Lots of people are interested in home businesses to make a little extra cash, to help pay the monthly bills, or to create financial freedom and security.
Either way, internet businesses can help you. The trick is to find a good one; don't waste time or money chasing empty promises or pipe dreams.
I used the following model to select my internet marketing business - a similar process should work for you as well.
Step 1: Identify Home Business Opportunities
You can easily surf the Net to identify interesting opportunities and obtain their basic information. Because search results will deliver far more opportunities than anyone could possibly use, we need a checklist to identify viable businesses and evaluate them at a high level.
Step 2: Evaluate Selected Business Opportunities
1. Legal?- Don't get caught up in any scam; make sure the product and company are legal.
2. High Demand Product? - Is there sufficient demand for the product? A lot of home businesses go after small markets that may not be large enough to make you any real money. What we want is a large, hungry, market that will buy from us now; and buy additional products later as well.
3. High Profit Margin?
Is there a big enough profit to be made by selling this product to make it worthwhile? After all, there will be a number of start-up and ongoing expenses to consider.
4. Manageable Competition?
It's very difficult to sell a product - even a very good product, if there are tons of other people giving it away (or selling it for far less than we are). Similarly, it is very difficult to make a sale if you can't even get your potential customer's attention.
5. Realistic Commissions?
Will the proposed commission plan require an army of down line members in order for you to make any profit? How realistic is that? Is the proposed commission reasonable? Will you do most of the work, but receive little of the commission?
6. Labor Intensive?
Personally, I'm looking for a business opportunity that doesn't require very much of my personal time and effort. I'm looking for a business that I can put on "autopilot" after I get it up and running. The best home businesses I've seen have systems and processes that will work for you 7x24x365 - whether you're spending the day at the beach with your kids, laid up in the hospital, or sailing around the world.
7. Targeted Traffic?
Your business will require an ongoing supply of new prospects. For "brick-and-mortar" stores, the key has always been "Location-Location-Location," but for online businesses, the key is targeted traffic. Will your up line help send you quality traffic?
8. Generous Training?
Unless you're already an expert in your potential business, you'll need training. You could muddle along on your own, but such an approach is more likely to fail than succeed. So, another key is to make sure that your sponsor provides adequate training.
9. Technical Support?
Any business these days requires computers somewhere along the way. If you're doing any form of internet marketing, that computer will likely be yours. For internet marketing businesses, a lot of the technical support will be needed up-front, getting your system set up before you can even start doing the business. Technical support, or the lack thereof, can make a huge difference in your ability to get your business off the ground, keep it running, and become profitable.
10. Customer / Sales Support
Regardless of the product you end up selling, there may be problems, returns, changes, upgrades, etc. involved. Be sure that you have adequate back office support from your up line so that you can deal effectively with any problem that might come up with your customer's use of the product(s) you've sold them. Look for businesses that also include customer and sales support. Some will even help you close the sales - those rate really high in my personal scorecard because I simply hate having to make cold calls, or deal with phones, in general.
Step 3: Take Action
Winners act; losers don't. So, if you want to join the winners rather than losers, use this checklist, and then. take action to begin your chosen program.
Copyright 2009 Sue White
Sue White, MBA, PMP, is a Project Manager Professional and Internet Marketer.
The truth about making money online isn't what you think. Find out now:
http://www.erge2009.com
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