60 Mail Order Business Ideas You Can Start Today [2023]

The story is actually pretty interesting, I had just finished my studies and was on my way to go to Japan with NO plans, money, or job/school. I had literally nothing going on in my life aside from music, which I was working on as a hobby.

In marketing the human element is really what makes it all work. I used to do giveaways monthly, sharing all the UGC on social media.

I had been playing with the idea of launching my own brand in the past, because I’ve always been drawn to fashion and anything creative, but didn't really know how to go on about doing so.

Since I was a kid I have always had a sense of wonder about the world and the mechanisms behind it. Whether it be a jet engine or a windshield wiper-I have thought about the creative process behind these things since I was 10 years old.

I drew houses as a kid. My dad grew up in a home designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, it was a solar home and it had an odd features. One example is, the entire back wall that was about 100 feet long and 15 feet high comprised of windows that all opened. In front, there were functioning levers that had fans which would draw airflow in and out.

Growing up I thought I wanted to be a pilot. I was described in high school by a classmate as “poetic” which I found offensive. I tried a hand in many things; managing a farm and pre-school, which were two businesses I inherited. This type of work wasn’t for me.

I started my professional life as a anglophone working in Paris France. The first day that I came to work I changed from ballerinas to high heels at my desk. My French colleagues found this ridiculous and they called me “the New Yorker” (Paris is the only city in the world where this is an insult).

Product development took a long time. I had to hold 4 entire years without a single sale and no venture capital so I was paying for everything myself.

Because I knew my life would be here (my husband is French) and I was trying to integrate into my new surroundings, I stopped wearing flats while walking, and spent the next 10 years including work, travel, babies and everything else that life throws at you, wearing high heels.

In 2012 I was working for a small company as an IT Director, and they tasked me with rebuilding their eCommerce website. As I started looking at available platforms, I found an article by Justin comparing WooCommerce to another platform. He seemed really knowledgeable, so I reached out to him to ask some questions and I ended up bringing him on as a consultant for the project.

We worked really well together and the project had a very successful outcome, so we stayed in touch. A couple of months later we had a chance to work together on a joint consulting project, which led to more consulting for companies that needed help with their eCommerce stores.

You rarely get it right the first time. You make decisions based on the best available information, then you learn from the results and iterate.

I was blessed to grow up in a two-parent household with a loving and caring set of parents. My father was in the military and because of that, I was born in California in ‘94. I’m a Georgia Peach all the way, but I was born in California. Unfortunately, in September of 2018, my life shifted when my father passed from cancer. It was pretty quick. In July, he was diagnosed and in September, he took his last breath. I was a Daddy’s girl to the FULLEST, so you can imagine the pain I went through - and still going through.

Do research before starting. If you want to start a business - research before you pay anything.

Fortunately, he was there to see me graduate from Valdosta State University in 2016. I majored in Mass Media with a Speech Communication Minor. Growing up, I loved to be in front of the camera (my father was a photographer) and I would record the video announcements at my church, as young as 11 years old. I also recorded the announcements in elementary school. I just knew Broadcast Journalism was something I was interested in.

Unknowingly, Savvy and Suite has been brewing for the last 15 years. I began working in my father’s accounting firm when I was 12 doing basic data entry of the tax forms. Every year I learned more and more until 18 when I was able to complete a full tax return on my own. Since then I have dedicated myself to developing my skills and really crafted my own approach to tax preparation.

Stay true to yourself and committed even during the low times, your success will come.

Over the years I have worked with companies from so many different industries and I learned that every company, even in the same industry, operates differently. Every entrepreneur has their own method of growing their business and respectively, spend their money that way. By getting to know each and every one of my clients to the smallest detail of their habits, I am able to create a tax return that reflects their true expenses. In this way, I am ensuring that no deduction is overlooked and the tax savings are optimized. The cookie-cutter approach just doesn’t cut it for anyone. No pun intended!

I graduated from Pratt Institute in 2012 with a degree in fashion design, focusing on costume design.

At the time, I just wanted a job that could support my life in New York City - stability, a salary, healthcare, that whole thing. While I’d have loved to get a job in costume design, that’s tougher to get into without connections.

Being able to change is, in and of itself, a trust in your innate abilities to grow in ANY field, rather than shackling yourself to one particular look.

At a very young age, I realize my mom had to work three jobs to barely make a living for me and my brother. Since then, I decided I was going to be my own boss and I started my very first company at age 28. I started doing janitorial services using only the cleaning products I had under my sink. That put me on the path with the person who gave me my next opportunity to start another business. This business was repairing apartments. This was a skill I did not know but I learned to do well quickly. This is the foundation that taught me that I can learn and do anything to accomplish my goals.

Life has shown me that you can start right where you are and with what you have, with no money or support. You can always do it if you have the courage.

Many years ago, after my husband was diagnosed with cancer, a passion ignited in me for natural ways of healing our bodies. I discovered that humans have an endocannabinoid system (ECS), a group of receptors in the brain and throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems. CBD interacts with CB1 and CB2 receptors that strengthen the immune system naturally. Quality CBD is an extremely effective natural alternative to align your health.

I began my business career with the family in-store sampling business, C.A. Courtesy, in the 1990s, while at the same time attending college at Johnson and Wales University, where I pursued a degree in Web Management & Internet Commerce.

I’ve always had a knack for marketing and technology, and when I left C.A. Courtesy, I was the Vice President of Marketing and Technology.

People don’t remember what you say as much as they remember how they felt when you said it.

At lunch, one day my business partner was telling me about his girlfriend who was spending almost $700 at the hair salon to get extensions. I instantly thought there could be a huge opportunity here because someone is making a lot of money off hair clients. After digging a little deeper, I found out the insane amount woman was paying for hair extensions.

As a product guy, I quickly learned everything I could about hair extensions. Where the best places to source and manufacture. I have worked hard to bring the best quality products for the lowest cost to the USA market. My previous experience selling online gave me a good background in E-Commerce which helped a lot.

Now I spend about a month a year working with manufacturers in China to ensure we are on top of production and standards. Building relationships has been a huge part of our growth and success.

I was born and raised in Italy where, since I basically got out of school, I’ve been working as an electrical engineer for 9 years at an industrial automation company. During that time I was also playing in a punk rock band (name is “NeverAlone”, look it up, it’s great) and felt constricted in that job (that I also quite disliked).

The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll learn from your mistakes (‘cause there will be many of those). Learn from others who have done what you want to do and take massive action.

I’m from a very small town in the Appalachians called Sylva, North Carolina. If you’re not familiar with that region, it’s a very diverse area. Sylva is in the north end of Jackson County, and Cashiers (and neighboring Highlands) are in the south end. Sylva is blue-collar, and a factory-type (now tourist) town and Cashiers/Highlands is a spot where some of the wealthiest people in the world have vacation homes and are all members of one of the ultra-exclusive private clubs.

Growing up, I worked at my family’s convenience store. I saw a lot of the folks headed through to Cashiers and Highlands up from Atlanta for the weekend, and a big portion of them seemed to be making their money in real estate. Some were making money buying the mountain land around my town at a low price from local farmers who had no use for the steep mountains, developing a portion of the top, and then selling it off for astronomical amounts of money to other rich people. I was amazed by that. And I couldn’t understand why no one locally had tried this himself.

I come from a fairly long line of entrepreneurs on both sides of my parent’s families. My great-grandfather on my dad’s side quit school after the fifth grade, and then he went on and started a convenience store business that I still help operate 85 years later as it has passed down to my grandfather, my dad, and now myself and my brother. And my grandfather on my mom’s side owned a heavy civil construction company building large-scale projects like interstates throughout the mid-1900s. My uncles and cousins still operate a part of that business, too.

When I tell my story I like to get into the details of how I landed where I currently am and where I am going. I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. I ended up in the United States after my father got a job offer for a marketing position at a semiconductor company, this was when I was only 10 years old. To be honest, the move definitely had an effect on me. When I lived in Mexico I was a fairly outgoing kid and (I believe) the move caused a shift that made me more of an introvert so you could say that was a bit against me, since I didn’t necessarily enjoy being the center of attention or being “noticed” too much for much of my upbringing. I finished high school and went to Arizona State University where I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Marketing alongside a certificate in entrepreneurship.

Right around the time of graduation from high school and the start of college I started a clothing line. I believe I was only 19 at the time and I didn’t have a budget to promote the new clothing line, so I turned to social media as my route to promote and sell the new products. I had to learn everything from Photoshop to constructing a website, content, photography, content distribution, supplier relationships, and many other skills. After seeing success marketing on social media, I quickly found that I was passionate about digital marketing. I then realized that there was a place where I could polish up my digital marketing skills, an agency, which to my surprise were not as concerned with academics as they were with real-world experience.

I went on to work for a marketing agency, after finally finding one was willing to overlook my lack of agency experience and realized that my entrepreneurial spirit and persistence would outweigh the need for the experience all the agencies were looking for. I was hungry. At this agency, I got hired on as a content writer (which I didn’t necessarily enjoy the most, but I knew I had to do it if I wanted to eventually lead the paid advertising department which was my goal). I was able to do just that within a year. I studied the ins and outs of the agency, how it operated, how it dealt with clients, how it made mistakes, and most importantly what helped it scale.

Finding my first drop shipping supplier was by searching over AliExpress and looking for the supplier with the best reviews and years in business and most importantly communication reliability I would get on skype calls with the suppliers and do a mini-interview to see if they fit the criteria I was looking for, also another important thing was making sure my supplier had a license to sell these products I was marketing/selling.

My supplier would handle all the logistics like inventory and fulfillment that’s how the drop shipping business model works.

I set up an LLC in the US I got an accountant to manage the books using a Shopify app called Taxjar.

My day job is a travel editor for a national newspaper in the UK, which I absolutely love. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, I was put on furlough at the beginning of May.

The great thing about launching a newsletter as a subscription product is that the overheads are low - or in my case, zero. The only thing I had to give up was my time, and I had plenty of it.

That month coincided with lots of journalists around the world getting laid off. Needless to say, I was seriously worried about whether or not I’d have a job by the end of the furlough period and how I’d make up the difference in income.

I remember vividly when my idea of business consulting came to me. I was at a networking conference with other business owners and when I stood up to introduce myself to the group, I called myself a systems consultant.

Industries change. Times are constantly changing. Relationships, if built regularly, can last forever!

From that day forward, I created the perfect way to audit an operational system or create one, effectively and efficiently. My systems consultation service is still available to this day and I’ve helped business owners dial in theirs to allow them to grow and transform their teams.

For two years, I was working as a consultant for a company that assisted other Eastern European countries in entering new markets, for example, from Russian to the Polish market. I managed more than 75 projects during my time there.

One of my responsibilities included optimizing the conversion of the websites to increase the number of leads and phone calls. While exploring various opportunities, we noticed with my partner - Sergey, that the faster we promised to contact users, the more likely they were to leave their contact details. We ran a test, where we promised to call back users within an hour, this resulted in a 30% increase in people leaving their contact details.

Within a short period, we observed a very high level of interest among businesses which reassured us with the belief that there is a specific demand in the market.

My name is Jackson Cunningham and I’m the founder of tuft + paw. We’re a modern brand for cat people.

This year, we raised 2M dollars from some very well-known investors including Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit).

Hey! My name is Matti Lehtonen and I am the MD and founder of Backstage Rock Shop, a company that takes care of more than 30 official band merchandise webshops for rock and metal bands such as Nightwish. Our main products are t-shirts, hoodies, and caps and we sell basically everything you can think of from shoes to coffees and from vinyl to jewelries - Whatever suits the artist the best. A factor that sets us apart from our competitors is our wide range of exclusive items.

When we started back in 2011 our annual revenue was around $150,000 and since those days we’ve come a long way as we’ve got many new artists to our roster. The past few years we’ve grown 20%+ in a year and nowadays we make the same revenue in a month what we did the whole first year. In 2020 we are looking $2M+ revenue, we just moved into a bigger office and we’ve recruited more staff to our warehouse.

Hi, My name is Montoya “Chocolate” Walton, I’m 34yrs old, Texas-born & raised. I have 4 beautiful children & a wonderful fiance’. He’s one handsome guy! I’m a pretty outstanding woman, sort of like “SuperWoman”!

I have faith that my monthly income will flourish like the rest of the businesses that I’ve read about in the past. Just have to keep pushing forward & stay positive in everything that we do!

Hey everyone! My name is Mitchel Matthews and I am a 22-year-old entrepreneur. I am the owner/founder of Adrenaline Offroad which is an eCommerce store for aftermarket vehicle accessories! We mainly focus our expertise in the realm of automotive LED lighting accessories. Our products are built for a person who will endure hardcore offroading situations with their vehicle all the way to people who attend multiple shows per month in their show trucks! Some of our most popular products being our RGB+W underglow/rock light & LED wheel ring lights. In just over a year of quitting my job to pursue my passion for truck mods full time, I am so beyond proud & excited to be making 5x the amount of money that I used to make per month!

Pictured above is our most popular bundle kit called “The UFO GLOW Bundle Kit”

My name is Nick Thacker, and I’m a full-time author of thriller and action-adventure novels. I write in the same genres as Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, James Rollins, and Lee Child, and my main series is about a Yellowstone park ranger named Harvey Bennett. Most of my readers are 45 years old and up, about 50/50 men/women, and the vast majority of my sales come from Amazon (either directly or through Kindle Unlimited, where I’m paid based on pages read).

I started writing back in 2011, but it was never something I thought I could do full-time. I was working a 9-5 job and I eventually realized I was making more by writing than I was at the day job, so I quit. Today, I’m pulling in about $10,000 a month on the low-end, and up to $20,000 during a heavy promotion or launch period.

My name is Nik Hall and I’m the founder of Vitafive - an all-natural custom vitamin pack. When

Today, we still sell the custom gummy vitamin packs however we also sell delicious gummy vitamins in eco-friendly packaging (pouches rather than bottles) to retailers like Target, Walgreens, Kroger, Rite Aid, H-E-B, and several other retailers across the country totaling 6500+ doors. We will hit near $3m in revenue in 2021 and are continuing to grow.

My name is Marc Staples. I am the founder of DowhHomeModern and the Lago Luna Lakeside Studio in Virginia. With the recent introduction of my original designs of windbells and chimes, DownHomeModern is gaining attention as an educator as well as a producer of quality products. Each Frontier Bell that we sell embraces the history of the place it is named for.

In 2021 I created a collection of small bells based on American Southwest decor. I call the line our Frontier Mission Bells™. The rustic style of these products has grabbed the attention of people who like their homespun appearance. The Frontier Bells has been the primary driver of sales for DownHomeModern. The example below is called “San Gabriel”. It is named after a Spanish Mission in San Gabriel, California.

Hello, my name is Michael Koh and I am the founder of Tree To Tub. We are a natural skincare company that takes care of people with sensitive skin. Our signature products are shampoo, body wash, facial cleanser made from the Soapberry.

We’re happy that we’re solving a painful problem (literally sometimes) for people, and that has got us to $3M on our 3rd year.

Hi there, my name is Dayana Doncheva and I am the founder of EcardForest. We create greeting cards that can be signed by multiple people and sent online. The product is quite straightforward - it’s a digital greeting card that a person buys and shares with others so that everyone can enter their wishes.

It looks like our efforts pay out well, as we already count more than $15K in monthly revenue.

Jeff is the CRO at Zogics, a B2B and B2C e-commerce company that markets cleaning products. With +40 employees, they are on track to make $20M in revenue.

Hi, my name is Rafael Hernandez and I am the founder of Alfred Lane. I have a line of personal and home fragrances handcrafted in small batches out of our Miami studio. I began selling solid colognes initially as an alternative to spray colognes and released three fragrances.

The business generates $19k a month in revenue. In 2020, the company had its best year ever. I opened a production studio where we make everything and hired a studio assistant all within the last 5 months. It’s been more than 8 years since I started and the journey has been a wild one.

My name is Alexis Evans aka Da Mademoiselle. I am a native of South Florida who has started a cosmetic and skincare company named FBI Cosmetics d/b/a Flawlessly Beautiful Individual in the middle of a pandemic.

I am also the owner of Boss Talk Expo an annual expo and conference company. I branched out into the beauty industry, I started FBI Cosmetics off with just lipsticks and have progressed into the skincare business in December. I have grossed over $62,000 in sales. People ask where the name comes from and I tell people “it’s a crime to be so damn beautiful.”

Hi, I'm Dhruvin Patel - a qualified optometrist who began Ocushield, a brand which develops medically-rated products to eliminate harmful blue light from digital device screens, allowing consumers to have fresher feeling eyes and improve sleep after screen use.

We also appeared on the UK’s version of Shark Tank in July 2021, called Dragons’ Den & have even personally been recommended by Sir Richard Branson.

Jason T. Andrew and Michael Kelly co-founded Limelight Health, acquired by FINEOS, in 2020.

FINEOS is a global market leader in core insurance technology for the Group, Life, Accident, and Health industry.

The founders started Limelight Health in 2014 to introduce a new technology suite to assist life insurers in providing excellent service to their consumers.

Limelight Health launched its mobile application in 2015 and acquired its first client two years after its founding..

The company raised $3M in series A in 2015, $7.5M in Series B from MassMutual Ventures, and $30M in series C in 2018.

Key growth strategies:

• Building meaningful relationships helped Limelight acquire customers to raise funding.
• Market research, assessing the risk, and competitor research helped them in product positioning.
• Hiring experienced executives to help with product pivoting.
• Hiring advisors as employees
• Building on culture and authenticity.
• FINEOS acquired Limelight Health in 2020 in a nearly 100M exit deal.

Watch the full video on youtube.com ➜

My name is Richard Worsham and I am a co-founder and lead designer at Janus Motorcycles, a motorcycle manufacturer building handmade, classically styled, lightweight motorcycles in northern Indiana. Janus is the ancient Roman god with two faces who simultaneously looks to both the past and the future. As the god of doorways and journeys, we thought this timelessness perfectly represented our classic motorcycles and manufacturing ethos. Janus Motorcycles focuses on building a line of simple motorcycles using traditional design, materials, and craftsmanship. We have produced our flagship model, the Halcyon, in various configurations for almost 9 years and just launched our latest iteration, the Halcyon 450 Motorcycle, this spring.

Because our motorcycles are so simple to ride and service, we can rely on an in-house service team, an extensive YouTube library of information and repair videos, and third-party repair shops around the country to provide service and maintenance for our growing owner base. Over the past 5 years, we have steadily increased sales by around 40% each year.

Hi, my name is Jean-Philippe Brousseau, I’m a 32-year-old entrepreneur from Canada, Québec. I’m the founder and owner of phoneloops.com. We mainly sell our universal phone strap that provides a secure, yet relaxed grip on mobiles to B2B and B2C markets.

We’ve been in business since 2014 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. We’ve grown exponentially every year since. As of 2018, we’ve sold over one million Loops in 66 countries. We couldn’t be happier and we are super excited about what the future holds.

I’m Katja Kaine and I am the founder of The Novel Factory, a novel writing software that helps guide new writers through the novel-writing process.

When we first started we would sell just a few copies of our software every month, but now we get over 1000 free trial signs up every month and over 100 new subscriptions.

Linjer, created by entrepreneurs Jennifer Chong and Roman Khan, provides sustainably crafted jewelry, luggage, and watches without the luxury markup.

In 2014, the cofounders were experimenting with making a soft briefcase out of high-quality leather, mainly because they couldn't find anything similar on the market.

To date, they have amassed $10 million in revenue in just three years of business.

Their plans for the future include:

• Influencer marketing
• Expanding to wholesale partners
• Creating pop-ups
• Entering new product markets & areas

Read the full story on defolio.co ➜

Hi! We are the Simple Goodness Sisters, real-life sisters Belinda Kelly (4 years younger, the bartender) and Venise Cunningham (the older sister and the farmer.) We are a lifestyle beverage brand focused on bringing the world a Happier Hour, from garden to glass.

The first product we launched were our simple syrups. The syrups launched in three flavors in Fall 2018 (Rhubarb Vanilla Bean, Marionberry Mint, and Huckleberry Spruce Tip), followed by 3 additional flavors in Spring 2019 (Lemon Herb, Berry Sage, and Blueberry Lavender), and edible flower salts and sugars for rimming in Fall 2019. During that time we pushed our ability to grow, harvest, and package in a major way, growing at a rate of 4 times our original production, with quite a learning experience along the way. We both come from a technical background in corporate Seattle, so organic farming, food production, and entrepreneurship are all areas we’re learning by doing, and Google!

I’m Logan Christopher, co-founder, and CEO of Lost Empire Herbs. We’re an ecommerce business in the herbal supplement space. We specialize in high-quality herbs from across the world that help people in different aspects of health and performance, most notably hormone support.

And it seems to be working! We’ve gone from starting the business on a table top to being in the mid-seven figures in revenue.

Hi! I’m Jennifer. When I opened Cool Contours in 2018, I was expecting our first child and just had our 2nd as I’m preparing to open our second location. Being a mom and running a small business is challenging, but doable! Having a family and trying to find a balance between home and workforces me to be more intentional with my time and finding support, whether that means leaning on the family to help with our 2 children, finding the right team at Cool Contours, or delegating marketing and SEO to the right firms.

On average, we’re able to charge about 60% more for CoolSculpting than other practices that offer a wide range of services since our patients see the value in our focus and service. Even though CoolSculpting does have some seasonality throughout the year, our average monthly revenue is $100k and we have completed almost 5,000 treatments.