee or perhaps add a mark up on top of the equipment prices. I know my parents have a monthly plan that covers so many call outs should there be a problem with the equipment. The other start up opportunity is to sell CCTV equipment on a drop shipping basis. That means you set up a website that sells cctv kits and the supplier delivers the goods to the home owners address. You make less profit but you don’t need to purchase and hold stock hoping a customer will purchase. Opportunity and Competition Analysis Our method of finding opportunities is to do keyword research and identify highly searched keywords with low competition. The search phrase ‘cctv kits’ is the ideal search phrase someone starting in home security or selling home security equipment wants to rank in Google for. Country: UK Keyword phrase: cctv kits Organic searches per month: 6600 Site with fewest referring domains in the top 10: 3 Position in top 10 results: 7 Competition: Maplins, Amazon, Screwfix, Currys Site to outrank: cctvkits.co.uk Organic Traffic Per Month: 1600 What does this research tell you? There are 6600 searches a month in the UK for cctv kits. The weakest site in the top 10 search results is at position number 7 called cctvkits.co.uk and it has only 3 other websites pointing to it. Therefore, it is easy to outrank with good website content and high quality links pointing to it. Therefore, the best business model is drop shipping; you make a margin for ranking good page content and selling other manufacturers products. The biggest threat to starting a home security business You will be reliant upon suppliers working with you, an unknown entity, on a drop shipping basis. Business Forecast and Projections Assuming you could create a website that will outrank the weakest website in the top 10 search results; assume 1600 visitors a month. Assume the average order value is £300 and you strike a deal with suppliers to take 20% of the revenue; that’s £60 per order. A 2% website visitor to conversion rate is 32 orders per month. Estimated monthly revenue projection would be £1920 per month. This appears a good return on investment. But it may take you 3-6 months to design, create content and build a good backlink profile before you start to see this type of organic traffic coming from Google. Low start up costs Register a domain name: £20 E-commerce website template: £150 use a Shopify template Website customisation: £500-£1000 Shopify monthly hosting; £50 per month Get a Stripe account to accept payments: zero Create great content: creating valuable high quality content costs in time and money Get high quality links: the average cost of link is around $150 Your time: your time is required to manage orders, email marketing, create content Facebook advertising: you may need to invest in some Facebook advertising to target likely audience Estimated cost to start a drop ship security website Between £600 and £1200 Back To Top {module_contentholder,name="Subscriber Box - Online Small Business Ideas"} Start these small businesses from home The following 3 business ideas can be started by any one with a computer at home for very little upfront investment. However, you should have some experience with websites; design, developme