How To Choose The Right Home Business – Part I

By Rick Carbone

If you are thinking about ditching the 9 to 5 crowd for the greener pastures of a home business, there are some critical items to think about before taking the plunge. Most of what appears below is our personal experience as a home business on the Internet since 1998.

1. Assuming that you want more flexibility to better suit your lifestyle always consider the amount of time necessary to start up your home based business. More often than not some people just dive right in and don’t consider the start up cost in time. This can be a significant deterrent to managing a home business as you will spend many hours running your enterprise.
2. That brings me to the second item, the start up financial cost. How much will you "realistically" need to invest to insure a successful start? As in most speculative ventures you will need to understand your real start up costs and how much you are willing or can afford to lose. This is not to say that all home business ventures lose money, but that you should be prepared to lose money to more accurately budget your working capital. This is an important aspect that many home business owners don’t consider before leaping into the fray.
3. Will you need to purchase any special equipment? As with many bootstrap home business start ups expect the unexpected. Will you need to purchase expensive equipment to manage your home based business. Some examples include MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) type businesses that "require" inventory or product purchases to maintain specific levels within the MLM structure. Another example is envelope stuffing. Sounds like a simple thing to do however have you ever seen what 500 or 1000 brochures and envelopes look like? Once you do you’ll want to invest in letter folding equipment and perhaps an inserting machine. Something you didn’t think about before you decided to make a few extra bucks. If you are content with spending a several hours of your evening stuffing 100-150 envelopes at a dime apiece, then this is the job for you.
4. Product Surveys are very popular now because there is literally no investment and your income, in theory, is based on how much time you invest. This brings me to another tip, research, research and research some more before you take on any home business opportunity. A good example is a product survey opportunity, the so called "typing" work at home jobs. They sound great. All you need to do is answer a few questions and you will get paid anywhere between $5.00 and $100.00 per survey. Most people see this and jump at the chance of spending an hour or two at the computer each day and make a couple of hundred dollars. Unfortunately that’s not how it works. Many of the surveys run at the low end of the pay scale, so you wind up spending more time at the computer for only $15 or $20 a day, not exactly the payday bonanza you were told it would be.

Everyone’s experience varies due to individual time and effort, however most individuals are sold on the marketing hype that accompanies each product sales letter.