Starting Your Home Business part 1

Starting a Home Business

I have a lot of friends who are interested in starting a home business or internet business.  You probably do to.  Or you may be weighing the pros and cons of going into business yourself. So one of the most frequent questions I get is, “How do I start a home business or online business from home?”

This is a question I see a lot on the forums too…posted in many different forms.  But most of the responses are not all that great.  Most are very general or vague at best.  Here are some of the typical responses I see posted to this question.  Keep in mind I have copied and pasted these from actual post.

• You can earn money online if you are determined to learn new skills and implement them.  It will never happen in just a matter of days. But if you are determined then you are bound to see results.  If you have a product or a service then you are ready to start an online service. All you need to do is to make it available to the hungry crowd.
• If you have a skill or a product, just sell it.
• There are many legit ways to earn money through online.  But i suggest domain reselling business.
• There are many ways in online business you can adopt to make money online.My favorable ways are setting up a outsourcing business and affiliate marketing.
• Affiliate marketing is the fast way to start making money.Choose some affiliate networks like Clickbank or paydotcom and start promoting product.

Are you Kidding Me???

Did any of those answers help you figure out how to start your home or online business?

I didn’t think so.  This is a huge reason why starting a new business is so hard.  It’s no wonder that so many small and or new businesses fail.

So over the next 3-4 post I will share with you some real strategies that you can use to set up your own business.  Let’s jump in.

If you’ve decided to start your own business there are literally tons of options available to you today not to mention 1000′s of options online!  There are home business opportunities.  There’s franchising.  There are investing opportunities.  There are real estate opportunities.  There are thousands of multi-level marketing (aka mlm) opportunities.  So where do you start?

As basic as this is going to sound you need to ask yourself some basic but important questions.

The number one question is what first got you thinking about starting a home business?

What did you envision?  What kind of business did you see yourself doing?  Why that type of business?  Maybe it is based on some skills that you already have.  perhaps you worked as an accountant for the last 5 years and you are considering starting your own accounting business.

Maybe it is a work of passion.  Maybe you love photography and you are considering opening your own studio.

Or maybe you know someone who makes a living online who does most of their work from their laptop at Barnes & Nobels and your attracted to that lifestyle.

In short, what really gets you fired up?  What gets you so excited that you can’t wait to jump out of bed and get started as soon as you can?

This is only one of the things that you need to get clear on before you jump into starting your business.  There are several of these types of questions that you need to answer before you get started.  Below is a quick checklist of questions you need to answer.

1. What are you passionate about?  What do you love to do?  What do you do now for fun with out getting any money?  If you find something that you are passionate about you will be more likely to stick with it and keep motivated!
2. What special skills or talents do you have already?  Write them all down.  Is there a business that you can start that utilizes these skills and talents?
3. Is there a market for the type of business you want to start.  (We’ll go over this more in the next post!)
4. What kinds of products or services are you going to offer?  Is there a product or service that you can improve on?
5. What kind of budget do you have to start your business?
6. Is there a business opportunity available that you can use to start your business?  Learning from someone else in the type of business you want to start can save you time, mistakes, money and can help you get started with your business more quickly.  You need to do your homework though especially with any money making opportunity that you find online.  (We’ll cover this more in future post!)
7. What skills do you need to learn in order to set up your business?  Again write them all down and get started with them right away!  Don’t let these stop you from taking action and getting started.
8. What kid of Lifestyle do you want to create?  This one is huge!  Think about that for a minute.  How can you create a business that prides you with the lifestyle you want?  What would your perfect month be like?  How much money would you make?  Where would you work?  What kind of work would do.  How many days would you take off?  What would you do on those days off.  Who would spend your time with?  It’s just as important to figure out the things you don’t like and how they pertain to the lifestyle that you want to create.

That’s it.  My quick checklist for designing the business and more importantly the lifestyle of your dreams. It may sound to simple but you’d be surprised at the number of people who wake up and decide to start a home business and start ordering business cards or setting up a website.

If you take some time to really answer these questions in detail you will be light years ahead of the people who just decide to jump into the first thing that presents itself.

In our next post we’ll dig into step two!

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS?
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