Somewhere between scribbling your idea on a cocktail napkin and actually starting a business, there’s a process you need to carry out that essentially determines either your success or failure in business. Oftentimes, would-be entrepreneurs get so excited about their “epiphanies”-the moments when they imagine the possibilities of a given idea-that they forget to find out whether that idea is viable.

Of course, sometimes the idea works anyway, in spite of a lack of market research. Unfortunately, other times, the idea crashes and burns, halting a business in its tracks. We’d like to help you avoid the latter. This how to on researching your business idea is just what you need to keep your home business goals on track.

The Idea Stage….
Analysis….
Checking Out the Competition….
When Your Idea Is Ready to Go…..

When you’re ready to get started, be sure you’re selling where your target market is likely to buy. “Your marketing plan and budget should include a well-crafted distribution strategy,” notes Shenker. If you’ll sell over the Internet, budget for media to drive new customers to your site. If you’ll sell via retail distribution, you might need workers with industry experience to help you reach your target market.

Read the Details on these methods from Entrepreneur.com

Book Review: The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site

“Want to know the most profitable, lowest-risk idea for your home business? It’s selling used books online, which is growing 33 percent annually, according to a November 2005 study by U.S. publishers. Learn how to start your business part-time, then work as little or as much as you want. This step-by-step guide, written by one of the most successful and highly rated sellers on Amazon.com and eBay, includes everything you need to know:

– Where to find books Find books in your own neighborhood to resell profitably to a worldwide pool of ready buyers. Get the best sources for valuable used books at low prices.
– Where to sell Learn how to list your books to sell at the best price on Amazon.com and eBay, and even your own Web store.
– Which books to buy What to look for in fiction, nonfiction, and collectibles to resell at the highest profits.
– Grading and pricing your books How to describe and price your books. Learn what buyers are looking for.
– Handling customers Tips on handling online book buyers. See the author’s time-tested scripts for responding to customer issues. Learn how you can get and maintain high feedback ratings.
– Fulfilling orders Easy-to-use ideas for storing, organizing, and shipping your books and handling returns.
– Automation tools Maximize your efficiency with these tips on automating your business. Automatically notify customers about shipments, and print postage to ship your books without leaving home.
– Taxes and legal requirements How to register your business to obtain the proper permits and be exempted from paying sales tax on your inventory.
– Exclusive list of wholesale book distributors Exclusive profiles and contact info for 32 wholesale distributors of used and new books. Order inventory at up to 90 percent off retail, shipped right to your door.

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A market in its entirety is too broad in scope for any but the largest companies to tackle successfully. The best strategy for a home business is to divide demand into manageable market niches. Small operations can then offer specialized goods and services attractive to a specific group of prospective buyers.

There are undoubtedly some particular products or services you are especially suited to provide. Study the market carefully and you will find legitimate opportunities. As an example, surgical instruments used to be sold in bulk to both small medical practices and large hospitals. One firm realized that the smaller practices could not afford to sterilize instruments after each use like hospitals did, but instead simply disposed of them. The firm’s sales representatives talked to surgeons and hospital workers to learn what would be more suitable for them. Based on this information, the company developed disposable instruments which could be sold in larger quantities at a lower cost. Another firm capitalized on the fact that hospital operating rooms must carefully count the instruments used before and after surgery. This firm met that particular need by packaging their instruments in pre-counted, customized sets for different forms of surgery.

While researching your own company’s niche, consider the results of your market survey and the areas in which your competitors are already firmly situated. Put this information into a table or a graph to illustrate where an opening might exist for your product or service. Try to find the right configuration of products, services, quality, and price that will ensure the least direct competition. Unfortunately, there is no universally effective way to make these comparisons. Not only will the desired attributes vary from industry to industry, but there is also an imaginative element that cannot be formalized. For example, only someone who had already thought of developing pre-packaged surgical instruments could use a survey to determine whether or not a market actually existed for them.

Learn More from SBA.gov

Entrepreneur.com

“There’s a good reason why cable TV networks like HGTV, The Learning Channel and DIY Network have such a huge following from coast to coast: The home design and improvement industry is hot, hot, hot and is showing no signs of cooling off. There may be no better time than the present to tool up your skills and fire up your enthusiasm for a career in this creative and fulfilling field.

But while Americans are keenly interested in home improvement and home design and have made household names out of “Extreme Makeover: Home Editions” Ty Pennington, professional organizer Peter Walsh from “Clean Sweep” and other home design show hosts, the fact is many don’t have the time, talent or inclination to undertake such projects themselves. Or they enthusiastically take up a paintbrush, rearrange the furniture or make a stab at organizing their lives, then toss up their hands in defeat when they realize it’s not as easy as it looks.

All this means there are plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs like you to start what we are broadly calling a home design business. In our startup guide Home Design Services, we’ve outlined the information you need to start five different home design services: interior design, interior redesign, professional organizing, building preservation/restoration, and faux painting. Here’s a closer look at each of those businesses so you can get feel for the opportunities available in this industry, and what will fit your personality and creativity the best.

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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.

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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.

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Do you know the number one reason that approximately 90% of people who join an affiliate program or business opportunity never make the kind of money they expect to?

Here’s the reason: HYPE

There’s way too much hype on the Internet. Most of you who have been around the block a few times with affiliate programs know how to see through the hype, but many people who are new to affiliate and network marketing do not.

As a result, they come into a business opportunity with unrealistic expectations, they get discouraged easily, and they end up not doing much for the growth of your organization.

Think about it for a minute.

If you’re using an advertisement that says “Earn $5K per week for doing nothing! I’ll build your downline for you while you sit back and cash your checks!”, that might attract a larger number of prospects than an ad that contains no hype, but is that really a good thing?

Full Article: How to Find Affiliates Who Will Work Hard

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.

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“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.”

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Here area 20 profit-producing network building tips from GDI’s newsletters that will make your network marketing business a fast success!

1) Write down your goals. They’re your road map to success. Be specific and refer to them every day.

2) Commitment is the key to attaining your goals. Commit yourself to enrolling five first-level leaders within two weeks of starting your business. Commit yourself to enrolling a minimum of two new distributors per week for the next year. Teach your marketing team to duplicate your efforts.

3) Ask yourself “Why am I in this business?” The answers will help you define your goals.

4) Ask yourself “What do I want to achieve from my network marketing business?” How fast do I want to achieve it? Be specific and write it down.

5) Develop a marketing strategy that fits your personality. Consider all the techniques of lead generation: on-line advertising, off-line advertising, trade/consumer shows, fairs, fund raising, etc. Whatever method you choose, do it consistently. Persistence pays. Never go to bed at night without taking a minimum of five active steps to promote your business.

6) Always assume that a person WILL BE INTERESTED. To do otherwise will end up costing you a fortune. Remember that everyone is a viable prospect for either the retail product or the work from home business opportunity, or both.

7) Be prepared to present the product or business opportunity to anyone at anytime. Always have promotional materials close at hand. Make sure that you have a minimum of three complete sets of literature in your briefcase, your purse, in your car, at your desk at work.

Read the rest: Network Markeing Business Tips

Why There’s Never Been a Better Time to Start Your Home Business… and the Top 5 Strategies and Cool Tools You Need to Know About.

I was surprised to hear at a recent seminar how many people think that the Internet is just too saturated for new online home business owners to be successful — and that if you didn’t get in on the ground floor, you’re out of luck.

Well, we did get in on the ground floor, and we’ve seen all the changes, so I can tell you this: Nothing could be further from the truth! That’s why I wanted to write this article to show you why NOW is probably the best time in Internet history to start a wildly profitable online business.

Sure, there’s more competition on the ‘Net these days. When we first opened our doors in 1998, there were only 130 million web pages in existence… now there are well over 313 billion (eMarketer)! But there are also a LOT more potential customers online, too — 1,022,863,307 of them in fact! (Neilson/Net ratings March 2006.)

And if online sales are any indication, the number of people who are actively shopping online is also on the rise. According to Forrester Research, online sales reached a staggering $172 billion in 2005 — a number they predict will rise to $329 billion by 2010!

Read More….

You can’t have a successful eBay business without a way to ship your goods. Here are some tips and tools to help you do it right.

The first impression you make with your eBay listing is crucial to your online success, but the lasting impression you make with your packaging and shipping can help secure a continued customer relationship. Check out these tools and tips to help you keep the customers you work so hard to get.

Shipping Calculator: Use eBay’s free Shipping Calculator in the “Sell Your Item” form and Turbo Lister to help your customers determine the actual cost of shipping to their location for domestic or international, flat or calculated shipping rates. Always give your customers as many options as possible by choosing three speeds for domestic and three speeds for international shipping. The Shipping Calculator shows your buyer a total cost that includes handling. Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, recently announced that sellers who charge excessive handling fees are no longer welcome on eBay. Charge enough for handling to reasonably cover your costs, supplies and time.

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Call it what you like. Procrastination. Fear. Necessary preparation. Regardless, the fact is that many new business owners fall into the trap of spending days, weeks and months staying “busy” without actually doing business. Designing business cards and setting up spreadsheets are just some of the tasks that, though necessary, make it tempting to put off doing business. After all, it’s more fun to choose fonts than to make cold calls.

It’s true that starting a business requires a certain amount of preparation, or as Robert Spiegel, author of The Shoestring Entrepreneur’s Guide to the Best Home-Based Businesses, prefers to call it, “pencil sharpening.” Luckily, we’re here to give you 10 specific ways to move past pencil sharpening and put those pencils to work……

……Emotion can kill a business before it even gets off the ground. Human nature dictates that we are first drawn to the things that bring us pleasure, and business tasks are no different. By getting responsibilities that seem distasteful out of the way rather than avoiding them, we can more fully enjoy the other parts of business ownership.

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We would all love to get rich quick, gain immediate profits and overnight success. But let’s be realistic! Reality does not allow us to experience this type of success unless we win the lottery. For most, online success comes from a long challenging journey.
I developed the “Wealth Online Website” (WOW) system to help make this journey a little less challenging, but it still requires basic skills, self-motivation, and a lot of effort over time. Above all, it takes a positive, optimistic attitude.

Hoping and dreaming are important, but financial success online takes much more. It is not easy and most people cannot handle the challenges so they give up. The people that give up may learn, study, and learn some more but never put what they learn into action.

Many people hope that financial success will happen just because they join an online business. They also hope for a magical system or secrets will give them riches overnight with little effort. They may as well keep buying lottery tickets.

These unrealistic hopes and wishes end up in frustration and more debt! Are you one of these types of people? You don’t have to be. You can have the financial home business success, but not without hard work, time, patience and persistence…and most important - the right attitude!

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Entrepreneur.com

8 Ways to Improve Your Visibility
Your home business may be on a budget, but you can still pump up your visibility. These 8 proven tactics will get you noticed on the cheap.

Do you have ambitious growth plans for your work at home business, but a limited marketing budget? There’s no need to compromise your goals. There are lots of great, budget-smart tactics that will put your home business on the fast track–even if you don’t have deep pockets. Here’s a list of eight proven marketing tools and tactics specially created for the budget-conscious entrepreneur.

1. Customer rewards: Since it may cost as much as five times more to win a new customer than to retain an old one, customer reward programs are a lower-cost alternative to acquisition marketing. Create and actively promote a loyalty program that rewards on enrollment and then provides graduated incentives to your best customers. To keep customers coming back, provide in-kind rewards rather than gifts from other vendors.

2. Opt-in e-mail: E-mail is a low-cost, high-return way to enhance customer relationships and increase sales. E-mail campaigns can be conducted for a fraction of the cost of other tactics and can be executed in weeks, not months. The key is to e-mail as often as twice monthly, but only to an in-house list of members who have agreed to receive e-mail from you. Keep the content extremely relevant, and you’ll see response rates climb.

Read the remaining five ways here.

Make Your Work More Enjoyable and You’ll Reap Outstanding Benefits, Including More Profits.

One of the biggest secrets to creating a life of wealth, as well as personal and professional satisfaction, is to find ways to turn the things you enjoy into an income.

Think of all the entrepreneurs out there who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars from their online home business. They simply took something they enjoyed, and they found a way to make money with it.

Someone who is knowledgeable about and loves model airplanes could easily make the jump from a hobbyist to a home business owner with just a little motivation and some startup cash. Over time, a specialized hobby shop - owned by an enthusiast - is likely to be more profitable than one owned by a businessperson who is just in the business for the money.

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Now YOU Can Quickly Learn How-To Work At Home On Your Computer – Publishing Professional Websites — And Earn BIG Money By Offering Brand Name Products And Services For Major Companies Seeking Online Affiliates!

Ask yourself this; Are you stuck in a job that limits your income potential, frustrates or bores you, or do you just want to earn an honest living working at home on your own computer — in the safety and security of your family and your own home?

Well All you need is a computer and some very basic software and Internet skills, then you may find the information presented here quite interesting and potentially very profitable.

Amazing things are happening on the Internet as HUGE companies, such as Apple, American Express, Dell, Denver Broncos, DIRECTV, Discovery Channel, MasterCard, National Geographic, and Wal-Mart, and countless others have begun setting up distribution networks that employ the talents of webmasters and publishers (big and small, home-based or not) through exciting and lucrative Affiliate Programs. This means that even us “little guys” can easily compete and earn big bucks!

Read More….

Entrepreneur.com

Just what is a business opportunity? That question has plagued a great many people trying to decide whether to buy a current independent business, a franchise, or what we’ll refer to in this text as a business opportunity. To allay the confusion, we offer a simple analogy. Think back to elementary school when your teacher was explaining the difference between a rectangle and a square. A square is also a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t necessarily a square. The same relationship exists between business opportunities, independent businesses for sale and franchises. All franchises and independent businesses for sale are business opportunities, but not all business opportunities meet the requirement of being a franchise nor are they in the strictest sense of the word independent businesses for sale.

Making matters even more confusing is the fact that 26 states have passed laws defining business opportunities and regulating their sales. Often these statutes are drafted so comprehensively that they include franchises as well.

Not every state with a business opportunity law defines the term in the same manner. However, most of them use the following general criteria to define one:

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7 things your dad always did that’ll help you succeed in home business today:

Pay Your Dues
My dad worked a lot of late nights, weekends and holidays. He had packages of mail and paperwork delivered to him at the beach, and took conference calls in our hotel room while we swam in the pool. He instilled in me a strong work ethic that has served me well in my career. His father used to have a sign on his desk that read: “The harder I work, the luckier I get!” I guess it’s in our DNA.

Do Work You Enjoy
If you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. When I’d get up and watch him get ready for work, my dad always seemed excited to go to the office. He bounced out of bed in the morning full of ideas and energy. His enthusiasm was contagious. He found a career that was a great fit for his talents and skills and moved quickly through the organization. I think it must have been hard for others in the company who had to drag themselves to their job every day and work along side my father, who was having a ball finding creative solutions to the latest problems they were facing.

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“Stay at home–and get successful–with your own homebased franchise. ”

Prospective franchisees seeking an opportunity to work at home are in luck. There are a host of franchisors that have realized practically any business can be run just as successfully from home as from a storefront location, and that includes bookkeeping and financial services, consulting, children’s services, computer training and repair, cleaning, home improvement, entertainment, home inspection, fitness, pet care, photography and travel businesses, just to name a few. In fact, many service-oriented franchise systems now not only allow franchisees to work from home–they encourage it.

Most of these franchise systems will spend considerable time training you how to work from home. They’ll review the requirements for setting up your office, making sales calls and serving your customers. After all, working from home may be convenient, but it’s more than just setting up a desk in a corner of your living room. It’s a unique working style you’ll have to adjust to. And just in case your franchisor leaves out some things, here are the basics of what you need to know to run a franchise from home.

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When you decide to put up your own home business, you are most likely prepared to wear all the hats required to run a business. What if you’re not? Then, you can always hire others to do what you can’t. But what if you suddenly find out that you’re out of funds? Don’t fret. You can learn to get by while you’re business is not yet in such a thumbthumping stage.

One of the most important aspect of business management is seeing whether all the money you’ve put into it are going down the drains or is actually growing. If you still don’t get the drift, you have to know learn how to calculate your return on investment (ROI).

Now don’t get all that jittery, if you want to know the profitability of your business, it’s important that you know how to come up with the ROI figures.

Since it’s hard to be an expert on this field, here is more or less the trouble, er, processes that you have to go through to conquer this one major business aspect:


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Reports from various online news sites show how some home businesses, especially the brick and mortar types, become nuisance to residential communities. To abate these complaints, here are the things recommended.

Reports from various online news sites show how some home businesses, especially the brick and mortar types, become nuisance to residential communities:

“a resident complained about the traffic created by a neighbor’s accounting business” - chicago tribune

“Others worry a business located in a residential area will have an adverse effect on property values.” - themountainmail

Other complaints from neighbors include the changing nature of the neighborhood from residential to more of a business type, and unfair competition.

To abate these complaints, the following were recommended:


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If you are looking for new ways to market your work at home business, then it is time to start socializing online by getting active on social media web sites like MySpace and Digg. These sites are extremely popular web sites with high Google Page Rank numbers — and if you can get links on these, it will help your web site generate more traffic and improve your search engine rankings.

Before I tell you how to use these sites for improved search engine placement and traffic generation, let me explain more about social media web sites. Social media sites make up 5 of the top 10 fastest growing web brands on the Internet, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. They are simply online gathering places where people share online information with each other. This information can take many different forms, but the following are the best ways to help your home business:


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Want to work from home on your spare time? Then network marketing may be the looking business you’re for.

There are no perfect or right type of people for a network marketing home business. There’s a common myth that network marketing is all about selling, so many people who don’t see themselves as “salespeople” shy away from it. The truth is, most of the people who are a huge success in network marketing aren’t sales types, and tend to be more introverted. I’m a good example, since I built my business almost entirely through the internet. I’ve done only a handful of personal presentations, and I hate selling people things. In my travels and my interviews of top network marketing income earners, I find that most of them hate selling. They build their business by listening for people’s needs and wants, and then providing an answer. I ask questions to uncover problems.

People aren’t looking for products, services–or even business opportunities; they’re looking for solutions to life’s problems. Now, I can’t solve them all with network marketing, but for many I can. So, I’m not in a sales business; rather, I’m in a problem-solving and dream-building business.

In fact, the biggest reasons why people are flocking to network marketing are time leverage, residual income, and tax benefits. Network marketing is one of the few businesses that doesn’t require employees, yet enables the owner to leverage his or her time by building a network of independent businesspeople. This network, which purchases and sells products or services, generates a residual income for the owner. Unlike the income earned at a job, which stops when the work stops, residual income continues on long after the work is completed. As exciting as leverage and residual income are, boomers love the tax benefits of network marketing. Tax expert Sanford Botkin says that a network marketing home business can result in tax savings of $3,000 to $9,000 per year.”

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“Small businesses across the nation — over half of which are home-based businesses —create a majority of new jobs, introduce exciting new innovations to the marketplace each year, and generate over half of the U.S. economic output, Consequently, it comes as no surprise that the small business sector is the primary driving force behind the American economy. The SBA Office of Advocacy offers the following top 10 reasons to love small business:

10, 9, 8, 7, 6….
5. Home-based businesses account for 53 percent of all small businesses.

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