30 Low-Cost Business Ideas For Beginners

26. FITNESS

Do you love the idea of helping people live healthier and happier lives?

You could become a personal trainer or yoga instructor, two jobs increasingly done through digital means.

Look at Rachel Brathen, aka Yoga Girl, who launched the online wellness hub oneOeight.com in 2015, which she describes as “like a Netflix for yoga.”

These days, Rachel is a New York Times best-selling author with over 2 million Instagram followers, running a bona fide yoga empire from Aruba, where she lives with her husband and young child.

If that’s not for you, what about starting a fitness blog or creating and selling an online fitness course.

Check out Jessica Castaneda. While seven months pregnant with her first son, she decided she had to get away from the 11-hour days at a desk job she hated, most especially so she could stay home with her baby when he was born. So, she started Easy Living Today, a blog to help other moms with fitness and mental health.

She now has a second son and a successful home business, making six figures every year!

You could even launch a YouTube fitness channel, which are growing in popularity as more and more trainers post training videos and programs.

Just ask Maddie Lymburner, who became “YouTube’s premier pandemic fitness guru” by uploading her unique workout videos during lockdown. In February, she gained 100,000 subscribers, in April, over a million. She now has over 7 million subscribers and growing!

27. TRAVEL PLANNER

Freed from a years-long pandemic, the travel bug has bitten hard.

If you’re into the travel lifestyle, then now is the time to start your travel planning lifestyle business!

So how do you become a travel planner?

Start by becoming familiar with travel deal sites like Hotwire and Travelocity. Theirs are the deals you will combine into packages, which you can then sell to customers. Think about creating customized bundles for things like romantic getaways, family vacations, or corporate retreats. The only limit is your own creativity!

From there, you can sell your packages through online travel marketplaces like Expedia, TripAdvisor, and GetYourGuide.

You might even connect with a host agency, which can provide you with valuable tools and connections for getting started.

Sound complicated? Start with this comprehensive breakdown of how to become a travel planner from home.

And don’t worry; you don’t have to go it alone. There are many training courses available to boost your knowledge fast.

28. CLEANING

I know. Most people don’t like to clean.

But then again, most people don’t get paid to do it.

The fact is, a cleaning service is one of the best small business ideas out there.

It is not uncommon for someone starting out or doing a little cleaning on the side to make $20-50/hour.

Commercial cleaners, who handle factories, warehouses, and retail spaces, can make even more!

Want a real-life example? Just look at Ron Holt.

Back in the mid-2000s, Holt was a scientist working as the director of a lab in Birmingham, Alabama. He decided to quit this prestigious position to launch a cleaning company called Two Maids & A Mop.

These days, the company has 55 locations and employs over 500 people, bringing in over $10 million per year. Ron Holt, no longer a scientist, is a millionaire many times over.

So how do you get your first cleaning customers?

Start by joining local Facebook community groups and promoting your services.

Go further and join a lead generation website like HomeYou.com, which connects cleaners and customers all over the world!

Specialized cleaning businesses include:

• Power washing
• Carpet cleaning, industrial carpet cleaning
• Window cleaning
• Event cleanup
• Move in/out cleaning

Ready to roll up your sleeves? Check out the Complete Guide to starting a cleaning business.

Pro Tip: Think about targeting an underserved niche market in your community.

29. JUNK REMOVAL SERVICE

Have you ever noticed junk laying around your neighborhood?

It could be that someone is moving out and leaving furniture on the curb, it could be a construction site laden with debris or a small business with garbage stacked behind it.

If you haven’t noticed before, you will now.

It’s everywhere.

Homeowners, construction companies, small businesses, warehouses, even hospitals all produce junk. And guess what? They would often like to pay someone to take it away.

This is where you come in.

So how do you get started?

Test the waters in your area by putting a junk removal ad on free sites like Craigslist. For the more brave among us, you may even want to visit locations that seem to be producing a lot of junk in person and ask them if they need it removed.

Go further and create your junk removal website. Here, the key is to use Search Engine Optimization to move your site up the search results list. The goal is to be first when someone in your area searches “junk removal near me.”

Don’t think that junk removal can be lucrative?

Brian Scudamore begs to differ.

Back in the late-80s, Scudamore was looking for a side hustle to pick up some extra cash while going to college. So, he took his last thousand dollars out of the bank, spending $700 on a truck and $300 on promotional materials for his new junk removal business, which he called ‘The Rubbish Boys Disposal Service.’

It did so well, he soon dropped out of college to run the business full time.

These days, the business is known as 1-800-GOT-JUNK, a multinational company making $1 million in sales every day. You may have seen Scudamore featured on Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Undercover Boss.

Want to know the secrets? Check out the Ultimate Guide to starting a junk removal business.

Tip: Consider exploiting seasonal junk removal as a profitable side business. Think about construction season or when college students are moving in and out of their temporary accommodations.

30. EVENT PLANNER

Ask yourself, are you the one who plans family vacations, road trips, and nights out with friends?

Guess what? This is an in-demand professional skill.

Consider, the special events industry has grown monumentally in the past decade, with spending cresting over $500 billion worldwide annually.

Just think of some of the many events that need planning:

• Weddings
• Birthdays
• Business Conferences
• Corporate Seminars
• Product Launches
• Civic Events

The best part might be that event planning works as well part-time as it does full-time.

Part-time event planners doing a few events a year can easily make $5,000-$10,000, while full-timers can make $75,000-$200,000 or even more.

How much more?

Ask Alicia Schiro, who ditched a well-paying job in the corporate world, to start Aced It Events in 2016. Taking on only the projects that truly excited her, the company now makes over $1 million per year.

Ready to get started? Check out: How to Start an Event Planning Business from Home, and download the free guide to 10 Event Trends.

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT – THE 30 BEST SMALL BUSINESS IDEAS YOU CAN START FROM HOME!

You are now ready to start a side hustle, a lifestyle business, or even something more!

Just remember, “Choose a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life.”

Apparently, Confucius said that.

He’s not wrong, is he?

And I learned that the hard way. It took me over 15 years in the corporate world, doing something I wasn’t passionate about, to find the courage to start my own small business and then quit!

And I now look forward to spending time working every day, having a strong passion for what I do.

So, what are you waiting for? Pick your favorite small business idea and get started!

If you have any questions, add a comment below or email me. I reply to every comment and every single email!

And if you know someone thinking about starting a small business that might need a little help, please do not hesitate to share this with them!