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

My name is Sam Evans. I am 23 years old and a recent graduate from Penn State Altoona. I am the founder of You Call We Haul Junk Removal, a junk removal company that removes anything from single items to hoarder home cleanouts. We’re located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and have been in business (part-time) since May of 2016.

We service any and everyone who may have unneeded items they are looking to get rid of. People often ask what items we consider junk, to us junk is anything you no longer need or want.

Our main customers are middle-aged and up adults, typically with a higher income that do not want to or are unable to do the work themselves. We complete over 75 jobs per month, bring in about $20,000 in revenue per month profiting about 65% per job.

Hi there! My name is Fitz Nowlan and I am one of two co-founders of Reflect. Reflect creates and manages automated web regression tests to verify a web application's appearance and functionality. Using Reflect, you can create automated web tests that replicate how a user actually uses your web application---all without writing a line of code. The benefits are two-pronged: 1) creating a Reflect test is faster than using a code-based automation tool, and 2) anyone in your organization can create a test because it requires no programming. Thus, businesses improve the quality of their web applications while simultaneously saving time and allowing anyone to contribute to their testing efforts.

Our customers are technology companies who sell either B2B, or B2C, and deliver their services or products through their web application. Therefore, they have a critical dependency on their web application behaving as expected in order for them to make money. They’ll usually have employees test (i.e., use) their web application to ensure it’s working, but the testers can range from technical folks like web developers and testing engineers, to non-technical folks like marketing and SEO specialists. As a result of the varied technical skills of application testers, we decided to make Reflect zero-code and zero-installation. This means anyone can use Reflect without coding or downloading anything, and create a test with nothing more than a URL!

Our customers access Reflect through a monthly, pay-as-you-go subscription that includes creating, executing and managing their suite of web tests. Reflect has been publicly available since November 2019 and generates around $3K in monthly recurring revenue. The cost of a subscription scales based on the number of test executions and the month-to-month plans range from ~$100/mo to $1,000/mo or more for our Enterprise customers. Our most exciting statistic is that we have not lost a customer yet!

My name is Russell Michelson and I’m the founder of Paper Box SEO. We’re a boutique SEO agency based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Unlike most SEO agencies, we focus 100% of our efforts on SEO and don’t work in other types of online marketing like PPC or social media.

Most of our clients are small to medium-sized businesses who want to grow their organic traffic and get more customers. We almost exclusively work long term contracts for a fixed monthly fee. Our packages are all-inclusive, meaning they include on-page optimization, content creation, link building, and monthly reporting. At the moment, we’re doing $20k/month in revenue and our team consists of me, a full-time employee, and a part-time contractor who is our dedicated writer. We also have an accountant and web developer who we use on an as-needed basis.

My name is Sal Polit-Moran. I am 25 years old and am the founder & owner of A+ Enterprises Junk Removal & Demolition. We are a junk hauling & demolition service that specializes in cleaning out homes and demolishing small structures. We’re located in West Pittston, Pennsylvania and have been in business since August of 2017.

Our service is mainly used by people who have items they no longer want such as appliances, furniture, construction debris, etc. In addition, we have a demolition division that demolishes garages, concrete, patios, mobile homes, and more.

Primarily, our main customers are people who have recently purchased or inherited a home and need it fully cleaned out. We average approximately 90 jobs and $41,000 in revenue each month.

Hi, my name is Michael “Medium Rare” O’Donnell and I’m the owner of Cave Tools and Grill Master University. We design, manufacture, and sell barbecue and cooking tools and accessories. We also provide online education classes that help people master the art of smoking meat.

The goal of the business is really all about bringing people and families closer together. You can be from different countries, different ethnicities, and even Republicans and Democrats in 2020. At the end of the day everyone bonds over food no matter how different their lives may be.

We believe that when you're confident about cooking, you cook more often. And when you cook more often, you end up spending more quality time and forming more in-depth relationships with the people you love.

Hello, my name is Kyle Capel and I am the founder of Hand Held Legend, a DIY upgrade shop for vintage handheld consoles. If you are as old as I am, you’ll remember the day you opened up your first Nintendo console and impatiently waited for mom or dad to figure out how to hook it up. After the crisp sound of a cartridge inserting into its plastic slot, you were ready to be taken into another world. Whether it be a 90’s Christmas morning or a special birthday, each of us can be taken back to parts of our youth when hearing and playing the games we grew up on. There is nothing that can replace the nostalgia old gaming consoles and the controllers that come with them.

Even though decades have passed, many of us still have an old game boy somewhere in a drawer or closet waiting to be brought back to life. Hand Held Legend does just that. We bring old handheld consoles back to life with DIY modification and upgrade products. Whether it be a modern backlit display, a new colorful shell, glass screen or rechargeable battery, Hand Held Legend has what your game boy needs to enhance your sense of nostalgia. What would your ten-year-old self have given to play Pokemon Red or Blue version in the dark? I would have given more than I am proud to openly share and you probably would have too.

Hello to all entrepreneurs out there! My name is Nathan Failla, I am of the founder of the on the go hair care company PocketGel. The idea for PocketGel and initial groundwork started in late September of 2015 and we have been striving to style your hair while you’re on the go ever since!

PocketGel’s product is currently filled and manufactured in Michigan. Then it is shipped down to myself in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. PocketGel is both the name of the company and the packets of styling products themselves. As of right now, we have three separate styling packets for different hair types and desired styles.

Our three product style types are pomade, fiber pomade, and hair gel. We decided on those three styling types because of customer feedback for what kind of products they wanted from us that could be taken on the go. These three types of styles also gives our customers varied and unique hairstyling options. We would eventually like to expand our product, being able to include at home versions of our PocketGel packet products so our customers can enjoy our products on the go and at home.

Hello, my name is Roy Stein and together with my good friend Bill Rebozo we founded BabelBark 4 years ago.

BabelBark is a very unique software platform that connects the whole ecosystem around pets, both dogs and cats, in one place - on one app and platform. We connect the pet parent with the vet, groomer, walker, trainer, shelter - and anyone else in their community of care givers, enabling the sharing of data, remote connectivity, remote monitoring - and basically caring for the fur baby in an easy and modern way.

We started the company based on an idea we had when we were planning to go on vacation and were worried about who will take care of our pets. The vets and caregivers have a portal where they can do cloud based client management, online scheduling and all the remote monitoring, while the pet parents have an app that not only enables them to connect to all the care providers, but also receive newsletters and articles that are specific to them and their specific pet. We rolled out the products last year and have seen amazing growth that we never expected… we already have over 200,000 pets on the platform and 2019 is really “exploding” for us with over 800% growth over the same period in 2018. For example, in July 2019 alone we had over 7,800 new downloads, and August is on track to be 60% higher than July…..

Hello! My name is Jon Shanahan and I run The Kavalier.

It started as a YouTube channel in 2015 to help guys find great undiscovered menswear brands just as the direct-to-consumer world was beginning.

Since posting my first video the online brand space has exploded which means more consumer choice but also a need for guidance.

My name is Davis Baer, and I am the co-founder of OneUp, a social media scheduling tool that helps business make more money and automates time-consuming tasks. OneUp allows you to schedule Google My Business posts, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, Twitter posts (and schedule Twitter threads), as well as schedule LinkedIn posts.

OneUp differs from tools like Buffer and Hootsuite because we allow for posts to be set to automatically repeat at any interval you choose, such as every 3 days, or every 3 weeks.

Our customers consist of startup founders, e-commerce store owners, small business owners, bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, and social media managers - basically any kind of business, or even people who are just building their personal brand.

My name is Amanda Austin, and I’m the founder of Little Shop of Miniatures.

My ecommerce store offers thousands of dollhouse kits and dollhouse miniatures for sale. My main customers are hobbyists who enjoy assembling, building, and furnishing dollhouses, though customers have also included kids who need miniatures for school projects and companies creating model displays for corporate trade shows

I launched my store in November 2017; right now my revenue averages about $4,000/month (of course it’s much higher during the holidays!). Summer tends to be the slowest time of the year since this hobby is most popular during the cold weather months. My gross margin is about 35%.

My name is Beth K., a busy mother of 5 and owner of BingoCardCreator.com. This SAAS (software as a service) online business provides a custom software solution for the creation of custom bingo cards. Most of our customers (about 60%) are educators while the other 40% is comprised of clients using our service for their business or for personal purposes.

This mainly passive income source earns on average $1200 per month.

My name is Ben Esgro, I am the founder and co-owner of De Novo Nutrition. We sell a line of dietary supplements, which started back in 2011 as a labor of love and curiosity.

This began with me hand mixing custom protein powders and has since grown steadily from a one man operation in my parents house to a multinational brand with employees in both the US and UK.

We pride ourselves on being unique, innovative, honest, and reliable in a highly competitive industry that isn’t often celebrated for these characteristics. While we are known for our unique and great tasting Whey protein flavors; White Cake and Candy Bar, our top product is a cognitive enhancer called Utopia. With Utopia, we were one of the first sports nutrition companies to release a standalone nootropic blend which led to us being mentioned on The Tim Ferriss Show and a major inflection point in growth.

Hi! My name is Ellen Hamilton and I’m a Founder and CEO of Chemo Cozy; a company that makes fashionable and functional apparel designed to provide warmth and comfort to patients during infusion treatments.

Our signature product is our fleece jacket. This jacket was designed specifically to help patients have a better experience while being treated. The fleeces are not only are functional (providing staff easy access to port or PICC line sites) they are also very comfortable, warm and stylish. Additionally, they help alleviate some of the pre-existing anxiety related to battling cancer by preventing the patient from having to practically disrobe in order to gain access to the infusion site.

Chemo Cozy launched with a Kickstarter campaign that raised 30k in 30 days! We operated out of our garage and a storage facility, handling all customer care and personally packing and shipping every order.

My name is Matthew Fiore, a senior in high school and a long-time LEGO lover. I also turned my passion into a business. Three years ago I started Summerfield’s Toys, an online reseller of LEGO sets and individual bricks.

I’ve been building with LEGO since I was 4. I love the feel of the bricks in my hands and the creative process of recreating a model or making my own creation, whether it be spaceships, bases, or cities.

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.

Hey, I’m Jordyn and I’m the owner of Jordyn Alison Designs. My intentions with my products are to bring joy to your daily life as well as help connect you with others.

For a couple of years, the only thing I sold in my shop was greeting cards. But in March of 2018, I started selling vinyl stickers, which proved to be successful. I now have greeting cards, stickers, notepads, apparel and more in my shop.

Part of what I think makes my business unique is that I have a pretty strong digital side to my business as well. For that side, I work on making SVG cut files and hand-lettered fonts. As someone who can’t sit still and do the same thing every day, it’s really nice to have two distinct sides to my business that I can switch back and forth from.

My name is Gregory Elfrink and I’m the director of marketing with Empire Flippers. We’re a three-time winner of the INC 5,000 award for being one of the fastest growing companies in America and we help people buy and sell online businesses.

In the last few years, we have become the thought leader and one of the largest M&A advisory businesses for digital assets in the sub $10 million range. Though, I am pretty certain we will soon be selling businesses above that $10 million mark as well.

We have brokered over $50 million worth of deals, and since we’re a big believer in transparency we also created a scoreboard that details most of our stats - from the hundreds of thousands of website visitors we get to our pool of potential buyers that grow by the hundreds every month.

My name is Allen Chiang, and I founded Retro Radio Farm, where I repair and restore old radios. I offer Bluetooth MP3 upgrade if the customer wants to play digital music.

I have a busy career as an IT professional. Retro Radio Farm is side business that grew out of a recent hobby of mine.

Right now, I make about $50K a year for the work I put in primarily on weekends. While it’s highly profitable, it has not yet lucrative enough yet for me to quit my day job. Although, the business has been growing 20% every year.

My name is Shuhan He and I’m a doctor and entrepreneur. I am the founder of a Boston-based startup called Maze Engineers. We focus on creating innovative mazes for research, integrating cloud computing technologies, wireless systems, and automated data tracking technologies to assist behavioral research. Our aim is to provide support for researchers to conduct important neurological experiments and create therapies for patients. We were actually featured on Nature.com, where we explored the science behind the mazes.

Aside from being a founder, I am also hands-on in the process of designing and creating the mazes for our clients. I have created numerous mazes for different research and purposes, ranging from mazes created for mice to VR maze intended for humans. Some of our clients are private and public universities, the military, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and researchers.

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.

Hey guys! My name is Matt Ward and I’m the founder and CEO of The Disruptors, a podcast about the future of all of us where TED level scientists, startup founders and experts join me to discuss the big issues facing humanity and how we can solve them together. I also run The Syndicate, a podcast and investment group focused on early stage startup investing.

I wanted to make a difference in the world and for me, two things drive exponentially better results and impact for all of us, startups solving big problems and innovators tackling epic and existential problems.

I have structured my work and efforts around this to empower others to change the world for the better and have the pleasure of talking to the smartest, most influential folks trying to do the same.

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 Regina Ye, and I am the founder of ZIRUI.

Our flagship product is a modular magnetic travel toiletry case that is secure, sleek, and simple. ZIRUI is the best way to travel with liquids.

BagsAway Luggage Storage is a marketplace that connects travelers and city locals with convenient, secure, on-demand bag storage locations across key cities. Utilizing the principles of the sharing economy we partner with local shops and businesses that monetize existing free-space by offering hourly/daily storage on location. We keep about 60% of all revenues while the storage partners keep the rest. With BagsAway locations in place, travelers and locals can now win precious hours back by conveniently dropping their bags at a location of their choice around the city, freeing their hands and their time to explore, experience, and sightsee without their bags in the way. Our overarching vision is to change people's relationship with things that weigh them down during travel and on the go.

We have stored over 150,000 bags for travelers thus far and have expanded to over 50+ cities and going strong! Our plan this year is to expand worldwide, with new funding and new members joining our company.

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.

My name is Ethan Holmes. I’m from Shaker Heights, Ohio and I am the 25-year-old founder and CEO of Holmes Mouthwatering Applesauce.

Holmes is an all natural applesauce product I created at the age of 15 and have since grown to hundreds of grocery stores throughout the Midwest.

Hi there! We are Kelan and Brittany the founders of The Savvy Couple. We are a personal finance and lifestyle blog with a mission to help families organize and simplify their entire life so they can do more of the things they love.

We do this by providing content on organization, meal planning, budgeting, paying off debt, making money online, marriage, and more.

Some of our top articles include:

I’m Ervin Ruci. Since 2005 I have been interested in the problem of geoparsing and geocoding - a piece of software that analyzes a string of text for geographical locations, then matches them to a database of locations with latitude, longitude values. Geoparsing is the process of extracting and disambiguating location entities from text, and Geocoding is the process of matching them to latitude, longitude values.

As a graduate student, I built geocoder.ca in the summer of 2005 then I went on to build several other businesses that relied on its geocoding API. Many of these businesses are now defunct, but geocoder.ca is still going strong with 2020 being its best year to date - over 90% growth from the year before:

I’m Doug Geiger, founder of Can You Handlebar, a men’s grooming product company. We’re one of those low-key-high-quality brands.

We are best known for beard oils and balms, moustache wax and inventing the first application brush for beard products, the Can You Handlebar Beard Oil Brush®. We are carefully and consistently extending our product line and distribution.

In our first three years our production grew from a kitchen countertop with a crockpot I stole from my wife to “making a million bucks” and a 10,000 square foot building with a whole fleet of crockpots. Meanwhile, our retail presence -- which began on the counter of a gracious proprietor of the corner gas station -- has grown to our own network of barbers and salons across the US, international distribution and most visibly, the shelves of every Art of Shaving.

My name is Jesse Hambly, I’m 1 of 3 brothers working at Pressa Inc. Luke and Mason are full-time founders as well. We have a diverse background, Luke manages engineering and manufacturing duties. Mason is in charge of media, content creation and strategy, and I (Jesse) oversee marketing, operations, and customer relations. We’ve been in business since 2015 where we’ve been selling our flagship product, Pressa Bottle. Pressa Bottle is a unique water bottle that allows the user to juice and press real fruit into any beverage.

Our company operates at just over $50k per month and we do this primarily through our .com and Amazon. We do sell in a few retailers which are Saks Fifth Avenue, Dillards and Uncommon Goods. The product lends itself well to the healthy/active crowd but we also sell a lot of units for flavored cocktails.

Hi, my name is Lenny Bron, and I am The Blog Proofreader. I’m the annoying grammar police person you’ve always been tired of hearing from every time you use an ellipses incorrectly in a Facebook post you wrote 3 years ago.

I content edit/copy edit/proofread the work of several clients on a regular basis. Some of this is done as a freelancer for larger companies, some of it is done for startups looking to make sure their content marketing looks clean and presentable, and some of it is done for bloggers or other content creators who want their readers to enjoy the work they put out without stopping to try and process a sentence with a missing word in it.

I’ve been able to build my business from scratch to consistently make ~$2,000 per month with zero experience in the field, no expenses, and barely any upfront costs.

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.