Business Tips Philippines: Business Owners and Entrepreneurs’ Guide

Business Tips Philippines, an online entrepreneurship, management & marketing guide for Filipinos, business owners, leaders & entrepreneurs around the world.

10 Small Business Ideas in the Philippines

Here is a list of 10 small business ideas with low starting capital you can start in the Philippines. If you’re an unemployed person who strives to earn for living, an employed one who wants to earn extra income, a mom who wishes to work at home, or a college student who needs to find ways to fund his own school expenses, then the following small businesses which require small investment and start-up capital can be the right idea for your small yet admirable business and entrepreneurship move.

 

1. Loading business

If you want to start a small business with small capital, cellphone loading or eloading can be the one for you. The good thing with this business is that you can do it part-time while you’re not yet ready to depart from your employer. Filipinos (including you) are in a constant need of prepaid cellphone load. You can sell it to your friends or even to your officemates, if you’re still employed. The loading business becomes more revolutionized, with the fast-changing technologies the world offers. You can try to invest a P3,988 capital to start your own loading business with some of the top loading business partners in the Philippines.

 

2. Website flipping

If you know how to develop a website and know how to market it, then website flipping is for you. It is the development of websites for sale. What you need is skills in website design, content creation, and some search engine optimization (SEO). The cost you will incur consists of your domain name registration fee, webhosting fee, listing fee and cost of outside services if you wish to outsource some works related to website development. A dot.com domain name costs P 500.00 for a one year registration, while webhosting fee for 4 months can costs P2,000, enough to accommodate a developing website for those months. Listing fee of one website in Flippa.com (a leading marketplace for website selling) costs around P 1,000. If you will develop a website and sell it after 3 months you will incur a total costs of P3,500 (assuming you will develop it by yourself). If you can come up with a website that receives good traffic and generates some income, you can successfully sell it at a 100% to 300% profit. Be sure to have a Paypal account to accept payment from your buyers online.

 

3. Web host reselling

Another online small business idea is web host reselling. This involves buying a web hosting account and reselling it to different customers. For example, you pay for a P 1,300 monthly web hosting reseller account with 15GB space and 300GB bandwidth. You can divide it to 10 (1,500MB space and 30GB bandwidth) and resell it for P300 or more to 10 clients, resulting to a sales of P3,000 and profit of P1,700. If you can multiply this business into more accounts and clients, then your revenues and income will also be multiplied. You can integrate this business with your website design, development and flipping business. But you need to have and maintain a reputable website that will serve as your online store and place to interact with your client. You can check ResellerZoom for a reseller account at your budget.

 

4. Direct selling business

Direct selling or personal selling will require anyone’s own effort and self-reliance. Most direct selling companies offer low starting investment or initial capital to become part of their successful business. This is just perfect for people (e.g., home-based moms, students and employed persons) who want to have a small business than can be done with a flexible time. Check out Avon, Sundance, Tupperware Philippines and Natasha.

 

5. Poultry farming

This is an old small business that you can do at your backyard. We already know the idea. We buy chicks or piglets and raise them till we profit. If you love to play Farmville in Facebook, why not try to make it real? However, this business may not be practicable if you live in a highly urbanized place like in the middle of a city.

 

6. Lunch and snacks

Everybody needs to eat, especially the employees and workers who almost don’t have the time to prepare or even go out from their workplace to buy their food during lunch break. The idea is to sell and deliver lunch packs and snacks during “merienda” or snack time to these workers. To run this small business, you need to have a telephone to contact your customers for delivery, good skills in cooking, and the ability to build good relationship with these prospective customers.

 

7. Specialty food business

The food industry is a never ending business, whether it’s small or business. People will continue to crave for a new kind of taste. If you love specialty foods, you can turn this into a business. This may include, baking special chocolates, candies, cookies and other special delicacies. You can consign these products in other stores (like department stores) or just sell it directly to your customers.

 

8. Laundry and dry-cleaning

There may be already lots of laundry shops in your area. However, you can make a more special and unique service by offering free pickup and delivery services. Since this is a small business idea, you can do it without expensive laundry machines, and do the cleaning just like the old times.

 

9. House cleaning services

A clean house is always nice to live. But many people, especially those who spend more hours in the office than in their home, have no time to do the job of cleaning their own place. Thus, you can be the one to provide that service to them. This can one of the best summer business ideas for teenagers and students who want to earn extra money during the school-break season.

 

10. Tutorial services

For me, being a teacher is the best profession out there. Remember that Christ our Lord is a great teacher. Now, if you are gifted and blessed with an exceptional knowledge, you can share that knowledge to everyone who needs it. Of course, except for the Word of God which you cannot share for money, other kinds of knowledge which you have invested with time and money, can be the product of your tutorial business. You can teach online or offline, depending on where you will be more effective, efficient and profitable.

 

There can be other small and low-capital business ideas that are viable to start in the Philippines. If you have other ideas in mind, don’t hesitate to share it by making a comment below.

Update: I have made a 100 list of business ideas for 2013. You can read it to gain more ideas what business to start in the Philippines. Also check out this list of micro businesses in the Philippines. Enjoy!

Comments

    • Hi Carolyn, how will P250 capitalization works when the site referred requires about P4,000 at least? Thanks

    • hi carolyn, i am really interested to know more about that small-capital business of yours. but i just wish and pray that this is not a scam for it only needs a much lesser capital. thanks…

  3. Hi anyone wants to have a loading business for as low as 3,988 pesos?
    Want to have more than 1 million return of investment? By just investing a small amount for about 120,000 pesos only? Let me know! 🙂
    I can schedule meet-ups for you business man and business owners.

    For inquiries :
    Call / Text : 09054139619
    Look For : Ron Angeles

    • Ron Angeles,

      How can we be sure that this is not another one of those pyramiding companies? I’ve read about Vmobile on the internet. And, in those forums I have visited, it seems that those who are raising concerns about the use of a pyramiding scheme by the company have a point. When one becomes a dealer/technopreneur of Vmobile, he/she will have a privilege to earn the referral bonuses set by the company for recruiting new dealers, regardless if there are or no product sales have been made. Well, based on the definition of pyramiding, I believe Vmobile is indeed practicing it, in spite of its DTI and SEC registrations.

      • Sadly there are alot of “networking” companies out there that remain unregulated and even left alone by DTI. Once again seeing that this country has the worst priorities and will probably continue in its trend of poverty for years to come as long as 99% of the country remain hellbent on traditions and conservatism.

        • The issue is not networking companies being unregulated but people who aren’t performing the right way of doing it.

          Networking or multi-level marketing is not all about recruiting people like most of you know. That is what you people know because most networkers nowadays skip the marketing part. Networking is about selling products AND gaining companions in your work. It only happens so that networkers were blinded by the fact that they income a percentage of their recruit’s income.

          Soon in my blog I will post about that in relation to the link I point to.

          I’m not like those networkers who just go on and recruit. In fact, I do not have any recruits myself since I am worried that they might not get income in the networking company that I’m involved in and they will think that I fooled them for money.

      • hi! network marketing business it’s not a bad business but before you join the network marketing business you always look for the credibility of the company and here some more suggestion in choosing a viable company 1. legality, stability 27yrs, D&B Rating 5A1 rating and Transparency Local PSE (Philippine Stock Exchange listed DSAP Approved International NYSE listed and Member of WFDSA (world Federation of Direct Selling Association. 2.longevity at least 10yrs with proven track record. 3. Products: Patended, quality, unique. consumable with money back guarantee. 4. Marketing plan: Patended, proven, audited and sustainable. 5. Proven System for Global Expansion 52 countries. 6. Support/Training System. 7. Sales: At least 500 million dollars annual sale. you should never join a company that is not a member of DSA (direct sales association). sana makatulong ako sayo…thankyou..

        if you have some question just call or text me.
        contact number: +639272064361

      • Hi Chris i just wanna express my thought regarding pyramiding companies.. when you say PYRAMIDING what idea comes to your mind?? in my opinion there are pyramiding company which are scam but there are still alot of pyramiding company which is real… lets make as example the Land Transportation Office in Philippines, when you say LTO they branded as Crocodile in the city, but not all of them is crocs, there are still alot of them which is good hearted, same with the Police, many police officer engage in illegal activity but many of them are good hearted too, when you say politician, they are branded as corrupt but not all of them is politician..
        if you try to figure out the government system is also pyramid structure, start from president on top down to the lowest public officials, thats also a form of pyramid..
        I’ve been in networking company and i know theres a plenty of scammers around but i am very careful on choosing the legitimate company.
        Now I enjoying my earnings from my online networking business with out living my home… and alot of ordinary people is now enjoying financial freedom because of this pyramid business.. find me on Facebook and i will share to you legitimate idea on how to earn extra income just what i did.. https://www.facebook.com/reynandgsogelio, 🙂

  4. Pyramiding = No Product or product with less value than the registration fee. Meaning, if you pay for your registration fee, wala kang makukuhang product kapalit nung binayad mo na registration fee or may product nga pero mas mababa ang worth kesa sa registration fee. Sa Vmobile if you pay 3988, you will get products worth 5000, so kahit walang recruit recruit na maganap, eh bawing bawi na po agad yung 3988 na puhunan, iba pa po dun yung override na makukuha mo. Again wag natin isama ang recruit recruit. Now for example sa isang company, you pay 5k registration fee then ang nakuha mong kapalit na product ay worth 1500 lang or basta mas mababa sa registration fee mo, ayun! that’s pyramiding because clearly you don’t have any options para mabawi ang puhunan mo kundi magrecruit recruit ka nalang 🙂

  5. I think V mobile will work better if you concentrate on the loading business than with the recruitment. If you go mainly for recruitment, you are up for pyramiding, otherwise, if you concentrate on loading business, then, you really intend to do business.

    • I agree. A friend introduced me to vmobile but i decided not to join. Why? You have to focus on recruitment to earn big while you earn VERY little if you focus on loading even if you become a load dealer.

      • I was once a dealer of this VMobile thing. The moment I joined the business, I studied the scheme/concept. It is indeed a business that is not supposed to be about pyramiding coz as “Joy” said, from the product itself “bawing-bawi” ka na and I agree on that. I simply do the necessary computations of the possible revenue with the least profit being considered, still we will gain something at the end of the day. Well, not as big as the recruitment “reward”. But the point is that, it has the chance to boom depending on how you will deal with the business. The common mistake of most Filipinoes (even the person who recruited me) was that, they wanted the BIG money immediately (thru recruitment and not selling) that makes the business more like “pyramiding”. I stopped for I think one year of operating the business as I need somebody who has the same faith as mine to be my business partner. I do believe that 2 heads are still better than 1. 🙂

  6. You’d a great list here Vic… 😛
    And as Christmas is approaching, lots of people espclly Pinoy teenagers want to make money for their ‘gimiks’, but they don’t have any idea on how and where to begin. So I’ll share here some list on how to make money online and as well as offline.

  8. Hi Vic,

    I don’t think electronic loading is for me. But I’d like to commend you for the list you posted above.
    From the list you gave, what I like the most is selling websites but the profit depends highly on the popularity of your websites. We all know that a lot of people are doing this so it’s not an easy job to sell.
    I know some online work for all the Filipinos who want to earn online without any out-of-pocket costs. I think that is what I highly prefer than investing. One has to have a personal computer and an internet connection. That’s all, no investment needed.

    • Hi Guest,
      I’m interested in the online works that you mentioned. May I know what are those online works for Filipinos? Thank you so much

  9. These are somehow also can be done even at the comfort of your home.
    And of course, with no holding tax, thanks for the share!

  10. I have been in the tutorial business for more than 12 years now with the main office in Quezon City and a branch in Alabang. Indeed, tutorial services is an ideal business for Filipinos, specially with the implementation of the K-12.

    Due to the tutorial inquiries coming in, normally from other areas, YTC Your Tutorial Center opened its doors to franchising. Those who will franchise, will get a 3-in-1 program — 1) tutorial 2) language and 3) review.

    For interested parties, you may call (02) 806 2027 or (0932) 8 666 982.

  13. thanks for the tips. good thing you didn’t mention mlm. im not against it, but its not for long term. i know a lot of people who earn from it but the company didn’t last for long. traditional is still the best.

  15. i think most of us came to this site because we are thinking of some small capital businesses. I had fun reading some comments about network marketing or multi level marketing businesses. I see there are some people who have the idea on how it works. if you want to go on multi level marketing business be sure to find the FIVE qualities for you to succeed. 1.) the company – it should be stable and credible and has continuous improvement. 2.) Product – since multi level marketing is a direct selling company the product must be great, easy to market and effective. If the product don’t have the quality needed then there is no marketing plan to talk to. 3.) Marketing Plan- since you are working for success you need to find the company that has a good compensation plan. 4.) and most importantly THE TRAINING. it should have training that will help every aspiring businessman/woman, to reach their goals. and last but not the least. 5.) ORGANIZATION – some people even though in a perfect network marketing fails to succeed because of their organization.

  17. it’s a must now that apart from working, you also must do side line business. create multiple income streams so you’ll not only cover your regular expenses, but also to achieve your dreams. you have good 10 suggestions