What Are The Most Profitable Small Businesses to Start?

If you look at the dictionary meaning of the word "profitable" it is defined as:

“Yielding profit, advantageous, lucrative.”

The word that sticks out is lucrative. What we are all thinking is how much money we can make with how little effort.

In that case the most profitable small businesses would be ones that required zero investment of capital and labour and gave us a return on those investments. In other words, ones that don't exist.

So, if we can identify some businesses with low investment costs then they would seem to be the most profitable. 

Three of the Most Profitable Small Businesses

Here are just three different ideas to get you thinking:

1. Auction Selling

The Internet is the cheapest place to set up a business. Literally, anyone can do it within minutes. Promoting, growing and making a success of your enterprise is another matter but the barriers to entry are virtually non-existent. That makes it a place to operate the most profitable small businesses. There are hundreds of models you can follow but lets have a look at auction selling.

All you need to do is list some items on ebay, receive payments and then send out them out. If you have absolutely no money then you will have to sell something you already own. You then use that money as seed money to buy more stuff and sell it. It is a pure trading model.

You can sell almost anything on ebay. To gain access to thousands of products that you wouldn't normally be able to, you can drop ship. This involves listing items that are sent to the winning bidder by a third party company. So, you don't have to worry about packing and sending etc. you just monitor the auctions.

2. Cleaning Business

Where there is muck there is money. People will always need cleaning services whether it is for homes or businesses. All you need to get going are a few cleaning materials and some flyers.

First, print out a few flyers. Next, hit the streets and post them to drum up some interest. Then organise some appointments. You don't even have to invest in equipment until you have secured some jobs.

The point is that this kind of business where you are offering your labour for a price really takes very little to get off the ground. You just need motivation. How you proceed after you initially get the ball rolling is up to you.

3. Beauty Supply

This is to show that actually producing a product doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive. And the margin in the beauty industry can be enormous. It is all about creating an image of something beautiful and natural.

The scope for different kinds of products is huge. There are simple shampoos and soaps. There are face creams, eye creams and hand creams. There are body lotions, cellulite creams, anti-wrinkle creams and more. All these products can be made simply for a few dollars and sold at 3 or 4 times cost. The mark ups are huge.

If you have an interest in this area all you need to do is a little experimenting with formulas, bottle some shampoos and set up a stall at a local market (If you are into cooking then you can do the same thing with any number of foods, too.)

Those are just three very simple ideas of the most profitable small businesses to get you thinking. They all have low investment costs so you will need to put some time and effort into making them work, but they are there for the taking.

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