• Home businesses offer independence and flexibility.Jupiterimages/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
  
  New and original ideas for businesses that are run from home can be quite profitable. Common businesses that are run from people's homes, such as accounting, childcare or landscape work, can make money but involve competition because of the number of people who are doing these things. Developing a new idea for a home business can give you access to less saturated markets.
  
  

Tool Sharpener

• Tool sharpening is an unusual skill that many people need but few people have mastered. A relatively small investment in sharpening equipment, and some practice in sharpening and honing skills, can provide you with the skills and resources to become the go-to person for sharpening in your town. Scissors, knives and household tools all work much better when they are freshly sharpened. Investing in a small vehicle and offering sharpening house calls can develop into a viable business. This business can easily be combined with a small sales business offering knives, scissors and other cutting tools.
  
  

Heirloom Seed Sales

• Large numbers of people have become interested in the cultivation of unusual or non-hybridized strains of vegetables. Providing these people with seeds is a business opportunity with a real future. If you have access to a piece of land, you can grow the plants yourself and allow them to go to seed, providing yourself with an ever-growing stock of seeds for sale. Small seeds are ideally suited for a mail-order business or online sales business because they are cheap and easy to ship.
  
  

Editing Services

• The Internet has greatly expanded opportunities for home-based businesses. If you have training, experience or skills in writing and editing, these abilities are perfectly suited for profitable home employment. Because writing and editing deals solely with text and ideas, they can be engaged in over the Internet from anywhere in the world. These skills are called for in many fields, ranging from government to the arts to commercial corporations. Building up a client base who trust your editing and linguistic skills can provide you with a lucrative and dependable business.