This morning, during my swim, I spoke with one of my neighbours who told me she and her entire division at one of Canada’s banks were being laid off, with outsourcing and artificial intelligence (AI) replacing their jobs. This is becoming a common story. It is happening for white-collar workers in lots of businesses. The layoffs are affecting not just entry-level jobs but also workers who have been at their companies for decades with middle-level management titles.
AI is being trained to take away prescriptive and task-specific, repeatable work. Where it likely will never compete is in work requiring emotional intelligence, creativity, and complex human interaction.
So, if you have been recently laid off from your white-collar job, have no plumbing, electrical, or construction skills, and are thinking of creating a home business, then consider what will make that business full-proof against others going down this path and AI.
The Appeal of a Home Business
In the United States, between 4.7 and 5.5 million new businesses are launched each year. A significant number of these are home-based. In Canada, the number of new home-based businesses launched, based on StatCan data, approximates 100,000 annually.
In the U.S., 70% of new businesses last more than 2 years, 50% beyond 5, 30% beyond 10, and 25% beyond 15. A home business startup, therefore, doesn’t fall into the old maxim that “50% of businesses fail in the first year.”
The best home businesses to start are those where you have displayed the necessary skills to succeed, and that can be shared with clients.
There are many advantages to working from home. I know, because for more than two decades I conducted my consulting practice and many short-term jobs from the second-floor study in our home.
Home-based jobs provide a work-life balance and flexibility that make them attractive. They can also be precarious if the work you choose to do is not in high demand or competes with thousands of others doing similar things.
In some cases, a home business can be a second job, an opportunity to earn a little more, or weigh the possibility of leaving the regular 9-to-5 world of work. The key is to choose wisely, aligning your skills and interests with what is in demand.
Here is a list of 10 types of businesses a person can start at home with very little investment capital (US$5,000 to $50,000). Some of these are resilient in the face of AI, while others, not so much. The last two on this list may be the most at peril to AI’s growing capabilities.
- Catering Opportunities, including baking, food trucks and food delivery services
- Mobile Cleaning Services from Homes to Cars
- Personal In-Home Training Services
- Pet-related Services like Dog Walkers, Pet Sitters, Groomers and Trainers
- Home Waste, Decluttering and Downsizing Services
- Transportation Services
- 3D Printing Services
- Freelance Writing, Editing and Translation Services
- Home Tutoring and Teaching, including Art, Music and Educational Curricula
- Accounting and Bookkeeping Services
To this list, I add some compelling home business opportunities for you to consider if you are being laid off or your job has been made redundant by AI. If you have the necessary industry skill sets or can take some time to get trained to harness a variety of skills in the following areas, they represent solid home business opportunities.
Consulting Jobs
For more than 20 years, I was a management consultant before retiring and beginning to write this blog. I mostly worked from home with occasional long-term contracts involving in-office work and travel.
Consulting can be a great way to leverage your accumulated work expertise. If you excel in a specific niche, you can start a consulting business.
Data from a 2023 global survey cited consulting as the second-ranked profession for secondary jobs. Consulting is big business. In 2025, revenue by year-end is expected to reach US$1.06 trillion. Projected growth is expected to hit $1.32 trillion by 2029.
Strategic consulting, which relies on emotional, creative and human interaction intelligence, is on a faster growth path. Since 2017, strategic consulting has nearly doubled in revenue to $91.38 billion in 2025. In the United States alone, strategic consulting, including business planning, the raising of seed capital and helping clients break into new markets, is producing a proliferation of home-based and solo practices, representing 82.7% of this market. So, if you want to put your shingle out as a strategic consultant, and I would suggest with a focus on small businesses and new startups, there can be a big upside with little threat from AI.
A Trader in Stocks, Etc.
Several years ago, when I was doing work for a franchise business selling children’s education programs globally, I was sent to the Bahamas, where I was a guest in the home of a stock trader. As a second business, he wanted to establish a children’s educational franchise in Nassau to sell to the Bahamian Department of Education. His day job, however, was a home stock trader, managing his and other clients’ portfolios and stock trades.
I have a good friend today who is doing this as a home business. Whether stocks, foreign exchange, cryptocurrency and NFT (non-fungible tokens), this type of private trading can be a way to create income from home. It requires no formal accreditation or licensing, and no minimum net worth restrictions. Individual investors can buy for themselves and others on public exchanges. The key is to understand market basics, learn risk management, and create a strategy. My Bahamian trader had developed a proprietary Excel spreadsheet program which he ran 24×7, monitoring targeted stocks and trades.
If you want to improve your personal skills to take on this as a home business, explore the prop firm challenge to prove your skills using demo accounts. If successful, you will gain access to funded trading capital.
Website and Software Testing
You can get paid for testing software and websites. This can be as simple as providing website feedback on the presentation of what is being sold on sites, or involve finding coding errors, broken links, and other mistakes that take away from a site’s effectiveness.
Basic requirements include having a computer, a smartphone, and a workspace. You need some familiarity with the languages of the web, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and web testing tools like Bugzilla. You can get certified as a web tester through the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB), a vendor-neutral organization that provides training and professional certification for this kind of work. If you are already proficient in web and software design and have just been laid off, you could consider becoming an ISTQB training provider.
Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing in 2024 generated USD$18 billion, and is forecast to reach $31.7 billion by 2031. What is it? It is a perfect web-based business focused on driving traffic, whether leads or sales, to a company to buy products or services. The business model involves a seller of products and services, an affiliate promoter who promotes the seller’s products and services through the affiliate’s website, blog, social media, email campaign or videos. The affiliate platform is the entry point for the customer who, when they buy the product or service, earns a commission.
As a home business, it has a low cost of entry and relatively low overhead beyond setting up the affiliate marketers’ web presence. Affiliate marketers bear different titles:
- Social Media Influencer
- Blogger
- YouTube channel promoter
- Email marketer
- Podcaster
- Referrer
Of all home business options available today, affiliate marketing resonates the most and requires the least training to get started. If you have a gift for the gab and an artistic flair, this may be your entry point for creating a sustainable home business in the 21st century.
E-Commerce and Dropshipper
Dropshipping is an e-commerce-based home business with low startup and overhead costs. It fits a home business with only Internet access required, along with good marketing instincts and an ability to pick product winners. You don’t have to keep inventory. You can offer a wide range of quality products. Your website “store” can be a testing ground for new products with no financial risk.
Existing platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce make it easy to create an online presence. Dropshippers can even become Amazon e-commerce partners. Your site never handles the products, and never sets prices. All of that is handled by the product manufacturer or supplier.
With so many getting into dropshipping, it will become increasingly difficult to differentiate offerings. That’s why the biggest investment dropshipping will require is an effective marketing strategy with promotion of your online presence through social media, blogs and other web content sites.
The low cost of entry makes this business attractive. The increasing competition and low profit margins make it less so.
So there you have it, in the precarious world of work here in the 21st century, there may be a home business in your future. I hope that the options presented here can prove helpful.
