Do you have a specific skill set or talent and want to work from home? Within this article, you can discover the possibility of starting your own business in the comfort of your own home, whilst sharing your skill and passion with your clients.
Transitioning from an already successful side hustle to running a home-based business full-time ensures a fantastic degree of flexibility, and can often be the easiest way to becoming an entrepreneur.
Coaching and consultancy
If you’ve built up a unique skill set and plenty of valuable professional experience, setting up a coaching or consultancy business could be one of your best routes into becoming a home-based entrepreneur.
The world is full of businesses and individuals looking to take advantage of knowledge and skills that they don’t have themselves. If you take a minute to think of the things you’re good at, odds are there’ll be at least one skill or specialism that you’ll be able to monetise.
From language coaching to business management consultancy to coaching people to smash tough interviews, being a coach or consultant has minimal start-up costs and can mark the start of a hugely successful business.
Virtual Assistant
If you’ve got a great mind for organisation, detail and efficiency, then setting up as a virtual assistant could be another great business idea for you to pursue.
Virtual assistants help business owners and high-ranking executives handle their responsibilities by shouldering some of their administrative tasks. Though this kind of work was once strictly in-person, the dawn of online remote working has allowed many people to position themselves as home-based, self-employed virtual assistants.
To break into this business, choose a specific niche and field of expertise to set your offering apart, then begin networking (online and in person) with the kinds of companies and professionals who may require these services.
Online accountant
In a similar vein as being a virtual assistant, establishing yourself as an online accountant can also be a great way to start a business that allows you to work completely from home.
The world is full of people who need help with things like filing tax returns, preparing budget reports and financial statements, and managing a business’s spending. If you’re great at crunching numbers in a professional context, then this could be the ideal way for you to get started as a home-based entrepreneur.
Unlike a virtual assistant, online accountants generally need some formal qualifications to get their business off the ground. If you’re not already qualified through the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), it’s important to include this in your plans for starting a business.
Personal trainer
If you’ve always kept in shape and have a passion for fitness and wellbeing, then starting a business as a personal trainer is another great option if you’re looking to go self-employed and run a business from home.
You could even create your own studio from scratch and run classes from your home. It could be useful to consider ease of payment for your clients, perhaps you could modernise this and accept card payments from clients.
To become a personal trainer, you’ll need to get qualified with a qualification managed by the UK’s sports activity professional body, the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA).
This will not only instil your audience with a sense of trust from your first contact with them but will often be a minimum requirement for agencies and gyms that you may want to leverage to promote your services.
Personal training can be a great way to feed your passion for fitness, letting you engage in work such as at-home consultations, creating personalised exercise regimens, and nutrition plans. Setting up as a personal trainer also makes it easy to start off small by working with your friends and family and gradually scaling up your operation.
Online tutor
Whether your speciality is maths, history, science, or anything else, working as a self-employed tutor can be a hugely fulfilling way to become an entrepreneur.
Students of all levels will often need a little extra help to hit their targets, and many will be willing to pay for it.
As a tutor, you’ll need to build up some demonstrable experience of teaching others in your subject, which you can do through volunteering in an educational context, tutoring your friends and family, or even offering those services for free through social media groups and forums with a focus on your area of expertise.
From there, you can list your tutoring services on a simple website, and promote yourself by networking through local schools, adult education centres, and online education communities.
Translation services
Whether you’ve grown up speaking more than one language or learned them later in life, being fluent in several languages can give you a great path to starting a business from home.
Any business or organisation that operates in several different countries will need its content translated accurately into other languages. When this need arises, it’s always preferable to have someone who understands the nuances and colloquialisms of different languages in a way that online translation tools simply don’t.
Though qualifications can help with setting up an online translation service, it’s certainly not a requirement. As long as you can prove proficiency in your relevant languages, you’ll be ready to start networking with brands and individuals who may need your services.
Freelance writing
If you have a way with words and a natural curiosity for a variety of different subjects, then freelance writing can be another great way to start a business from home.
Whether it’s as a freelance journalist, copywriter, ghostwriter, or a combination of these, working as a freelance writer is a varied and interesting way to go self-employed and start enjoying the freedom of being a solo entrepreneur.
All you’ll need to get started is a knack for crafting written content, a simple website to serve as your portfolio, and the people skills to develop positive relationships with clients.
One of the best things about freelance writing is that it requires practically no start-up costs, and you can usually start your freelance writing business with nothing more than a laptop and a reliable broadband connection.
Graphic designer
Digital marketing agencies, web design firms, and countless other types of businesses have a need for high-quality visual assets to promote their services and maintain a strong, consistent brand.
If you have experience with the Adobe Creative Suite or other major graphic design software, then setting out as a graphic designer could be the ideal route into starting your own business from home.
Even if you don’t have this, however, starting a business as a freelance graphic designer doesn’t require any formal qualifications.
Potential clients will be much more interested in seeing what you can do rather than any kind of certificate or accolade. Create some quality, original graphics, showcase them in a portfolio, and you’ll be ready to start reaching out to potential clients.
Web designer
Having an aesthetic and functional website has been a basic requirement for all businesses for decades now.
As a web designer, you can have a role in helping businesses perfect their visual storefront and connect with their audience in just the right way.
Like working as a freelance writer or a graphic designer, finding clients as a web designer is more dependent on the previous work and skills you can showcase more than any formal qualifications.
Having said that, it’s still helpful to approach this business with some familiarity with web development languages like HTML and Javascript, and certain design principles that will allow you to use a CMS and other tools to their full potential
Final Thoughts
Fully-remote jobs can sometimes be hard to find, so why not start your own remote business? Hopefully, this article has inspired you to create your own venture using your pre-existing skills, or possibly you’re keen to learn a new skill from the ground up!