Small Business Ideas

Here is a list of 10 small business ideas with low starting capital you can start in the Philippines. If you’re an unemployed person who strives to earn for living, an employed one who wants to earn extra income, a mom who wishes to work at home, or a college student who needs to find ways to fund his own school expenses, then the following small businesses which require small investment and start-up capital can be the right idea for your small yet admirable business and entrepreneurship move.

1. Loading business
If you want to start a small business with small capital, cellphone loading or eloading can be the one for you. The good thing with this business is that you can do it part-time while you’re not yet ready to depart from your employer. Filipinos (including you) are in a constant need of prepaid cellphone load. You can sell it to your friends or even to your officemates, if you’re still employed. The loading business becomes more revolutionized, with the fast-changing technologies the world offers. You can try to invest a to start your own loading business with LoadCentral Business.

2. Website flipping
If you know how to develop a website and know how to market it, then website flipping is for you. It is the development of websites for sale. What you need is skills in website design, content creation, and some search engine optimization (SEO). The cost you will incur consists of your domain name registration fee, webhosting fee, listing fee and cost of outside services if you wish to outsource some works related to website development. A dot.com domain name costs P 500.00 for a one year registration, while webhosting fee for 4 months can costs P2,000, enough to accommodate a developing website for those months. Listing fee of one website in Flippa.com (a leading marketplace for website selling) costs around P 1,000. If you will develop a website and sell it after 3 months you will incur a total costs of P3,500 (assuming you will develop it by yourself). If you can come up with a website that receives good traffic and generates some income, you can successfully sell it at a 100% to 300% profit. Be sure to have a Paypal account to accept payment from your buyers online.

3. Web host reselling
Another online small business idea is web host reselling. This involves buying a web hosting account and reselling it to different customers. For example, you pay for a P 1,300 monthly web hosting reseller account with 15GB space and 300GB bandwidth. You can divide it to 10 (1,500MB space and 30GB bandwidth) and resell it for P300 or more to 10 clients, resulting to a sales of P3,000 and profit of P1,700. If you can multiply this business into more accounts and clients, then your revenues and income will also be multiplied. You can integrate this business with your website design, development and flipping business. But you need to have and maintain a reputable website that will serve as your online store and place to interact with your client. You can check ResellerZoom for a reseller account at your budget.

4. Direct selling business
Direct selling or personal selling will require anyone’s own effort and self-reliance. Most direct selling companies offer low starting investment or initial capital to become part of their successful business. This is just perfect for people (e.g., home-based moms, students and employed persons) who want to have a small business than can be done with a flexible time. Check out Avon, Sundance, Tupperware Philippines and Natasha.

5. Poultry farming
This is an old small business that you can do at your backyard. We already know the idea. We buy chicks or piglets and raise them till we profit. If you love to play Farmville in Facebook, why not try to make it real? However, this business may not be practicable if you live in a highly urbanized place like in the middle of a city.

6. Lunch and snacks
Everybody needs to eat, especially the employees and workers who almost don’t have the time to prepare or even go out from their workplace to buy their food during lunch break. The idea is to sell and deliver lunch packs and snacks during “merienda” or snack time to these workers. To run this small business, you need to have a telephone to contact your customers for delivery, good skills in cooking, and the ability to build good relationship with these prospective customers.

7. Specialty food business
The food industry is a never ending business, whether it’s small or business. People will continue to crave for a new kind of taste. If you love specialty foods, you can turn this into a business. This may include, baking special chocolates, candies, cookies and other special delicacies. You can consign these products in other stores (like department stores) or just sell it directly to your customers.

8. Laundry and dry-cleaning
There may be already lots of laundry shops in your area. However, you can make a more special and unique service by offering free pickup and delivery services. Since this is a small business idea, you can do it without expensive laundry machines, and do the cleaning just like the old times.

9. House cleaning services
A clean house is always nice to live. But many people, especially those who spend more hours in the office than in their home, have no time to do the job of cleaning their own place. Thus, you can be the one to provide that service to them. This can one of the best summer business ideas for teenagers and students who want to earn extra money during the school-break season.

10. Tutorial services
For me, being a teacher is the best profession out there. Remember that Christ our Lord is a great teacher. Now, if you are gifted and blessed with an exceptional knowledge, you can share that knowledge to everyone who needs it. Of course, except for the Word of God which you cannot share for money, other kinds of knowledge which you have invested with time and money, can be the product of your tutorial business. You can teach online or offline, depending on where you will be more effective, efficient and profitable.