Although not all businesses have to be related to computers and/or the Internet, it is highly recommended to pursue the Internet as the way and the means by which you market and advertise any home business. You will find that everything is less expensive, much faster and easier and more effective in that you can reach so many more people.
For example just a guy that made videos of his dog misbehaving has gotten over 25 million hits! Too bad he is not selling anything. He should think of something with a response like that. Some things that come to mind that would work well with a site dedicated to those videos could range from pure kitsch, like a framed portrait of the dog which could be sold as tee shirts or refrigerator magnets, to something substantial like treats for pets and pet accessories (pet beds, leashes, training books, or toys). This would be called ‘monetizing’ the site. It is likely animal lovers or people who have pets would be interested in the video and would be the best target market for pet products. It’s a natural!
So that is just one example of taking almost nothing and making a business around it. Other examples can be something like a recipe for which you receive compliments and maybe even is something passed down in your family for generations that people always love. You could make something like cookies, candies or cakes and package them up and sell them. For example gift baskets for the various holidays that include a dozen cookies, a decorative mug and some little packs of coffee, tea or cocoa. This of course involves shipping and packaging that will allow everything to arrive in one piece. You could create an expensive or even free site (blog) to advertise your gift baskets. If you have a digital camera you just need some good pictures of the baskets and the ingredients.
You would need to factor in all your costs for materials and shipping (and of course a profit) and create order forms. The cheapest (free) way to accept payments would be to get a free Paypal.com button for your site – that way you can accept credit cards through Paypal without having to incur all the costs of having a payment gateway, (“cart”) etc. (all the credit card companies charge a monthly fee even if you have no sales).
So you could apply this type of ‘theory’ to almost anything you can think of – arts and crafts – for example soap and candles, or other crafts like jewelry or decorative gifts – anything you enjoy doing or even what interests you like your hobbies – sports, etc. – you can build around anything. They actually say that you do best with what you like to do so why not make some money while you are it?
If this is all more involved than you had anticipated, you might also consider just selling the recipe! This would go nicely with a blog where you do share some recipes for free and/or discuss various baking techniques and ingredients (just keep the prize ones to make money). Again, how you might monetize a blog about baking might be to get a line of bake ware – pans, mixers, etc. In this case you might want to get a free store from Amazon.com so that you could list their products and they would handle the payments for you and pay you a commission.
Whatever you decide to do, just create a plan, do some research and then cook something up!
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