Like any big decision in life, choosing the right business is much more complex than simply coming up with a list of pros and cons. Choosing the right home based business should be a decision that you spend some time on, because if you want to be successful, you’re going to have to put a lot of time and sweat into your business, and it will essentially take up the better part of your time for at least the first couple years. Here's a few probing questions to ask yourself that should help you narrow down what the perfect home business is for you.
What Are Your Core Values?
Just about any business coach will tell you that narrowing down your core values personally will not only help you figure out what kind of business to start, but it will keep you on track and give you some common language to refer to when you bring others into the business (particularly investors). For example; if in your own life you place a high value on the environment and living green, you will want to model that in your business as well. This can result in higher costs (buying locally, using green materials, etc.) but depending on the business, you may be able to charge a premium, knowing that your customers also share this value and are willing to pay more for it.
What Are You Willing To Put In?
A business will not build itself, so you need to have realistic expectations for the time and resources that you’re willing to invest in the business to get it off the ground. The earliest stage of a business is often called “friends and fools” because when you first start out, you will have little money and will have to rely on friends helping out and “fools” or people who are willing to invest time and/or money with no guarantee of any payout anytime soon.
What Is Your End Goal?
A common mistake when starting a new business is to build it with the intent to sell the business in a couple years and make millions of dollars. While this would be nice, and it may very well be what happens to your business, setting an exit strategy as the goal for your business is a good way to kill your business before it ever starts. You need to set a goal for your business that will allow it to continue to evolve and grow over time, and you need to invest yourself in it for the long haul. This doesn’t mean that you’re committing the rest of your life to the business, but it will help you to focus on making the business truly great, rather than just building something in order to get rid of it.
Where to go from here?
Check out our Work From Home Business Directory for proven home based business concepts.
Home Business Bug
http://www.homebusinessbug.com/
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
West Sanitation Home Business Joins HomeBusinessBug.com
About West Sanitation
Clean and sanitary restrooms are essential for anyone desiring to improve employee morale, customer attitudes and opinions of staff and customers in hospitals, nursing homes, schools, universities, office buildings, governmental facilities, cinemas, manufacturing plants, airports, recreation facilities, etc. Unpleasant smelling restrooms destroy credibility almost instantly. This can be easily avoided by using West Sanitation Odor Control Services.
West Sanitation provides services for anyone with public restroom facilities that desire clean, sanitary, and odor-free fixtures. Through its network of local franchisees, West provides this to our customers every 28 days. Customers never pay for appliances, installation, or odor counteractant. They pay only a small charge for the service.
Read more about the West Sanitation Home Based Business.
Clean and sanitary restrooms are essential for anyone desiring to improve employee morale, customer attitudes and opinions of staff and customers in hospitals, nursing homes, schools, universities, office buildings, governmental facilities, cinemas, manufacturing plants, airports, recreation facilities, etc. Unpleasant smelling restrooms destroy credibility almost instantly. This can be easily avoided by using West Sanitation Odor Control Services.
West Sanitation provides services for anyone with public restroom facilities that desire clean, sanitary, and odor-free fixtures. Through its network of local franchisees, West provides this to our customers every 28 days. Customers never pay for appliances, installation, or odor counteractant. They pay only a small charge for the service.
Read more about the West Sanitation Home Based Business.
Monday, March 29, 2010
MLM or Pyramid Scheme?
MLM stands for Multi-Level-Marketing. Such a program starts with a product or service to sell, yet the way to grow your business is to build a network. If you enlist 3 friends, you receive a percentage of their sales. If they each enlist 3 friends, you are now receiving a percentage of sales from 12 people (the original 3, plus the 9 they brought on).
There are plenty of articles online that will educate you on what to look for in an MLM. A simple search for “What is an MLM?” in Google will probably yield enough results in the first two pages to give you most of what you need. One of my favorite resources is About.com, which has lists of relevant articles under the Entrepreneur section. For starters, check out “Too Good To Be True?” by About.com contributor Scott Allen, which defines 6 criteria you should look for in an MLM. While there, peruse around for more valuable resources.
Most information you will find will heed the warnings of multi-level-marketing. A few to review are at Vandruff.com, and http://www.mlm-thetruth.com. And with good reason. There’s a standard pitch that seems to can prey on what everyone looks for in an opportunity – no selling, unlimited potential, free time to enjoy your new boat.
However, don’t think that all MLM opportunities are ones to stay away from. There have been many companies that implemented this structure and were very successful in doing so. Two examples are Avon and Mary Kay. The best test is to ask yourself if the product or service on its own appears to be valuable and profitable. In other words, do you feel confident in the business of selling the product or service alone without creating a network? If not, then you should dig deeper into its potential.
Other resources I recommend visiting are http://www.mlmwatch.org/ or http://www.mlm.com/.
As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, please understand that HomeBusinessBug.com will not limit a company’s ability to advertise based on negative feedback we have heard or come across. Reputable companies have had negative press, and even those that appear to have more negative press than usual may have just as many people that they are successful for. The internet makes additional research very accessible. Let HomeBusinessBug.com be just your first stop in gathering the information you need to owning your own business.
Read more Work From Home Articles and research Work From Home Opportunities at HomeBusinessBug.com.
There are plenty of articles online that will educate you on what to look for in an MLM. A simple search for “What is an MLM?” in Google will probably yield enough results in the first two pages to give you most of what you need. One of my favorite resources is About.com, which has lists of relevant articles under the Entrepreneur section. For starters, check out “Too Good To Be True?” by About.com contributor Scott Allen, which defines 6 criteria you should look for in an MLM. While there, peruse around for more valuable resources.
Most information you will find will heed the warnings of multi-level-marketing. A few to review are at Vandruff.com, and http://www.mlm-thetruth.com. And with good reason. There’s a standard pitch that seems to can prey on what everyone looks for in an opportunity – no selling, unlimited potential, free time to enjoy your new boat.
However, don’t think that all MLM opportunities are ones to stay away from. There have been many companies that implemented this structure and were very successful in doing so. Two examples are Avon and Mary Kay. The best test is to ask yourself if the product or service on its own appears to be valuable and profitable. In other words, do you feel confident in the business of selling the product or service alone without creating a network? If not, then you should dig deeper into its potential.
Other resources I recommend visiting are http://www.mlmwatch.org/ or http://www.mlm.com/.
As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, please understand that HomeBusinessBug.com will not limit a company’s ability to advertise based on negative feedback we have heard or come across. Reputable companies have had negative press, and even those that appear to have more negative press than usual may have just as many people that they are successful for. The internet makes additional research very accessible. Let HomeBusinessBug.com be just your first stop in gathering the information you need to owning your own business.
Read more Work From Home Articles and research Work From Home Opportunities at HomeBusinessBug.com.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The Top 3 Mistakes To Avoid In Your Home Business
Starting a home based business can be one of the most rewarding ventures a person can make in life, but it can also drain you emotionally and physically. Moreover, if you head full-sprint into a new business opportunity without first having a solid plan, you may find yourself making some big mistakes early on that can take years to correct.
As you start to think about a new home business, here are some big mistakes that you should take care to avoid.
1.Think Big, But Not Too Big
Thinking big is essential to starting a new business. You need to have a large goal to aim for when starting your business, both to motivate you to succeed, but also to have something to measure your progress against. If your goal is to eventually make $10,000/month working from home, you can easily see that after a year, if you’re making $2,000/month, you’ve made it to 20% of your goal. Setting your sights too high, however, can have the opposite effect of discouraging you and stopping your business in it’s tracks. Hitting that $10,000/month figure can be a huge achievement, but if you’ve set your goal to make a million per month, that $10,000 will feel like a drop in the bucket.
2.Good Is Good Enough.
French author Voltaire famously said “the perfect is the enemy of the good” and striving for perfection can stop any business in it’s tracks. Along the same lines of thinking big, but not too big, learning to be okay with good is the only way to launch a business and not beat yourself up when you meet small snags. Only a minute percentage of businesses will ever reach the multi-billion dollar status, but when your metric for success is a modest and achievable goal, you set yourself up for success in the long run.
3.Fast Eats Slow
For so long, big business has had the power and girth to annihilate any small business that stood in it’s way. While in many industries this may still be true, the prevailing mantra for small businesses is that fast beats slow, not big beats small. Use your size to your advantage when you’re starting out. Think of the time and energy it would cost just to switch over to a new, more efficient, piece of software at a company of 100,000 employees, but at a company of 5 or 10 people, the cost is negligible, but the benefits can still be huge.
View more Home Business Articles at HomeBusinessBug.com
As you start to think about a new home business, here are some big mistakes that you should take care to avoid.
1.Think Big, But Not Too Big
Thinking big is essential to starting a new business. You need to have a large goal to aim for when starting your business, both to motivate you to succeed, but also to have something to measure your progress against. If your goal is to eventually make $10,000/month working from home, you can easily see that after a year, if you’re making $2,000/month, you’ve made it to 20% of your goal. Setting your sights too high, however, can have the opposite effect of discouraging you and stopping your business in it’s tracks. Hitting that $10,000/month figure can be a huge achievement, but if you’ve set your goal to make a million per month, that $10,000 will feel like a drop in the bucket.
2.Good Is Good Enough.
French author Voltaire famously said “the perfect is the enemy of the good” and striving for perfection can stop any business in it’s tracks. Along the same lines of thinking big, but not too big, learning to be okay with good is the only way to launch a business and not beat yourself up when you meet small snags. Only a minute percentage of businesses will ever reach the multi-billion dollar status, but when your metric for success is a modest and achievable goal, you set yourself up for success in the long run.
3.Fast Eats Slow
For so long, big business has had the power and girth to annihilate any small business that stood in it’s way. While in many industries this may still be true, the prevailing mantra for small businesses is that fast beats slow, not big beats small. Use your size to your advantage when you’re starting out. Think of the time and energy it would cost just to switch over to a new, more efficient, piece of software at a company of 100,000 employees, but at a company of 5 or 10 people, the cost is negligible, but the benefits can still be huge.
View more Home Business Articles at HomeBusinessBug.com
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