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9 Proven Criteria to Select Your Home Based Business

Getting from a job situation into becoming an independent entrepreneur requires due diligence. I want to share with you some valuable information.

Marius Tesselar

January 26, 2007

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9 Criteria To Research a Home Business

Selecting a home based business opportunity can be difficult.
Use our 9 proven criteria to avoid the scams and problematic businesses out there. 
To further facilitate you, we have made a distinction between:

- New to working from home
- Experienced

How to select your home based business?

New to working from home

If you are relatively new to working from home you need to be aware of many things including the transition period it takes to get used to ‘being your own boss’.

1/ THE COMPANY - always select a company that really exists and has been in business for at least 5 years. They have proven themselves and stand the test of time and are positioned for growth. This is the easiest way to stay away from the ‘Mickey Mouse’ programs and scams out there.

2/ THE PRODUCTS - these should be real and marketable. Pyramid schemes where only money is passed around are 100% illegal and cannot exist for a long time either. Be aware of them and avoid them.

3/ THE TRAINING SYSTEM - a step-by-step program works best as it allows you to learn from the professionals and make corrections as you go. Make sure the program has been proven to work and is generating results for those following the steps.

4/ SLIGHTLY CHALLENGING - here’s the thing: if you select an extremely simple business like typing ads or filling questionnaires working from home, you cannot expect any great rewards: anyone in the world can do this and most of it can be automated anyway at lowest cost possible. Moreover, how motivated will you be after 3 weeks typing the same ads over and over again…

5/ LONGEVITY - you want to do something for a longer time so make sure the opportunity is challenging and motivating enough for you to stay involved and focused. Otherwise you will have to restart your learning curve over and over again and not make any money in the process…

6/ THE TEAM - you learn faster and stay motivated if you can interact with a team. Make sure the team is ready and motivated to help you as well. Not a good idea to sign up for something and find out that there is no support from anyone else.

Experienced
 
Have you been engaged in a home based business and found yourself not having the success you wanted?
Did you invest more than you could actually justify for yourself?
Did the ‘team’ not provide the training they promised?
Did you feel abandoned after a while and did you start losing focus after 2 weeks into the business?

If your skepticism is currently bigger than your desire to generate wealth, read on...

Many people have become very skeptical by either chosing the wrong opportunity or by allowing themselves to fail. They are potentially giving it all up to go back to their jobs again… That would be a sad thing because in the process of working from home for a while you may have learned specific skills already that will potentially make you very successful faster provided you will find the right opportunity.

Honestly, do you really want to go back to work for someone else after you have experienced the potential, the freedom and the flexibility working your own business from home?

Understand that you will have a much shorter learning curve and probably have already set up a working infrastructure enabling you to work from home.

My advice would be to not throw it all away but keep an open mind and use your knowledge to filter out the right opportunity for you. Yes there are plenty of legitimite opportunities out there you can benefit from as well. You already know what works for you and what doesn’t so use this knowledge to figure out how to become successful again rather than becoming ultra-skeptical which may disable you to engage in any opportunity at all…

7/ INVESTMENT - common question of many people: ‘how much do I need to invest’. Difficult to answer because everyone is free to invest in his own business what he wants. Some of us invest in powerful computers and large desks while others use the kitchen table and a simple laptop. What is important is the freedom to make your own business decisions. That’s the whole point of being self-employed: you make your own decisions and decide how fast you want to grow and how effective you want to be.

8/ MLM OR NOT - Multi-level marketing business has created succesful companies and I know people who have become extremely successful in this business. However, it never was something for me. I am not a good salesperson and after a while, I hated the way that I needed to chase my family and friends… Yes, there are more sophisticated programs out there that are still relatively easy to operate with great rewards, so keep your eyes open!

9/ MAKING MONEY - last but not least, how do you get paid? In many cases there is a combination consisting of profits on products sold and a reward for building teams in the organization (leverage). Profits on products sold are justified because the more products the company is able to sell, the more value is generated. Rewards for building teams are justified because the more people are selling products from the organisation, the more value is generated over time.

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