My Top 9 Best Home Business Ideas for Housewives / Homemakers To Make Money from Home

I believe that you, as a housewife/homemaker, are in a fantastic position to start a small scale business from home and be able to make your own money.

Also, running your own home-based business will give you that extra sense of achievement as you can create something of which you can be immensely proud of. I once read in a personal development book that earning your own money is the no.1 best way to have the utmost self-respect for yourself – and I must admit that I definitely agree with that.

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So from one women to another, and as someone who’s started and ran various home businesses over the years, let me help you find a home business idea which will suit you and make you excited to get started.

The first thing you need to do it to go and get a notebook and pen so you can do some brainstorming and write down some notes.

By doing this simple task (making notes in a notebook) will tell your brain that you’re actually going to do this! You’re not just thinking about it and loosely browsing the Internet for ideas – you’re actually going to start writing ideas down and to start planning your own home business.

When looking at this list of business ideas for housewives, I want you to write down the ones which are real contenders. Write down the business ideas where you can actually see yourself running that business, and enjoying it!

I just want to quickly mention three things first…

Business Ideas for Housewives / Homemakers

Although I’ve already written an in-depth post on business ideas for women, I wanted to brainstorm and narrow ideas down specifically for a housewife or a homemaker. Because someone who is working a full-time job, or they’re a mother with toddler children, will be looking at different home business ideas from you, a housewife.

So I just want you to know that I have created this list specifically with you in mind where you can run your business at home alongside doing your household / homemaking chores.

Small Scale Business Ideas

All the nine home business ideas listed below are on a small scale. This means that you don’t need to pay for rented space or to buy large volumes of stock, and you don’t need to hire staff.

These are businesses which you can run yourself from home and not have to worry about staff or expensive overheads.

Very Low Investment Needed

And lastly, they’re all very cheap to get started.

In fact, you can start a business with no money at all, but I would say that to get started more quickly and efficiently, you should have a budget of between $50-$100.

My Top 9 Home Business Ideas for Housewives / Homemakers

1. Ironing Service

Do you love to iron? Some people actually find ironing therapeutic, so wouldn’t it be amazing to earn a decent income simply by ironing other peoples’ clothes?

Everyone seems so busy (and under pressure) these days, and some people absolutely hate ironing, or they don’t have the time for it. In fact, some people can’t even iron – I’m thinking more along the lines of men who wear shirts and suits for work – so offering an ironing service to busy professionals would be a welcome relief for some.

Cost To Get Started: $0-$100

You can literally start with no money by word of mouth and via social media. Facebook is a good option as it allows you to create a new business page where you can post and keep people updated with your ironing service news.

But to get started and earning money within a few days, your best option would be to get some leaflets printed and to put them through the doors of people who would need your service the most. Is there a housing estate / area where you know that many professional live? Then you should target these areas with your leaflets.

Related Reading: How To Start an Ironing Business from Scratch

2. Sewing Alterations

If you can sew, then you could offer a sewing alterations service.

I’ve personally paid someone to take up curtain hems and had my son’s suit altered for a wedding, so I know that this has the potential to be a good little money earner.

Cost To Get Started: $0-$100

Very similar to the ironing service above. Use social media for free word-of-mouth advertising and/or get some leaflets printed and put them through letter boxes.

3. Baking/Cake Decorating

Love to bake and/or decorate cakes?

This is a great little business to do from home if you love to bake. I would start simple and just offer one or two bakes to get yourself off the ground.

For example, you could only offer to bake and decorate celebration cakes, such as

And/or you could also bake the very popular cup cake and sell them in sets of four, six or eight etc..

I’ve also noticed that macarons have become very popular lately, so you could offer to bake sets of 6 macarons (in different flavors and colors) and put them in a box ready for collection or to deliver by post.

Have a bit search online and see what other people are doing and selling when it comes to offering baked goods.

Cost To Get Started: $0-$50

Free word-of-mouth via Facebook or Instagram. You would then obviously need to buy the ingredients and any equipment and packaging to get started.

Related Reading: How To Start a Cake Business from Home

4. Your ‘Skills’ Service

What skills do you have? What can you do which you could offer in exchange for money?

So here you would be a freelancer, offering a freelance service to clients. With this type of work, you could land yourself a small handful of regular clients and therefore receive a regular monthly income.

Cost To Get Started: $0-$50

You can setup a profile on freelancing websites such as www.fivver.com and www.upwork.com to sell your service. There are others, but those two are the main ones.

You could also get on social media (including LinkedIn) and mention your services there. Facebook groups are also a good place to socialize and get clients.

So that’s four, very different home business ideas for housewives which are based offline. Now we’ll move into the online business business space and blogging is a great online business idea to start with.

5. Blogging

I believe that a lot of people still just don’t ‘get’ blogging. I know my family and friends haven’t got a clue what I’m doing or how I can possibly make money from a blog (this blog you’re reading), and this is very common among people in the blogging world.

But blogging is a great online business where you can start earning passive income.

Yes you still have to write blog posts and do some other form of marketing to get your blog noticed, but once monetization is added to your blog, then you can literally make money while you sleep and when you’re on vacation.

Blogging could easily be carried out at home on your laptop sporadically throughout the day around your homemaking chores. You could even start a blog on subjects such as:

Cost To Get Started: $0-$20

All you need is to buy a domain and get some cheap web hosting to start off with. You can use the WordPress software normally provided for free with most web-hosting services.

6. eCommerce Store

Online ecommerce stores are very popular among women with many opening shops in fashion, shoes and jewelry.

You would normally buy wholesale merchandise in bulk, list it on your shop and start selling.

You can of course make your own wares such as jewelry and knitted garments, and then sell them on an online marketing place.

Lastly, you go down the dropshipping route where you don’t hold any stock and you only place an order for the item to be shipped to the customer when they have purchased it first from your shop.  I know that this sound confusing, so here’s an article on dropshipping from Shopify.

I know that running an online store sounds fun and exciting (and it can be) but please be aware that online stores, in any category, are extremely competitive and it can be very hard for your shop to get seen, and enough times, to start making daily sales.

Cost To Get Started: $0-$100

There are many online store platforms today with Shopify being one of the main ones where you can get started for as little as $20 a month.

7. Proofreading

If you’re good with spelling and grammar, then I think that this is a great little business to run from home – and it can very profitable too!

Here you would do freelancing proofreading, so you will be self-employed running your own freelance proofreading business. Doing it this way, you can easily earn a full-time income only working part-time hours as you could charge anywhere from – per hour for your proofreading services.

For further information on this, visit Proof Read Anywhere where you’ll be able to watch a free video on this business model.

Cost To Get Started: $100

You might want to pay for a course on how to start and run a freelance proofreading business, so you will have to take that cost into consideration, but after that there are ways to do free online marketing to get clients (which is covered in the course).

Related Reading: How To Start a Proofreading Business With No Experience

8. Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is in big demand online as there are so many blogs and online businesses who don’t want to write their own content that they are more than happy to hire freelance writers to do this for them.

The great thing about online freelance writing is that you don’t have to be a trained writer, and you definitely don’t need to have a degree in English to get started. Online content writing is very easy to create because you write as if you’re just speaking to someone one-on-one (like I’m writing to you now).

It’s best to choose a niche and subject area to focus on, so it shows that you’re a specialist in that particular subject area, for example:

Cost To Get Started: $00.00

You can definitely start with zero money, I’ve seen this happen time and time again. You simply identify what sector you would like to write for and then compose an email outlining your services and then send out dozens of those emails each week until you fill your client quota.

9. Virtual Assistant

And lastly, I want to show you the virtual assistant business model.

As I’ve just mentioned above, there are thousands (upon thousands) of bloggers and online businesses where they really need a helping hand with some of their online business tasks, and this is where virtual assistants come in.

Although there are also thousands of virtual assistants, there will always be a need for more. The other good news is that the spectrum for virtual assistant services is massive.

You can do general admin work, email customer service, typing & transcription (transcription of audio podcasts for example), bookkeeping and graphic design, just to name a few.

Cost To Get Started: $00.00

A good place to start to get clients for free is from Women in Business / Female Entrepreneur Facebook groups. It does take a bit of networking, but you should be able to pick up a couple of clients with daily networking in such groups.

Related Reading:

So there you have it, my top nine pick of home business ideas for housewives/homemakers.

Did you find a business idea which you would like to do?

If nothing jumped out at you, then head over to my more in-depth article outlining 47 home business ideas for women, where I go over a bigger variety of businesses which you can carry out which are home-based.

Good luck in whatever you choose to do!