If could start own home-based business, what would it be?

[ZandraJoi]

I tried starting a business many years ago making lotion balms & lipglosses. I did sell quite a few at craft fairs & at health stores. If I had the financial help & assistance, it’d be nice to start this up again. What would you do? Is it something you already enjoy doing? How long have you been doing it?

 

[ValleyGal]

I think making crafts all year and selling them at Christmas markets would be fun, but certainly not as a business that would sustain me. I used to make aromatherapy blends for lotions, bath bombs, body butter, body sugars and massage oils. I had my own spa and did massages and foot care. Best home-based business ever! No stress.

 

[Ash]

I always wanted to get into the dropshipping business because it's quite an easy thing to set up, run, and expand if you enter the right market. Unfortunately, I never really got into it because, by the time I wanted to, it would be too hard to start up since there are just so many competitors.

 

[tango]

I tried starting a business many years ago making lotion balms & lipglosses. I did sell quite a few at craft fairs & at health stores. If I had the financial help & assistance, it’d be nice to start this up again. What would you do? Is it something you already enjoy doing? How long have you been doing it?

Lots of things can be fun but making a living out of them is another thing entirely. The trouble is that if you're doing enough to make a living the chances are it will soon cease to be fun, unless you can get to a point where people will pay a good rate for your time and materials.

The trouble with anything hand made is that so many people won't pay the price for it because they can get something loosely similar from Walmart or some junky direct sales rep. My wife and I used to go to craft fairs and sell home made beaded jewelry but have all but given up because it's increasingly difficult to compete with the junk from Paparazzi and the like. It's not as good as ours, and you can see it's not as good, but there's no way we can compete with a necklace that sells for $5 because it was made in a Mexican sweatshop. Selling higher end stuff is possible but only if you get to the right places - the kind of craft shows that have the clientele who will pay a decent price for a quality product have much higher booth fees and still have no assurance of selling anything, if you don't happen to get the product just right for the market.

I'm thinking of options to sell stuff on etsy or similar. I'm just debating whether it's worth the outlay to buy the tools I'd need to get started, or if I can borrow the more expensive ones pending testing the waters.

 

[Alexander]

Starting a home-based business is not a bad idea and COVID has shown this to us. With governments worldwide encouraging to work remotely from home, owning a business that can be run from your own home works well. I'd probably opt for an online community generating passive income from advertising. However, it's a hard niche to get into.