Small Home Business Ideas That Are Recession-Proof

Due to the current lousy economy lots of people find themselves short at the end of the month when it comes time to pay bills. Whether you've been laid off or forced to work longer hours because other people were, your mind may have turned to small business ideas as a way to make up the difference or get out of the rat race. Following is a list of small business ideas you can do from home that are reasonably recession-proof and have small start-up costs.

The first of these small business ideas that is good for a bad economy and doesn't cost much is staging homes for realtors. It's very tough to sell a house right now in most markets in the US, and sellers will do anything to make their house stand out. If you have an eye for home decoration and organizing, set yourself up as a home stager with no cost other than having cards printed and advertising in local papers.

A "stager" goes into someone's home and gives them advice on how to rearrange their business furniture and what to get rid of in order to show the home to its best advantage. The idea is to make the house that's for sale look like a model home. Some stagers have interior design degrees, but it's not necessary as long as you can show a portfolio of before and after pictures. (Practice on your own home and your friends' to build one.) Contact realtors in order to promote your services and your small business will be up and running in no time.

Another of the great small business ideas that you can do from home during a recession is resume and cover-letter writing. Once again, this is a service that will do well during the recession so it's a great business to start in the current lousy economy, and it requires little investment beyond advertising, assuming you have a computer, of course.

The profits in resume writing and rewriting are good-some companies charge over two hundred dollars for a rewrite and nearly five hundred dollars to write a resume from scratch. People are willing to spend this because it's important to them and when your resume is successful they'll recommend you to all their friends and family.

Some clients will also give you multiple jobs at once. Many people like to target their resumes to a specific job so you can do one original rewrite and then several rewrites. An example of this would be someone who wants a job as a lab technician and does one resume targeting biology labs and another targeting chemistry labs.

Finally, another of the best small business ideas you can do from home is e-Bay power selling. In the current lousy economy lots of people have things they want to sell for a little extra money, but few of them have the time or expertise. Basically you agree to sell things on e-Bay for people in return for a percentage of the profit. The start-up costs are minimal; you might want to invest in an e-Bay power-selling e-Book or course online in order to learn how to get the most out of your listings.

You can try any of the small business ideas listed here almost immediately without outlaying a lot of cash, and they're all good businesses to have during a recession that can be managed from home.

Any of these great home-based businesses require very little in upfront expenses. By building a simple, but informative website, and the cost of business cards, you can be up and running in hardly any time at all.