Small Business Ideas For Women

We’ve all been there, having a boss we hate, in a dead-end job, or just not having the flexibility we need for a steady work-life balance. Honestly, it seems to happen to women more than anyone else. So, why not consider these small business ideas for women?

It’s pretty well-known that women tend to be undervalued and overworked compared to male counterparts and are less likely to climb the corporate ladder or ask for a pay rise. All in all, the workplace isn’t great for women, so why not become your own boss?

Let’s make one thing clear, despite the title of this article, anyone can use these small business ideas, not just women. Likewise, any small business venture you’re interested in is a small business for women. However, there are some small business styles that are more popular with women because of features like flexibility, less face-to-face risk, or confrontation. We know what we like and what we don’t, what can I say?

So, without further ado, let’s dive in and find out more about these popular small business ideas for women.

Blogging

Blogging is a classic small business idea that has been used by women for the best part of a decade now. While it’s perhaps not as profitable as it once was due to the sheer amount of blogs out there, it’s still a good way to get some passive income and boost your overall brand.

Find your niche, something that you have expertise and interest in, and start building content around that subject. You might want to take an online course or watch some YouTube videos on things like SEO and WordPress design and plugins before getting too far into your strategy as these things matter!

To make money from your blog, you can sell digital materials, courses, or coaching based on your experience, or sign up for affiliate marketing platforms to boost your income with ad revenue. It’s worth saying that this is not an overnight business – it can take years to get a following where you’re making reasonable ad revenue or have enough of a brand that people will buy guides from you.

Affiliate Marketing

One of the most common and lucrative small business ideas is affiliate marketing. The premise is simple: take products you know and love, recommend them to others, and get a cut of the profit if they purchase. It’s essentially a referral fee from businesses.

There are a few ways you can go about affiliate marketing, but you need to have a platform where you have a following. This can be a blog, social media, email lists, or courses where you send links out to your students. To find affiliate programs, you can simply Google your favorite brands following by affiliate program or sign up for a platform like Travel Payouts or Rakuten which have a ton of brands under their umbrella.

Basically, you have a link with a unique identifying code in it and this is what links to your referrals. While it’s normally between 3-10% per purchase, it slowly builds up depending on your following. For instance, if you organize travel itineraries for people, you can add your referral links to the hotel links and car rental links and get a backend payment as well as an upfront fee. 

Affiliate marketing is mostly an additional income stream on top of blogging, content creation, or digital products. However, if you have a good following, it can be a reliable form of passive income. 

Freelancing

If you have a skill set that people are willing to pay for, then you could potentially be a freelancer. Use platforms like Upwork or Fiverr to initially find clients and gigs, and then expand out as you feel more confident. 

People pay for writing, photography, social media, business management, English-language editing, graphic design, and so much more. Even if you have a professional skill like being an accountant, you can be freelance and super booked and busy during tax season!

It’s important to know that freelancing is a lot of hard work, as you’re running the business, and accounts, finding clients, and making sure you have enough buffer for months that aren’t as busy. There are plenty of courses online to help you get started, and so many forums that are full of like-minded people who can help you figure things out!

Digital Products

If you create guides, worksheets, or downloadable lists for your expertise, it’s a good idea to try and sell them. Digital resources are a great way to supplement your income. You can sell them on your website, advertise through social media, or sell on a marketplace like Etsy. 

The reason digital products are so popular is because they’re relatively quick and cheap to make and you can repeatedly sell them without much effort. Using tools like Canva, you can make checklists or workbooks look super pretty and appealing.

While the per-item price of digital products isn’t high, you have no outlays once you’ve created them, except maybe platform commission fees.

Digital products can be anything from budget templates to packing checklists to beginner guides for moving abroad. Templates that can be sold year after year are always good, so try not to load them with too much changeable information that requires you to edit and reupload. Journal templates are definitely a popular avenue! 

Run Courses

If you have expertise in a certain subject and a decent amount of credibility, you can run your own course. There are a few avenues to go down here. First, you can run live courses where people log in and watch your lessons each week or month, or as a one-off course.

These are great for interactive purposes and people feel like they’re getting something personalized out of the experience.

However, the downside is that it takes a lot of your time to run and be there in person. If you can pre-record your courses and upload them to a site like Teachable or Coursera, people can sign up and watch your courses at any time.

You’ll pay a portion to the site as a commission, but once you’ve filmed your course, it’s a relatively hands-off revenue stream. All you have to do is advertise!

Courses are a great way to impart your wisdom to people looking to be in the same situation as you. For me, I run courses on working abroad, moving abroad, or how to get visas in different countries.

This is something I’ve done a lot and something I’m well-known for. Find something that works for you, package it into a course structure with sections and modules, and give it a go!

Teach English Online

If you don’t want to build a brand or feel like you’re running a traditional business, why not teach English online? There are dozens of websites looking for native English speakers to run English classes on either a class or one-on-one basis. Online tutoring is a big business with plenty of waiting students.

The good thing about teaching English online is that you can use a ready-made platform that markets and finds customers for you. You can set up your own profile, set your availability, and often, you can set your own hourly rate. 

If you have teaching experience or qualifications, this usually means more sites with higher-paying customers are open to you. You can do online TEFL courses for relatively cheap nowadays, so it may be worth upskilling to get these higher rates and more premium customers. 

Coaching

Similar to how you can make money tutoring or running courses, you can also build a successful business as a coach. Again, you need a point of expertise that you can capitalize on. Honestly, most people have something, but it may take a while to figure it out and shape it into a profitable niche. 

From here, it’s pretty similar to setting up a lesson for a course. You still the key points of your expertise and what the end goal is likely to be for your clients. For example, I can coach people to move abroad in under six months.

While I have courses in a similar niche, these coaching sessions are a lot more personalized, so clients feel additional benefits and actionable outcomes from each session.

Coaching can be time-consuming but you can limit the amount of clients you take on at any one time. I suggest having a sign-up window and, if there’s a lot of interest, setting up a waitlist and collecting everyone’s email and giving them first refusal on the new intake.

Coaching sessions often make a lot more money than courses as they’re more expensive, but you have to weigh up your time versus the revenue difference.

Content Creation

If we’re talking about popular small business ideas for women, it’s impossible to ignore content creation. Although technically blogging and courses come under content creation, this is now a much wider field. Thanks to social media, you can get ad revenue for reels, and sponsored content, and have a ready-made audience for things like affiliate marketing.

However, you don’t need your own audience for this to happen. Many people aren’t comfortable with being the face of a social media account, but this is where content creation for other brands and UGC or user-generated content comes into play. 

UGC is where you make content for a brand or company and then sell it to the brand for them to use on their own socials or website. There are dozens of UGC platforms you can use to connect with brands. They’ll usually send you products to feature in the content or you may have to be an existing customer. The key here is getting authentic content that doesn’t feel forced. 

Using UGC platforms means you don’t have to search for your own brands and leads, but you will have to pay a commission to the site, similar to Upwork or Fiverr.

Dropshipping

Even though it’s not particularly glamorous or fancy, dropshipping has been a staple small business idea for some time now. Essentially, you find a bulk-buy product on a site like AliExpress or Alibaba and organize it in a way that it can be shipped to customers without you ever receiving the item.

Again, there are a lot of dropshipping platforms and companies out there. You can usually peruse from a pre-approved item list and then market them on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Etsy, Amazon, or any other online marketplace. The beauty of this is that you don’t have to do anything once it’s set up. The fulfillment is done behind the scenes, so it should all run automatically once your customer purchases on your link.

The way you make money is that your price with a profit buffer versus the bulk rate to cover the dropshipping fees, including the platform fees and shipping. As bulk items are always much, much cheaper than individual items, there’s usually a lot of room for profit.

It’s worth saying this is risky as you probably won’t know the quality of your products unless you order a sample first (which I highly recommend you do). Also as a lot of people have been doing this in the last decade or so, it’s a crowded marketplace with a lot of small businesses selling the same items with the same imagery.

If you can get a sample and make your own advertising content this will help you stand out and up your chances of sales.

Making Your Own Products

If you’re handy, crafty, or have a flair for design, you can make and sell your own products on platforms like Etsy or Red Bubble. If you can make things whether it’s crochet scarfs, bath bombs, wood carvings, or something super niche like board game dice, there’s going to be someone who’ll buy it.

If you’re into graphic design, you can sell your designs on stuff like water bottles, t-shirts, and mugs on platforms like Red Bubble. You just need to sign up and upload your artwork and Red Bubble will do the rest. Again, you pay commission fees, but for how hands-off this small business idea is, it’s pretty reasonable. If you do any fan art for shows, books, or films, this can be a lucrative business idea, especially around the holidays.

If you do great content around existing TV shows and films, just be careful of copyright infringement! However, most of the time, the platform will just take down your items if it’s not in line with their legal code of conduct.

Selling Your Photography

If you fancy yourself as a decent photographer, you can actually sell your photos to stock websites like Shutterstock and Pexels. Typically, you get a percentage or set commission based on how much it costs them to license your photo. Realistically, this can be like 10 cents per photo, which isn’t a lot, but with repeat downloads, it can soon rack up.

It can be a good idea to search online for your local area first and see if there are any gaps in the popular databases. Then, go out with your camera and get some quality images. Don’t forget to give them a polish in some editing software before you upload them for the best chance of downloading!

It’s definitely worth buying a camera for this small business rather than using your phone. Even though phone cameras are so much better than they used to be, the resolution for print or editorial use isn’t always there, so it’s better to hedge your bets. 

So many websites use stock imagery and footage for their articles and pieces, so if you find a gap in a popular search, you could be making a decent amount of money from this. Again, like many of the ideas on this list, it’s pretty much entirely hands-off once you’ve uploaded the photos. 

I‘ve lived abroad for many years and love helping others find work abroad and figure out their “Move Abroad Plan.” Check out my class below to get you started ASAP!

Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)

Okay, before you shout at me, yes, I know some MLMs are massive scams that force people into debt and leave them with boxes of unsold product. Yes, I’m aware. However, there are plenty of decent MLMs out there that have stood the test of time.

If you want to actively be selling something in your community or through online forums, but don’t want as much admin as running your own business, MLMs are a good halfway point.

One of the most popular MLMs is Avon. This cosmetics company made a name for itself through Avon parties at friends houses, magazine drops around the community, and as social fundraisers. Essentially, you drop the catalogues around with order forms which your neighbors give back to you and you’ll fulfill their order, getting the profit minus the commission to Avon and bulk item price.

Any MLM is hard work and a lot of networking. Sales isn’t easy unless you know a lot of people who will be interested before you get started. For example, if you live in a small village where there are few people interested in cosmetics, you might have to get creative online. 

With any MLM do extensive homework beforehand. There are a lot of bad schemes out there and you should never see it as a get-rich-quick scheme. As with anything, only invest what you can actually afford to lose. Maybe do some market research in your neighborhood before committing to see if the market is there at all.

So, there you have it, a selection of small business ideas for women that can help you be your own boss and get that money and flexibility you’re looking for. While none of these are overnight money makers, they have the potential to set you up nicely and empower you to get paid properly for your expertise and skills!