Look Before You Leap

Every day, more and more people are becoming ever increasingly discontented with the daily rat race, and direct their interest to starting a home-based business.

For most people, once this threshold is reached, the desire to start working from home is so overpowering that they become vulnerable to making poor choices in the opportunity they eventually embrace.

As a result, most fail miserably, and its not usually through lack of determination, but several other reasons that can be responsible for their dream turning into a nightmare. It is the dream of staying at home, and enjoying the kids growing up, of working your own hours, of extra money, and of financial freedom. A worthy goal.

In the past, there have been many work at home opportunities banded about. Multi-level business opportunities selling everything from personal care, cosmetics, jewellery, hardware, to vitamins and even electrical goods. There have been the mail order catalogue opportunities, and the party plans. These opportunities have made people money, and the rare few wealthy, but they have also cost a lot of people a great deal of wasted time, money and effort.

One of the reasons is inexperience. People have spent years developing the qualifications and skills for their day job, but expect to start a home business and become wealthy almost overnight. Its a well known fact that over 50% of all new small businesses fail in the first year, and 95% fail within the first five years, and were not talking about home-based business here, were talking about all small businesses.

Inexperienced people join MLMs, (good companies like Amway), while others join money making schemes after attending a meeting somewhere, and yet all these people expect to succeed within a few months and become wealthy. What they dont realise is that it takes time to succeed, and as with any business, investment.

Financial investment and time investment.

If you go by facts and figures, the statistics are against them. They are against any new small business venture, but especially against some home-based opportunities, because the very nature of the business has people working long hours, often door to door for little profit. People end up burned out, tired, frustrated, and quit feeling very guilty because they are told such things as Winners never quit.

Why become part of a work at home opportunity that is like a regular job?

Another reason people fail is because they are told it is only temporary. If you build your network, and duplicate yourself they are told, you will soon have enough volume that you wont have to work as hard, and you will have a recurring monthly income. So some people plod on and on becoming more and more disillusioned as their people quit after a few months. Its usually the people who have some of the necessary skills already that manage to forge ahead, and unfortunately many of those who havent, just havent the time or the money to gather those skills. Some will make it, and some will excel, but the majority of them will just quit.

When you base your future income on the efforts of others, its a two edged sword. It cuts both ways, but like any sword it usually cuts better on the down stroke.

Another reason that many businesses fail is they offer products that nobody really wants. To put it another way, there is not a strong market for the product. John Paul Gettys formula for making money was, find a product that is needed, find a product that is consumable, find a product that is affordable, find a product that is guaranteed to work, and then sell it. If you were selling cold soft drinks, would you rather sell them on a cold winters day or on a sunny hot summer afternoon at the beach?

If JP Getty were alive today, I guess he would add another qualification, that the people behind the product or service have a proven track record of success, and are not simply out to take peoples money and run.

The problem is many of the home-business opportunities out there today that are not so good, have promotions that sound every bit as good as anyone elses. If you are looking for a home-based business opportunity, decide what you want from it, and then examine it carefully. Check with the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and the internet scam warning web sites for information. Run a Google search for company name + scam. Go to www.mlmwatchdog.com and check there.

Be extremely wary of any opportunity that wants a large purchase up front. Many of these opportunities show you cheques of hundreds of dollars earned within a few weeks to entice you to join. In many cases it is because the new member has been persuaded to pay a large amount up front for a never to be repeated introductory offer.

Be wary of money schemes on the internet that appear to be just that. They spring up on a weekly basis, just as fast as the authorities can shut them down. Many people have invested reasonable sums of money and watched their online earning grow, only for the company to be shut down before they can get their money out.

So are all opportunities set to fail?

Not at all.

There are many ways to make money from home, but perhaps more now than ever, the best way forward is still the Internet.

Why?

Because the business of Internet Marketing can be taught. There are many successful people online who have started with nothing and built businesses turning over from many thousands of dollars monthly, to millions of dollars yearly over a decade or more.

2006 has been a booming year for Internet Marketers. There has been a phenomenal amount of high quality training information released by top internet earners.

An internet business can be fully automated. It is possible to do the work by spending weeks not months, setting up systems, (or having them set up for you), to have your web site and your computer sell for you unattended, and for the first time ever this goal is within the reach of ordinary people to achieve by learning from people with proven track records of success from the convenience of their own home, at a pace, and at a time convenient to them.

There are many areas of Internet Marketing that you can choose from, Ebay, Affiliate Marketing (selling someone elses product or service), information products, software products, training (audio and video).

No, its not a get rich quick scheme, and no its not an automatic guarantee of success because people are people, and believe it or not approximately 50% of people who buy teaching courses dont open the cover, or only get as far as the first couple of chapters. But with a high quality training course, that will take you by the hand and lead you step by step with written training material, and both audio and video training from a company with a proven track record over a number of years, there is no reason why the average person can not make a nice income from the internet.

For example, Inspiration Point and 6M Profit Method headed by Lisa Diane, a business woman who thirteen years ago started from scratch, and who developed a closely guarded marketing blueprint to success, which she uses to generate millions of dollars annually, brought her expertise to the internet in the last few years. In the last few months she has opened her secret blueprint for success to the masses, and founded the 6M community where people who have bought her training program, backed by her proven track record and personal commitment, can get ongoing training, and frequently her personal advice for as long as they remain a member of the community.

What is it you really want from a home business?

What is your focus?

Whatever your choice, make it an informed one!

Article by Mark McGimpseyAleen Blog8040
Caryn Blog84047