Hottest home businesses in 2007

This year's predicted business trends

Having spent 12 months observing the home business market and analysing trends and research reports, Enterprise Nation announces its predictions for the top 5 home businesses for 2007.

Best year yet

We predict that 2007 will be a great year for homeworking. Expect to see an increase in the number of employees requesting the right to work flexibly and more people turning their home into start-up business premises.

And now for our top 5 predictions...

Based on a year spent researching and listening to our readers, here is the list of what we think will be the hottest home businesses of the New Year.

Personal services

By this, we mean any home-based company that provides a personal service to a customer. We include here occupations such as mobile hairdressing, complementary therapies, party planning and wedding organisers.

In research carried out by Yell.com earlier this year, the company recorded an astonishing 57,200% growth in the number of mobile hairdressers listing in the online directory. We predict that this group of home based and personal service companies will grow at the fastest rate in 2007.

Professional services

Here we include individuals who are accountants, lawyers, graphic designers, website developers, marketing professionals and journalists. Anyone who has taken their skills home, started a business and provides a professional service to other companies.

We confidently place this group in second place, having heard from so many of our readers who are professionally qualified and considering leaving corporate employment in search of the freedom and flexibility of being their own boss at home.

Craft and produce

The number of home businesses producing food or products from home is surely set to grow in 2007, driven by consumer demand for local and organic produce that is outstripping supply.

Indicators of this include the surge in popularity of farmers markets and the success of 'Made in' campaigns championed in local areas across the UK.

The online world

More than 70,000 people in the UK are making a living from eBay and thousands more are generating their income from trading online. We believe that 2007 will be the Year that Second Life makes it big in the UK and sites such as Lulu.com and VCAM (viewer created ad message) will deliver a decent income for entrepreneurial homeworkers.

Domestic energy

An emerging market but an interesting one. When B&Q started selling domestic wind turbines in November, they became one of the retailers' top selling products. This was also the year that Al Gore toured the world to tell us an inconvenient truth about global warming. This must mean there are opportunities to start businesses at home that tap into people's growing awareness of the environment.

In 2007 the Enterprise Nation team will be exploring further what this means for home business. But at this stage we think it is big and important enough to have it ranked at number 5 in our list of hot home business predictions.

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