What kind of service business should i start

If education is your specialty, work with students one-on-one as a tutor. You could even specialize in a particular subject or test prep focus. You could very easily offer cleaning services to homeowners or businesses. Get on a regular schedule and visit each client weekly or monthly. Or you could specialize in makeup artistry, helping those who are preparing for various special events. To offer more a more wide ranging list of services, you can start an errand business where you shop for groceries, finish laundry or complete other various tasks.

Food delivery is always an in-demand service. Pick up carryout orders or groceries for people and deliver them right to their doorstep. If you prefer actually preparing food for people, start a catering service for special events or corporate gatherings. Photographers can sell their work to create a product based business.

But if you prefer a service model, you could offer to take portraits or cover special events. Valet services work with businesses or event hosts to provide convenient parking services for guests.

Or you could get outside and take dogs in your neighborhood for walks in exchange for a small fee. To help homeowners who are traveling, offer house sitting services where you look after their property while they are away.

Tailoring and alterations are also popular services that you can easily offer to customers in your area. There are now so many opportunities for service businesses. The best part is that you can do most of these online. Thank you so much This was helpful to me I appreciate your generous effort in putting this journals to help people in need of it.

Annie I read your business ideas and gotten more informative tips that will help me to my business grow. I really like Moving service business.

My friend also starts this business. I have a young niece who started her dog walking business and almost immediately grew it into a lucrative full time business. She also makes extra money doing occasional dog training, dog sitting and overnight dog boarding. You can get started walking one dog and grow it from there. What makes dog walking a really great business? Most of all you have regular repeat customers. So if they like you, they will keep using your service forever and they will recommend you to their friends at the dog park.

As you build up your list of loyal customers you are not only increasing your income, you are also building the value of your business. That means if you get tired of walking dogs, you can sell your business for a good bit of money.

A number of dog walking businesses have been sold for over a million dollars. Keeping your clients happy and finding new customers — which means digital marketing!

Dog walking is the perfect business for digital marketing — you have a very specific and highly passionate target market. You can target social media and online ad network ads directly to dog owners in your zip code. And you can develop content they would love to read about like the best dog parks nearby, great places to take your dog for a walk, local Vets, pictures of local dogs and more! To learn more about how to start a dog walking business see my course Start-a-Business You can start watching this course and all the other courses for free on BusinessTown.

A moving company is another great business that you can start small and grow at your own pace. You can even keep your day job and focus on the highest demand moving days — weekends and holidays.

Most moves are local, so the market for local moving services is huge. You can start this business with no money by renting vans or trucks as you need them. This will allow you to get the exact size vehicle you need for each move. Truck rental services like U-Haul will also sell you insurance and provide supplies. You can hire helpers by the day or the hour. I recommend you charge by the hour rather than by the job.

This way, if the customer underestimates the number of items to be moved, you still earn the same hourly rate. Offering packing services is a nice add-on for extra income. Larry began his career as an engineer but wanted to try something different. Today his moving company has 20 locations in major cities coast-to-coast, over trucks and almost one thousand employees.

How has Larry been so incredibly successful in this highly competitive field? For starters, he chose a great name, Gentle Giant. A great name can serve as a built-in advertisement for your business for years to come.

Larry also set out right from the beginning to clearly set his company apart from his competitors, including building a strong employee team, and building a premium level of service. This allowed him to build a loyal base of repeat customers, enhanced word of mouth promotion and allowed him to charge premium prices. To learn about starting a business see my course Start-a-Business And today there are seemingly unlimited venues for selling your jewelry.

You can sell your jewelry on websites like Etsy and eBay. Some people get started selling at craft fairs and flea markets. Whatever sales approach you take I would recommend you also support it with your own website and marketing efforts, including building an email list and a social media presence. This will help you develop repeat customers, add new customers by word of mouth and build credibility. Holly Christensen is an example of someone who changed careers to pursue her passion by starting her own jewelry business.

Holly began by making jewelry on her kitchen table and personally selling it at local craft shows. Her unique touch was to include sand from popular beaches within her jewelry. People told her it was a crazy idea. However, Holly stuck to her vision of beach sand jewelry and has been very successful. She has developed a solid base of repeat customers, has over 20 employees, and sells through retailers throughout the world.

Want to learn more about Holly and her jewelry business? Watch her segment in the course, How to Succeed as a Woman Entrepreneur. Ariana Huffington started a blog with her friend Ken Lerer in after a failed political race for governor of California.

They pulled together news stories and gave political commentary naming their blog The Huffington Post. A blog is a great example of a business that you can start small and grow at your own pace. Popular blog topics include fashion, food, travel, music, sports, local interest, hobbies and much more. Choose a narrow or specialized topic and stick to it. Let your personality shine and include specific, actionable advice or pointed commentary.

My experience with blogs is that great topics and writing is seldom enough to build a sizable audience. You should learn basic SEO search engine optimization techniques so that your posts rank well in Google search results. To monetize your blog there are a number of options. The easiest is to sign with an advertising network such as Google, Facebook or Outbrain and let them do all the work for you. You will have to have a lot of traffic however to make much money by selling advertising.

Another popular option is affiliate marketing. You provide links on your blog to other businesses that sell products or services and they pay you a commission on each sale. You can approach affiliate marketers directly, such as Amazon. You can also sell your own products or services from your blog.

For example, you could sell your own webinars, courses, ebooks, handcrafted goods, or consulting or coaching services. An avid photographer, Gene filled his blog with fresh photos, developed a strong following and sold ads to local businesses. You can succeed with a blog business.

One of my wealthiest friends is a car nut who loves nothing better than to spend a Saturday morning washing, waxing and then taking a spin in one of his exotic cars. His older son developed an interest in cars too and while in high school got a job cleaning up and detailing cars at an auto dealership. Still in high school he later started his own car detailing business, making great money. People who love cars love to keep them in great shape.

And if you love cars too, and are incredibly meticulous, then this could be a great business for you.

But let me be really clear. These customers will pay you good money. But they will not compromise on quality. And you have to try to please them. If they like you, word will spread quickly and their friends will want your services. If you are just starting out I would not try to hide that from your customers so that they will have realistic expectations. You will be surprised how understanding your customers will be if they understand you are just starting your detailing business. This business is a natural for digital marketing because you can really target your most likely customers — owners of high end cars.

Executive transportation companies may be another possibility. You can also do some guerilla marketing — walk around parking lots and stick a brochure or your business card on the windshield of sports and luxury vehicles. To learn how to start your car detailing — or any other business — see my course Start-a-Business A coffee shop or tea salon can be a profitable and fun business. But with all the competition in this space today, you need to carefully think out this business before you start it.

Just being nice to customers and working hard is not enough to guarantee success. Will you offer special craft coffee? Will you offer exceptional pastries? Will your interior design be particularly inviting? Next you need a great location. A great location is not necessarily a cute little shop that happens to be vacant or a large space you can get a great price on. In this business you want traffic. Lots of traffic.

And ideally foot traffic. Before you lease a place, I suggest you personally go over there and count how many people walk by your potential location during the key time periods. One of the most successful independent coffee shops near me is Diesel Cafe in Somerville, Massachusetts. They even have a pool table, a black and white photo booth and all kinds of funky items. The coffee is great. Plus they have some solid food choices including avocado toast, bagels, sandwiches, salads, and smoothies.

From my observation, the nearby Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks have only a fraction of the business that Diesel Cafe enjoys. If you want to learn more, take a look at my courses including Start-a-Business and How to Create a Business Plan, which you can try for free on BusinessTown.

These eBay sellers take pictures of the items, set up the listings on eBay, and arrange for packing and shipping. They might charge sellers either a commission or a flat fee. To start an eBay selling service, first try listing some of your own unwanted belongings. And then next expand to family, friends and friends of friends. To expand further start promoting your service with digital marketing. A completely different eBay business is trading — in other words buying and selling items.

The key to this is to develop some sort of specialty, learn the pricing and then buy cheap and sell at a fair market price. A trading business might take some time to really master. That being said, you can make a lot of money trading items on eBay. To learn how to start your business check out Start-a-Business You can try this course for free on BusinessTown.

Can you really make good money selling custom T-shirts? Yes you can! A friend of mine, Jeff Jacober, started a custom T-shirt business right after college. Then he sold the business when he turned 40 and made enough money to buy a sailing yacht and cruise around the Caribbean for a year, buy an airplane, and invest in several new business ventures. Custom T-Shirts are perfect for selling online, but you could sell them locally too. Even if you are going to focus on your local market you might want to initially skip the cost of a storefront and try running this business from your home.

You could approach local businesses, social groups and sports teams. You can learn how to print T-shirts in minutes. If you are really feeling lazy you can even contract out the actual T-shirt printing and focus exclusively on making sales and customer service. But I recommend you take a little time to learn how to print them yourself. Of course instead of doing custom T-shirts you could try to sell your own designs.

This is a riskier approach but the upside potential is huge! Initially they struggled selling their T-shirts on college campuses. They lived out of their van to save money. To find out more about beginning a business, start streaming the courses on BusinessTown including Start-a-Business And if your skills are more advanced then you can tutor at higher levels.

Or you can just hire other people to do all the tutoring for you! You can tutor almost anywhere. You can tutor online via video, such as on Zoom. Or you can meet in a coffee shop or a library. The demand is huge. We hired tutors to help my kids improve their college entrance test scores. The tutor was an MIT college student who had never tutored, but nonetheless was fabulous. Tutoring is still another example of a very easy-to-start business.

Yet you can grow it as large as you want by hiring additional tutors and ramping up your marketing. For example, I sold a career magazine business that I started to Kaplan Inc. Kaplan has grown into a world leader in tutoring with over 12, employees and over 1 million students.

Like any business you will be more successful if you first learn about business and then plan it carefully. If you want to find out more, consider my courses including Start-a-Business , which you can try for free on BusinessTown.

Want to express your creativity and make some money at the same time? How about a craft business? Years ago my Great Aunt Betty made and sold a variety of creative craft items.

She sold them both through a small shop on her property and also directly to a few stores. Today the opportunities to sell your crafts are seemingly endless with the expansion of the Internet.

With websites like Etsy. But if you really want to turn this into a business, you should develop your own online presence. I would suggest starting with a website. Then adding an email list. Also consider social media. You can also sell your craft items offline. You can start by selling at local art and craft fairs. And you can also approach retail stores yourself. Or once you have a good product line put together, you may want to consider contracting a sales rep firm that focuses on the gift trade.

I successfully used sales reps firms to sell my books into the gift trade. You can find these firms at the larger gift shows or you can approach them online. To learn more about how to start a craft business — or any other business — check out my course, Start-a-Business You can try it for free on BusinessTown. This is another perfect business that you can start small, even part-time, and then grow at your own pace.

You can start with just a basic lawn cutting service. You can grow this business quickly by both adding customers and adding services. Typical add-on services include leaf collection, yard clean up, edging, weeding, snowplowing, and applying fertilizer. The next level of services you could offer would be flower, bush and small tree planting. You can make big money cutting small lawns! Even just cutting a few lawns yourself you will likely be able to earn more per hour than many people earn at professional jobs.

Add in a few basic services and your income can quickly add up. They did grass cutting, yard cleanup, and snow plowing but nothing fancy — I hired other services for fertilizer application and irrigation. So how do you get going with a landscape business and how do you get customers? Of course you start with a business plan.

Then give a lot of thought to marketing. I would suggest you use both online and traditional marketing. You can try this course and all the other courses on BusinessTown for free.

You can get started selling on Amazon with very little money and even a single product. And you can customize the look and feel of your Amazon online store front. You also have the option of having Amazon fulfill your orders and ship your products.

The fee structure changes frequently and varies by product and country. While it is relatively easy to set up an Amazon store and start selling some products, it is more difficult to build a sustainable, highly profitable business.

Selling on Amazon or anywhere else online is super competitive. To develop a great plan for your store, first evaluate your market, your target customers and your competitors. Next seek out opportunities where you can develop a true competitive advantage. Then, take the time to develop your thoughts into a cohesive strategy and a well thought out business plan.

You can also pay Amazon for additional advertising and exposure on their website but you need to make sure that it is cost effective for you. Consider doing your own digital marketing beyond Amazon such as through your own website, through social media, through email marketing or through online advertising.

There are all kinds of ways to turn photography into a business. You can do portrait photography, commercial shoots for businesses, real estate photography, or wedding photography. You can sell photos through stock photo services.

You can even do photojournalism or sell your outstanding photos in the photo art world. When we decided to get pictures of our kids, we went to a local portrait photographer who used one of the rooms in her house as her studio. She charged a significant price — but the great pictures made it worth every penny of it.

Excellent lighting, good positioning and getting the kids to smile made a difference! A common myth is that anyone who has a smartphone can be an awesome photographer. But the photos I have taken certainly prove otherwise! You could start your photography business as a side gig but to be sure it turns into a real business instead of a hobby, you need to be serious about it.

So write up a business plan that includes the specifics of what kind of customers you will target, what services you will offer, what your marketing message will be, what packages and pricing you will offer, and how you will get your marketing message to your audience. If you want to find out more, take a look at my courses including, Start-a-Business and How to Create a Business Plan. You can try them for free on BusinessTown.

Let me tell you about my first business — a story that has valuable take-aways for any business you are considering starting. It was a little scary because I had no idea what I was doing.

Then, I arranged to have a motel, a gas station and a sporting goods store serve as rental locations. But my competitors had better rental locations already lined up. And they also had shiny new bicycles. Almost no one was renting my bikes and my business was going nowhere. So, unlike my competitors, I tried offering free delivery of bicycles to customers at their motels and campsites. My customers loved it and my business took off! This example shows why it is so important in any business to develop a unique business model.

In other words you want to design your business around a true competitive advantage. To design a business with a competitive advantage, you first need to evaluate your market, your target customers and your competition and then seek out new opportunities.

Then, you want to put together a solid strategy and develop it into a complete business plan. A good related business is bicycle repair. The demand is constant providing you with a strong, steady income. You could start by only taking on the easier repair jobs. Then for more complex repair jobs you could contract them out to other repair shops and keep a percentage of the repair price.

You could also try selling bicycles. If you are operating out of your house I would recommend you focus on buying and selling used bicycles. I found it difficult to sell new bicycles out of my home. But I discovered that I was often able to sell second hand bicycles for quite a bit more than I paid for them. To learn more see my courses including Start-a-Business and How to Create a Business Plan which includes a complete business plan for a bicycle rental business.

You can try these courses for free on BusinessTown. A consulting business can be very lucrative and rewarding.

He prefers to do his consulting work only hours a month and spends the rest of his time doing volunteer work for non profits and avidly following outdoor athletic pursuits such as mountain hiking and cross country skiing.

I know a lot of other consultants who have done well with specialities including sales, logistics, human resources, executive coaching, small business coaching, international business customs, facebook marketing, website strategies, email, accounting, logos, and more. I have also hired a number of consultants for my various businesses.

So what does it take to become a successful consultant? The path I have seen many people take is to start an independent consulting business after many years of working in the field. By that point in time they have not only developed a lot of expertise but they also have built up a network of industry contacts.

However, today I increasingly see many people becoming successful consultants much earlier in their career — sometimes right out of college.

Why the shift? For one, the digital world has exacerbated the rate of change, increasing the demand for consultants with new knowledge. Plus online marketing has made it much easier to attract clients. Also I have seen people with less experience develop their consulting practice and get new clients by offering attractive flat rate packages for their first assignment, rather than just charging by the hour. Even though you may be a highly experienced consultant you still should come up with a detailed business plan.

Her background is in magazine publishing, as a health and nutrition magazine editor. Today, Amy is successfully running her nutrition communication business and she has completed and written more than 1, media interviews and freelance articles for top-tier media outlets, such as WeightWatchers.

Want to help people lose weight? In that case, you could start a weight coaching business. And think outside the box. To stand out, you can help busy women lose weight. Or you can specialize in herbs or spices to teach people how to lose weight with the right diet.

Love meditating? Becoming a meditation coach could be the right thing for you. You help others learn the right meditation techniques and that way, live a more mindful and balanced life. And finally, you can become a yoga instructor.

How do you become a yoga instructor? You need to be a skilled practitioner of a yoga variant. There are several courses and trainings you can take to build on your existing skills. Are you good at advising friends on how to improve their dating life? Or do you love working with children? These are the best service businesses to start in the relationship and family niche. See her case study here. You know what it takes to find the right partner? Perfect, then you could start your own relationship coaching business.

For example, you might advise clients on how to find the perfect match on dating apps or how to find love even if your clients are busy professionals with high standards.

But who is an ideal relationship coach? If you have found the perfect match for yourself or people around you and you enjoy helping them improve their love life, this could be the right service business idea for you. If you enjoy advising couples on how to take their relationship to the next level, then coaching for couples might be the right business for you.

A divorce counsel is a therapist. Doulas and birth coaches provide emotional support to women before, during, and after they give birth. Do you enjoy helping parents? Then, you might make an excellent parenting coach. As a parenting coach, you give advice on parenting-related issues.

This could be general advice on how to raise children or more specialized advice on things like supporting children with ADHD. Do you have results to show? Then, put sleep coaching on your list of business ideas. Similarly, potty training coaching is a potential coaching business you could start if you have experience in this field. Lots of parents are looking for help on how to make potty training easier. And last, baby proofing. If you have experience of baby proofing homes, why not help new parents make this a struggle-free and safe!

You love helping people grow and achieve new levels in their lives? There are several unique service business ideas in the personal development space. Income example: My student Spencer, a mindset coach, makes three times more than she used to at her job. First up: Life coaching. As a life coach, you help your clients maximize their full potential and reach their desired results.

You can specialize and help a niche group of people like women, entrepreneurs or a religious group. Or you can focus on specific problems like resolving fears or goal-setting. Who can become a life coach? Similarly, more and more people want to become as productive as possible to get more work done and have more time outside of work. Are you a Toastmasters member? Or are you just great at giving speeches? Then, you could help others do the same. As a public speaking trainer or speech coach, you can help employees create better presentations, startup founders pitch for more funding or speakers train for their speaking engagements.

A lack of social skills can be incredibly limiting. Helping people change their mindset is highly rewarding work. Do you have professional skills as a marketer or salesperson?

Or have you developed them on your own? Then, marketing and sales consulting are small profitable business ideas that could work for you. Income example: My student Sanae, a sales coach, earns 5-figures every month.

See her story here. If you enjoy writing, copywriting is a great business idea. As a copywriter, you could work with marketing or sales texts, such as web, email marketing, or sales copy. Instead, you learn by writing. Love traveling? Love writing? Why not combine the two and become a travel writer? Content writers write content for social media and websites.

For example, you could get hired to write blog posts, whitepapers, or social media posts. A successful content writer is someone who can engage readers and optimize texts for lead-generation and conversions. According To Brittney Service: Brittney Moffatt is the content writer and social media strategist who helps entrepreneurs grow their influence, visibility and engaged audience through content marketing with the mission to help women find their voices and confidence. She started blogging as a way to uplevel her career as a marketing professional.

Her blog, According to Brittney, landed her a dream job and helped her start her own freelancing business. She also uses her Facebook group, Content Marketing for Women Entrepreneurs, to leverage content marketing as a business tool. Today, Brittney has worked with brands such as Uber, U. News and World Report, Dollar Tree and more. Enjoy crafting texts that persuade others? Sales page copywriting is the business idea for you.

As a sales page copywriter, you help companies create pages that sell their products. The most successful sales page copywriters earn six and seven figures… Because they know that their writing will bring in sales. Do you know how to write attention-grabbing proposals? Help individuals, startups, nonprofits, and other organizations write winning proposals. Want to write books? You can turn your passion into a business and start ghostwriting fiction or nonfiction ebooks.

As a technical writer, you write articles, instruction manuals, and more to make complex, technical information understandable. As an editor, you polish texts and as a proofreader, you focus on correcting errors. Have web design skills? Turn those into a web design business. By helping individuals and business owners create websites, you can quickly grow a profitable business. Julie is the lead graphic designer and Steve is the lead developer.

Love visual communication? Start up your own graphic design business. You help businesses create visuals for their websites, ads, brochures, and more. Have you worked with brands before? In that case, you can offer your services as a branding consultant or strategist.

Help businesses define their brands and create brand strategies for them. Are you great at getting likes, comments, and clicks on social media? Help businesses grow on social media by becoming a social media manager. Service: Andrea Vahl is a social media consultant and speaker who is passionate about helping businesses understand and leverage the power of social media to actually grow their business.

Andrea even used her background in improvisational comedy to create a social media character, Grandma Mary the Social Media Edutainer. Her services include Facebook Advertising coaching and consulting, done-for-you Facebook ads, and a self-study course. If you enjoy using Instagram personally or professionally, you could become an Instagram marketing strategist.

Similarly, if you enjoy Pinterest as a platform, there are tons of businesses looking for help with their Pinterest marketing. So, you basically get paid to pin! Jana O. Service: Jana runs Jana O. Media, a content management and Pinterest strategy business. In her business, Jana uses her background in communications and marketing to help online entrepreneurs, such as relationship experts, business coaches, and wellness coaches, attract their ideal clients by managing their content strategies and marketing their businesses on Pinterest.

Jana does this by offering different packages, like setting up and managing Pinterest profiles, strategy sessions, and content marketing services for example, managing content and Facebook group administration , managing content automation, writing content, and managing email automation and lead magnets.

And if you create amazing videos and you know your way around YouTube, you can start a YouTube marketing business and help businesses grow that way. Do you know search engine optimization SEO? Help businesses rank on Google as an SEO strategist. As an email marketing manager, you help businesses set up and implement their email marketing strategy. A PR consultant spreads the word about businesses. Influencer marketing is booming. As a sales consultant, businesses outsource part of their sales activities to you.

If you have experience from a sales role or similar, you could start your own sales consultancy. Alternatively, you can start a sales coaching business. Here, you help business owners improve their sales instead of doing the work for them. Susan McVea. Service: Susan McVea, one of my students, is a business sales strategist and consultant who helps ambitious and established entrepreneurs convert sales calls to paying clients.

Before starting her business, Susan had a successful career in sales. Susan helps business owners through group programs, digital courses and private consulting that help entrepreneurs establish and optimize sales processes to create more income and impact. Are you an experienced search engine marketing expert? If you know how to get clicks on your Google ads, you can build a Google ads business. Enjoy creating presentations?

Improve how businesses and other organizations communicate with their presentations by becoming a presentation designer. After all, many business deals, investments, and funding pitches rely on that presentation….

Know how to improve conversion rates? You can set up shop as a conversion optimization consultant. Go general or specialize. For example, as a landing page specialist, you focus mainly on creating converting landing pages.

Offer your services independently by helping your clients design better apps and websites. Ever been part of a conference team? You could help businesses and other organizations set up and market their conferences successfully. Raelyn Tan. Service: Raelyn Tan, one of my students, is a blogger and blogging coach with years of experience in marketing and blogging.

She then took her skills and grew a YMCA cafe by starting a website and focusing on social media. Raelyn majored in marketing at one of the best universities in the world and then worked in the corporate world for a billion-dollar company.

Today, Raelyn runs her blog where she helps bloggers and online entrepreneurs grow their audiences, lists, and make money with their blogs. Her services include blog coaching and self-study courses.

You know how to create and edit videos? Produce podcasts? Then, building a business around your existing media skills could be a great way to get started. Do you know how to edit videos?