The COVID-19 pandemic has made the global population realize that work from home is not only possible for them, but also profitable, in most cases. In fact, for small businesses and budding entrepreneurs, the worldwide health crisis could even be interpreted as a blessing in disguise.

How, you ask? When some companies are taking a major hit to profitability due to the mandatory self-isolation directive by governments across the world and having to lay-off employees to simply stay afloat – others are thriving.

These are the businesses that promote customer convenience, such as grocery home delivery services and the like. In the current times, these are the businesses that encourage and enable “social distancing”. Many such services are required by the public and not catered to, yet.

If you want to make the most of the situation, you could explore any of the following five home business ideas, for starters –

1. Liquor Delivery Service

Government directives for self-quarantining have led to all your local pubs, taverns, and bars closing doors. While liquor and wine retail stores might still be open, most people are reluctant to leave their own houses and drive all the way to a retail store to stock up their bar cabinet. However, you can rest assured that these people will pay good money to have the same delivered to their homes. People have been panic-buying liquor fearing extensions of the lockdown period and even, to use as hand sanitizers, incase their sanitizers run out.

If you open up a liquor home delivery service, you are sure to make sizeable profits in 2020, catering to a large section of the anxious house-bound population.

2. Professional Cleaning Service

It is no wonder that professional cleaning and sanitization services have registered a hike in their demand with the COVID-19 pandemic rearing its head. Offices, health clinics, airports have all utilized professional cleaning services to sanitize their facilities lately. There has never been more demand for this industry sector than there is now.

Many commercial enterprises have contracted professional cleaning services for regular deep-cleaning of their premises. Imagine the amount of profit you could make if you started up your own professional cleaning service in these times.

3. General Delivery Service

If you do not wish to operate into an industry niche and instead, keep your options open – you could consider starting a general home delivery service. You could round up drivers for the job who would go pick up customer orders as directed, and deliver them to their doorsteps.

An undeniable truth of our times right now is that nobody wants to venture outdoors. We fear the risk of infection and want to keep ourselves indoors, where we are safe from the threat of contamination. As a result, we are enlisting delivery services of every kind to pick up the essentials we require to sustain indoors.

These delivery services are finding themselves constrained by a lack of manpower and struggling to meet the spike in customer demand. If more delivery services were to open now, not only would it help the population, but it would also be biting into the share of the profit made available due to the increase in demand in this sector.

4. Landscaping companies

With more and more people practicing life indoors, they are looking for ways to keep themselves entertained and occupied. Household chores are being duly tended to, and if they have a garden or lawn, they are taking up the responsibility of taking care of these by themselves too. Landscaping and yard-care companies are making this possible for them by providing them with the tools and accessories they require to keep their lawns and yards in good shape.

You could utilize this rise in demand for services provided by landscaping and yard-care companies to open your own. You would be earning yourself a steady stream of profit, as well as doing a service to your community.

5. Become a Freelancer

If you do not have the funds to open up your own at-home business enterprise just yet, you could monetize the skills you have and use affordable virtual office services to give your business a presence on the cheap. But the question need answering is, “what to sell?”

You could offer to tutor and help out the millions of students confined to their homes, with an uncertain future waiting for them, by signing up to an online tutorial service. Similarly, you could hunt down copywriting, video-editing, or social media management projects listed on the web and apply for them. You don’t necessarily need to attend an office physically to make an earning. You could utilize any of these opportunities and make yourself a good bit of savings. Of course, you would be helping others in need too.

Conclusion

Nobody knows what the future holds for us any longer. We can only make conjectures about how long it will be until we can all resume our former lifestyles. Perhaps, life after the COVID-19 crisis will not resemble our former lives at all. What can be predicted for sure is that industry and how businesses are operated will witness a massive overhaul.

There is no use wringing your hands about what is lost. A winner knows how to make the most of the circumstance they’ve found themselves in. If brick and cement offices might cease to exist altogether in the future, entrepreneurs and industrialists will need to figure out how they can provide the services with the most customer demand and make themselves a profit accordingly.

For example, if social distancing is asked to be followed for the better part of the year, perhaps, drive-in cinema halls could replace ordinary cinema halls. Drive-in cinema offers visitors the ability to observe a greater length of distance from other members of the audience, than is possible in a regular cinema hall where the audience has to be seated in a row of consecutive seats.

Maybe starting your own drive-in cinema or drive-through restaurant could serve as worthy replacements for movie theatres and sit-in restaurants for the public. You would still be following government instructions to maintain “social distancing”, but also earning a profit by providing the population with activities they used to enjoy in the pre-pandemic days. Ingenious, isn’t it? We’ve only provided you with 5 of such home business ideas – there are tons remaining, waiting to be explored!