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This question was puzzling me about two years ago. Finding the answer to this question has drastically changed my life and I want to offer you a few thoughts of mine.
Something you should know first: there are two different things available for you: work from home and home based business. They are two absolutely different things. Work from home is something like a typist or virtual assistant or medical billing specialist - when you are actually employed by somebody and you are paid a fixed salary or hourly wages for your services.
Another thing is a home based business. In this case you are becoming a business owner and your income potential increases, but you actually have to be involved in a decision-making process.
I can't advise you on work from home, but if you are asking about a home based business I might be able to give you some food for thought.
In today's world Internet has become a great vehicle to market goods and services and has allowed a lot of businesses to reach larger customer groups.
The Internet has also created a concept of a "Internet marketer": a person who markets products and services via the Internet.
So, in many cases, "home based business" means a business that delivers products and services using the power of the Internet.
Like any other business, it must have a product and in order to generate any income you are going to have to market it.
This is where you have to choose what is it that you are most comfortable with, because options are endless.
The beauty of this kind of business is that your initial investment is incomparably small related to what we call "Brick-and-Mortar" business: you do not have to rent an office, hire employees, buy any tools or machinery, rent a warehouse, maintain inventory etc. Plus you get to reach millions and millions of people via the Internet, which makes it much easier to actually achieve measurable results in a timely manner.
The concept of an Internet based business is still new to a lot of people and you are going to here a lot of opinions like "It's a scam" or "It's to good to be true", especially from your uncle Bob, who spent 20 years fixing furnaces and your aunt Polly, who spent her life working at the gas-station.
It's like with any other business opportunity: there is always a gun-slinger with his "It ain't gonna work". There are also a lot of people who is going to try to drag you into something scammy. They will be screaming "Sure, go ahead and join me, pay me this much money and then I will personally write you a check for a million dollars!"
And like with any other business you need a lot of information to make an educated decision about each particular business opportunity. What if you were interested in opening a laundromat, would you base your decision about getting involved on uncle Bob's "It's a get rich quick scheme" or on the sellers promise of a million dollars in a month? No. You would try to acquire all the information you can get and only based on facts you would make a conclusion about a particular business opportunity.
As far selling structured settlement internet based business opportunities, look at following things:
- what is the product that you are going to market
- will a potential customer see the value of the product without a two hour presentation
- is there a clear marketing strategy
- is there a support or any kind of mentorship available
- what is the profit margin per unit of product (is it 20 cents per bottle of vitamins or $35000 per space shuttle).
If you are able to locate those answers it should be relatively easy for you to make a decision.
Internet marketing is a great business after all and you would be surprised to know how many people are involved and what kind of money are being made here, but before you get involved, again, do your research.
I can't tell you that I'd investigated all the possible opportunities out there, but I stopped at one and haven't regretted it so far.
I have a lot of information about every aspect of what I do on my blog and it might be educational and helpful for you to check it out.
And when somebody gives you again one of those "It's a scam"-opinions, ask them if they would be able to provide you with the data that they used in order to make their conclusion, including names of business opportunities that they had joined, what kind of investment they had to make, what kind of steps they took and what kind of marketing strategy they used.
In most cases these people never tried anything other then going to work for the last ten - twenty years, never made more then $40,000 per year and their opinion is not a valid source of information by any means.
If you are actually interested in finding people from this industry, go to You Tube - there is a lot of us over there and we are open to the idea of sharing all the information we have about what we do.
One more time: home based business has changed lives for a lot of people, are you going to be one of them?
The decision is yours!
Pavel Becker is a frequent contributor of articles on the subject of Internet Marketing, Home-Based Businesses and Small Business Development. More information on these topics can be found at his blog: PavelBecker.comhttp://PavelBecker.com or on his website: OceanIsWaiting.comhttp://OceanIsWaiting.com