35 Great Small Business Ideas For Content Creators

There often comes a point in a content creator’s journey where you want to amplify your impact outside of content creation - to help grow your community/fan base in other ways while increasing your income. Taking action on your own small business idea can be an excellent way to supplement your revenue; the most profitable business ideas can even provide you with passive or low-maintenance income that can free up more time for you to create content!

There are many different types of businesses to start, from a food truck business to working as a personal chef or event planner; launching a clothing boutique, consulting business, cleaning business, or a photography business; dog walking to tutoring to dropshipping or affiliate marketing, bookkeeping to freelance writing or app development.

Let's explore some of these great small business ideas in more detail, covering their characteristics and goals as well. We'll help you find the best business ideas for your skills, and show you how you can get started in launching a lucrative business of your own.

What Makes a Small Business a Good Small Business? 

There are several key characteristics that good small business ideas share; the qualities that set them apart and help them to thrive where others struggle. If you want to launch a profitable small business idea that can withstand challenges, gain fans/customers, and grow over time, focus on building a business plan with these traits in mind:

Having a Clear Vision 

The best small businesses know who they are, what they do, and why they do it. They have a clear vision of their goals and how they want to turn those goals into a profitable business idea. As a result, they can communicate effectively with customers, employees, and partners, which is essential for success, and they’re stronger at keeping their business structure on track and on brand whenever obstacles come up.

Low Startup Costs 

Great business ideas don’t necessarily require a lot of money to get started; they’re often quite lean business startup operations that can function well with minimal running costs. This allows them to keep their prices low, making them more competitive in their respective markets and turning them into a profitable business idea. Having low startup costs also means less risk-taking for you - for instance, if you launch your own store on Fourthwall, there are zero startup costs and no monthly fees, giving you plenty of room to get your small business idea going.

Online Presence

Great business ideas have to have a presence online. It doesn't matter what type of business; part of your business plan should include a website, social media presence, and other digital marketing strategies to get your products or services in front of the public. Fourthwall makes this easy, too, by providing multiple components for building out your great business idea, from your own customizable homepages and shops, to loads of custom merchandise options, to memberships and other customer perks. Being visible and having a professional online presence is half the battle won!

Customer-Centric Approach 

The best small business ideas put their customers first. They focus on serving the customer's needs, even if it's inconvenient or requires extra effort. Anchoring your business plan in the customer-centric approach to small business ideas helps to build trust and loyalty, and also gives you better access to customer feedback. This then allows you to adjust your business plan, strengthen your business structure, and fine tune your products or services to what’s in demand and on-trend.

Adaptability 

The business and content creation worlds are endlessly changing, and successful small businesses know how to adapt and adjust! They stay up-to-date with trends in their industry, and aren’t afraid to pivot, try something new, or change direction if necessary. This flexibility within your small business idea will help you to navigate difficult circumstances and emerge stronger and with your business fully intact on the other side.

How To Start a Small Business From Home 

Starting a good small business at home is an attractive option for creators who want to turn their passion into a profitable business idea without having to commit to a ‘regular’ 9 to 5 on-site job. With the right strategies, resources, determination, and business plan, you can successfully launch and manage your small business idea as a home based business. Here are some key tips and actionable strategies for good business ideas, to help you begin your entrepreneurial journey:

Identify Your Brand Idea

To make your small business idea a reality, you need a clear concept of what you want to achieve and why you're doing it. Whether your small business idea is a creative pursuit, tech services, launching a clothing boutique or cleaning business, tutoring, event planning, or simply dog walking, identify your passion and develop a brand around it, ensuring that it aligns with your interests and values.

Build Your Online Presence

Having a website and online store is essential for any small business idea, so you can reach both existing and potential customers, provide a storefront for purchases, and give yourself opportunities to promote your business plan and build a community around your products. Fourthwall is such a good option for this, as it’s a platform designed to help creators sell products directly to their audience. The platform provides tools to create customized products, manage inventory and orders, build a website, and more, all with no startup costs.

Create Marketing Strategies  

To grow the best small business, you need to promote it with effective marketing strategies. Content marketing is one such method; you can create a content marketing plan that aligns with your goals and target audience, developing strong messaging that conveys what makes your brand unique. Socials should be another cornerstone of your business plan; they're a massive and cost-free way to promote goods and services for any type of business. Leverage everything from Instagram to TikTok to make your new business visible and generate some hype!

Utilize Accessible Tools

Starting a business from home requires leveraging cost-effective tools and resources. Create a business plan document, put a bookkeeping program in place, utilize social media management tools like Hootsuite, and use high quality design software like Adobe or Canva for visuals and promotional graphics. You can also use free website builders, customization tools, and hosting platforms - like the ones available on Fourthwall! - to establish your online presence.

Create a Business Bank Account

A separate business bank account and possibly an LLC (limited liability company) helps keep finances organized within your business structure, facilitates easy tax filing, and ensures that you keep your personal and business finances separate for any type of small business idea; this becomes even more important as you grow.

Network With Other Creators  

Networking with other creators in your niche can help you find new customers, gain new insights, and get advice from seasoned business owners for your own small business idea. Collaborating is also a great way to expand multiple creator networks, and is fun! Join communities or groups on social media to find people you have common ground with for networking and collaborations as you expand your business plan.

Set Up An Office In Your Home

Setting up a designated office space in your home can help separate your work and personal life. Invest in creating a dedicated workspace for your home based business that is comfortable, distraction-free, and equipped with all the necessary gear (computer/internet, desk space, space to store content creation gear, space to store stock if necessary) - having an accommodating and organized space can make a big difference in your productivity levels!

The Best Small Business Ideas

Making your small business idea come to life is a great way to channel your creativity, do work that you love, and have control over your professional life as you generate extra revenue. But there are so many possibilities, so many options and so many unique business ideas - how do you choose? Here are some of the best small business ideas for content creators of all varieties as you work on your new business plan:

Business Ideas for Crafters

Handmade Crafts 

If you're crafty and love making things with your hands, you can turn those hobbies into your new home business idea. You can make and sell a variety of handmade crafts - jewelry, pottery, candles, soaps, are only a few of the possibilities. To maximize sales on sites like Etsy or your Fourthwall shop, try creating product lines that coordinate with each other, for instance, a line of products themed around RPGs (role-playing games) - these could be candles named after a series of different RPG weapons and potions, so your customers and fans will want to collect the full set.

Upcycled and Repurposed Goods 

Recycling is everywhere, and if you’re particularly crafty you can create unique products from items that would have otherwise been thrown out. Upcycling, repainting, and repurposing items like old furniture, home goods accessories, or vintage electronics is a unique business idea and can make for fantastic, one-of-a-kind, environmentally-friendly products; developing your own quirky upcycling style can make your goods sought-after collectibles on sites like Etsy or eBay.

Apparel and Accessories 

Personalized clothing and accessories are becoming increasingly popular, and you can capitalize on this trend by developing a fashionable small business idea that provides custom-designed items. If you know how to design and sew, you can start a good small business - your own clothing boutique! - by creating original clothing designs from scratch. There are lots of other options here, too, like knitting/crocheting, painting canvas sneakers, custom bedazzling, and embroidery. Or you can design your own branded clothing on Fourthwall, where you can choose from dozens of customizable apparel options.

Handcrafted Jewelry 

Similar to customized apparel, starting a jewelry business that emphasizes unique, handcrafted pieces can be a fantastic opportunity for creatively-skilled fashionistas, and you can sell your wares everywhere from Etsy to your Fourthwall shop. Your jewelry can be as simple as costume jewelry beaded bracelets (like the Taylor Swift “friendship bracelets” craze); artist-designed or bespoke jewelry involving mixed metals, wood or leather; or fine jewelry, if you know how to work with precious metals and gemstones.

Ideas for Foodies

Home-Baked Goods 

If you love baking, a great home business idea is to turn your baking passions into a profitable business. You can build your home bakery around themed cookies or cakes; specialize in just artisan breads; cater to specific dietary categories (gluten-free, Kosher); or become the best pie bakery in town. This small business idea could also expand to the wedding industry, as you could design, bake, and sell custom wedding cakes.

Specialty Food Products  

Starting a business that serves quality, specialty food products such as artisanal cheese, organic teas, or locally sourced honey can be a success for foodies looking to launch a sustainable home business idea. If you enjoy being outdoors and you’ve got a bit of revenue to invest, one of the most unique small business ideas in the foodie realm is a pedal food cart, selling foodstuffs like small-batch ice creme or gourmet hot dogs.

Catering Business

Another one of the most profitable foodie businesses to start is a catering business - these business structures are in high demand now, especially services that offer personalized and unique menus. For this small business idea, you'll need to watch the latest foodie buzz so you can keep up with new and upcoming trends in the culinary industry, and make sure all of your offerings include high-quality ingredients and top-drawer catering services.

Personal Chef

Taking the catering company small business idea to a more focused, smaller level, you could also contract your skills out as a personal chef. This great business idea for foodies could see you working for a busy individual, a family, or even a small business that wants to provide meals for its staff. Most personal chefs work in a home kitchen, preparing menus and then cooking and serving the food itself for the client.

Food Tours or Cooking Classes 

If you have excellent knowledge and passion for cooking, you can share this by organizing culinary tours or offering cooking classes and culinary tutoring. Your tours can be as simple as foodie excursions around your own town or region; or could be coordinated as day trips or overnighters to other food-rich locales. Your cooking classes can range from basic cooking skills to specialty tutoring on such challenging foodstuffs as handmade pasta.

Food Truck

Seen in virtually every town now, food trucks are very popular, and a food truck business is much easier to set up and establish than a traditional brick-and-mortar restaurant. If you have a food specialty in your cooking repertoire, a food truck business could be the best small business for you; think about healthy, quick to prepare foods that you can make uniquely your own, and your food truck business will be up and rolling. You can even flip your food truck into side gigs as a catering business for funky outdoor events.

Business Ideas for Creatives

Online Language Tutoring 

If you are proficient in a foreign language, you could start a language tutoring business for extra income. This small business idea can, of course, take the form of any language (as long as you find that there’s enough demand to fill your schedule or class). You can teach IRL (in real life) classes in an indoor or outdoor venue, or host online language courses as closed, paid sessions. Another unique business idea would be to work as a dialect or language coach for film or stage actors.

Music Instruction

This one can be either an IRL or online business idea - musicians who are skilled or experienced in teaching or tutoring could offer music instruction services. You could teach any instrument, from guitar or piano to stringed instruments, percussion, or brass; offer vocal coaching; or teach your new students how to read and write music score or tablature.

Art Instruction or Workshops 

Artists can turn their passion into a profitable small business idea, too, by offering art workshops or tutoring to people interested in learning the craft. Whether your art skills are in drawing/painting, sculpture, or digital art, you could host IRL classes; virtual classes; or perhaps your best small business idea would be a series of video tutorials that you can prerecord, for ongoing passive income.

Freelance Writing and Editing

If you have strong writing or editing skills, starting a freelance writing business that specializes in content creation or editing can provide multiple opportunities. You could offer your services as a freelance writer to a range of publications that suit your writing style and choices of topic; offer editing services to similar publications or to book authors; or do copywriting or commercial freelance writing for advertising agencies or product companies.

Photography Business

Starting your own photography business is a great way to exercise your visual creativity and bring in extra revenue at the same time. Your photography business could focus on selling photos that you've already taken in an artistic sense (landscapes and such that you could sell on your own website, your Fourthwall shop (where you can also place your photos on merch!), or another ecommerce site like Etsy), or you could contract out as a photographer for hire for special events, headshots, family portrait photography, or wedding photography.

Digital Downloads Store

Artists who enjoy creating more than teaching can launch their own digital downloads store, selling their own artworks as downloadable, printable art in a variety of sizes. One of the best businesses to start for aspiring artists is a print-on-demand store, where you can offer items like a calendar of your own watercolor paintings, or a coffee mug featuring one of your own ink sketches. You can sell digital downloads on sites like Etsy or Threadless, but they're especially easy to sell on Fourthwall, where you can create a store to sell both physical and digital goods that you can easily design yourself right on Fourthwall’s site.

Business Ideas for Tech Geeks

3D Printing Services 

As 3D printers become more affordable, you can start a business that creates custom-designed products using 3D printing technology. This is pretty much an endless market at the moment, as it’s nowhere near being flooded yet. You can create and sell products from cute collectible figurines or Croc (shoe) decorative buttons to replacement parts for tabletop games or even cars.

Website Design

If you have experience in website design and development, one of the best tech business to start is creating websites for clients, which can be a very lucrative venture. There are different levels to this; you can simply create the website’s graphic elements, and leave it to someone else to incorporate them into the site itself. You can assist your client with the layout and design for a no-code or drop-and-drag website builder (like the one on Fourthwall!) Or you can go full freelance web designer, using CSS and CMS to build a custom site from scratch.

App Development 

Whether you join an existing team as a contract developer, or start a small app development company of your own, launching mobile applications that can solve people's problems or explore new gaming or entertainment trends can be an exciting small business idea for techies. As your company grows, your app development could expand in much bigger ways, such as a mobile game company expanding to full PC or console game design.

Data Analysis and Consulting 

For this small business idea, you'll offer freelance consulting and data analysis services to companies to help them better understand their business structure and company progress. You’ll research their existing data collection and analysis processes to collect information, and then help your clients decipher their data. You can also assist them in choosing the perfect ongoing data programs and software so they can continue to maximize their business.

Business Ideas for Administratives

Social Media Management

Providing social media management services can be a great source of ongoing revenue, whether you work with individual clients or customers, and can easily be a successful online business idea. You’ll generally be responsible for amplifying your clients’ brand and visibility on social networks; this can include scripting/filming/creating content, responding to comments, and watching for relevant social media trends.

Virtual Assistant Services 

Business owners often need virtual assistants, and if you're highly organized and can offer administrative support services, you can start a virtual assistant online business from home with minimal effort. Your tasks with this business would likely include managing email and other digital documents; making travel arrangements and scheduling appointments; bookkeeping; and organizing phone calls, deliveries, and other correspondence.

Life Coaching or Consulting 

A rewarding home business idea would be to offer life coaching or start a consulting business; this is one of the best business ideas for people with a keen sense of business acumen. Life coaches generally help people make major changes in their lives during personal or career challenges; you could help someone relocate after a lifestyle change, prepare for a new job position, or even simply reorganize their household or bookkeeping procedures. A consulting business is a similar prospect, but is more often applied to specific individual projects.

Event Planning Services 

With the events and entertainment industry finally starting to return to its previous strength, an event planning agency is another good business idea, and could be a lucrative business choice for you. Just like the job title suggests, event planners make sure that everything is planned, organized, and executed perfectly, from the venue to the catering business and the advertising; your event planner skills can be applied to gala events, fundraisers, weddings, social or professional events, or conventions. 

And Even More Small Business Ideas!

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a close cousin to being an influencer. Basically, you search for products that you enjoy, approach the companies for those products with an offer to promote them, and earn part of the profit from each sale you make of said products. Affiliate marketing is a symbiotic business relationship that benefits both parties; you can actually build an entire small business around affiliate marketing through your social media accounts if you're dedicated enough.

Pet Care and Dog Walking

Love animals? Starting a pet care or dog walking business in your local area is another profitable business idea. A dog walking business could be a standalone service, where you make sure your clients’ dogs get walked on a regular schedule. You could also offer pet-sitting services in your clients’ homes while they’re away, as an add-on to your dog walking business. Or, as a separate but related venture, you could outfit a van to offer pet grooming services that travel to your clients’ locations.

Daycare

If you're good with small children, running a daycare might be the perfect small business idea for you. At your daycare, you'd oversee your clients kids, keeping them safe and entertained at your daycare facility while their parents are at work or other pursuits. Having teaching or tutoring experience would be great skills to have for running a daycare, as would a fun sense of play.

Car Detailing Business

It's right in the name - if you pay excellent attention to detail (and also if you enjoy being around cars), then car detailing might be the small business opportunity for you! Running a car detailing business is fairly simple, but takes a lot of elbow grease; for each car, you'll generally do an exterior wash and polish, tire cleaning, and interior cleaning and polishing. You can add on extra options like steam cleaning engines, touching up paint/dents, or installing accessories like car audio systems.

Cleaning Services 

One of the quickest businesses to start is a residential cleaning business, which can prove to be very profitable as people become busier and have less time to attend to household chores. Be prepared to do everything from general tidying and window cleaning to kitchen and bathroom cleaning, laundry services, and garbage removal; a cleaning business is hard work, but it can be very rewarding to keep your clients' houses in top condition.

Handyman Business

If you're a Jack or Jill of many maintenance trades, starting a handyman business could be your small business idea of choice. Handyman businesses typically have low startup costs and low overhead, but you may need to invest in a solid set of tools to take on such tasks as household repairs, deck repair, hanging framed artwork or TVs, and fixing small appliances. Being a handyman can pay well, but sometimes means you're on call; so make sure to set down ground rules and hours as you establish your new handyman business.

Tour Guiding 

Organizing or guiding tours to places in your region can be another business startup that’s both rewarding and profitable, especially if you’re passionate about travel and tourism. For this small business idea, you'll accompany your clients - which can be individuals or small groups - to popular sites and tourist attractions. The more you know about the places you’re sharing, the more you’ll be able to charge, as you can offer personal knowledge and insights not generally found in tourism guides or websites. Another unique business idea in this category would be themed tours, for instance of movie shooting locations.

Personal Training

For the health-conscious, one of the best small business to start is as a fitness instructor or personal trainer, which has you catering to the growing health and wellness needs of people today; you’ll both help people and turn a profit. This small business idea has multiple options; coaching individuals through a fitness program as a personal trainer; running small group workout classes; or even prerecording a personal training fitness video series that you can then put behind a paywall.

Dropshipping 

The dropshipping small business idea can become a lucrative business fast if you choose the right products; a dropshipping business has low startup costs, and has you selling products online without having to run a physical location or storing any products. You simply start an ecommerce store, choose your dropshipping business supplier, choose from the available dropshipping products, and oversee your new dropshipping business shop.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a close cousin to being an influencer. The basics are that you find products you enjoy, and contact the companies for those products to see if they’d be interested in having you promote said products. Affiliate marketing means that you’ll then make part of the profit from each sale of a product that you promote. You can actually make an entire business from affiliate marketing via your socials if you make affiliate marketing your focus, and if you’re dedicated to continually showcasing new products of interest to your viewers.

Landscaping Business

If you enjoy the great outdoors, a landscaping business could be the best small business idea for you. Landscaping businesses keep their clients lawns and property in top shape by planting and maintaining flowers, trees, and other plants; they keep lawns mowed and weeded, and also tidy up leaves and other debris on the property. If you have specialty skills, your landscaping business could also offer additional services like topiary carving or sprinkler system maintenance.

Start Your Small Business With Fourthwall!

Starting a small business from home, whether an online business or IRL, is an excellent opportunity for content creators to turn their passions into a successful revenue venture. And you’ll find that Fourthwall is the perfect ally for your all of your best business ideas, whether you're an event planner, personal trainer, life coach, or chef.

Fourthwall is a creator-first platform with zero startup costs that provides solutions for creators looking to manage products, build impressive online stores and websites, and connect with their communities. Get started on Fourthwall, and let them help you launch your business with confidence and ease!