30 Best Home-Based Educational Business Ideas (2023)

I had been learning to code for some time and I was looking for inspiration from people who like me hadn’t learned programming at college. I’m a member of quite a few online communities and I had already been asking developers for a while about how they got into software engineering. I knew quite a few people hadn’t been to college and had still done really well in their careers.

For instance, an Austrian developer Richard was making six figures as a self-taught web developer aged 22 years old and I was really impressed by that. Also, Harry Dry made a dating website for Kanye West fans which went viral and he was basically learning how to make it as he went along. One of my biggest influences, Pieter Levels, is also a very successful entrepreneur and makes $600,000 as a self-taught web developer. These stories helped encourage me to keep learning to code so I thought other people would be interested as well.

I knew of course that interview websites like Indiehackers and Starter Story were a good way to start a business so I had some examples to follow already. I figured that over the next 10 years there are going to be so many people learning to code for the first time that I could get ahead of that and making a website for them. I was definitely inspired by the way Pieter Levels took advantage of the trend of remote work with his websites Nomad List and Remote OK aimed at people having a location-independent lifestyle.

My paternal grandfather was my mentor in Indian music. He taught me Carnatic vocals when I was 4 years old. He was my inspiration. My maternal grandfather was a businessman who ran hotels, lodges, oil and rice mills, spares shops, etc. He too was my inspiration. My mom will always be an inspiration to me as she taught me righteousness and virtues.

Also, my school provided great exposure to dance and vocal, both being my passion. I had participated in various cultural competitions and events during school and got recognized and awarded by our Chief Minister and Governor at that time. I even performed in the International sports festival inauguration dance that happened in India during my grade 12. The thrill was the music was composed by our Oscar awardee AR Rahman, India's pride. I used to be actively participating in Lions club events, competitions, and Bookfair every year.

To start any business we need to have the investment and I definitely wanted to save for that big day. It took me years and I decided after my younger kid was born. I wanted to balance my work and family life better, without compromising both and also keep them growing.

I always loved creating with my hands and I tend to get carried away with presents and cards during the holidays. That being said, I was content that my passion for drawing and painting would be a minor supporting role while I majored in Interior Architecture and worked as an Interior Designer over the next 4 years after I graduated.

So one day when my then boss passive aggressively asked what day I would like to show up for work that week, I told her ‘how about none?’... and never looked back.

It wasn’t until 2015 where I decided to pick up modern calligraphy as a hobby. Upon admiring all the more established calligraphers’, I realize that working on bespoke custom wedding invitations would allow me to do everything I love and at the same time make a living off of it.

My days with a camera can be traced back to my parents’ Sony Handycam when I was 6 directing my friends to make mini movies (still somewhere around here on VHS) but high school was a defining time for that passion as I joined the video club.

There’s certainly no substitute for hard work and dedicating thoughtful time to what you’re working on. I’ve published over 500 videos in the last three years and it takes a lot of time and effort to get there but if you show up everyday you will be ahead.

I was a distracted student in high school but my one reprieve was making videos at the direction of my teacher Brad Schulte. One of my earliest projects is still on YouTube which received 700k views at a time when that was a big deal. Most of those views came from people searching for keywords which planted a seed.

It was a bad habit. Buying books and not finishing them...

One tap on Amazon, and bang, there it was on my kindle or my doormat the next day. I’d fleetingly read a review or even just a crunching blurb and my key words, curiosities or aspirations had slapped me round the face and before I’d considered a sensible swipe-by it was too late.

I’d become a heavy user. Buying non-fiction books at quite a click. But the problem was not so much the cost — at the most I was spending £20 a month — which I saw as a solid investment in potentially 2–3 life-changing reads. The problem was I couldn’t get past page 100 (or 25%) of almost all of the books I’d bought.

I’ve spent the last 17 years serving in the United States Navy – separating from active service in 2017 to pursue entrepreneurship full-time while entering the Navy Reserves. A big part of separating from active service five years before retirement was my life-long passion for entrepreneurship. In 3rd grade it was hawking creepy crawlers for $0.25, at 12 years old it was snow removal and lawn mowing, then it was going to auctions and reselling on eBay… there was always something.

In 2009, my wife, Cherice, and I launched the activewear apparel company for service members, Warwear. This was my first dose of: “if you build it, they [don’t necessarily] come.” After acquiring more inventory than I’m comfortable sharing, we had a major problem: it wasn’t moving off the shelves. In 2010, I approached my good friend Derrick Smith with an idea: let’s create an adventure race so we could move Warwear apparel via ‘free’ participant shirts. After opening up a Men’s Health magazine and seeing a Warrior Dash ad (and knowing full-pagers were north of $150,000), I knew there had to be an opportunity in the space; and the new obstacle race company could reimburse for the apparel in exchange for seed capital.

Go with data, not your gut. The amount of time invested in data collection and analysis should be commensurate with the impact of the decision across the organization.

It began as a side project while building a web app. I had wanted to launch something helpful to a broad set of people. And I wanted to launch something that could run without my interference.

In the company that I co-founded, to do ad sales we were constantly building biz models and outreach in Google Sheets. My co-founder earlier this year mentioned that all my Google Sheets look great. And are way above anything else he had seen.

I didn’t have to validate it, necessarily, before creating it. I just launched the damn thing on a Friday. Landing page, 4 free videos, and 4 paid videos. I set a price and moved on with my life. Come Monday I had a sale, and everything blasted off from there.

In true Hipcooks fashion: I’m not a culinary school graduate — I’m a hack! Here’s my story:

I’m first-generation American (Mom is from Germany and Dad from Argentina). My parents were young foreign students in the US and their friends were the other international students: I was a kid surrounded by people from different nationalities, like Spain, Russia, France, and the UK. I was a child foodie and loved to experience culture through food.

I caught the travel bug early, living in Argentina (studying economics in college), traveling through Europe, and moved to England for graduate school (I have a Master’s in Economics from LSE.) While in school, I cooked my way through a series of London restaurants in the gastro-boom of the ’90s, just for fun. My first job was on the West Coast, as an econometrician at the RAND Corporation.

Back in 2013, I had already discovered my passion - personal development - and had realized writing is the best way to express myself. So I combined these and started a self-improvement blog.

Starting the blog was the best decision and not giving up on it over the years (even when no traffic or money was coming in) was what helped me move forward.

It was first just a hobby and I knew nothing about blogging. Over the years, after publishing a ton of content, gaining traffic, learning about SEO, email marketing, social media, and all the ways to monetize a blog, it became a real business.

This business idea was born in 2016, but the journey really began in 2014.

After working for a company for 8 years, I hadn’t really gotten far financially and felt stuck. I decided to find a job with better financial prospects and the possibility of advancement. After 6 months of searching, I was hired at a new employer and managed to double my salary in one fell swoop!

Just start! That little voice inside your head giving you doubts will always be there. Push through that voice and keep going until you reach a point where you’re lost.

When I started Chasing Planner Peace I was a mum of two very small children, working part-time in a job for the government. I found my job extremely unrewarding and boring and had a little avenue for creativity. I never dreamed that starting an Etsy store would lead to growing a company that could become a full-time career. I had always had it drummed into me to find a secure job and stick with it - don’t take risks!

After my second child was born I became interested in using a paper planner as a hobby. There’s actually quite a big community of people (mostly women) who combine organization and creativity and love using their planners as a memory-keeping, scrapbooking tool using stickers and washi tape to decorate.

I loved the idea of using Filofax type planners where you could really customize your planner by adding in what “inserts” (refill pages) you wanted. I would download printable inserts off Etsy for calendar pages, meal planning, etc. but I could never find a layout that really worked for me. I would also waste huge amounts of time, money and printer ink trying to print out the printable inserts - as every file was a different format.

Over the years I’ve built quite a bit of business knowledge (was a Director of Operations and helped build a company from 5 employees to 100 and $2.5 million to $16 million in revenue; also was a five-year member of Vistage, a business mastermind group) and wanted to leverage that.

Get started with something inexpensive that interests you. Then keep going as you try things and learn.

I started a website through an online marketing/website building course and began blogging on business and career topics. But I found monetizing that to be difficult. I wanted to do business strategy consulting and paid $1,000 for a three-month insert in a coupon mailing that did nothing and found trying to get that type of consulting off the ground part time around my day job wasn’t working.

I come from an entrepreneurial family. My father works for himself and my maternal grandfather started a clothing factory. Working for myself has always been encouraged by my family, but before I could get started, I needed to learn a skill. At Georgetown, I study international politics and business. Most students with these backgrounds go on to work at prestigious firms like J.P. Morgan. I really didn’t know what kind of business I could start, and frankly, planned to work as a (boring) data analyst after graduation.

If you have an idea but don’t have the knowledge to execute, use that idea as motivation and go learn how to turn your vision into reality.

Tutoring first came to mind because I had spent significant time working for other tutoring companies and cutting my teeth/learning how the industry works during my teen years. I first started tutoring when I was 15. I was hired by College Experts, a local test prep center in Davie, Florida. My first student was three years older than me, and I spent our first session teaching him how to use his calculator rather than trying to explain any complicated formulas. Being a student myself, I was able to bring a student’s perspective to tutoring. I worked for College Experts until my senior year of high school when I began tutoring on my own and finding clients on Craigslist.

I started teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) during my undergraduate studies on a volunteer level. Over time, I acquired a TEFL certification and more experience while working other full-time jobs and growing my skills in other interests. My heart, however, was always drawn to hanging out with international friends and helping them improve their English.

Don’t give up. If I would have quit when I lost $17,000, I wouldn’t have learned anything. It was a good educational moment. Failure does not define your business. How you respond to situations does define it.

Phrase It grew out of need to enhance student learning in a fun and dynamic way. Specifically, I developed a dice game to help English language learners through the use of phrasal verbs. Then it turned into a card game.

I started my career as a researcher at NASA where I helped scientists visualize data. It did not take long before I realized that research is not a place for me. I thought to join a big company would make it exciting for me, I then joined Intel Corporation only to realize that's not a place for me. It took me 10 years to realize that being an entrepreneur is where I felt more fit and excited. I always knew, If I had the right mentor I would not have wasted 10 precious years.

All this made sense to me, when I met my co-founder over a beer, he mentioned an interesting data point to me. The ratio between a high school counselor and students is 1:500, which means the amount of time, a student gets over their entire high school is 38 minutes. That clearly is a huge problem and interestingly of all the high school students that get into colleges, 40% of them either end up changing majors, colleges, not graduating on time or not graduating at all.

I think that's a very serious problem. I instantly connected with that problem and we decided that we will certainly fix it. That’s how we started on this journey.

Hey everyone! My name is LaKenya Kopf and I'm the founder of Kopf Consulting Virtual Assistance. Manifested from frustration and insane pricing structures, Kopf Consulting has provided affordable and professional virtual technical support to all levels of entrepreneurship for over 14 years.

What started as a favor to a friend has flourished into a full-time, six-figure, tech-support company with dedicated clients, international recognition, and a constant waitlist that continuously births innovative ways for Kopf Consulting to work with clients without being overloaded or sacrificing the quality of service.

My name is Grantly Neely and I am the founder of GRANITE®,an education technology, and learning center. I am a longtime ed-tech enthusiast, certified KORU mindfulness instructor, and certified Mindfulness-Based Educator™.

Thanks to a bootstrap funding approach, a virtually non-existent capital requirement, and almost immediate cash flow, Granite’s average revenue is $30K/month and I have been able to retain 100% equity in the business!

Hi! My name is Dean Bokhari, and I’m the founder of DeanBokhari.com - a membership platform focused on inspiring people to improve their lives and achieve their goals.

These days, about half a million people read or listen to my work every month. It’s both fun and fulfilling to help others grow. And it’s financially rewarding, too—our revenues are over $100,000 per month.

Hello, my name is Cédric Sigoire and I am the owner of the DEMAN Translations group.

We will reach more than 6 million euros in the year 2021 and my target for 2022 is 10 million euros!

My name is Jade, but my students call me Teacher Jade. I have two businesses that were founded from “ah-ha” moments. My primary business is an online academy that offers courses to youth ages 8-18. From the success of that business, I started my second business which teaches anyone how to teach classes online.

That was my first “ah-ha” moment. I went from teaching online as a side job and earning a couple of hundred dollars a month to becoming a five-figure a month online teacher and I was working way less than my full-time contract hours.