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Work at home business opportunity – Finding a reputable home business opportunity without getting ripped off.
Author: James R. Sanders
It never ceases to amaze me the sheer numbers of listings
online for "work at home", "home business", "business
opportunity", "make money", "home based business", "making
money", "make money online", "home-based business", "home
business", and all the other terms you can come up with for
researching work at home business opportunities. The
competition is staggering, and it seems almost everyone
wants to give you information on his or her own business
opportunity. What's worse is many of these would be "good
Samaritans" offer you information and links based on the
marketing materials provided by their chosen company to
promote rather than their own real life experiences
promoting those companies. Which would you rather have from
these promoters, their companies marketing professional's
copy write touting the benefits of pushing the company
products/services or the real life experiences the promoters
have experienced and the success they have enjoyed through
promoting the home based business? Worse yet, what happens
when you run into someone new to the home-based business
they are promoting who has nothing they can offer when it
comes to their success in promoting the home business and
how well they have done with their online endeavors of
making money online?
In researching the "work at home" keywords mentioned above,
there are 73,636 daily real world searches according to Web
CEO for those keywords alone. These statistics show that you
can make money in work at home opportunities and it is a
driving force for would be entrepreneurs to flock to the
internet as a means to make money online. An even more
staggering statistic is that according to Web CEO there are
36,145,000 competing web pages for these terms. That's quite
a bit of information to sort out if you are researching work
at home opportunities to make money on the internet. With so
much competition out there and so many web sites wanting you
to visit them for your work at home needs, how can you know
what home business opportunity works and which home based
business idea is a flop that will leech your hard earned
cash from you? With all that competition, the nature of the
web as a home for the unscrupulous to take advantage of our
naivety, and the lack of credible information available
through such web sites, it all adds up to a dangerous
combination for the would be work at home enthusiast.
Almost everyone has visions of the "Great American Dream".
And there probably isn't a one of you reading this article
that hasn't been fed up and sick with their present job.
Faced with the hype of these work at home hucksters combined
with the get rich quick dream and more and more people
hating their jobs, more and more people are being lured to
these sites as a means to solve their making money from home
needs. People will sign up for every home business program
they can, copy and paste some text into their hastily built
websites, add a signature line to their emails and forum
posts, add lines of text to their business cards, and then
sit back and wonder why they aren't too successful with
their newly found business opportunity. All too often these
home business opportunity seekers get scammed into self
perpetuating programs or other get rich quick schemes. Most
of these schemes only pay off for those at the top of the
chain who found the program in it's infancy before everyone
and their brother was promoting it, or are the ones that
founded the scheme and a way to entice people to promote it.
The reality is this. There are only a couple sure-fire ways
to start a home based business to make money at home through
online endeavors. The first is to create your own product or
services and find ways to sell them online. This type of
work at home business opportunity is always a sure bet but,
like everything else, takes time, effort, and money. You
will make money at home quicker in a work at home business
based on this business opportunity model because you are the
one receiving the profits; not some other company you are
promoting which decides what it is going to give you in
commissions. You call all the shots, you own the products or
services sold and you determine what they should cost your
customers. Best of all, you don't have to worry about the
credibility of the home based business opportunity.
The next best way to realize your dreams to make money from
home in a work at home business opportunity is to sell other
people's products or services. This is the tricky part where
affiliate programs come to mind. This particular home
business can help you make money on the internet if you are
careful in the way you go about it. The first thing is to
check the company's credibility. Is it a realistic home
business opportunity where you can make money, or is the
company's information so full of hype and promises that it's
just to good to be true? Keep in mind that a realistic home
business opportunity takes time, effort, and money. But
there are also limitations to spending that money too,
especially when a work at home business opportunity promoter
wants you to pay money in exchange for making money online.
Don't get me wrong; the old adage "It takes money to make
money" is true. But the money spent should be money spent in
producing your products or services, or spent in marketing
you products or services for sale, NOT to show someone you
are "serious" about their work at home business. Be very
careful of these types of home based business opportunities
where they want you to pay for the "privilege" of promoting
their products or services. From my experience, most of
these work at home or work at home opportunities are scams,
or self perpetuating programs. Remember that the only ones
that prosper from these types of home business opportunity
are either those that start them, or those that find them
before everyone else is promoting them and before people
begin to learn the truth behind this type of scam.
Think of it this way. It's like going to a job interview at
a local corporation for a job you feel you are qualified
for. Common sense says that you are already interested in
this job. You have done the research, dressed the part, and
you have spent your valuable time to get there; not to
mention the amount of time you will be spending in the
interview. The interviewer is professionally dressed in a
business suite and shakes your hand firmly when you arrive.
Before sitting down to interview you, he suddenly states
"Before we can start this interview process, I need to
collect $10.00 from you just to make sure you are serious
about this position. We've had allot of 'tire kickers'
coming through here lately and this is the only way we can
make sure that you will benefit from our job position and
ensure that you are really ready to accept this position".
Would you hand over the $10.00 to "prove your sincerity" or
would you be insulted? Personally speaking, I would be
insulted, but you are welcome to your own feelings on this
subject.
The point is when you decide to promote another person's
products or services as the choice of your work at home
business, you become an employee of sorts. Although you set
your own hours and choose your own means of promoting their
products, which makes you an independent contractor or an
affiliate by definition, it's still the same concept as the
$10.00 interview. If a company has to ask you to pay money
for their business opportunity so you can make money from
home, then how good is the business opportunity to begin
with? Legitimate and successful businesses offering a home
based business opportunity have already figured expenses
into their marketing budget and know that budget is tax
deductible. They realize it's a cost of doing business, and
absorb that cost instead of passing it on to their work at
home affiliates. The business opportunities asking you for
such fees more than likely make their living by charging
those fees and NOT selling the products, or services, they
want you to promote. If they aren't making their money from
their own products or services then how do you expect to
make money on the internet by promoting their products or
services?
There are many business opportunities that will offer you
additional things for their fees; like your very own hosted
website. Although you are getting a website, you are getting
a cookie cutter website that you can not control, and you
are stuck with their design and layout. If their products or
services don't make you money, you have no means to insert
additional work at home business opportunities into that
site as a means to help make money online. But there's
another thing they don't want you to know about this
process, and that is that the website will not be indexed by
the search engines, or if it is, it will show up in hundreds
of pages listed for the same business. Worse yet, it is
likely that NONE of your pages will even be shown close
enough to the top to get you any real benefits from your
spending; if you see any benefits at all. The other problem
is that your page will look just like everyone else's page
who are promoting the same product or service. What benefit
does that give you for the cash investment? You'll do much
better hosting your own web site where you can post as many
work at home business opportunities as you want. By building
an interesting, content rich web site, you will bring
visitors to your cyber doors while being found and ranked
decently by the search engines.
There is only ONE work at home business opportunity I have
even found online that I have made money from, and they
provide the same kind of cookie cutter web sites for free.
They aren't a get rich quick scheme, and promoting their
products and services takes time, effort, and money, but
they do not charge a fee for the "privilege" to promote
their products. This same work at home business opportunity
is one that I have actually made money through at home. Have
I retired yet? Am I a millionaire? Do I drive a big fancy
sports car or own my own mansion? None of the above. A slow,
steady process takes time, effort, and money to pursue. Have
I aggressively promoted it? No. I have sat back, placed a
couple links in my site, and left the sponsor above me place
some people in my downline. Yes, it is MLM.
The money I invested in this home business or work at home
business opportunity? I've invested roughly $30.00 per month
in things that my business needed already. It qualified me
for the next income level for the business opportunity, and
it gave me valuable tools to tweak my web site and learn to
market that web site and home business opportunity more
affectively. This investment was money that I was going to
spend on the same tools, but I chose to buy those tools from
a company I promote that was going to give me something in
return for my investment; and that was affiliate checks
based on sales volume. Did I mention that the cash spent was
normally covered by the affiliate checks I received? That's
like getting FREE tools to promote my home business. Did I
also mention that my downline is growing in this home based
business? Will I tell you how much money I made? No. I won't
do that because then if you don't make the same kind of
money I do, or more, then you will say that I lied to you
and that my information is just from another person pushing
work at home business opportunities to make money. You will
probably even think that I haven't even really made any
money using any of the programs I promote.
The point is you can make money on the internet through a
work at home business opportunity IF you know which home
based business to promote, how to promote it, and what to
watch out for in choosing how you begin making money from
home. You also need to be realistic. There is no one work at
home business that is going to make EVERYONE rich. If that
was the case, then why are there so few people out there
that are rich? It simply doesn't exist. Everyone is
different. I will make money in ways that you will probably
not. Then again, you will make money in ways that I will
probably not. The point of this article is using care in the
work at home business or make money at home business
opportunity that you choose. Spending the time to make sure
it is a good fit for you, and is something that you believe
in. Failure to realize that a home based business
opportunity is like any other business, and requires time,
effort, and money, will almost assure that your dreams of
making money at home will be fruitless. You need to realize
that making money online also requires spending money, but
knowing where to spend that money to affectively market or
produce your products or services is the important part. Do
these things right and you will find a work at home business
opportunity you enjoy, believe in, and can promote to gain
you the money online.
For those of you wondering what that one company is that I
have honestly made money with, feel free to drop by my web
site and drop me an email. I'll be more than glad to give
you a bunch of links to information that will give you the
pro's and con's, educate you on the home business
opportunity, and help you make an INFORMED decision. Till
next article, may your work at home business opportunity
come true, and may the information presented in this article
help you to make money online.
About the AuthorJames R. Sanders is the owner of Sanders Consultation Group Plus. He has been a webmaster and web site designer since 1997, and involved in self-employment ventures since 1992. He is presently a contributing author of NewbieHangout, and has been published through WebProNews. You can email him at webmaster@sanders-consultation-group-plus.com. ...
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