[XMLLINK0000000092]
Home Business Start Up: Deal or No Deal
by Rick Carbone
How much personal risk are you willing to allow?
The question most people have about starting an online home
business is, " what are the risks involved?" The answer is
there are always risks involved with any business venture,
however your risks can be minimized considerably with an online
home based business. Let me explain.
One major factor is financial risk.
This is a question that you have to answer yourself as you
are the only one who can determine what amount of money you are
willing to invest with the possibility of 0% return. A little
harsh perhaps but honest. It’s about the same as investing in
the stock market. Sure there are companies that have proven
track records which make them less riskier than say new or
start-up businesses, but the fact remains that they can be
risks as well depending on the strength or weakness of the
stock market.
A second factor is personal risk.
Will you expose yourself to identity theft or other online
fraud? One of the biggest issues today is identity theft or
other Internet fraud schemes. Identity theft has been a problem
for more than 20 years, considerably longer than the mass
popularity of the Internet. The only difference is that because
of the Internet it has become wider in scope. The same
safeguards are still at play only they have different names.
Instead of regular mail we now have email. Instead of
telemarketer fraud we have online application fraud. The same
safeguards still exist here as well. Don’t respond to email
with personal information. Don’t fill in personal information
in a non secure site.
These are risks that can be easily remedied when thinking about
starting a home business.
- Decide on an investment cap. This depends on a number
of different factors. Is the home based business a turnkey
business?
- Is there a business plan provided for the business? Are
there reliable and verifiable references of others who have
used the business? Don’t use your personal information.
Develop and design a business with a real business name and
register it with your local municipality or form an LLC or
corporation. There are plenty of legitimate and trusted
resources on the Internet to provide you with that
service.
- Always do your research first. There are a lot of
sources on the Internet to help you with researching a home
based business. Start with Home Business Research, That’s
this site if you didn’t know. There are plenty of free home
business research sites on the Internet. Of course I am
partial to Home Business Research because it is a free
resource.
- Always look before you leap. In other words, don’t fall
for the sales pitch. Ad copywriting is a very lucrative
business and major copywriters command upwards of $10,000
or more to write a sales page. Why? It’s simple the product
owner will easily get a double digit return on investment
by using a professional copywriter. Don’t get me wrong
there are plenty of very good products with professionally
sales pages, because they need to keep pace with the rest
of the market.
Up to this point I’ve given you all the negative factors of a
home based business, only to provide you with a realistic
expectation. The positive factors actually far outweigh the
negative ones though.
The Internet is a rich tapestry of problems, ideas and
solutions. As it is constantly evolving so are the
opportunities to make money. First and foremost:
You don’t need to start a formal business to make some extra
income.
Low Risk:
There are plenty of casual home business opportunities
available. Some present more risk than others but are pretty
much dependant upon how long and hard you want to work. These I
would categorize as safe bets and include opportunities such as
data entry in the form of product surveys and market research.
The downside is that many of the surveys pay out only $10-20
per, so you have to hustle to make the big bucks.
A second low risk home business is article writing. If you have
a writing talent you can create niche content articles. This is
a simple business opportunity. Website owners are constantly
looking for unique content for their sites. The best way is
have niche articles written solely for a particular site. It
really depends upon how good your articles are that will
determine their value in the market.
Medium Risk:
A medium risk opportunity is eBook marketing. It’s not the
development and publishing that is an issue here it’s the time
resource and the advertising to make it work. If your eBook
clicks with a niche audience it can be very lucrative. A good
place to start is www.ebookinstructor.com
for a bunch of free information.
Another medium risk opportunity is Google® AdSense ® . If you
don’t know what Google AdSense in I suggest that you check out
our section on this topic at X. The reason that this is medium
risk is that you must have a lot of traffic to your site to
make any appreciable money. Research our
AdSense section first before you jump.
Rick Carbone is the owner-editor of Home Business
Research a top website focused solely on online home
business development and management since 1998. You can get
a free copy of his ebook "Go Online1-2-3" by clicking
here
• This Article must be published with all
hypertext included.
| 
