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.

1. Decide on an investment cap. This depends on a number of different factors. Is the home based business a turnkey business?
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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

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