The 39 Best Home-Based Businesses To Start In Arkansas [2024]

Hi, my name is TJ Clark and I am both the co-owner and co-founder of Healthy Chew. Healthy Chew is weekly meal preparation and delivery service based out of central Arkansas that helps our clients eat great and lose weight.

We offer delicious macro based meal plans that change every week, so our clients never get bored of eating the same foods.” Fun fact: that’s our elevator pitch!

We also offer in-store pickup, curbside, and home delivery options. With options such as our cheesy chicken bacon ranch pasta, buffalo chicken mac and cheese, ground turkey spaghetti, sauteed chicken lo mein, and Mongolian beef, our customers are delighted with a variety of foods they know and love.

I’m John James, I’m currently the CEO of Engine, a new cloud hosted ecommerce platform.

In this interview, however, I’m sharing the story of how I started my previous business, Acumen Brands.

I’ll share how we started, how we acquired a nine million Facebook fans in 90 days for one of our brands, how we leveraged that success to raise $100 million in venture capital in middle-of-nowhere Arkansas, and how the business ultimately failed spectacularly after being acquired.

My name is Stacey, and I grew my handmade jewelry hobby into a business. Bang-Up Betty is subversive and sweet hand-stamped jewelry and funny, feminist gift items and apparel.

My work has been featured numerous times by sites like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Bustle and more, and several celebrities have been seen out and about in my designs. Bang-Up Betty is known for its quirky sense of humor, feminist and progressive tendencies, and donating to nonprofits and great causes.

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 name is Joel Runyon and I started an app called MoveWell. The app is designed to help you move better, get stronger and prevent injuries. It’s your ultimate movement and mobility companion.

Our customers are athletes and desk jockeys looking to perform better in fitness and generally move better and have less pain. The app has been out for a few years and currently brings in about $1,200-$1,800 per month, a nice amount of extra cash, but not really a huge business yet.

Even though MoveWell brings in the smallest amount of revenue of any of my ventures, the project has some of my most enthusiastic followers. I used to have a business partner, but recently bought him out and am looking to scale the business even more by adding coaches, consistently adding content, and doing branded partnerships over the next 6-12 months.

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.

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!

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.

Our names are Justin and Casey and we are two brothers who have spent the last 10 years building and growing an aftermarket motorcycle exhaust and accessory business. Our main product is exhaust, but have been able to expand our business by adding several complimentary branded products as well as kitting package deals that might include non competing complementary products made by other companies. If someone needs another product to enhance or use the product you make, you might as well offer it to your customer to create a more complete and pleasant shopping experience for your customer base.

We have grown a little over double every year for the past 4 years and are using that income to reinvest into new products and new capabilities for our company. Just this year we were able to purchase new equipment to allow us the ability to manufacture many complex parts ourselves which cuts down on cost and enhances our ability to be agile and adapt to new products quickly.

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.

Hi everyone, my name is Shane and I’m the founder of The Match Artist. We help singles take amazing pictures for their online dating profiles. Our flagship product is the 3 hour Executive shoot, which gets you about 100 different photos in 7 different settings.

Most importantly, this package comes with an e-mail course and one-on-one coaching so you can take better photos in the future. Many people (especially guys) are horrible at taking pictures. The Match Artist teaches you how to look at the camera, and how to show your most attractive and authentic self. This empowers you to take better photos, even after the shoot is over.

The Match Artist is More Than a Typical Photography Company

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, Dane Jensen here, my business partner Noah and I run Sock Club. Our flagship product is socks of course. We started Sock Club as a monthly subscription where we would deliver a pair of unique socks to our customers every month. As we’ve grown we’ve developed a manufacturing supply chain here in the United States. Having the ability to make our own socks made it possible to enter the new market of custom socks. Now making custom socks is 90% of our business and the subscription 10%. Last year we did $12M+ in revenue and we plan to do more than that this year.

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 Alex Nerney. My business partner Lauren McManus and I started an online blog, two of them actually, that we were able to make a full time income from. We started out with building a health and fitness blog Avocadu. It seemed like a reasonable first niche to start in as I was a personal trainer at the time. After growing that blog to six figures a year Lauren and I decided to start Create and Go to teach others exactly how we did it and share our journey as professional bloggers with them.

We have a lot of customers from all over the world, but they all have at least one thing in common: They dream of making some income through an online blog. Whether that’s to quit their soul sucking day jobs like we did, or to be a stay at home parent, or just to have more financial freedom. Our flagship product on Create and Go is our Pro Blogger bundle, and it aims to give every student exactly what they need to accomplish that dream. It contains all of our individual courses and is our start to finish blogging guide that teaches each student how to start a blog.

After growing Create and Go to have over 10,000+ students now and having an average income of around $130,000 a month combined from our blogs, we have been able to really reflect on how much we have accomplished. Lauren and I quit our jobs only a few years ago, but honestly, the life we have lived since doing so makes it seem like it was another lifetime ago.

I’m Michael Arciola III and the founder of Southern Cigar Co. At the time of founding, I was a student at Florida State University studying computer science and business. I started the company 4 years ago out of my apartment and couldn’t be happier with the progress we’ve made thus far.

Southern Cigar Co.’s primary product is a subscription box, which was all the hype then and still is now. Our primary customers are fathers, golfers, businessmen, and new hobbyists. We ship worldwide and have shipped to over 30 different countries so far. Currently we are doing ~250k a year in revenue, but this has been growing at about 20% year over year.

Me packing boxes outside out apartment on the deck. I would do them in batches, this being one of them.

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.

Hi, I’m Jeremy Simon, founder of 3D Universe, LLC. We are an e-commerce value-added reseller, providing digital fabrication solutions, such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and vacuum forming machines, as well as related supplies and accessories. We represent several different brands, but the Ultimaker line of 3D printers is our strongest product line.

Our customers include educational organizations, government entities, commercial organizations across a wide variety of vertical markets, and individual consumers.

We have developed a business model that leverages online technologies to minimize operational overhead, allowing us to conduct a profitable business with significant revenues using a very small team of employees.

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.

My name is Braxton Manley and I am a 23-year-old living in Austin. I started Braxley Bands with my dorm-mate Grant Andrews as a class project at Texas Tech about 3 years ago.

We created an elastic Apple Watch band and started making them by hand on my Nana’s sewing machine. We have since scaled the business from an original $20 upfront for materials to $100K a month on Shopify. No other capital or investment was ever put into the business.

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.

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.

I started college as an engineering major at Arizona State University. I always had an entrepreneurial spirit and quickly realized engineering (especially biomedical engineering) isn’t a quick path to starting a company. Switching to the business school, I wanted to choose a major that was more technical and academic compared to the topics I believed made more sense to learn in “real life,” such as marketing or management. So I chose accounting – “the language of business,” as Warren Buffett calls it.

Researching keyword traffic for interest in your product would be a completely free way to start validating your idea before putting too much time or money into it.

Just a year after switching my major, I saw an opportunity to learn QuickBooks and see if any small businesses around Tempe needed help with their bookkeeping. I spoke with one business owner I knew and looked up to, and he agreed to let me handle a small aspect of his bookkeeping. I was off to the races. I started cold-calling local businesses and responding to Craigslist ads, and that’s how I got my first few clients.

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.

I'm Kurt Elster, and I host The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. With 750,000 downloads, 200 episodes, and four sponsors, it’s become quite the media machine for us.

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.

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.

My name is Kyle Golding, I am a co-founder and CMO of VORTTX Training and Testing SaaS virtual emergency response training system for long-term healthcare facilities. I co-founded VORTTX Training and Testing in 2016.

VORTTX is a yearly subscription service currently generating 1% of the market potential of one hundred million dollars a year in our second year of full-time operation.

After nearly a year in development, the adoption rate of VORTTX from the public launch to the end of the first 12 months was over 500% and still growing.

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.

We started Highway Robery (roe-bur-ree)..get it? - a sustainable robe company based in Austin, TX, making colorful kimono-style robes, and we’re doing a new twist on an old standard.

With our robes, we strive to exude a sense of adventure and whimsy so that our wearers can stay in touch with their inner-goofball. We make all of our robes in the USA, using sustainable production methods. We focus on having as little waste as possible and ensuring that our sewers are treated (and paid) well above industry standards.

All of our robes are one-size-fits-most, and are gender neutral. It was important to us to be as inclusive as possible with our robes.

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! I'm Erin E. Hooley, proud Texas mom of 6 as well as founder and CEO of the e-commerce children's clothing line Bailey's Blossoms and it's sister brand, Peyton Bre.

Bailey's Blossoms started as a hair accessories company at my kitchen table in Arizona back in 2008 and has since grown into a multi-million dollar adventure. Both brands provide fashion-forward styles at a price that won't break the bank!

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.

What’s going on! I am Garret “Buddy” Lamp, and I am a co-founder with Taylor “Earl” Nees of our start-up, Muff Waders. Muff Waders is an epic product that Earl came up with about 3 years ago, and we just began selling in September 2019.

Muff Waders are the first-ever bibs for work AND play. The bibs have many different features that allow you to keep your drinks close while working outdoors or being the life of the party. Made with strong and tough material, these bibs are built to withstand the rugged elements of mother nature.

The main feature is the insulated six-pack cooler located on the chest that holds 12 oz. cans and bottles. Along with that, there are two pockets located on the side of the leg that can hold 1/5 of liquor, a bottle of wine, etc. nice and snug. A Muff Mug (magnetic coozie) located at the top of the Muff Waders that attaches to the metal bottle opener. People love using this feature so they can go hands-free. On the inside of the bibs, you'll find a hidden/concealed pocket to keep your valuable possessions close and safe.