Author: Maria Alfano
These are 9 unique business ideas with little startup cost for 50+ you need to know to get your entrepreneurial mojo going. They are simple and creative ways to relieve the financial stress of retirement, especially when you’re accustomed to a particular lifestyle afforded to you by your job. Or, if watching the soaps all day is not your cup of tea and need to do something constructive with your day, then you need to read this post.
This post will give you some awesome ways to stay creative and earn extra cash on the side, provide the start-up costs and give you some tools for staying organized in your new business venture.
9 Unique Business Ideas With Little Startup Cost for 50+ you need to know
Being retired or choosing to retire early gives you the opportunity to use your time to do something you love…or didn’t know you loved. I retired at the age of 50 and quickly found myself looking for things to do when there was more day ahead of me than I had plans for. Like many others, the pandemic has forced folks to pivot their lives and come up with new ways to make a living.
This post will show you some exciting and creative new ways to run your own company, large or small, and make a good living from it. It will also so show you any costs you will incur to start and operate your own business.
Being a business owner has many perks. You will need to consult your CPA about these. One word of advice – keep ALL your receipts because you never can tell which one is a good business expense!
What Business Can You Start With Little Capital?
1 – Your favorite hobby
Looking for business ideas but don’t know where to start? Do you have a hobby? What is your favorite thing to do? Do you like to knit, garden, cook? Or maybe you are handy and like to lay tiles or paint homes. Are you good at fixing your own car? Can you teach yoga or tai chi? These are all awesome ways to make some money and the easiest way is to teach someone how to do what you do.
For most of these ideas, you place an ad in your local paper for just a few dollars to invite people to your “master class for flower arranging”. You can rent a space for little or no money to hold the class. Churches and community centers have meeting halls they will rent out for a small fee. If you live in a condo or community complex, they have spaces available for free for their residents.
The minimum cost for this hobby-based business is around $10-$20 for running the ads plus the cost of the room and any incidental items you need to run the class. Ex: a ball of yarn and knitting needles along with any take-home materials for your students.
To determine your fee per attendee, add up all your costs and divide by the lowest number of participants you will accept to run the course. That would be the lowest admittance fee. Add a few dollars for your knowledge to come to the actual fee. Let’s use the flower arranging course as an example.
The total costs incurred are $171.00. The total number of required attendees is 10 or the class is canceled. The break-even cost to run the course is $17.10. You should round the course price to the nearest whole dollar. In the example, I used $20. With only ten people taking the course, you will earn $29.00 in profit. The profit goes up with each additional person over the minimum that joins your class. I used 22 attendees to illustrate the potential profit for a 1-2 hour class.
Some of the most successful small businesses are those that teach others how to do something new. Grab your free Course Cost Analysis today
2 – write a book
Even if the only people who will ever read your book are your family, writing a memoir is an enriching experience that will record all your experiences, thoughts, and traditions for future generations. The key to writing a book is to put in your personality. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to reflect who you are.
You can also write an instruction-style book that teaches people your favorite hobby. Courses, whether in digital format or written in a hardcover book, can be lucrative.
You can always self-publish your book or put it on Amazon Kindle. Writing books or manuals are perfect business ideas for those with a creative mind.
The cost to write your book is your time. To self-publish will depend on how many books you want to print and which publishing house you use. Amazon Kindle requires a monthly subscription of approximately $40 USD in order to sell your book. The best part of Kindle is you create the story once and it continues to sell after it is digitally published.
One of my favorite places for creating amazing books and stories is Designrr. Create your own look and feel with this awesome tool. Designrr allows you to put your touch on the books and stories you want to publish. It is fun and easy to use even for beginners. You can find out more about this awesome service by clicking on the pic below:
A book is not the same without pictures. Of course, you can always take your own pics but why spend the time and effort to take, edit and adjust photo quality when you can find some great pics for your book using Shutterstock. Pictures if not procured correctly can lead to lawsuits. Buying them from places like Shutterstock gives you the right to use the images anywhere you create published work like books, manuals, courses, and more.
3 – House Sitting
Want more great business ideas? How about house sitting? Homeowners prefer not to leave their houses empty while away on business or vacation. They will gladly pay for a responsible person to take care of their place. You can advertise for free on many websites. You get to visit new cities, live in some fabulous homes, and make some money while you’re at it. Of course, it goes without saying that the most important attribute required for this business is respect for your client’s home and privacy.
The cost to start up this business – $0.00
4 – Craft Fairs
Local craft fairs usually raise money for good causes. Renting a table at a fair can run from $20 to $100+. It is the perfect place to sell your handcrafted wares. Craft fairs draw crowds that love homemade jams, jellies, teapot covers to name a few. It is also a great place to make connections for your housesitting business:-)
The minimum cost to sell at a craft fair starts at $20 plus the cost of the goods you want to sell. When considering the costs of your “organic onion jelly” remember to include everything from the onions to the jars, the labels, and any take-home recipe cards you will give away to your customers.
5 – minutes Transcribing
Condos, schools, and board of directors meetings need to have their discussions recorded. Often these minutes or notes are part of the firm’s annual business report. If you are good with computers and can take quality notes from all the speakers in the meeting, this could be an excellent side hustle for you. You can take on as many clients as you want to fill your calendar and many of these clients will be fantastic resources for new business ideas.
The start-up costs for this business are a little more substantial as you will need business cards and a good laptop or tablet if you don’t already own one. You can get business cards from Vista Print for about $10 and a good tablet can start around $150. For business cards, you can click on the picture below to head on over to Vistaprint. They are who I use for all my printing needs: business cards, postcards, banners, and much more!
6 – Pet Sitting
Are you an animal lover? Do you want all the joy of taking care of a pet without the cost and commitment of pet ownership? Pet sitting is the perfect business for you.
You are in control of how many pets, the type of pet, and when you want to sit with them. A little piece of puppy and kitty heaven for you. Just like a grandchild that you can spoil and hand back to mom & dad, pet sitting fits the deal.
The startup costs are negligible for this business as you can advertise on the local bulletin board for free or place an ad in the local paper for around $10 and you may want to buy food and water bowls from your local dollar store. The pet’s human parents will supply everything you need to take care of their Fido and Fifi – food, treats, leashes, and more.
7 – Tutoring
What is your special skill? Math? English? Music? You can operate a small tutoring business to help students in elementary or secondary school improve their grades. The beauty of this business is it can all be done online – social distancing at its best.
The costs of a tutoring business are minimal unless you need a computer. You can approach your local schools to have them advertise your services to parents. This is usually free!
Create a simple and fun video of your tutoring materials using Doodly. You never have to be in front of the camera. The videos are creative cartoon-style demonstrations that you record once and use for a long, long time to come. This software does it all for you and it has a one-time fee of approximately $27.
Check out Doodly today! Simply click on the pic above.
8 – Write a blog
Take your favorite hobby and turn it into a blog. This is a little more complicated than the above-mentioned business ideas. You will need to get a domain name like www.thesilverdiaries.com. Then you will need to get a company to host your site. Once you have these two you will need to build your site and write the blog posts. Lastly, you will need to advertise your website.
The cost to purchase a domain name can be as little as $4.95 per year up to several thousand $ if you want to buy something popular like www.apple.com.
The cost to host your site is very reasonable if you use services like BlueHost.com. This will run approximately $2.95 per month. You can sign up with BlueHost to create your domain name by clicking on the image below: Personally, I have tried many other providers and have found BlueHost to be the most reasonable, reliable, and customer-focused.
When funds are really tight and you want to make sure your blog will be worth it, you can always start for free using Strikingly. Create a beautiful site in minutes by dragging and dropping and making a few mouse clicks. You can be literally up and running in less than 15 minutes. It will take you longer to decide on a name than it will get your blog site ready.
If you are smart with your advertising, you can actually do it for free on Pinterest and Instagram. Facebook and Twitter will cost money but you set the limit as high or as low as you can afford it. I would not recommend less than $5 per day for each day you are advertising – regardless of the schedule that you choose.
9 – Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Shopify
I saved the best for last. These are some of my favorite business ideas/side hustles along with my blog. The trick with online retail is selling what customers are looking for not necessarily what you like.
Amazon
Selling on Amazon is exciting and addictive. Watching the sales come in every day is truly gratifying. Amazon has the highest number of customers worldwide that will have access to your products.
Amazon’s customer is sophisticated and expects a higher quality of product and customer service. They pay a fee to be a member and will pay a little more for this quality. There are 4 main strategies for selling on Amazon:
1-Arbitrage – buy goods from your local retail stores or online and resell for a profit on Amazon
2-Wholesale – buy products from a local manufacturer or distributor and sell on Amazon for a profit
3-Private label – create your own products to sell on Amazon
4-Sell new and used books – from around your home, local thrift stores, or library sales
Any of these strategies can be fruitful.
Amazon costs can be quite high. They charge $40 per month to be a seller and a 10-35% commission depending on the product to warehouse your product, provide customer support, and ship your product to the customer.
eBay
Selling on eBay is also very exciting. The customer base on eBay is different from Amazon. There is no fee to be an eBay customer. They expect to pay less for a product on this platform. Often, they are content to buy used products. This is a good place to lighten your load and sell old small appliances, clothes, shoes, and other knick-knacks that you haven’t used in years.
The two main strategies for selling on eBay are:
1-Auction sales – this means customers bid for your products and the best price wins. This can be lucrative if you have the right product that customers are “fighting” for. You never really know how much the item will sell for.
2-Fixed prices. You can choose to sell your items at a set price. This means no bidding and you always know how much your item will sell for.
There is no start-up fee for selling on eBay but they do charge a $1.50 insertion fee to list your product and a commission for when you sell your product. This commission is a little lower than Amazon’s and it too depends on what category your product falls under.
Etsy
For vintage items or hand-made crafts, Etsy is the best place to sell. There is a large market for unique one-of-a-kind items. Each item you list for sale on Esty has a lifespan of 4 months or until it is sold whichever comes first. Etsy also charges a small insertion fee of 0.25 cents per item. As well they charge a 5% commission and 3-4% transaction fee for using their payment system. As well they advertise seller products on other sites and for that, you are charged a 15% fee. The good news is this is payable from your sales not out of pocket from the start. This is one of those business ideas that is a cool way to get rid of “stuff” around the house.
Shopify
Having a Shopify store is very much like selling on the above platforms. You need the following:
1-A domain (store) name
2-Products that customers want
3-Knowledge of SEO marketing
4-Funds for advertising
Unlike Amazon, eBay and Etsy, Shopify does not have a built-in customer base. You need to advertise your products yourself in order to attract customers to your Shopify store. The costs for owning a Shopify store are the highest of all 4 forms of online selling. You will pay $100 per month to be on the Shopify platform + you will need to be constantly paying for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, and other forms of advertising to drive the sales.
If you are a novice at online selling and SEO (search engine optimization), then I would suggest this is not the place to start. To be honest, I struggled with Shopify.
Stay organized with all your side hustles using this classy Lux Productivity Pro Daily Planner available on Amazon. It helps you to plan your day, week, month so you know exactly what you need to do next to keep your business ideas growing and prospering. It is lightweight and easy to carry with you and fits in most handbags and computer cases. Your pen stores safely in its slot so you never lose it. Comes in handy when you can’t access your laptop or tablet.
This post was all about exciting and creative new business ideas that allow you to run your own company, any costs associated with these opportunities for you to start and operate your own business.
Have an inexpensive business idea you would like to share? I want to hear from you!