Home based online business ideas
I recently wrote an article about home based online business ideas for people who already have a job, but might be looking to produce more income in their spare time. The article is aimed at the creative type of person, perhaps those of you with artistic abilities, or who like writing. And of course, they are the sorts of home based online business ideas that you can set up once, and which then produce income passively. The more you add to them, the more financial potential there is. Like everything in life, the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out.
Five home based online business ideas
1. Online Publishing – platforms like Triond, Squidoo and Hubpages (see Links and Resources) let you write a single page or article on a subject of your choice. They place ads and you as author get a cut of the advertising revenue. Squidoo and Hubpages both permit the author to add ‘selling modules’ to advertise products from Amazon or Ebay, and you get a commission on sales.
2. Online Self Publishing – if you are a writer or an expert in a particular subject, perhaps you have already written a book. These days, you don’t have to go through the long-winded process of finding an agent and publisher, and deal with dozens of soul-destroying rejection letters. You can use a print-on-demand publisher such as Lulu. You won’t have to pay for a job lot of books to be printed and then find nobody wants to buy. You upload your book and cover artwork, do a lot of marketing and promotion yourself, and then customers buy from Lulu, who prints each copy when ordered, on demand. You get your commission for each book sold, and this is likely to be a higher percentage than you’d get from a traditional publisher.
3. Creative Selling – I touched on Amazon and Ebay in point 1. Many people set up thriving businesses on Ebay, buying goods cheaply to sell on for a profit. But if you don’t have the time, space or money to invest in buying the initial stock and packaging materials, there is another way. You can use a Squidoo or Hubpages account. Find a set of niche products on Ebay, write an interesting article (lens or hub) about it, and include relevant Ebay modules to offer other people’s Ebay products for sale. Then promote your article to get visitors. If anybody buys, you get a commission – less than you’d get for doing it on Ebay yourself, but a LOT less hassle, and a lot less risk financially.
4. Print on Demand Stores – if you’ve got some artistic talent, why not set up a home online business designing products for the many print-on-demand companies now available. You just have to sign up (free), use your artistic talent, upload you design and sell it on a whole range of products, from t-shirts to coffee mugs, to mouse mats. For more information, check out the Links and Resources section for links to some of the major print-on-demand companies out there.
5. Photo Library – if you are a budding photographer or graphic artist, you can turn your hobby into a lucrative sideline. There are now dozens of sites on the internet that provide all sorts of photos for people to use in their webpages and blogs on a royalty-free basis. This means they don’t have to pay everytime they use the picture – but are charged a nominal fee to get the picture in the first place, usually 50 cents or a dollar, though this depends on the size and resolution required. There will also be certain rules governing usage. So you can join a photo service company, such as iStockphoto and upload your own pictures for people to use, getting paid each time somebody downloads one.
There is a lot of stuff to digest here, but you can find more detail in the article I wrote over on Bizcovering, Creative Home Based Online Business Ideas, and good luck getting started on some of these new part-time income streams.
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