From Entrepreneur.com:

Even Wal-Mart sells organic cotton T-shirts these days, but you definitely don’t have to be a retailing behemoth to take your business in a green or organic direction. In fact, entrepreneurs have an advantage when it comes to reaching customers who care about the cause as well as the products.

“It’s a highly underrated opportunity for small business,” says Dr. Karel J. Samsom, a specialist in environmental and sustainable entrepreneurship and author of Spirit of Entrepreneurship. A study by the Organic Trade Association shows that nonfood organic product sales reached $744 million in U.S. consumer sales in 2005, with supplements, personal care and household products leading the charge. For green entrepreneurs, passion is key, says Samsom: “People who are imbued with this kind of spirit have an incredible imagination to rebuild the value chain and inspire their customers in the process.”

That passion is evident when talking to Jonelle Raffino, 41, of South West Trading Co. Inc., a Tempe, Arizona, business that specializes in earth-friendly, alternative fibers and textiles such as yarns made from bamboo, corn and even recycled crab shells. “This country is seeing that we need to challenge the idea of products that use fossil fuels,” says Raffino, who co-founded the company in 2001 with her mother, Jonette Beck. Business is booming so much, they’ve expanded into ready-to-wear items, and they can barely keep up with demand for their line of plush Soy-Silk Pals toys.

Full Article

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is the federal government agency whose sole responsibility is helping you succeed with your small business. Many entrepreneurs have heard about their loan packages, but are you taking advantage of the additional free information, resources, and even personal assistance they have to offer? These people are paid to provide assistance in every area of your business. They are knowledgeable, and they are glad to help. All you need to do is ask.

Every politician in the entire country wants the U.S. economy to thrive. What better way than to support the engine that drives this economy: small business?

Small businesses provide 75% of net new jobs added to our economy, and they represent 99.7% of all employers. To see just how important we small entrepreneurs are, just look at this page: http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbastats.html.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), though always ready to help, used to be considered too complex for the average small business. For many years, only those businesses with legal and accounting advisors took advantage of most programs….

Full Article: Small Business Administration: A U.S. Entrepreneur’s Best Friend

Jenna Bean loves pets, so much so that she has turned her appreciation of the four-legged creatures into a thriving home-based business as a pet sitter.

In two years, her client base has jumped from a handful to nearly 90 pet owners.

“This has just exploded,” said Bean, an animal-science major at Fresno State University. “One day I had 12 stops to make. It was crazy.”

Bean joins the growing ranks of home-based entrepreneurs who opt to run their own companies in nontraditional ways. For many, including Bean, home-based businesses are cheaper to operate, more flexible and easier to control.

Recent Census data show that almost half of the nation’s 23 million businesses are operated out of the home.

“We are running at about a 10 percent annual growth rate,” said Rudy Lewis, president of the National Association of Home Based Businesses, in Maryland.

“I really couldn’t do everything I am doing if I had an office,” said Bean, who likes having few overhead business costs. “But what’s scary is how fast this has grown. This was supposed to be a side job to earn some extra money; now I am working on a Web site and brochures.”

Read Full Article Here

From WomenHomeBusiness.com:

By tradition, the “self employment culture” has been characterized as a male phenomenon. Entrepreneurship, a game of risk and chance, used to be the exclusive domain of the male population

Not anymore. A growing number of women are venturing into self-employment and getting inclined to start an enterprise. Many women are finding that entrepreneurship could pave the way for their “need for new challenges”, the wish to “be one’s own boss” and a “better organized working life”.

What motivates women to pursue self-employment and start their own businesses?

We interviewed Kimberly Yorio and Caitlin Friedman, founders of YC Media, a successful PR firm), to give us insights on women and entrepreneurship. Kimberly and Caitlin recently wrote a book entitled The Girl’s Guide to Starting Your Own Business (HarperResource Category: January 2004),.which is a great primer designed to give real advice to women on business planning, hiring and managing a business.

Click Here for the Interview

Excerpt from StartUpNation.com:

Before Becky Boyd turned her basement into an office for her public relations business, MediaFirst PR, she fell prey to the “just let me check another e-mail” syndrome that ails many home-based entrepreneurs.

“We had a computer in our living room, and it was so easy to run in there and go online and start doing e-mail,” says Boyd, who works with her husband, Jim Caruso.

After founding the company in 1992, the pair worked offsite. But they moved home because, well, they liked being there. It was easy, convenient, required no commute and – a big plus – their young son wouldn’t have to sit in after-school daycare.

They built out the basement of their 4,000-square-foot, three-story house, creating two offices and a computer closet. Every day, Boyd dresses for work like she would for an offsite office. She sets hours, too, which is imperative for home-preneurs who can get swept away by the compelling forces of working where you live.

“It’s very hard to leave work at work because work is always available,” says Boyd, who has to fight the urge to work 16-hour days and fill weekends with earning income. “It’s not like I have to drive anywhere, fight traffic. I just go boom, and I’m in the office. You have to make a concerted effort to get away from it.”

Read Full Article

Below is another great article excerpt from Entrepreneur.com:

“Starting a low-cost home business on the weekend is one of the easiest and most risk-free ways to dip your toe into the waters of entrepreneurship. It only takes your free time, a small investment in marketing materials and business supplies, and some hard work.

Michelle Anton and Jennifer Basye Sander interviewed more than 100 people living their dreams through weekend home businesses when they wrote Weekend Entrepreneur: 101 Great Ways to Earn Extra Cash (Entrepreneur Press). Here, we excerpt four great ideas for people who love to work around the house. If you’re already spending your evenings and weekends cleaning, organizing and improving your home, why not put those skills to work in a part-time business?

Holistic Housecleaning With Allergy-Free Products
Did you know that approximately 50 percent of Americans suffer from some kind of chemical sensitivity? Or that nationwide, every single day, 32 million pounds of household cleaning products are poured down the drain? Kind of makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?

Christmas Light Installer
This is a great seasonal business that specializes in providing the labor for holiday decorations. Once a year an opportunity to make excellent extra money arrives–installing and then later removing decorative outdoor Christmas lights for people who just don’t have the time or the energy to do it for themselves. Jennifer recently went to a spring dinner party at the home of a distinguished couple in their late 70s. Although it was May, the house was still hung with colored Christmas lights outside. These folks and others like them, busy or not quite in physical shape to remove their own lights, are your target audience.

House Staging
Have you ever been inside a house for sale, and although you liked the house itself, the furnishing and decorating gave you the willies? Some real estate agents insist that empty houses sell better; it allows a prospective buyer to “see” themselves living in the space when it isn’t all cluttered with the current owner’s things. “Less is more” when it comes to staging a house for sale, and an objective eye can help cut through the clutter that the longtime owner can’t see anymore.”

Read More from Entreprenuer.com

Blogging is the latest innovation to take the web by storm. According to blog tracking firm Technorati, there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added every day. And 30 percent of all 50 million internet users are blog readers. In short, a lot of people are reading and writing blogs.

Yet despite their popularity, you may be one of those people who doesn’t really know what a blog is or what relevance blogging has to your home based business. In this article, I hope to answer those questions and cover the basics of using blogging to deliver favorable business results.

So just what is a blog and why should you care? Basically, the word “blog” is short for web log, a frequently updated web-based journal that’s intended for general public consumption. So what do people write about? Anything from personal stories (from the mundane to the bizarre) to theme-centered creations (finance, politics, parenthood) to businesses (philosophies; updates; branding methods) to…you name it!

Read More from Entrepreneur.com

Don’t buy “One Minute Millionaire” until you read this. Does anyone out there actually believe that they can become a millionaire in one minute?

If you are familiar with who the authors of “One Minute Millionaire”, you have to ask yourself why these professionals are writing this book. Mark Victor Hansen is best known for his “Chicken Soup For The Soul” series of books. He’s a multi-millionaire. Robert Allen made his millions with a real estate book called “Nothing Down” which explains how to use other people’s money to make a fortune in real estate. Allen is a character, he regularly puts outrageous challenges out to the media like, “Sit me at the keyboard of any computer in the world with access to the Internet, and in just 24 hours I’ll earn at least $24,000.00 in cash.” Ok, so he actually delivers on his promises, (he made over $94,000.00 in 24 hrs).

So these guys are multi-millionaires, so why don’t they just go sit on a yacht and live the life of the rich and shameless? According to their book it’s because they have a new goal. Their goal is to create 1,000,000 millionaires. I don’t know about you, but if someone wants to make me a millionaire I am not going to stand in their way.

Read the Complete Book Review Here.

Very often in home business you see people fail after they appear to have had success. In some cases they may have even had significant success only to lose a great deal of it. How can this happen to people who have demonstrated a mastery of the business?

Over 2000 years ago the author of the book of Proverbs correctly identified pride as a major cause of failure. The reason pride can be so devastating is because it blinds us to reality. Being blind to reality prevents us from responding to situations in ways that will best benefit us.

I have seen marketers start to succeed in their online business. They master the prospecting process and become proficient in recruiting new distributors. Then one of several things can happen. They may stop learning and improving themselves because they no longer feel they need it. The result is a gradual loss of motivation and ends with the inability to adapt to the ever-changing marketing environment. They may get over confident in their track record. They may even try to double their efforts with the idea that it will bring twice the results. Pride often leads them to find that they have lost focus on the fundamentals that got them there in the first place. This is because pride rejects reality and substitutes it’s own instead.

Then there are those who have achieved what most would call major success – a solid six-figure income and a thorough understanding of the business. Still, occasionally these people fail. The reasons usually lead back to pride. Pride makes you inflexible and gives you the false belief that you are infallible and immune to failure. As a result, pride leads to the wrong actions, the wrong timing and the inability to recognize it.

Fortunately the author of Proverbs also provides us with the solution to this problem. He states that riches and honor come through humility. Humility is simply not thinking so much of yourself that you begin to think that you are always right and everyone else is wrong. This isn’t to say that one should not be confident in their ability or to give up the faith that they can indeed accomplish the task at hand. On the contrary, humility is an approach to life that holds that you can learn from others and that every part of business and life is subject to continual review.

This holiday season, recognize what you have and be thankful for it. Most of all recognize that you have the ability to direct your own destiny. Through your work at home business you have the power to change not just your own life but the lives of hundreds even thousands of others. For this you should always remain thankful.

Discover how real people achieve real success – watch our video online

BusinessWeek.com

Google or Yahoo for small-biz advertising? Who prepares better business plans: men or women? Plus, an organizational approach with competitive advantages, and more

Google (GOOG) wins hands down, says Fred Thacher, president of uSalus, a seller of specialized wool bedding. The first time he specified Google keywords for ads, within hours of posting he received a call from a Google rep, who advised him that he likely wasn’t making the best choices. Over a period of several days, says Thacher, the rep spent four to five hours guiding him through a realignment of his ads.

In contrast, he says, simply composing ads for Yahoo! (YHOO) is an adventure. “The difficulty arises when there are several keywords and the customer has to write copy and insert the correct landing page for each ad. Yahoo cuts the customer off after only 20 minutes and all your work is lost. How bad is that!”

Moreover, all keyword ads need to be approved by Yahoo, which is fine by Thacher, to reduce clutter and spam. “The problem arises when the keyword buyer composes an ad for use and the ad is submitted for review and is rejected,” he says. Trying to correct the situation “is tough to do even by a skilled user. I know because I have finally, out of desperation, asked my paid Web designer to do some of it for me. He reports back the same problems.”

What are your experiences with the two kingpins of online advertising and searches? Post your comments with this column.

Read More…

Sell business making decorations for comfortable, ugly, shoes to company

DENVER - Boulder homemaker Sheri Schmelzer and her entrepreneurial husband have the Midas touch. A year ago, the Schmelzers started a basement business called Jibbitz to sell mini faux flowers, buttons and other accessories for Crocs, the wildly popular footwear.

On Tuesday, Crocs Inc. agreed to buy the family-run business for $10 million with a pledge to pay an additional $10 million if future earnings goals are met. Not a bad return on an investment that began as a way to amuse the Schmelzers’ three children.

“We’re a perfect fit,” Sheri Schmelzer said of Crocs and Jibbitz. “We’re just going to settle into what happened here and grow the company.”

Read Full Story

Entrepreneur.com

If you were to ask a business consultant how to evaluate the “right” business opportunity for you, you would probably receive these guidelines:

1. Make an honest evaluation of yourself and your abilities.

2. You must run your business enthusiastically.

3. You must have complete knowledge of the product or service with which you are involved.

4. Make a market evaluation of the product or service to be offered.

5. Find out how many buyers have been in the business successfully for a respectable period of time.

6. Check the training and experience required to run the business properly.

7. What is the company’s profit ratio to sales; to time and service requirements; and to the financial leverage requirements?

8. Do you have to work more hours to make the same amount you do now?

9. Check with current operators to see how they’re making out.

10. Research company’s history.

11. Is there financial strength and strong credit behind the business opportunity?

12. Evaluate the policies and plans of the company with the associations and business groups in which the parent company or seller is involved.

13. The Better Business Bureau will give you a report if others have lodged previous complaints against the company.

14. Having an attorney, accountant or business consultant conduct an in-depth study of the company may be an excellent idea.

15. Visit the headquarters of the licensor-seller.

Want to lead a happier, healthier and wealthier life? Start by practicing self-control. By Robert Kiyosaki (Entrepreneur Magazine)

Most of us have heard the phrase “health, wealth and happiness.” But what actually brings health, wealth and happiness? Is it success, and success alone?

My poor dad was a successful man. He had a Ph.D. and was well-respected and accomplished. But he had poor health, very little wealth and was rarely happy. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, eventually dying of lung cancer. He made a lot of money as a government official but never invested it. He wasn’t happy with his success. In his mind, he needed to accomplish more.

So, my thought for you this month: Are you becoming healthy, wealthy and happy? Or are you sacrificing these ideals for success?

Most of us know what to do when it comes to our health and our wealth. Health is primarily about diet and exercise, and wealth is about earning and investing. But happiness is a bit more mysterious. We know to think positively, but thinking positively instead of realistically can have tragic consequences. For example, positive thinking won’t prevent you from going bust if you’re foolish with money, and it won’t reduce your percentage of body fat.

In fact, it’s often the pursuit of happiness that causes the most problems with health and wealth. Many people are obese because they eat and drink to feel happy. And others shop to feel happy, even if it means maxing out credit cards.”…….Read More…

When Doug Mellinger was a student at Syracuse University in the 1980s, there were almost no programs specifically for students bent on owning their own companies. In fact, he created the college’s first major in entrepreneurship and helped found the Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization, www.eonetwork.org, just so he wouldn’t feel so alone.

“You could count college entrepreneurial programs on one hand in those days,” says Mellinger, now a 42-year-old serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Foundation Source, www.foundationsource.com, a technology company serving philanthropic foundations that’s based in Fairfield, Conn.

A decade later, YEO (now called The Entrepreneurs’ Organization) boasted 10,000 members around the world, and some of its early members had gone on to spark a creative technology revolution that would change the world. “That early movement led to the growth and acceptance of young people in business that boomed during the 1990s. Today, people in their 20s and even teens who own businesses are very accepted, but that wasn’t true before,” Mellinger notes.

Along with that newfound acceptance, young entrepreneurs today enjoy networking groups, educational programs, and competitions aimed at supporting and encouraging their efforts. Here are some resources that can help youthful entrepreneurs get started:

Read Full Article from BusinessWeek Online

MSNBC:

“….. I often hear B-school advisors vigorously warn new grads against entering a business they know nothing about… “If you’re picking a business,” they say, “pick something you know and love.” The reason? Since you’re going to be spending most of your waking hours fussing, worrying about, and promoting it… you darn well better love it!

In the story I’m currently working on, the problem is not that too many enter a world they know nothing about… but the opposite… it’s a world they love far too much — haunted houses.

A hidden industry
In all honesty, I wasn’t even aware of this as a viable industry until I spoke with Leonard Pickel of ‘Haunted Attraction Magazine.” This guy is amazing… he’s got his ‘claws’ into just about every aspect of the haunted house industry… And, I do mean “industry”… complete with several national trade shows www.hauntcon.com … monthly published trade magazines, a cadre of time consultants and endless vendors and suppliers of such specialty products as: Zombie Pinups from www.sinistervisions.com , Haunted Windows www.apparition3d.com , and Sinister Scents “you can smell the fear.”

Read More….

Wikipedia.org

A work at home parent is an entrepreneur who works from home and integrates parenting into his or her business activities.

Entrepreneurs choose to run businesses from home for a variety of reasons, including lower business expenses, personal health limitations, eliminating commuting or in order to have a more flexible schedule. This flexibility can give an entrepreneur more options when planning tasks, business and non-business, including parenting duties. While some home-based entrepreneurs opt for childcare outside the home, others integrate child rearing into their work day and workspace. The latter are considered work-at-home parents.

Many WAHPs start home-based businesses in order to care for their children while still creating income. The desire to care for one’s own children, the incompatibility of a 9-to-5 work day with school hours or sick days, and the expense of childcare prompt many parents to change or leave their job in the workforce in order to be available to their children. Many WAHPs build a business schedule that can be integrated with their parenting duties.

Read More…

Interview with Donald Trump and “Rich Dad” from Entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur: As successful entrepreneurs, what would you do to build wealth today? Is real estate a part of it? If so, how can entrepreneurs build wealth in a slowing housing market?

Robert Kiyosaki: When I talk to most people about real estate, they’re thinking about owning a house. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m buying commercial buildings and large tracts of land. I own thousands of acres of land in China, and I bought a mining company to make that land viable mining gold. That’s my formula.

Donald Trump: Real estate is a part of who I am and what I’ve built. As a developer, I would look at the hotel/condo mixed-use concept, but housing is not the only market if you are a developer. I started my career in real estate when it wasn’t really a booming market in New York City. If you wait for perfect conditions, you will be waiting for a long time. I’d keep my focus while being patient and creative.

Do you see changes in how entrepreneurs view success? Do they want more flexibility and other nonfinancial benefits, or are they focused mostly on monetary wealth?

Trump: Entrepreneurs like to have control, which equals more flexibility, and that hasn’t changed. Very few entrepreneurs would welcome the opportunity to work for someone else even if it meant higher income. Entrepreneurs are motivated by independence as well as challenge, knowing they are ultimately responsible for themselves. Monetary success is certainly helpful, but it often becomes more of a score card than anything else.

Kiyosaki: The [entrepreneurs] I talk to are more concerned about their purpose and mission. Making money is just a game to them. People are looking at the meaning of work now. There’s plenty of money.

Read the Full Interview

Yes, many home businesses do follow the stereotypical evolution from corner of the living room to the corner office.

But there are many small businesses that, in fact, are better suited to the cozy confines of the home front. In this column, I’ll specifically discuss seven businesses that I consider perfect for the work-at-home crowd.

Before I do that, however, you need to understand that are three specific criteria you need to evaluate before you decide to set up shop at home:

1. Client contact. This is perhaps the first issue to tackle in determining whether a business can reasonably remain and prosper at home, or whether it’s better to move it elsewhere. Think carefully how much, if any, sort of client contact your home based business may bring about and, in turn, whether that contact may be suitable for a home office. Gauge how much “professionalism” — at least in the conventional sense of the term — your clients and customers demand. If that can be achieved adequately at home, perhaps through a separate entrance and special meeting room, fine. But for many businesses, the better solution is a separate office.

2. Branding. This is not to suggest that a professional persona can only be achieved outside of the house. Far from it. Rather, it depends more on how the people with whom you work have come to see you and your abilities. If, by chance, you’re an attorney who does a first-class job of representing large companies but does so from the loft of a New England farmhouse, that reputation actually depends, in part, on keeping your office down on the farm. “It really all matters on the brand that you’ve built up,” says Julian Lang, a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. “No matter what you do for a living, staying at home can mean you’ve disdained all the trappings. It can be seen as quaint and neat.”……

Read the Rest

Increase Home Business Knowledge with Online Training Courses

Successful home business owners are always looking for ways to stay ahead of the curve and ways to stay current on home business trends. But few work at home entrepreneurs have the time to devote to traditional college business courses.

The solution could be Online learning via the Internet, with courses in entrepreneurship. Most college business courses take 15 weeks to complete, but it is possible to find the same high quality courses online, where completion may be a fraction of the time.

Since online courses are not issued at the same time as all students and faculty, you will have the benefit of setting your own schedule around the demands of your home business.

Read Full Article

Inc.com

Five years ago, Jim Poss, a 28-year-old environmental studies grad from Duke University, was determined to make a living in renewable energy — he had the science and the passion, and a vague idea about selling geothermal energy. What he didn’t have was the slightest clue about starting a business. So, he enrolled in Boston’s Babson College, taking a 12-month intensive program that puts students through the rigors of launching a new business venture.

This year, Seahorse Power Co., a business Poss started at Babson which manufactures and sells solar-powered trash compactors, is poised to break $1 million in sales with customers from New York to Sydney, Australia.

“My home business plan today really hasn’t changed from when I wrote it at Babson,” Poss said. “I totally owe it to that program for getting my feet solidly on the ground.”

That kind of success — on top of a surge in the number and size of endowments from wealthy entrepreneurs — is sparking a boom in entrepreneurial education at business schools from coast to coast. In the early 1980s, only 300 universities in the U.S. offered courses in small business and entrepreneurships, according to a survey released in June by the Indiana University’s Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Today, there are over 2,200 courses available at over 1,600 schools nationwide, complete with 277 endowed faculty positions, 44 academic journals, and nearly 150 research centers, the survey found.

Read More…

Become an eBay Trading Assistant
Are you a stellar eBay seller? Consider using your expertise for a profit.

Everyone knows eBay is a shopping hot spot. It is the source for everything from hard-to-find collectibles to great deals on used merchandise to new and used cars.

eBay currently has 193 million registered users, 575 million listings and annual sales consistently rising at a double-digit pace. But most of the users are buyers. What many people don’t realize is that there is an even bigger opportunity on the sales side of the equation.

eBay spotted that opportunity back in 2002, when it began receiving calls and e-mails from people asking for referrals to experienced sellers, says Skip McGrath, eBay PowerSeller and author of How to Start and Run an eBay Consignment Business. In response, the company created the eBay Trading Assistant program. Today, being an eBay Trading Assistant is a great way to profit by helping others sell their products, either from your home or a retail location.

Trading Up
Trading Assistants are individuals with an eBay account in good standing, have proven their familiarity with the eBay sales process by listing at least 10 items in the past 90 days, and have a feedback rating of at least 100 (meaning they completed at least 100 transactions), with at least 97 percent of it positive. These individuals can be listed in the Trading Assistant directory, which connects prospective sellers to profit-motivated sales help.

Read More…

Business success isn’t just about getting new customers–it’s about holding onto the ones you’ve got. Technology can help.
“Entrepreneur.com”

Many entrepreneurs spend a lot of time and money trying to land new customers, an extremely important goal if you’re trying to grow your work at home business. But what are you doing to keep the customers you already have?

Customer retention is vital to a company of any size, for several reasons. First, it’s generally more expensive to land a new customer than to keep an existing one. That’s because wooing new customers often entails a higher level of costly marketing and advertising efforts and sales promotions to create awareness of–and desire for–a product or service. In contrast, existing customers already know who you are and what you offer (unless you’re introducing a new product or service, of course).

Second, existing customers who are satisfied with your product or service are likely to become repeat customers. And they’re apt to recommend your home business to friends and colleagues. In our global, extremely competitive business environment, holding onto your customers has never been more critical.

So how do you inspire customer loyalty? One way is through customer relationship management technology, or CRM. Technology may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you consider ways to ingratiate your business to your customers, but in fact, CRM technology provides small businesses with a wealth of innovative, effective tools that can help you build better relationships with your customers.

Read More…

Here’s a great article from awhile back from Entrepreneur.com

Don’t believe everything you read. Before you invest in an opportunity, make sure it’s legit.

Q: I’d like to work from home, and I’m currently back in college learning Web design. But right now my inquiry is in regards to a company* that I saw a sign for on a telephone pole–I checked out their Web site, and it mentions a positive reference from Entrepreneur magazine. Before I go headfirst into this or any other business, I want to know if such an article was ever written. Are there companies like this that I can start from home?

A: Thank you for your questions. This company* does not sound familiar to me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s either good or bad. In any event, even if this company is a legitimate franchise or business opportunity, Entrepreneur would not endorse it, per se–we would merely provide as much information as possible to our readers, based on disclosure documents and/or other relevant data provided to us by the company, such as growth rate, size of the system, number of years in business, number of operators and so forth.

We don’t get all this data for every company in existence, however, because disclosure requirements vary based on whether it’s a franchise (for which more disclosure is required, in the form of a Uniform Franchise Offering Circular) or a business opportunity (which has fewer regulations in place). In short, when it comes to franchises and business opportunities, our best advice is always this: Proceed with caution, and conduct your own thorough investigation.

If it’s a franchise or business opportunity you want–meaning you prefer to invest in a proven business concept rather than start your own company from scratch–your job at this point is to separate the legitimate opportunities from the scams. Be wary of any work at home business opportunity that promises you’ll get rich quick with little or no effort. (And it probably wouldn’t hurt to be wary of any company that markets via telephone poles.) Any legitimate work at home business will require time and effort on your part to build it and realize a profit.

Read Complete Article

“I doubt that we (or future generations) will ever again witness the revolutionary change in the MLM work at home industry that has transpired over the past five years. Today, there are so many companies, so many products, so much information and so many opportunities worthy of our efforts. There has been an increasing number of successful and street-smart MLM distributors as our industry matures. But there are still huge numbers of distributors who struggle to make MLM work.

Many distributors feel overwhelmed by the details that surround the business. They have trouble understanding and managing the various sales tools, marketing systems and compensation plans. And with the technology-driven information and support systems thrust on them by progressive MLM companies, it’s no wonder so many people become confused and disillusioned, and drop out way too soon. Since you’re just getting started, here are a few words of advice:

You can’t do it all or learn it all in a few weeks or even a few months. Think about this: We go to school for 12 years and college for four years to get a job that pays us $30,000 to $50,000 a year. But when we join MLM, if we aren’t making $10,000 per month in short order, we’re ready to quit. My evaluation of the most successful MLM distributors has shown me that they view growing their MLM business knowledge and earning that subsequent success as a lifelong process.

That doesn’t mean that as a newcomer you can’t be relatively successful right away. Same for an old hand at the game who is still trying to find the right formula to make it work. Keep in mind that a lot of the legwork has already been done by others. The problem for most people new to MLM is picking the right company with the right product and the right system that suits their personal style, interest and skills.”

Read Full Article

The road to startup doesn’t have to be rocky: Being aware of these all-too-common mistakes can help you avoid them. Entrepreneur.com

Every day, literally thousands of regular, sane and normal people take the plunge and start their own work at home businesses. As they survey the hazardous landcape, little do they know how easy it would be to avoid the traps that so many of us have fallen into.

If you’re in the initial phases of starting your own home business, then I must warn you: Avoid these mistakes as if your life depended on it. Because it does–your financial life, that is.

Let’s look at the pitfalls I’ve seen entrepreneurs have to dig themselves out of all too many times:

1. Buying a job rather than a business. Yes, you’ll have to be involved in the daily operations at the start, but remember that the ultimate goal is to grow your home business into much more than just a job where you work hands-on every day. Work on the business, not just in the business.

2. Being a great plumber but having no idea how to run a business that sells plumbing.Your former jobs are all an apprenticeship to running your own business. Be an apprentice in all areas, not just in the trade or profession of your business. Most important, be sure you’ve paid attention to all aspects of business in your past jobs, no matter what they were, so you’ve done your basic, “how to run a business” apprenticeship.

Read the Full Article