The 40 Best Home-Based Businesses To Start In West Virginia [2024]

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

My name is Ross Lohr, and I’m a co-founder of Project Repat. We make it easy and affordable for customers to turn their memorable t-shirts into a one of a kind, custom t-shirt quilt backed with cozy fleece.

People buy quilts from Project Repat because we have the most affordable price, which is due to us fine tuning the production process by making more than 250,000 t-shirt quilts over the past 6 years. While traditional quilts can be very expensive, we’ve found a way to make them at a much more affordable price.

We currently make 2,000 custom t-shirt quilts per week at 2 production facilities in the United States. In 2018, we will make 90,000 t-shirt quilts and do $10MM in sales per year.

I am Andrew Tarvin and I am the world’s first humor engineer (at least according to all the Google searches that I’ve done).

I run Humor That Works, a training company focused on human effectiveness. Our primary goal is to deliver programs that help people get better results while having more fun in the workplace.

We’ve worked with thousands of people at more than 250 organizations, including Microsoft, the FBI, and the International Association of Canine Professionals.

Hello, my name is Andrew Hoffman. I am the founder of My Franchise Partners.

My Franchise Partners is a $15-20K/month consulting agency focused on helping people understand the franchise industry before they take the plunge and invest in a franchise.

I help people find the best franchise for them through in-depth research, analysis, and due diligence. The best choice is always an informed choice.

My name is Daniel Doubrovkine, and I go by “dB.” I was born in Moscow, Russia, and my family emigrated to Geneva, Switzerland in 1990. That’s where I got my first computer (a Commodore-64, from a relative who upgraded to an Amiga 2000), and started programming by copying some x86 assembly code from SVM Magazine and trying to run tasm.exe. There was no Internet, then.

By the time I enrolled in C.S. at the University of Geneva, I had been selling shareware to users in 42 countries. That business was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (I was not old enough to incorporate in Switzerland) and was called Vestris, after a sunken Spanish ship in the 1400s. I made tens of thousands of dollars selling Windows shareware between 97 and 99, including XReplace-32 and Expression Calculator (sold as Global Calculator on a CDROM in Germany). I then made hundreds of thousands with a very popular Alkaline Search Engine, which powered some of the biggest websites in the late 90s, ranging from bbc.co.uk to warez.com. If you’re old enough to remember, you may have used the aGNeS forum, too. That was ad-sponsored - ads which I may or may not have been clicking on in my sleep.

I also tried to co-start another company, Xo3, but that didn’t quite pan out. So In 1999 I decided to get serious with starting a programming career, and moved to Seattle to work for Microsoft. I completely shut down my old company around 2003, and in 2004 came to New York after getting my Green Card. I held engineering jobs at various startups and spent 8 years as CTO of the fine arts marketplace artsy.net. I am currently a Principal Engineer at AWS Data Exchange.

Hi I’m Jamie Clawson, and I run Jamie Clawson - a small business designing and producing leather products and accessories. I do everything from designing, testing, manufacturing, shipping etc. All operations are done in house.

My main product line is leather skins for Apple products - iPhone, MacBook, iPad, etc. My premium leather accessories mediate between technology and a way of life that champions quality, craft, and traditional aesthetics.

My products reintroduce an enduring look and feel to the devices you use most and love best. I source the finest grade leathers from respected New York City-based purveyors. The pressure-sensitive adhesive, custom ordered from 3M, simplifies the process of application and respects your device, leaving no residue upon removal. Each product can be applied and reapplied multiple times to the same or similar devices.

Hi, I’m Andrei Calinescu and I am the Founder and CEO of One Life Meals.

One Life Meals is a healthy meal delivery service located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We handle the complete process from ingredient sourcing, cooking and delivery. We also work with our clients on a one-on-one basis to understand their requirements and help them select the right plan.

We cook and deliver twice per week to keep the meals fresh. The plan is for 6 days per week, with Sunday as a day off or a “cheat day”.

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.

Hey there! My name is Dan Pepin and I co-founded Bonify five years ago with my business partner, John Carbone. Bonify started out in life as a small web development agency focused on building amazing websites for clients. However, for the past three years, we’ve been slowly transitioning the business from client services to paid online app subscriptions, which has been no easy feat!

Our current major endeavor is growing our portfolio of Shopify apps and increasing customer acquisition. We currently have three apps in the Shopify app store and we’re quite happy that the apps are bringing in $15,000/mo, but our goal is to nearly double our app revenue by the end of this year.

The most popular app we have is the first one we launched about three years ago called Custom Fields. The app allows store owners to add extra structured data to anything in Shopify, which enhances a lot of the flexibility of what you can do with store customizations. We very recently launched Mr. Arigato - Task Automator, which we are very proud of! It’s a very sophisticated app which allows store owners and developers to automate their store tasks, such as subscribing users to their mailing list, adding data to Google Sheets, sending emails and text messages to customers, and a whole lot more.

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 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!

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

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

My name is Michael, and I’m the owner of Breathe Healthy.

As a kid, I ran a lawn and field mowing business. Unfortunately, I also had allergies. There were times when I would be in the fields all day, but then had to come home with my eyes swelled shut because of my allergies. I tried masks, but they were uncomfortable, and not very easy for a kid to keep on his face.

A more urban lifestyle and career kept me away from the worst of my allergies until I entered the military. Once again, time “out in the field” brought back my allergies with a vengeance. While serving in a desert environment, we often had to operate in sandstorms and high dust and dirt environments. Often, a shirt or rag wrapped around the face was what we used to protect ourselves.

My name is Michael Chou, and I am an aerospace engineer by trade.

It’s always bothered me how difficult it was to scoop hard ice cream. I hated trying to melt the ice cream using heated spoons, or the microwave. I just knew there was a better way. It took me years to develop the most perfect ice cream scoop.

There is definitely blood sweat and tears in the product. Heck, we call it the Midnight Scoop because I spent so many nights obsessing about it and losing so much sleep.

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

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

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

My name is Nick Fortosis and I am the founder of GEO 101 Design, a company that specializes in creating one of a kind cork maps with modern minimalist aesthetics. Our goal is to turn your love of travel into your own personalized home décor.

Founded in late 2017, I run the business by myself and manufacture everything in my garage workshop in West Michigan. We have been steadily growing and are currently doing roughly $2000 a month in sales through our website and our Etsy shop.

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 Ben Goldberg and, along with my wife, Jennifer Goldberg, we founded and run the New York Food Truck Association (NYFTA) and Food Truck Promotions. We focus on mobile culinary solutions for private and large events (everything from weddings to Comic Con), as well as experiential marketing for top brands such as Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Califia Farms, Match Group, Google, Viacom, and Twitter.

Our association is composed of 50+ NYC local food truck vendors, which are mostly small, family-owned businesses. Through our events and promotions, we can provide our members with an additional (high margin) revenue stream. In markets outside of NYC, we operate under our sister company, Food Truck Promotions, where we tap into local food trucks in cities all around the country.

Within our first year of business (2016-2017), we did >$1M in revenue with consistent and every year we have had 50%+ YoY growth.