The Most Profitable Home-Based Businesses

Author: Maureen Farrell

by Maureen Farrell 

When art major Melissa Schmechel graduated from Smith College in 2004, she chose to cut her teeth at two small shops in San Francisco. But she also had grander entrepreneurial designs.

"I saw small studios and letter-press printers make it work on their own," says Schmechel. "I felt like there was a big enough market out there."

Skills honed, the entrepreneurial 26-year-old launched her own graphic design shop, Darling Design, out of her apartment last year. She figures that an office lease would have cost an extra $1,000 per month. Sure, the home office can get a bit crowded--Schmechel shares the cramped three-bedroom rental with two roommates--but she's happy she did it. "I couldn't have started the business without doing it in my house," she says.

Schmechel charges $50 an hour to spruce up brochures, business cards, catalogs, case studies and occasionally Web sites. Her tools of the trade include a computer and basic printer. (For high-end printing, she heads to Kinko's.) Additional overhead: a mere $10 per month for a Web site hosting service. Initial marketing amounted to posting an ad on Craigslist. Darling Design's first-year profits: about $50,000, she says.

Who needs a nasty commute when you can make a decent buck but a few feet from your kitchen? Over half of all U.S. businesses are now based out of an owner's home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. With the economy shedding jobs, the ranks of the self-employed may well keep swelling. Plenty more entrepreneurs may look to eliminate rent and fuel costs to pinch pennies.

With the help of Sageworks, a Raleigh, N.C.-based private-company data provider, Forbes.com has assembled a list of the 10 most profitable businesses--on a pretax basis--that could be run out of a home. The data were drawn from eight years worth of financial statements (nearly an entire business cycle) for tens of thousands of privately held U.S. companies with annual revenues under $1 million and bucketed by Internal Revenue Service classifications. Average pretax profits ranged from 8% to 14%.

We included only industries for which Sageworks had data from at least 35 companies, and we eliminated categories too broad to be meaningful. One big caveat: The data have an inherent positive survivorship bias, as some companies captured in earlier years may have failed along the way.

Facilitators--from brokerages to consultancies--nabbed five of the 10 spots; creators, such as specialty design shops, earned three; and repair outfits rounded out the rest. To be sure, not all will fare equally (or well) in the economic downturn.

Case in point: securities and commodities brokers, who stand atop the list with an average pretax margin of 14%. Yet while confidence in the markets is shaken and competition from E*Trade (nasdaq: ETFC - news - people ) and Charles Schwab (nasdaq: SCHW - news - people ) is stiff, trusted brokers able to develop a book of business by giving financial advice (not simply executing trades) can still do well. All it takes is a computer, a speedy Internet hookup and some trading software from the likes of Automatic Data Processing (nyse: ADP - news - people ). Typical commissions: 2% to 3% of the value of each trade.

To get started, first you'll need approval from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Required paperwork includes a business plan, a trial balance sheet and monthly projections of income and expenses. Registration fee: about $5,000, depending on the types of securities you deal with. If you haven't already bagged your broker's license, get ready to pass a series of exams, including the six-hour Series 7 Exam and perhaps the Series 63 or 66. One caveat: You can only take these exams after working for several months at a registered firm--and all of your employees must pass the same tests.