Six Money-Making Home-Based Business Ideas for Men

Schedule flexibility.

For guys who feel like they’re stuck in the 9-to-5 rut, the idea of being able to have full control over what they do and when is supremely attractive. Gallup says so. In a June 2024 poll, it found that 38% of men who want to start a business have that desire for a simple reason:

They want flexibility.

Does that sound like you? If so, we’re here to get you started with a few home-based business ideas for men, ranging from dropshipping to selling your expertise—in the form of courses—online.

The Benefits of Home-Based Business Ideas for Men

Schedule flexibility is just one of several key benefits that come with starting a home-based business. There are more—each being a good reason for you to take the leap—that includes the following three.

Pursuing Passions

The average working day can feel like a grind. That’s not what work should feel like – you should wake up every morning with a true passion for what you do. That passion comes from actually controlling your work, which is precisely what you do with your own business.

Your Rules

Your business, your rules. There’s not much more to say about this benefit other than you get to control how you work without having to worry about having somebody else breathing over your shoulder.

Online Business Ideas for Men Can Lead to Financial Independence

What are the barriers to achieving financial independence? There’s the wage ceiling, of course – you can only earn what somebody else is willing to pay. But there are other costs associated with working a regular job—transport, food, and clothing all being examples—that don’t exist with an online business. Again, it’s about control and not facing the same caps, or expenses, when you work for yourself.

Starting a Home-Based Business for Men – Six Great Ideas

So, you’re ready to take a chance. You’re tired of working to somebody else’s schedule and you’re about to become the guy who runs his own show. There’s just one problem – you need some ideas.

Try any of the following six on for size.

#1 – Web Design and Development Services

Even in an age when we have website-building tools—such as Squarespace and Wix—there’s still plenty of demand out there for talented graphic artists who can put together websites that sell. That’s the key point here. Anybody can knock together a basic website. It’s only those who have an understanding of online marketing to back their graphic design skills that can make sites capable of converting visitors into customers.

That’s where you might come in. If you have a talent for web design, or you’re willing to learn, you can handle practically every aspect of this business idea from home. Granted, there’ll be meetings with clients, but even they can take place over Zoom. Web design and development is also a growth industry – Business Research Insights says it’ll achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.03% between now and 2032.

#2 – Video Tutorials and Coaching

You have a skill. Maybe you’re a dab hand with a bandsaw and know your war around carpentry. Or you’re skilled with an instrument and also capable of putting a few music lessons together. Now, you could teach people directly, though that approach comes with problems. You’re limited by the number of hours in the day, meaning you can only schedule so many lessons before you’re fully booked.

You’ll hit a ceiling.

That’s precisely what you want to avoid when you’re working for yourself.

Enter creating video tutorials and coaching materials, which is one of the best online business ideas for men. The idea here is simple – film what you’d teach and make it available for people to purchase. That approach transforms each lesson into a never-ending moneymaker as you can sell a single lesson over and over. You just need a platform on which to host these lessons. Building a website for yourself is an option, though it comes with costs both in building and ongoing maintenance.

BlurBay is a much better alternative. A pay-to-view streaming platform, BlurBay allows you to host your video tutorials while locking them behind a paywall. There’s no subscription required—BlurBay only takes a 5% commission from each video sale—and you don’t have to worry about hosting or ensuring you provide appropriate payment options to your potential viewers. It’s all done for you, leaving you to focus on the important task of creating coaching content.

#3 – Virtual Assistant

A virtual assistant (VA) is precisely what it sounds like – somebody who handles tasks on a company’s behalf without ever leaving the online space. Thus, you have a great idea for a home-based business for men. If you have solid writing skills, can communicate well, and are organized, you already have most of the qualifications you need for this type of business. Throw in a dab of accounting knowledge or customer service experience—depending on the role your client requires—and you also have a unique selling point to set yourself apart from other VAs.

Plus, you’ll be entering a growth industry. The VA market was already worth $2.48 billion in 2022. Between then and 2030, it’s anticipated to achieve a CAGR of 24.3%. It’s a fairly inexpensive type of business to start, too. As long as you have a laptop or desktop computer capable of running the likes of Skype or Zoom (a smartphone can also do the job for some errands) you’re pretty much set.

#4 – Dropshipping

We mentioned that there are platforms out there that help people create websites. Rather than designing sites to compete with those platforms, why not take advantage of them to set up an e-commerce business? The likes of Shopify and Amazon are ideal here, as they give you all of the tools you need to set up a dropshipping company from home.

Why dropshipping instead of running a standard e-commerce store? The answer lies in how the dropshipping industry works. Your main tasks are to provide a platform through which customers can buy and source manufacturers to create products you believe will sell. Beyond that, the manufacturer handles the rest for you – no worries about storage, shipping, or any of the other issues that add costs and would require you to have a dedicated selling space. Plus, you’ll be entering another growth industry – the dropshipping sector is already worth over $222 billion, and it’s anticipated to achieve a CAGR of 28.4% between 2023 and 2031.

#5 – Social Media Marketing

If you’re looking for online business ideas for men, perhaps the best route lies in leveraging your skills in platforms that are always online – social media sites and apps. The key here is to blend your knowledge of a specific platform—or platforms—with online marketing savvy to help your clients connect with their customers on socials.

You’re taking advantage of a gap in the market with this business idea. A stunning 93% of small businesses struggle with overcoming the most marketing-centric social media challenges, such as generating quality leads and increasing engagement. Content is also a problem – 12% say they struggle to post content consistently while 11% don’t even know what type of content to post. The message here is that many entrepreneurs, though they have talent for whatever their business revolves around, don’t understand the intricacies of social media marketing. You can step in through content creation, leveraging your customer service skills, and any knowledge you have of lead-generating online marketing techniques, making this one of the best home-based business ideas for men.

#6 – Affiliate Marketing

Maybe social media marketing isn’t your thing. Or, it is, but you’d rather be running a business using your own socials combined with a blog and video content. In other words: you don’t want to be tied into long-term contracts with other businesses.

Enter affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing, you leverage your own online presence to sell products on behalf of other people. The trick is that you need to establish yourself as an authority in the sector in which you wish to sell. That’s where your online nous comes into play as you can use your online presence to create that authority through the content you create. That content will contain links to your clients’ products—from which you earn a commission each time a sale is made via the link—and you create a network of content that generates passive income. And again, you’ll be entering a growth industry. Business Research Insights says that the affiliate marketing sector is set to hit a CAGR of 15.2% between 2023 and 2031.

Get Ready to Go Into Business for Yourself

Flexibility. Freedom. A much higher earning potential. These are just a handful of the reasons why you need these home-based business ideas for men. Your only task now is to figure out which of these six concepts best aligns with your skills so you can make a choice.

The coach, consultant, or teacher may gravitate towards creating online video content—monetizable through platforms like BlurBay—while the social media whizz could lean more toward marketing on behalf of other companies. Whatever your choice may be, you have an unprecedented opportunity to work from home due to the sheer number of tools available to you. Take advantage of it – your chance to pursue a passion rather than working for the sake of working is right in front of you.