The 37 Best Home-Based Businesses To Start In Alabama [2024]

I’m Stacey, founder and President of Liberated Specialty Foods, based in the quiet town of Madison, Alabama. We run a food manufacturing business making a full line of baked food (made mainly from nut flours) like almond flour pizza crust, cashew bread, and coconut flour donuts, along with additive-free sauces like ketchup and pizza sauce; with the specific mission to help those suffering from autoimmune diseases like Crohn’s and Colitis, that ALSO fill the niche of Keto, Paleo, Atkins, and other trending diets.

We sell online and to retailers. We went from about 100 retailers with our products in 2016 to over 1,000 today, including major chains from Whole Foods and Sprouts to Wal-Mart -- and we hope to keep adding more!

As we say in the South: “Hey Ya’ll!” I’m Mary Drennen, a co-founder of Nourish Foods.

My partner, Tiffany Davis, and I are classically trained chefs with a strong background in healthy recipe development and high-volume food production. Tiffany excels at operations and diving deep into the details of all of our recipes, meal components, and production flow. My strengths are more on the business development, sales, and marketing sides of the business. I think we are a complete Yin and Yang. We share almost no strengths, except for our culinary skills.

In late 2014 we launched Nourish Foods. Nourish creates and delivers high-quality, healthy and fully-prepared meals to your door each week. Our goal is to give individuals and families their time back. There is no shopping, cooking or cleaning involved with Nourish.

Hello dreamweavers, empire builders and world changers. My name is Ron Holt, CEO & Founder of Two Maids & A Mop.

I started my company more than sixteen years ago inside a 250 square foot office space. When I’m dead and gone, there’s a good chance my tombstone will read “Crazy Entrepreneur That Out Hustled Everyone”. That’s been my mantra ever since leaving the uninspiring halls of corporate America and it’s a virtue that is based on tiny, small habits eventually evolving into big, massive victories.

So if you’re like me, and can’t stay focused because you’re always wanting to fix another problem….just stop right now because the true secret to my success has been to simply outwork and outpassion everyone in my path, every single day for nearly twenty-five years now.

Hi, I’m Tippy Tippens, Chief Eternal Optimist at Goods that Matter. I started with a soap that gives to oil spill cleanup in 2010, BirdProject Soap. This was my way as a designer to help after the BP Oil Spill Disaster in 2010. I got my start on Kickstarter with that product and then was inspired to start the company, Goods that Matter. We design and make a variety of eco-goods from candles to custom first aid kits to cards - each product raises funds for a unique cause.

Goods that Matter creates everyday design goods, with extraordinary impact. Each Matter product is handmade in the U.S., of eco-friendly materials, & gives back to unique social and environmental causes. 10% of all proceeds flow to causes that impact the health, happiness, and sustainability of our communities both locally and for our neighbors around the world.

We are proud to be the first Benefit Corporation in the state of Louisiana and to have donated $43,632 to date to our partner causes! Goods that Matter works to make the world a better place by creating products and collaborations that matter.

My name is Karl, and I’m the founder of Draft. After almost a decade leading engineering teams at venture-funded startups, I decided it was time to leap into entrepreneurship. Draft is a productized service that provides technical content to software engineering blogs on a subscription basis.

August is my third month running the business and first month full-time, and I’m on track to bring in $10,000 in (mostly) recurring revenue this month. The business isn’t going to replace my salary as a CTO right away, but the freedom of running my own business has given me a lot of freedom to stretch my creative muscles and spend time with my family.

My son Joe and dog Chili. We get to hang out together every day now!

My full-time job is in advertising. (Think Don Draper with less Brylcreem,) And from 2005 to 2012, I worked at JWT, the United States Marine Corps’ longtime ad agency. As the Creative Director, I was in charge of recruitment advertising - writing the television commercials, print ads, billboards, etc - for the Marines during two of the most unpopular wars in our nation’s history.

Every time I’d go to a Marine base to film a commercial, I’d bring my then 5-year-old daughter back a small gift from the Marine Exchange. At the time, she was having trouble sleeping - bad dreams, fear of the dark, monsters under the bed - the usual fears of a young kid.

So I bought her a teddy bear and told her a story.

I’m Nick Bey and I run Bey Moss, an e-commerce platform that sells products infused with Chondrus Crispus or, better known as, sea moss. Our flagship product started with sea moss gel, which was used as a food additive. Our customers are men and women concerned about their health and using beauty products that are safe for your skin.

Bey Moss started on January 1, 2020, and has made over $800,000 to-date with less than $10,000 overall in ads. Our customers realize that they are investing in their health when they consume our products.

My name is Suzann Kaltbaum, I am a fine art photographer.

“I just snap and go”. Intuition is an entrepreneur’s secret weapon. What started as a passion project, travel photography has turned into a lucrative business.

Hello! My name is D’Shawn Russell and I am the founder and CEO of Southern Elegance Candle Company. I started the company 4 years ago as a side hustle to make some extra money on the weekends and to get me out of the house. But it quickly grew to much more than I expected.

Southern Elegance Candle Company is all about loving and living in the South. We created home fragrance products that all have a southern theme to them and all of our fragrances are based on Southern agriculture. Apple? Check! Pine? Check! Cotton (or course) Check! Missing the Southern Sunshine? We got a fragrance for you. Our core group of customers are women that live in the South or people that appreciate Southern culture.

Our flagship products at the moment are our candles. We offer three different sizes; travel tin, mason jar and large tumbler. We also have wax melts and room spray. But, we will be slowly rolling out new products over the next year to include an apparel line.

Hi, my name is Todd and I’m a serial entrepreneur. After a long history of building various businesses, I created ByteStand, a friendly software development company run by ecommerce nerds who get excited about weird things like “cross-platform integrations” and “fulfillment networks” and “coffee”.

We design Shopify apps, with three apps currently in the app store and over 2,000 shops using our software. Our two main apps are ByteStand and FBA Shipping, which were designed to help Amazon sellers diversify and generate more revenue by importing their Amazon inventory to Shopify and exporting their Shopify orders to Amazon for fulfillment.

We also created FreshCredit, Shopify's first true store credit app. Between all three apps, we generate about $17,000/month in revenue.

My name is Paul Sciortino, I am the founder of Ayo Supplements and we sell Matcha Boost, the best matcha tea supplement you will find on the market. It’s a simple

product; organic, ceremonial grade Japanese matcha powder combined with vitamin B-12 to support natural energy.

Matcha’s renowned health benefits are widely recognized and it is one of the healthiest substances in the world. It’s an acquired taste, however, and prep time can make it difficult to fit into a daily routine. I thought that if I created a quality product in a convenient “take with you anywhere” capsule, people couldn’t afford not to take it.

Hi everyone, my name is Mitchell and I’m one of the three founders of Patriot Chimney. We sweep, repair, and build chimneys and also service and repair dryer vents around the Roanoke Valley in Virginia.

We created the company in order to provide really, really awesome, transparent, and trustworthy chimney and dryer vent services in our region. You see, chimney companies don’t typically receive a positive reputation and we’re out to change that. In fact, we’ve been fortunate enough to provide our services to more than 350 homes in an area that spans from Lynchburg, VA all the way down to Blacksburg, VA. What’s more is that we’ve also been able to generate more than $212,000 in revenue during our first year, with 8% of that being net profit.

I studied marketing in college, but my experience in the past few years has been a mix between marketing and sales, so my focus is primarily around building the sales and marketing strategy for us. My brother (Matt) and a friend of his (Billy) focus on the operations, actually getting on the roof and doing some real dirty work.

My name is Christopher Thomas. I am the managing partner and co-owner of a cocktail mixer brand called Eli Mason. We make premium cocktail mixers and syrups using real ingredients like cane sugar and premium bitters in Nashville, Tennessee.

Our flagship product is The Old Fashioned Cocktail Mixer. Just mix it with your favorite whiskey and you have a delicious Old Fashioned in less than 30 seconds. We have two main customers. Our first customer is someone who enjoys a delicious cocktail, but they don’t want the hassle of figuring out the right ratios of sugar to bitters, should they muddle fruit or not, we make it super easy for them to make a consistent and delicious Old Fashioned in less than 30 seconds. Our second customer is the cocktail enthusiast who loves making cocktails from scratch in their home, but sometimes they just want EASY. We give them that EASY option for a solid drink made with real ingredients.

My name is David Dewane and I’m the co-founder and president of the Mouse Book Club. We make phone-sized physical books you carry around with you so that you have a decent alternative to reading your phone.

I’m an architect, professor, journalist, hustler, and the lowest form of tech junkie. I’m the kind of creep you’d see checking their phone at the dinner table when the baby is crying. That’s one of the reasons I started Mouse and am aligning our company with the movement towards digital minimalism, that is, a more limited and thoughtful integration of technology into our lives.

So far, we have mailed over 40,000 books to 60+ countries and all 50 states. We’ve done about $170,000 in sales in the first two years.

Hi! My name is Natalie, and I help people build conscious wardrobes through my blog Sustainably Chic. It’s the ultimate destination for everything in a sustainable fashion. From learning what it is to brands who produce it, you can find all of that information on my blog. Sustainably Chic is here to show you fashion can exist responsibly.

While I mainly write about women’s fashion, I also speak about men’s fashion, children’s fashion, fashion in the home, and green beauty. I find fashion to be everywhere in life, so it’s important to touch on every little aspect I can. Most importantly, almost anything you use has a sustainable option, and Sustainably Chic is here to showcase it.

I’m Clifton Muckenfuss, I am Co-Founder of Carolina Exteriors, a Specialty Replacement Contractor based in Apex, NC, serving the Raleigh Metro Area. Carolina Exteriors offers residential home improvement services including Roofing, Siding, Windows, Doors, and Gutters. We believe that if we “build people, we build a winning team and combined, we Build Exceptional Customer Experiences. Our dedication to our people and customers and execution on our mission has led to us receiving numerous industry awards for customer service.

Carolina Exteriors was founded in 2010 amidst the last housing crisis and recession. We realized and understood that most contractors were great carpenters or “tradesmen” but not savvy business owners, and many found themselves overleveraged and without a sustainable business model. We [founders] drew from our previous business experience in Sales, Management, Customer Service and Operations Management to create a “customer first” company backed by systems and processes.

We bootstrapped the business on $3,500 and now 9 years later generate $4,000,000 in revenue.

I’m Brian White. I started the Houston based law firm, Attorney Brian White Personal Injury.

We are a law firm that primarily handles plaintiff personal injury cases, although we do handle other commercial litigation, insurance bad faith, wage & hour, and financial fraud cases as well.

Through hard work, relentless advocacy for our clients, and extreme preparation, we have grown our business from a boutique law firm with a scrappy reputation to capturing a large share of the competitive Texas legal market capturing tens of millions of dollars of market share per year.

We named our organization StandUpLD because we wanted to empower children and their parents by giving them a voice and helping them have the confidence to stand up for themselves and acknowledge their learning differences; to own it. There can be such a tremendous sense of isolation for children with learning differences. And with that, of course, often comes depression, which children with learning differences experience at greater rates than the national average. Imagine the sense of inadequacy a child feels when they’re working as hard—usually much harder—than others in the classroom but those efforts aren’t bringing results. What’s more, it’s not uncommon for a learning issue to be mistaken for a mental health issue. You can imagine how that mislabeling can affect self-esteem, depression, and escort in a host of other issues they face once they reach their teen years. According to Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, there is a significant overlap in learning differences and substance abuse.

Something is only a failure if you don’t learn from it. If you do and can use that knowledge to your advantage, it can hardly be called a failure.

Without access to proper remediation and organizations like StandUpLD—and others with similar missions—children in at-risk communities who have a learning difference are even more likely to fall into negative and self-destructive behaviors. As an example, 48% of today’s prison population has dyslexia. Those children, along with any child challenged with a learning issue, is why StandUpLD is truly a heart mission.

My name is Mike Luongo and I am the Managing Member of Total Home Supply in Fairfield, NJ. Total Home Supply was founded in 2010 by a group of disgruntled people working for other Internet companies. We were not happy with the direction of these companies so we got together under a common concept of creating a company that would treat our customers the way we would like to be treated.

Since we sell heating and cooling products that can be purchased elsewhere, we knew we needed to find a compelling reason for customers to choose us. We also knew that just selling cheap was not the answer so we became the leader in customer service, both before and after the sale.

The above is why we have double-digit growth while our competitors struggle to maintain the volume from previous years.

Hello, my name is Steve Sanders and I’m the creator of a website called Episode Ninja. The primary goal of the site is to rank the “best” episodes of a given TV show.

In my day job, I work as a web and app developer at a company in the smart home space. Episode Ninja is still firmly a side project for me, currently making around $1000 a month in revenue. It is monetized through display advertising and TV streaming affiliate programs.

Traffic to the website has been steadily growing since launch and is currently at more than 200,000 unique visitors per month.

Why hello there, my name is Sam and I am the owner and head developer over at Sam Munoz Consulting, LLC! We are a WordPress development company, specializing in upscale websites for high-performing businesses as well as affordable website templates called the Effortless Website Kits for new business owners & entrepreneurs.

Our purpose is to EMPOWER business owners & entrepreneurs to harness their website to work for their biz as the #1 MVP. We strive to make the tech side of the business overall less scary and overwhelming through bite-sized education, our digital products, and speaking in human terms.

We are a dynamite team of 3 tech-savvy ladies. The team includes Sam (me!) owner & lead developer, Laura Kåmark - business and project manager & Karyn Paige - head tech wizard.

Hello! My name is Savitra and I am the owner of the influential online boutique New Era of Style, LLC. New Era of Style is a mid-priced online boutique that is dedicated to catering to the fashion needs of working professional men and women.

New Era of Style is a Career and Lifestyle brand. Our selections are versatile and transition with the busy schedules of our customers. Our best-selling items include our selection of tops, vegan-leather bags, and wardrobe accessories. We work with several unique wholesalers and designers to bring the best in fashion. To create exclusivity with our merchandise, we offer a limited inventory of selected items.

Hey there! So excited to be going over everything that’s happened this last year. My name is Anslea and I run Forgotten Mermaids, a brand of temporary tattoos inspired by mermaids, designed by humans. Our tattoos give the illusion of mermaid scales so even if you’re not ready to commit to the mermaid lifestyle, you can still add a little mermaid magic to your every-day outfit. Currently, we have two tattoo styles available in six colors, alongside a variety of clothing items such as leggings and swimsuits that share this same scale pattern.

We started the year with big plans for expanding our sales channels and product line, but due to COVID-19 our timeline was pushed way back and ultimately we had to change our vision quite drastically. Thankfully, since the business was built on the premise of being adaptable, adjusting to our new reality was relatively painless and has since opened up opportunities we otherwise wouldn't have explored.

Currently, we’ve seen a 40% increase in sales compared to this time last year and hope to keep that trending upwards with new products and expanded marketing tactics.

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My Dad owned several companies when I was young, and when I graduated from college, I planned on getting started in corporate America and then eventually starting my own business.

One of the keys to survival is to not get too discouraged by the bad days, no matter how bad it might seem at the time.

In 2001, my Dad went to work with a financial planning firm, and then in 2014, I joined him. We quickly realized that we wanted to run things a different way, so in November of 2014 we set out on our own and Van Wie Financial was born.

My name is Mat Hofma, and I created Mini Materials. We sell miniature masonry and woodworking supplies like cinder blocks, red bricks, pallets, lumber, and even molds to pour your own cinder blocks.

Our best seller is by far the pallet of miniature cinder blocks. From Day 1 - when I posted my development story to Reddit - the general consensus has always seemed to be "I didn't think I'd ever want to buy a pallet of mini cinder blocks, but now that I see it, I really need it."

Since then we've expanded to different styles of mini masonry and even kits to build models.

Hey, y’all, I am Sandy Engels and I am the owner and artisan of The Purple Sage, a company created to encourage modern midlife women to live and love boldly.

When my youngest child started kindergarten, I started my first business doing medical billing from home. Which I sold a few years later...and went back to being a stay at home Mom.

I’ve been making soap and bath products since 2002. I got serious about business in 2011. In addition to selling online, I do festivals and events in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia. My average revenue is $2800 a month.

My name is Chris Reimer, and I’m Founder and Chief Power Officer of Boosa Tech.

We sell power banks - portable phone chargers designed to keep your smartphone up and running no matter how long you’re away from a wall outlet. On a plane flying across the world? Trying to hail an Uber? At the never-ending 3-hour soccer practice playing mindless games on your phone? On the couch and your slovenly body just won’t move? Boosa's designed to eliminate the Low Battery Anxiety that just about everyone feels when their phone dips below 30%, 20%, 5% … as little as $25-35 will take this stress out of your life.

Boosa is currently a one-person operation - me! I run the website, social media, PR, inventory procurement from China (both negotiations and logistics), pick/pack/and ship orders, customer service, marketing … I do it all and love every minute of it. And all of this is happening while I continue to work my full-time job as a Director of Creative Services at a local university. Boosa’s website went live in late June 2018, and we’re averaging about $2,000/month in sales.

My name is Marlena Jorn and I am the founder of Marlena Jorn Tutors. I offer private, one-on-one German lessons to both children and adults. I currently have a website and a Facebook page. I teach my lessons through Zoom and PowerPoint, and after every lesson, I provide the student with the PowerPoint with my voice attached to it so they can practice the vocabulary/grammar between lessons.

I currently have three students, and I am currently working on building rapport and a solid clientele. Throughout my own education, I have seen a decline in the availability of the German language. I aim to reverse that and make German available to anyone interested.

Hello, My name is Chris D. and along with my partner and technical advisor Oliver C, we run Bighead Custom. Bighead Custom creates wooden “BLING” pendants that are created from customer or corporate logos. The finished product is unlike anything else available today. We have the technology to reproduce any photo or logo using colored metal flake and finish the piece off with a smooth sheet of glass. We give customers the “BLING” without the heavy price tag sting!

Our customers range from the up-and-coming rap artist, corporate America, celebs and everyone in between. Our “TURNOVER CHAINS” have become EXTREMELY popular and were born right after the Miami Hurricanes first debuted this style chain back in 2017. In fact, the turnover craze has forced us to create a 2nd website dedicated strictly to this style chain, Turnoverchains!

BIGHEAD IS EVERYWHERE! Since starting Bighead in 2011 and without any real advertising, Bighead does really well for a side hustle. Without giving up too much personal info regarding our finances, Bighead brings in enough revenue to help take care of 4 full-time employees. For a company that has never paid for advertising and only uses Youtube, SEO and other social media platforms (minus Facebook believe it or not) to expose the brand, it's really pretty impressive how large of an audience we were able to capture without paying for them! I think the key for us has been that we have something that doesn't really exist anywhere else. You can only get it from us. You can't shop us around. We have no real competition!

Hi there. I’m Jen Hansard, the co-founder of Simple Green Smoothies where we create plant-powered recipes that gives you the energy and health to fuel your passion. It all started on Instagram in 2012, yet over the years (and with a LOT of hustle and luck) it has exploded into a brand of best-selling plant-based recipe books, live community cleanses, adventure retreats and the #1 green smoothie app in iTunes, Daily Blends. Since 2012, Simple Green Smoothies has helped over 2 million people take control of their health in a tasty and simple way.

Our flagship product is the FREE Simple 7-Day Smoothie Challenge. We spent months creating this self-driven program and deliver the most amazing experience for anyone who signs up. We’ve made healthy habits fun, simple and tasty so that you keep coming back for more. Yet most importantly, we’ve empowered you to take control of your health, in your own kitchen so that it’s sustainable and affordable. I don't know many people who can afford to spend $8 a day buy a smoothie, which is why I can teach you how to make one that tastes WAY better (and for under $3).

My name is Grigory Pekarsky and I own a residential real estate company called Vesta Preferred.

We operate in the Chicagoland area and this year, 2019, we are celebrating 10 years or operation. We focus on relationship building rather than strictly selling real estate. Our operations are unique as many relationships in our company begin by helping our clients find their first home as a rental property in the city. We then stay in touch and maintain our relationships in hopes of becoming everyone’s broker for life. My personal business is now over 80% referral based and repeat clients due to these principles. This year we are #3 in the city for sales as compared to the 14,000+ individual entities that sell in Chicago.

We consistently grow at a 20% pace and this year we are on pace to write 1000 new leases and sell over $120m in real estate.

Hello, everyone! My name is Tyler Macke and I’m the 21-year-old founder of SendAFriend, an e-commerce brand that sells stuffed animal care packages.

Our core product is the stuffed animals themselves, which we offer alongside a customizable greeting card and a few small accessory add-ons. The fluffy friend gets swaddled up in blue tissue paper and packaged in our bright blue shipping box with the ‘Someone Loves You’ motif before being sent out the door.

My name is Travis Hancock and I’m the founder of Facade Games. We have published 3 board games, each disguised in book boxes.

Each of the games focuses on a city and year from history, and has some kind of lying/backstabbing involved in the gameplay. We’re currently working on game number 4 for our current series of games, as well as a new party game line.

Our games have raised over $1 million on Kickstarter, and we’ve sold about 80,000 copies of our games around the world. I work full time from home with my wife Holly. We love inventing and publishing games!

Hey, y’all! I’m Hagan Walker - one of the co-founders of Glo! We make liquid-activated products under two different brands - Glo Cubes, which are light up drink cubes - and Glo Pals, light-up sensory toys for children. Both incorporate the same patented liquid activation circuitry.

Basically, you drop one of our products in liquid and it uses ions in the liquid to bridge an electrical circuit, causing the cube to light up. Not only is the circuit patented, but we also have a unique design that isn’t triggered by residual fluid or ice. This means Glo Cubes work very well in a restaurant setting. When someone finishes a drink, the light goes out, indicating to the server that a refill is needed. The same idea translates to the Glo Pals. These bath toys only work in liquid - just draw a bath and drop them in. They automatically light up, and when you drain the tub, they turn off on their own - no buttons or switches to forget about!

It’s a strange combination (internally, we joke about kids and cocktails - ha!), but I’ll get into how that all came about in just a bit. We’re a bit quirky and, in this fast-paced world of e-commerce and dropshipping, we’ve found a small niche where we design, prototype, and package every single product from our headquarters in Starkville, Mississippi. This year, we’ll sell over 3 million of our products to customers in 37 countries.

My name is David Bishop, and I started Agile Worx, an organization that provides tools, training, and consulting services to technology companies. Our main product is “Metagility” a new, patented framework that leverages agile principles to help technology companies become #1 in their market.

“Metagility” is based on the concept of Agile Vorticity, which was derived from over 10 years of peer-reviewed scientific research. At Agile Worx, we’ve productized this research into an entire ecosystem of products and services that maximizes productivity, efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction for our clients.

Although there are other “agile frameworks” on the market, “Metagility” is the only framework that has received a US patent and proven by scientific peer-reviewed research to accomplish what we say it does.

Hi y’all, I’m Stacey Haynes, founder of Thrivette, a community of people where we “Make Things Happen.” Our company offers consulting, as well as free resources in our Thrivette Lab, to help businesses grow. I have over 15 years of experience in the customer service/call center industry. My husband, Jason, is an architect turned web designer. We have had countless side hustles over the years to help fund our bigger dreams...real estate. People continued to ask us how we did it, so we started Thrivette as a way to compile information for people to reference anything from getting started with crowdfunding, to selling on large e-commerce platforms (Like Amazon, Etsy, and Shopify), to dealing with customers in real life as a landlord.

Our highest paying clients, are Fortune 100 companies that range from retail, candy, dog food, and insurance. However, we are passionately transitioning into serving those ready for the start-up hustle! We have a large growing market of customers who want to start that side hustle or make enough profits to quit their 9-5. So teachers, stay-at-home parents, recent grads, are all a huge part of what we do.

We love encouraging these people to get to the next level and will give as many free resources and advice as we can. Jason and I believe in giving away all our “secrets” because as entrepreneurs we know there are struggles lots of hoops to jump through, just to get something simple started. People can get overwhelmed, but we love jumping in and helping them find their way. Our goal is to help people get going, accomplishing small wins, and ultimately finding success.

Hello! My name is SiDi and I’m the inventor of the ZipSeam, a product that lets you tailor your baggy shirts in minutes. I launched the product 5 years ago to help young professionals dress better without breaking the wallet.