Work from home - home business opportunity

Working from home is not every ones cup of tea & even the people who are successful at it will admit to a few negative trade off that they have to endure. However, that said, I often have to pinch myself & stand back from the hustle & bustle of it all to really appreciate the overall benefits that working from home does have.

As I see it the real positives for any home business is as follows:-

1. Work & play when it suits you! This concept is perhaps the best attribute. I manage to manipulate days, weeks etc. into a continually varying schedule of play & work time that seems not to have any set constants set in stone. This has allowed me to learn to fly, visit motorcycle shows in week days when it's less chaotic & well away from the madding crowds.

2. Increased family life & participation. The flexible working hours has meant that I have never missed out on any of my children's 'milestone moments'. Parents are actively encouraged these days to participate in school activities & this is not just for the mums. I have been to all the sports days, end of term sing-alongs, thanks giving etc. You can never repeat these moments. I feel sorry for so many parents that have allowed their children to grow up without witnessing these special events dictated to by corporate wage slave mentality & PAYE dogma. Intensive weekend 'family cramming' (as most working families do) is no substitute for witnessing naturally nurtured & unpressurised events in your childs life.

3. Make more money!! There is a general rule in life that no one ever gets rich working for someone else. Well that's not quite right as the 90's 'dot com' revolution witnessed. However, for most people in their 'jobs' which for most of them means 'just over broke', being properly rewarded for effort & skill is rarely appreciated. Time spent in a 'job' is time spent building someone else's business - a bit like renting a home - dead money! Running your own business will allow the clever gifted people to succeed where as in a PAYE job they will probably never have the chance to succeed financially.

4. Save money on overheads. With the aid of technology & mobile communications, working from home is no longer seen as a 'second rung' position for the small business. The days of having central offices in over priced locations purely for the prestige of it are gone. We are far more focussed on efficiency & can you do the job. Performance & service is everything now & this is where the home business can score massively over the larger more expensive firms. There are even home run businesses that manufacture products simply by the expansion of 'out sourcing'. Not every business is suitable for working from home & difficulties arise if you need to employ more than 1 or 2 members of staff. But for most of us 'one man bands' we have managed to retain most of our gross income as profit simply by working from our homes.

The above four items are the main positive elements for running your own business from home.

The negative elements of working from home are:-

1. You will likely work a dam site harder with potentially longer hours - This fact sits uncomfortably with the flexibility of being your own boss. Now that the 9 - 5 mentality has disappeared & the 'effort = reward' principal has dawned, it is hard to sit at home watch the soaps when one could be earning money or improving ones chances of earning money in the home office environment. The benefit is though is that you are likely doing something that you enjoy so the longer hours may not become a burden.

2. Having complete control on ones destiny is not for everyone - This alone can be an added pressure especially if you have received finance to get the business going. Motivation is often the key factor here. Unmotivated or intrinsically lazy & un-organised people do not make good 'self employees'. Working from home can allow so many things to slip such as finding other things to do at home, failing to put in the hours, being diverted from work issues due to family intervention. These people will know who they are & are advised not to try running a home based business - at the ned of the day its not for everyone & a high degree of dicaplin will be required.

3. It will use up part of your home - A must for any home based business is to arrange part of your home solely as your work environment & having a whole room (no matter how small) is vital if your home business is to succeed. Sharing ones study with the kids or the wifes sewing room will not work - trust me. You need to be focussed & selfish on this issue & have one whole room dedicated for your home business. There will be times in ones family life were the family environment will spill over into your work environment & you need to be able to shut it off & divide the two. It can also be a good mental approach to turning it off for the day - to actually come out of your work environment, shut the door & call it a day. I personally have trouble turing off from work mode when I am at home so we have to take lots of short family breaks away from the home to compensate.

4. Putting money aside for TAX - This one hurts. When you are in the clutches of PAYE, the drip, drip effect of paying tax seems to be relatively painless after a time & one does not need the dicaplin of sub-dividing your money into '2 for me & one for him'. If you fail to do this you will definitely fail at building a business. Writing large sum cheques twice a year to the government really makes you focus on just what tax is & oh boy does it hurt when you are made aware of government based spending issues in life that you do not personally agree with (asylum abuse springs to mind).

5. Seclusion from other colleagues in the work place - This can be a stranger for some people. I personally love it. My biggest interruption for producing chargeable goods & services is the telephone but you can manage that. Being in close proximity to work colleagues is often harder to manage & is often cited as reasons why larger companies are so inefficient. Sure I miss the occasional wind up or banter & social interaction at times but having complete control of my life & earnings capacity more than makes up for this. You tend to develop alternative interactions most of which evolve around the use of the telephone, email & the radio or television which make for good substitutes if you are still able to get the work completed.

So there you have it, the compressed version of the 'ying & the yang' of having any home based business & we haven't even touched on the various types of home business there are out their. Hopefully this small article will help you consider some of the more major issues if you are contemplating changing your lifestyle & working from home with your own business. The next few articles will help you select some ideas for building a home business if you do not have any of your own at present.

Research has shown that most people who already run a homes based business have done so through chance or got into it by accident & it just evolved. These often are the best home businesses as they have grown organically without the pressure of being forced grown by finance.

For the newcomer or novice, it can seem quite daunting - throwing away the security blanket of the regular monthly pay cheque for some obscure idea or passion that you may have can seem like a huge step to take. My advice is don't jump in all at once. Start part time to begin with. Give yourself a year to develop & grow your business at evenings & weekends first. Again things that can grow organically without too much debt have a greater chance of sustainability when you do eventually leap into full time self employment...& if it didn't work then at least you will know why & it will be a self test as to whether or not you have what it takes to run a homes business.

For the complete newby without the benefit of a previous skill or asset they can exploit working from home, the selection of what you could do from home at first site seems vast but in reality they all fall into a few simple categories:-

What has significantly changed is the medium in which these tasks can be achieved. WIthout doubt the explosion in technology, computers & communications has greatly assisted the flexibility & choice we have in getting work tasks done. We are now seeing more & more home based business being set up for obscure services & products etc. that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. What has also added to this is the requirement & trend for most larger companies to outsource a large proportion of their operations which has opened up niche consultancy markets that previously did not exist.

The internet - well if you are reading this then you are obviously well aware of its powers & the whole new avenue of so called 'wealth creation' scams there are out there in cyber space. Again these internet home business operations can be simply sub-divided into 3 main categories:-

1. Money exchange schemes - Simply chain letters or pyramid selling scams. Even ones that appear to have a genuine product or service behind them are quite simply shams. Most people who get involved will end up losing money. The only people that seem to make money are those promoting or fully understand the schemes in order to get more people to join. Steer well clear - you have been warned.

2. Affiliate marketing - SImply put, you add links from your web site to other vendors & you get paid per click or percentage of product sold. You really need to be an internet techie to make this work. Most internet affiliates generate very small levels of income streams. for a great many hours of tinkering. Some have great success - most fail.

3. Selling your own product or service - To me the internet is just a giant global catalogue in which it is very easy or near free to install your own advert (a web site). For my home business I simply use it as a brochure to refer potential clients to who want to investigate my services further rather than sending them a glossing in the post. If you can build simple web sites then this route is relatively easy & inexpensive. I receive about 3 new jobs a year by people who have found my web site by accident which is nice but it does show the potential it has to grow any business - the only thing is you need to be bit of a techie to understand how search engines work or pay through the nose for being listed in a bidding war. Again it can be very time consuming for little reward but has the best potential for making money in my view.

Other sources for new home business ideas can be as follows:-

1. Buying a franchise.
2. Training in a new skill & promoting that service.
3. Joining a network marketing operation.

Well most of us cant afford the 'buy-in' & running costs of a franchise, most of us do not want to retrain in something that we may not like & network marketing is just amway flogging unwanted cleaning products to your friends?.- WRONG, VERY VERY WRONG!

Network Marketing has really come of age since the early days of Amway in the UK. If you understand the principals of how network marketing is applied, you will surely appreciate its potential & power at delivering considerable personal wealth to those that work the system & input some consistent effort. You now have more choice of services & products that use network marketing or multi-level marketing as it is sometimes called than ever before. I believe that the UK is about to enter a new explosive growth in this field over the next 10 years as people really do strive for a change in their job induced lifestyles.

1. Low entry costs - anything from £25 to £400.00. For most people this is achievable.
2. Genuine products & services in most cases although strict vetting & investigation is required.
3. Can be started part time without major commitment or change to your existing job position.
4. Allows you to choose from just obtaining sales or building your own team or a combination of both.
5. No big deal or major lost costs if you fail.

Being paid for success in network marketing usually has 2 or 3 streams of rewards. These are often called up front bonuses, monthly residual commission payment income & promotional rewards such as holidays etc.

The big money plan is the term 'residual income' or often referred to as the 'compensation plan'. This is the 'wow' factor in network marketing that is really exciting as generally as your customer & team base grows each month so does your residual commission payment income. For successful customer gathers & team builders there will come a time in your life with the network marketing company when a 'critical mass' has been achieved where your efforts are continually rewarded each month whether you choose to carry on working or not! Now for most brain washed 9 to 5''''ers this is a strange concept to grasp & some are unable to expand their minds to encompass this fact. Some people refuse to upgrade their knowledge base to this fact even when it has been explained in detail - they simply say oh its 'pyramid selling' which is totally incorrect. Actually pyramid selling is against the law in the UK & as Avon, Kleenezee & a vast array of other well known companies have been using network marketing for years now you would think that they would have been banned by now if that perception was correct.

However, there is a draw back to most network marking companies in my view & that is product or service. To make a good constant residual income you continually need new or repeat sales which can be extremely hard to sustain after the initial enthusiastic flurry form a new networker. There is only so much herbal bath cream a customer can use & so often we like to try other products & things go out of fashion so easily - so you can see why it can be hard to sustain a good monthly residual income.

Just think if there was a product or service that people had to use anyway & spent on month after month???

Just think if that networking company had say 4 of these products or services that people continually used & they had no choice but to use these services???

What if the product or service the customer had to spend on in any event could be made cheaper or 'the cheapest' guaranteed for them? - do you think they would want it? of course they would - they would be foolish not to!

Well prepare to have your eyes opened as this company is here & now & it only has less than 0.5% of its available market share which is worth billions. That means for every one customer it has now there is another 199 to get & it has only been going since 1997. Timing in entering Network marketing as a player is often about timing & the time is right NOW. This company is about to explode into the record books. It is a UK PLC that always receives great third party endorsements from the press with the most latest being The Financial Times, Saturday 4th October 2003. - a whole page spread.

WHO IS THIS COMPANY OFFERING ME THE BEST & MOST ETHICAL NETWORKING MARKETING DEAL IN THE COUNTRY:-

Telecom plus PLC (the utility warehouse).

UK's cheapest gas & electricity.
Cheap fixed line telephony.
Cheap Mobile phones.
Cheap internet.
Cheap 0800 freephone numbers.

Quite simply in my mind there is only one Network Marketing company to consider when forming your own home based business - Telecom plus. It is unique in its position in the market place, it has no debt, it is efficient, it is well run & above all it has the goods & services to compete that will build you a considerable & reliable residual income for the years to come - if not life.

Click the banner link below to be taken to my own personal web site where you can find out more & download your own information pack.

When searching for home business opportunity information there are some useful resources that should help in your research....

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Home Business Opportunity

As I see it the real positives for any home business is as follows:-

The negative elements of working from home are:-

Other sources for new home business ideas can be as follows:-

**Telecom plus PLC (the utility warehouse).**

When searching for home business opportunity information there are some useful resources that should help in your research....