With the tough economic times and the growing number of unemployed Americans, people are starting their own home-based businesses. Studies are showing that more than half of all U.S. businesses are based out of someone’s home.The question now is which one will work for you. Well, you first need to figure out what you are most passionate about. Doing something that you are interested in will be very important, because sometimes you need to try and get people to invest in your home-based business or spend money for products or services you will give. You will need the enthusiasm when you are trying to sell your services.Some home-based businesses need little or no start-up capital and will provide you flexibility. They could be up and running in no time.Here are some home-based business ideas:1. Affiliate marketing/eBay seller – This is one of the lowest cost home-based business. It is very simple. You just set up a blog and review products in certain niche markets. Also you can learn how to sell items on online auctions. You can sell items for your friends and neighbors. You can set up a commission.2. Freelance Writer (Ghost Writing or Article Writing) – Many make a decent living with ghost-writing articles, topic-related articles or short stories. There are many websites that allow you to offer your services. Most are free, but some you have to pay.3. Dog Walking/ Pet Sitting – This is mostly for teenagers who want to make some extra money.4. Business Mentor/Business Coaching – If you have a business background, you can start with local business and then expand from there. Most small to medium companies don’t have much money to start with. They will contract you to help their business grow.5. Personal trainer – If you’re fitness minded, you can start training other people in their homes or rent some space. Another possibility is to make some short training videos and sell them to your clients. It doesn’t take much.6. Blogging – Many people blog on a daily or weekly basis. There are a number of ways to make money, such as displaying ads like Google AdSense throughout your site, offering unbiased reviews of products and services and providing helpful articles about certain topics.7. Photography – Are you a keen photographer and have your own camera? Then you could look at making money. You can take pictures of people either at their homes, outside scenery or just products or items and you can sell them for websites who buy stock photos.8. Technical support – If you’re computer literate and you can help others with computer problems, you can make money doing that.There are so many ways for everyday people to start making money at home. People just need to take some time to come up with a plan to successfully have a home-based business!