Home Business Ideas Pt.1

Accounts Receivable Business

Many home and small business end up getting behind in billing clients, following up when payment isn't made, and determining when invoices should be sent or when a late service fee should be charged. This is a great business for financially minded people.
The business owner will hand over all accounts to you on a weekly or monthly basis. It is your job to then turn these notes into professional detailed invoices for the business, then sending them to the proper customer or client. You will then followup when payment isn't made, calculate any late fees before sending a second (or third…) invoice, or following up with a phone call. The payments can either be sent to you (made out to the actual business, not you) so you can record the payment, or directly to the business itself.
You can charge on a per invoice basis, per month, on a commission basis (you earn a per centage commission of each invoice), or per hour.

Announcements & Invitations

Custom announcements and invitations can be a very lucrative business to get into! You can approach this business in two different avenues or one in the same.
Choice A: If you are artistic and crafty you can create the announcements and invitations on your computer using graphic software. It is essential that you have a good quality printer that will be able to print on heavier card stock for your invitations and announcements to be professional looking.
Choice B: You can become a rep with a company that offers personalized announcements and invitations and you will make a commission on each of the sales you make. Both options are viable ways to make money. Either choice will also require you to be able to sell your product and have different variations of the same invite/announcement.
You can specialize in wedding invitations, bridal shower invites, and baby shower invites, engagement parties, baby announcements and the like. You may want to create a niche and work with a specific category such as wedding or babies but you can also blend them into one business as well.
Along with this business you can also offer thank you cards and even holiday cards, such as Christmas cards! You have many different options, it will just depend on the avenue you wish to pursue.

Antiques & Collectibles

Do you have a knack for spotting collectibles and antiques? If you do, then you could be onto a new business idea!
You can take this business in two different directions:
1-You can set out to try and find a specific antique or collectible someone maybe in search of and unable to find. There are many different resources at your fingertips in this day and age but there are many people that lack the research skills or time to find what they are looking for. So you can do the searching for them and charge them a fee.
Or
2- You can search for collectibles and antiques all on your own and resell them on EBay or to small stores or even create your own website.
Estate sales and even garage sales are a great place to find collectibles and antiques, as they are often being sold by people who have no idea of its value. How often have we heard of 50 cent garage sale finds sold for hundreds of thousands?
I cannot tell you the amount of times I have heard someone say I can't find the 1st addition Pillsbury figurine from back in 1969, only to have found it on EBay or seen it in an obscure online store or the like. Why not make a small fee for helping to match the owner with the collectible/figurine/antique they are in search of. You may even assist them in the selling of their own collectibles and antiques for a fee.
There are a few different ways to adapt this idea but the choice is up to you and what you feel your strong points are but it can be done and it can also be profitable!

Answering Service

An answering service can be a great small business for you to start with a lot of growth potential. Many small companies do not have the money or resources to hire a full time assistant; this is where you can offer your services to them!
You can offer your services to doctors, lawyers, tow companies, even small home owned businesses. The gist of this business is to answer phone calls and take messages for your client while they are unavailable, then you relay the messages. The job itself is simple; however, getting your first few clients can be somewhat of a challenge.
*What you need to start: We suggest you have at the least two phone lines for your service and many message pads for taking down messages. Many telecom companies offer 1-800 numbers that forward to your home phone, which will be necessary for this business. You will supply your client with the 1-800 numbers they will use for your answering service. The cost of the 800 number will be included in the fee you charge your customers.
*Positive: If you have small children that you want to be home with during the day, a chunk of this business will be during late night hours. A quiet home during the hours when you would be receiving business calls is vital. It would not be too professional to answer the phone with screaming kids or dogs barking!
Whilst on vacation many business owners will not want to accept phone calls on their time off. Your service will take messages for the duration of their vacation and they can then call and check in with you to retrieve messages.

Apartment Cleaning Service

Many apartment buildings find themselves with unrentable apartments when the previous tenants leave the place a mess when they moved out. Yet the next tenant is due to arrive in 6 hours. This is where an apartment cleaning service comes in.
This is a thorough, disinfecting clean of an apartment. This includes the bathroom, kitchen and all areas of the apartment. You may or may not offer carpet cleaning as part of the package. You can also offer general repairs such as paint-touch-up.
This business is one that can easily be done part time, as most people move out on the last day of the month, or the 15th. This can easily leave you with time to run another home business or to only have your children in child care for those days.
You will have to have lots of elbow grease - it is hard work for the hours you work.
This business can run in two ways - either you can target the manager of various apartment buildings, or you can target the actual tenants themselves, who often have better things to do with their time (such as getting their stuff to their new home) than cleaning baseboards and window sills in their old apartment.

Astrology Website

Has zodiac and astrology research been a long time hobby of yours? Do you enjoy researching the different signs and talking about it with others? You could create a website that focuses on zodiac and astrology signs.
This happens to be a very popular topic of discussion for many people that follow this sort of thing. You could supply them with the information they may be looking for such as personality traits of a particular sign, astrological charts, zodiac meanings and much more.
If you are wondering how you would make money with such a business, the answer is affiliate programs and paid advertising and depending on your skills, personalized charts and readings. It all depends on your beliefs and abilities, this is a topic that comes natural to some and others don't believe in it at all.
Other like sites would happily pay an advertising fee to be listed on your site if you have a significant amount of traffic coming to your site daily. A plus for this type of business is, people that are interested in this type of thing will continually come back to your site for weekly or monthly information therefore creating a steady traffic flow.
With this business it would also be best to use some precautions. Some people rely heavily on their beliefs of this topic and you would not want to find yourself liable for the advice given on your site so be sure to include a disclaimer that you are doing this business for entertainment purposes. It is always better to be safe then sorry!