Home-based businesses in the town, suburbs or on the farm can be just as lucrative as office or factory jobs. Whether you are interested in gardening, crafts, DIY projects or personal service jobs, home based businesses offer the freedom to work from home at your own pace and to be your own boss.
In the articles below are stories of home business successes in many fields — gardening, home repair, office work, teaching, and arts and crafts of all kinds. There are also a few tales of home business failures and bumps in the road to learn from. And the advent of the Internet age has ushered in a whole new niche for online home-based jobs.
With a modest investment in time, energy and money, you can work from home and own your own business.
Garden Green
Earn Cash With your Own Garden-Grown Nursery
Our 3,000-square-foot garden produces about three-quarters of the vegetables we eat in a year — and a bumper crop of nursery stock that brings us up to $1,000 of extra cash annually.
Mother’s Mini-Manual: Greenhouse Gardening
Although they’re usually considered “luxuries,” greenhouses are, in fact, wonderful, year-round gardens that can be useful for producing vegetables for the kitchen table or the local market.
You Can Make Money Harvesting and Selling Botanicals
Almost every relatively green region on the U.S. and Canada boasts at least one native “medicine plant” which homesteaders can make money harvesting.
The Organic Home Nursery
With no money, no publicity and virtually no plants, Donn and Rachel Tickner started a retail organic nursery. All they really had going for them was a healthy stock of reverence, know-how and determination.
Pick Poke for Profit
Pokeweed (phytolacca americana) is an early wild green. Some folks pick pokeweed and sell it to neighbors.
Read about Rosemary Randolph’s experience picking poke.
Hobby Farming and the IRS
The following tips by a specialist in extension farm businesses may give you better understanding this tax season, including records and other considerations.
Crafts for Cash
Toys to Build for the Young and the Young at Heart
Carefully crafted handmade toys can become family heirlooms passed from generation to generation.
Wild and Woody
Twig furniture blends the natural grace of the growing tree with the personality of the builder, including choosing wood, planning and making rustic furniture, alternative tenon, finishing.
I Build Willow Chairs for Pleasure and Profit
How to gather willow, tools needed for the job, chair design and how to market the chairs.
Read about R. Sowards’ experience building willow cane chairs.
It Pays To Be An Old Sew-And-Sew
How to work 25 hours a week at your sewing machine as a seamstress, make $300 a month and keep track of the kids at the same time.
Sun-Burned Art
Use a magnifying glass, the sun and a block of wood to make wood-burned designs.
Read about Lance Ollenberger’s sun-burned slogan button business.
Fine-Feathered Hatbands
Make a classy hatband from pheasant feathers.
Read about M.S.’s and Lori Ides‘ hatband making experiences.
How to Paint House Portraits
If you’re a struggling artist in need of cash, make ends meet with house portraits!
Read about G.J.’s bartering experience with house portraits and Mary Denney‘s homescapes..
A Holiday Artist
When the approach of Christmas brings visions of elves, reindeer, holly and an empty bank account, this might be the perfect solution.
Make Wreaths for Winter Dollars
Use cuttings from evergreen trees to make wreaths for your family and friends, and to sell for holiday cash.
Read about Diane Abernathy‘s wreath making business.
The 19th Century Business You Can Start Today
The old business of tin-typing to make photographs is still economically viable today.
Hand-lettering Makes Sense: Cash in on Old English
Hand-lettering is easy to learn, worth money, and takes us back a little way toward the days when folks took pride in the graphic arts.
Read about Suzanne the Sign Painter.
How to Make $1,000 a Week Making Candles
The venture that keeps Dennis in the business of living is the business of making and selling candles.
Read about how Dennis inspired Janet Ryan’s macrame business and David Paulson‘s candle making experience.
Macramé
Macramé, or the art of creative knotting, may look difficult but its really about as easy as tying your shoes and as inexpensive as a ball of twine.
Trash to Treasure
Recycled Refunds
There’s a surprising number of “checks” and “vouchers” with your name on them just waiting to be picked up.
Read about Sara Sander‘s refunding experience.
The Fine Art of Trash-Mongering
Conversation about the art of trashmongering and scavenging at Baltimore County Sanitary Landfill.
Read about Dave Bacon‘s and Tom Mesi‘s trash hauling experience.
Try a Wood Pallet Project
A couple in Vermont has created potting sheds, a greenhouse and more from repurposed wood pallets
Teachable Moments
How To Teach Almost Anything At Home
From “101 Practical Ways to Make Money at Home.”
How To Teach a Guitar Workshop
If you’re a passably-fair guitar player looking for a way to make some extra money, look no further – Suzette Haden Elgin tells us exactly how to earn $40 with your guitar almost anytime you feel like it.
Making Money
10 Surefire Home Businesses for the New Decade
How can I be my own employer and not spend a fortune doing it?
The Lonely Worker
Freelance cartooning: How to break free on a grass roots level.
Underground Moving
If you’re stuck in the city, becoming a mover or trucker might help you earn your way out. All it takes is a second-hand truck or bus, a stable telephone number, strong arms and a broad back.
Read about Suzanne Harmon‘s freelance moving experience and Stanley Callopy‘s hauling business..
Getting Paid for Living Good
Have you ever dreamed of living the Good Life out in the country far from the city’s noise and pollution and still get paid for doing all this while protecting natural areas from the dangers of “civilization”?
The Best Home Typing Business of Them All
Make your own hours and work at your own pace by transcribing notes for court reporters.
Read about Linda Martin‘s home transcriber experience.
$12,000 a Year Home Typing Business
Here’s an article on how to make a ongoing paycheck with a home typing business.
Housesitting as a Way of Life
How to turn housesitting into a business and an acceptable, profitable substitute for home ownership.
Read about Claire Stevens‘ experience in pet sitting.
I Wash Windows And Live Like A King!
Authors offer different views on the window-washing perspective but agree that it is a fun, profitable field of employment.
How to Start a Home Bakery of Your Own
Baking brings family closer together and brings in extra money, including getting started, how the idea began, cost, simplicity and cleanliness.
Read about Dan Wesolowski‘s business selling sandwiches.
It’s a Hare-Raising Business
Beginner’s guide to raising rabbits, including a rabbit barn, pens, feeders and waterers, breeding stock, care and feeding, breeding, butchering and meat sales.
Read about Chuck and Cathy Tate‘s rabbit raising experience.
Rabbits, Records and Other Matters
Keep good records of the costs of feed and other costs for your rabbit-raising business.
Our Family Upholstery Business
Author and businesswoman shares how her family got started in the furniture recovering business, with advice and tips for potential entrepreneurs, and what it takes to get started and get established.
Read about Tim Hamblen‘s new upholstery business.
Wood-Burner Restoration
Bill Eckert explains how to restore an antique wood burning stove.
Chimney Sweeps are Cleaning Up!
This chimney sweep home business may be the best start-on-a-shoestring business that Mother has ever featured!
Read about Joel Baldwin & Bill Lannon‘s chimney sweep business success. And here’s a successful business inspired by this article.
“Landlord” Doesn’t Have to be a Dirty Word
Buying, cleaning up, renting out, and selling quality older homes for a profit may be just the “home business” you’ve been looking for.
Read about Loretta and Dan Dolingg‘s success at being a landlord.
Profit with Portable Sawmills
Dreaming of a new home or barn you can’t quite afford? If you cut your own lumber using a portable sawmill, you could save enough to bring the project within reach. And you can use the mill to develop a business custom-cutting lumber.
Read more successful sawmill businesses from James Fairfield, Dave Boyt and another tip from Dave.
The Treeincarnaters
Mark and Ray salvage logs for lumber from storm damaged trees.
I Drive For Money
How a retired gentleman who lives in the sticks makes money driving other people’s cars.
Saved by the Bell: a Business Solution
If you are in a location where business is slow, install a hose bell to alert you to customer’s arrival.
A Nice Little Concrete Business
Start an enterprise on $5. Here’s an alternative way of earning money without getting into the 9-to-5 rat race.
How to Go to Work for Yourself
Start a small business and become economically independent.
On Your Own
Work at home rip-offs and starting a small business.
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