No matter how much you love your website, viewers are going to see it differently. There are many things you can do to your website that you might think will help that in fact put visitors off. Annoy them too much and not only do they leave quickly, they don’t come back.

1. Start with a splash page.

I remember in my college website design classes my professor was huge on splash pages. He thought they were a great way to introduce a website.

Real world?

Splash pages are annoying. Search engines don’t like them. Visitors don’t like them. Plus you don’t have that much control over where people come into your site, so not all visitors will see your fancy schmancy splash page.

But when people type in your domain name they don’t want to have to click through to get to the actual website. There’s no need for that pretty Flash animation sharing what your site is about. Just start your site on the home page and skip the splash.

2. Slow loading.

People are impatient. They don’t want to wait for the content of your website to load. They want to get what they’re after quickly. More than 7 seconds, plus or minus depending on the individual’s patience, and they are away from your site and off to another.

3. Confusing navigation.

Ever get lost driving somewhere? It’s frustrating.

The navigation of your website shouldn’t give that lost feeling. They shouldn’t feel as though they need to ask for directions on how to get to different parts of your website. It should be consistent throughout the site.

4. Too many ads.

You know how many ads are in your typical magazine or newspaper? People don’t put up with that many online. Don’t overload your site with ads.

A large part of the annoyance with online ads is how intrusive they can be. It’s not like print ads. Online ads can talk. They can be animated. They can quite simply drive people nuts.

Overuse of ads, even when tolerated, can even lead to “ad blindness,” where people don’t notice ads at all. Keep your use of ads to appropriate levels if you want them to be effective.

5. Site appears to be out of date.

When was the last time you updated the copyright notice on your site? Have you made reference to the day or year anyplace else on your site?

Having a date on your content can make it appear to be out of date. There’s a simple piece of PHP code you can put on pages to make the year update itself, which is handy for copyright notices.

<? print(Date("Y")); ?>

But if you’re calling something new for 2010, November or whatever else, it will look outdated if people are looking at it outside that time frame. Make sure you change or remove dates when they start to look a little old.

Blogs can find this particularly challenging, as most put a date on the post. If you have evergreen content on your blog it can help to periodically update it or consider having it be on an undated page rather than a post.

6. Website appears incomplete.

Don’t say your site is “under construction” or anything like that, even if it is. Most sites are a chronic work in progress.

If a page isn’t done, don’t put it up yet. You can add it in when it’s ready to be seen by the public. You really aren’t drawing people in by saying that something is coming soon unless it’s something really important to them. If they’re just casually shopping on your site or seeking out particular information, they aren’t going to be that interested in waiting for the update.

If you’re trying to build anticipation, give plenty of information. Make it interesting. “Coming soon” just doesn’t cut it.

7. Irrelevant content.

While a website as a whole can cover a huge range of topics, keep individual pages on topic. Don’t switch from a discussion of the butterfly eggs hatching in your back yard to discuss who you’re voting for in the next election, unless you’re really good at relating politicians to butterflies.

Random ramblings rarely work on a website. Most people just can’t make them that interesting. You’re far more likely to come off as incoherent.

Running a website is a lot of work. It’s very rarely a case of set and forget. Take some time to put in the effort needed to create a really great website.

Lots of people talk about the great things about running a home based business. And don’t get me wrong, it is mostly great for me. But it has its downsides too.

1. Long hours

Yes, long hours for most people who have home businesses. Sure there are some people who manage to keep really short hours, the whole four hour work week kind of deal. But that’s not the typical experience.

Most home business owners, especially in the beginning, work long hours. They get up early in the morning or stay up after everyone else is in bed. They work weekends, holidays, whenever they can get a moment.

It’s incredibly difficult for most people to completely put aside their business when they love it. Even on vacation you’re likely to want to check your email or make sure your sites aren’t down. If you want to get completely away you’re probably going to have to hire a virtual assistant to take care of things for you.

On the plus side, it’s time you’re managing. If you need to be there for your family, you can do it. If you need a break, you’re the only one you have to convince to take it. That’s not always easy, as you may find yourself to be a harsher taskmaster than any boss you’ve ever had. But do go easy on yourself sometimes, okay?

2. Uncertain income

There’s nothing so wonderful as earning an income you can live off from home. But when you have a home business, you have no guarantees that your income will be steady at any level.

Some ways that’s a good thing. Your income can go from “ouch!” to “wow!” very quickly sometimes. But it can go the other way too.

This makes it vital that you keep savings available for those times that your income just isn’t where you need it to be. You have to prepare for the bad times and enjoy the good.

3. Expenses

When you own a home business, you pay for everything. Your training. The costs of operating your business, such as hosting and advertising.

Depending on your business model, these can add up quickly or be pretty easy on your budget. But they’re all yours!

4. Feelings of isolation

This one gets a lot of people in the early days. You’re at home, with no immediate co-workers, unless you count any children around. You can easily miss adult interaction.

There are many ways to get virtual interaction during the day. You can join appropriate forums and make friends. Use Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. Just don’t overdo it or you will find that you lack time to get real work done.

Be sure you get out with friends you can see in person too. Virtual friends are great, they can be wonderfully helpful and give you great input, even be there for you in a crisis, but time out with people in person is good for you too.

5. Lack of health benefits

This can be a big one. If you don’t have a spouse with health benefits, you have to find a plan on your own. These can be expensive.

6. Always with the kids

This is one of the big reasons why many parents choose to start a home business, but kids are one of the challenges as well. Sometimes you need to get something done for your business, and the kids just aren’t cooperating. They need you, they start fighting, they get sick, they do something or other that makes it more challenging when you’re really trying to get a project done.

Good thing you love them so much, right?

They’re a positive also. You’re there when they need you. If you want to do something with them, you get to.

One of the most important things to remember when you’re running a home business is that you can turn many negatives into positives. The same things that make working from home so hard are also what make it wonderful and great. Don’t let frustration stop you.

7. Hard to get sick days

Sure, you can take a sick day any day you want when you work at home. The question is, will you?

Just as with the tendency to work long hours, many work at home business owners will keep working even when they’re sick. It’s a home office, it’s right there!

On the plus side, even if you do work when you’re sick, you have more control over the pace of things. You might be fighting to beat a deadline, but you can figure out how much work you are up for without a boss breathing down your neck or talking to clients face to face.

When you have a home business, it’s important to realize that while you have more freedom, you also have more responsibilities. This can lead to overworking, missing out on fun with your family and other problems. Even though it’s difficult, make sure you’re taking time off as necessary.

Creating content for your online business is challenging. It’s hard to come up with new ideas day after day. But have you thought about repurposing content you’ve already created?

I don’t mean rewriting the same article over and over again. It’s already hard enough to avoid that trap when you’ve been working on a topic for a while. You can easily forget some of what you’ve written in the past and write something new that is very similar.

But writing content isn’t the only game in town. You can repurpose content you’ve already created for use in marketing your site.

Podcasting/Audio

Some people love to learn by listening. It’s how they learn the best. You’ll need a microphone for your computer and some software such as Audacity to create it. There are many sites you can use to distribute your podcast. You can even share it on iTunes.

The tricky part is coming up with information that’s long enough to be interesting. That’s a rather different length from most articles written for websites. You may have to combine a couple to come up with a good length.

Video

Sites such as YouTube are incredibly popular. They get millions of visitors looking for videos on all kinds of subjects. This is great since some people are very visual learners.

If you have Windows, you probably have Movie Maker already installed. Macs also have tools to help you make videos, and are generally better at dealing with high definition.

You will need either a good webcam or a small digital camcorder if you want to be in your videos. The Flip video camera is very popular.

You can in essence read your articles to make your videos. I suggest having visual aids when possible. If you’d rather not star in the video, you can make them be a sort of slide presentation, or do a product demonstration without showing your face. You have plenty of options.

Brainstorming New Content

If you’re struggling with new content ideas, repurposing what you already have is only going to take you so far. Eventually you’re going to have to come up with something new.

Brainstorming can be a big help. There are many ways to do this, and hopefully you’ve learned one in the past.

An easy way to go is to write down one idea. Then start expanding on it. This can generate several individual articles or even an article series. Just see where it takes you.

Reading other people’s content can also help. I don’t suggest copying, but see what it makes you think up. I recommend sitting on ideas generated this way for a few days so that your writing is not much influenced by whatever you were reading at the time. You want to be original.

Carrying a notepad and pen everywhere you go is also a help. This lets you be ready any time an idea strikes. You may not be able to write the whole thing at the time, but you can get main concepts down.

This one particularly helps if you sell a physical product that you can look at in local stores. Take a look at who’s buying what you’d like to sell. How is it presented. I wouldn’t take notes in the store, of course, but use your eyes.

A little repurposing, a little creativity, and bit by bit you can get past even a bad case of writer’s block and start creating content again. It’s a lot more fun than being stuck.

Lots of people want to make money from home. Lots of people try it. Lots of people fail.

Why is that?

1. Not thinking opportunities through.

Many people fail to make money at home because they don’t think things through when they pick an opportunity. They go with the one that looks like it will make a lot of money for them.

This makes it easy to fall for scams or to end up trying to do something you really don’t enjoy. In either case, you probably won’t earn much of anything.

You’re better off really thinking things through before starting any kind of work at home, be it a job or a business. Do your research on it. Know how you’re going to get started. Understand where the money is coming from.

Never be afraid to ask questions about any opportunity. Anyone pushing you too hard for a sign up is likely to be hiding something. Ask around, don’t just stick with one person’s information.

2. Not giving it enough time.

Once you’ve gotten started with an opportunity, you have to give it some time before you earn money, more likely than not.

Many people don’t recognize this. They don’t earn money immediately, so they go try something else.

You can’t give up so easily. A part of making a living from home is giving it time to work. You wouldn’t expect a brick and mortar business to be profitable right away (or if you did, you’d probably have trouble convincing the bank that you knew enough to get a loan for it). It’s the same with home business except that your costs are far, far lower. Give yourself and your business some time.

3. Claiming to know things you don’t.

There’s a philosophy many people have of “fake it until you make it” that can really slow your efforts at earning money down.

Why fake it in an area you know nothing about when you could more quickly “make it” in an area that you are more knowledgeable?

There’s a time and a place for “fake it until you make it” and starting your first business really isn’t it. While you can get away with a lot online for a time, you can ruin your business if you get caught.

That’s not to say you can’t learn enough to run just about any sort of business online in a short time if that’s what you really want. But why limit yourself to rehashing someone else’s information?

It’s also easier to work in areas you know well. You won’t constantly be in search of information you can use to build your business.

That doesn’t mean you won’t constantly be learning things in any home business. You will be. No matter how much you know about your niche there’s something new to learn, if not about the product then about how you’re marketing it, building your site and so forth.

4. Trying to do too much.

There’s a lot to do to run any successful business from home. You need to know your limits so that you don’t overdo it.

Don’t try to learn a bunch of new marketing techniques all at once, for example. Start with one. Master it. Then add another. You’ll do far better.

Doing too much also means knowing when to hire help. A virtual assistant can be a huge help in doing some of those routine things that you really shouldn’t spend time on yourself but need doing. You should be focusing on the parts that need your personal touch, not the basics.

5. Letting the bad times get you down.

It’s rough when your business isn’t growing the way you want it to. It’s even worse when your income shrinks. That doesn’t mean it’s time to give up.

There are no guarantees when you run your own business. One day your earnings may be great. The next you’re spending more than you’re bringing in. The next a once great income source vanishes. That’s how it goes sometimes.

You can’t let the bad times get you down. Keep working at it. You have options.

You do have to know if you need to give in enough to get a regular job so you can keep a roof over your head and food on the table, but even that doesn’t mean giving up. It means fighting all the harder in whatever time you can give your business and building back to where you want to be.

Earning money from home isn’t easy.  Anyone who says differently is not only selling something, but they’re not telling all the truth. Expect to work. Expect to struggle. Being ready for a challenge will serve you well in the long run.

And there are still no guarantees you’ll earn a single dime! That’s business for you.

There’s no denying that your typical home business costs money. It doesn’t matter how many things you manage to do for free, there’s probably something you spend money on.

But are you spending it wisely?

It’s easy to fall into one of two traps. The first is not spending money when you should. This one keeps your business from growing as quickly as it could and makes you work harder than you have to.

But the other one is spending when you shouldn’t. This can take many forms.

Buying the Latest, Greatest, Hyped Up, Going to Make You Megabucks Program

You know the routine. You get interested in whatever the latest product release is, and you buy it. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t ever do anything with the last information product you purchased. You just know that once you find the time to put this one into action, you’re going to hit it big.

Somehow. If you can just find the time.

If you don’t know when you’re going to implement new information or new tactics, don’t buy new informational products, no matter how hot the launch or how amazing the hype.

Buy what you are going to use when you’re ready to use it. You’ll save a ton of money and clutter on your hard drive.

You’ll also have a clearer path for what you need to work on next. Buy too many information products and you’re running in too many directions trying to get it all done. Work on what you have. Do your best to master it. Then make an educated decision on any future purchases based on the needs of your business.

Home Business Hopping

This is related to buying all the latest information products above. Many people start one business, but hop into another when they hear about the next great business opportunity. They may not be much related at all, but off they go.

This can be common in network marketing businesses, and can be disguised as joining many opportunities. You can only spread yourself so thin before you don’t have time to really build any of your businesses.

There’s nothing wrong with joining related opportunities when you’re really ready to promote both of them. But if you start that up too fast you’ll slow your overall growth down in most cases.

Dropping one business for another too freely also means that you’re constantly having to rebuild customer lists, downlines and so forth. You’re not going to make money if you can’t stick with something that works.

That said, figuring out what will work for you takes time. You just have to be reasonable about how much time and know when to drop it.

Domain Name Collecting

This one’s my big failure. I buy domain names that I just know I’m going to develop, then do little or nothing with them. But I have a nice collection ready for when inspiration strikes!

While domain names are cheap, they add up fast. If you can’t at least slap a quick page up with some income generating links, the domain is not worth it, and won’t be worth it until you have the time to develop it.

It may be cheaper to write down your ideas, then find available domains when you have the time.

Of course, if you come across a highly valuable domain name that isn’t claimed, you have my sympathy if you decide to buy it. But even then know what you’re going to do with it.

These are the areas that come to my mind when I think about wasting money on a home business. What comes to your mind?

Lots of people want to start home businesses. It doesn’t matter whether they’re a stay at home parent or work outside the home. A home business often sounds like the way out of your financial troubles.

Considering all the challenges, why do people put so much faith in having their own home business? Do they really understand the risks?

Other People’s Success Stories

Hearing about how other people have succeeded in home businesses is a big reason why so many people want to start their own. It sounds so good! This person started a simple business in their garage and now makes millions. How can you resist?

Freedom!

Another reason people want a home business is for the freedom they believe it gives. Run a successful home business and you can go on vacation when you want, work the hours you want, have tons of time for your family, the list goes on.

Following Your Passion

Running your own home business is a great way to do something you love. What is it that you’ve dreamed of doing to earn a living? You can quite possibly do it as a home business.

Is It All True?

Here’s the kicker. Running your own home business can bring you everything you want. Maybe. If you’re one of the lucky ones.

More likely is that you will work hard for years building your home business. Maybe you make a living, maybe you don’t. You might even *gasp* fail! As with any other kind of business, more home businesses fail than succeed.

Your typical real home business success story is not a tale of a newly made millionaire. Those home businesses that succeed don’t all make big bucks. Many make just enough for the family to get by. Others run their home business for extra money while continuing to work their day jobs.

And don’t count on extra time for the family. While you can take time off as you please, most people running home businesses find it takes a lot of time to do it right, and there’s the temptation to keep working well beyond the hours that you would have worked a regular job, even with overtime and commuting.

Should You Bother Starting a Home Business?

None of this means you shouldn’t get started if you dream of owning your own home business. You should. You won’t succeed if you don’t try.

What you should be doing is taking the chance with your eyes open. Understand what you’re risking. Understand that success most often means long, hard hours of work before you see any payoff. Understand that you are taking a financial risk.

You might succeed wildly. You might fail miserably. You might be somewhere in between. But if you don’t try you will never know.

Running a home business is a lot of work. There’s a lot to learn and do in order to keep things growing. Have you considered ways to keep your business more simple?

There’s going to be some complexity no matter what you do. Something you didn’t think of is bound to come up. But that doesn’t mean you have to keep trying to do it all the hard way.

Start with What You Know

Starting your home business out with what you know is a great way to keep things simple. If everything you’re doing is unfamiliar it’s going to be a lot harder to get things going.

This is one of the places where passion comes in. People talk about having passion for what you do in your business. It’s one of the ways to keep things simple. You love what you do, so you know more about it already and you enjoy working on it. Simple.

Stick to a Niche

You can’t be all things to everyone, even in the broad category you work in. You can try to take in all kinds of work, try to compete with Amazon in sheer variety, but odds are it isn’t going to work. Most people can’t pull that off, especially without a lot of money behind you.

Serving a well defined niche market is far simpler than serving a broad one in many ways. It takes research to find a good niche, but once you have that information you have greatly simplified everything else you need to do.

Knowing your niche helps you take the right tone in your writing. It helps you decide which kinds of marketing to try. It helps you to decide what to offer.

If you don’t know who you’re talking to when you make your website or select products, you’re going to be all over the place. You won’t as easily be able to make appealing offers.

Learn One New Skill at a Time

You’re going to be picking up new skills for your home business all the time. Life will be much simpler if you stick with learning and mastering one at a time.

I’ve had people ask which is the hottest way to market their online business. Truth is, anything can be simple if it’s one that works with your style.

For some, social media marketing is simple. For others, it’s difficult.

For some, article marketing is simple. For others, it’s difficult.

For some, video marketing is simple. For others, it’s difficult.

For some, pay per click advertising is simple. For others, it’s catastrophically expensive difficult.

Odds are you can succeed at any of these. But if you try to pick even two or three of them up at once you’re going to have an incredibly hard time really mastering them. Pick the skills up one at a time and not only can you keep track of what’s working more easily, you’ll probably master each one more quickly and thoroughly.

It Will Never Be Completely Simple

Running your own business will never be a completely simple activity. Expect challenges.

But if you keep the things you have more control over more simple you’ll make things much easier for yourself. This doesn’t mean don’t challenge yourself (do!), but it does mean pick your challenges and don’t pile it all on at once.

Knowing who you are selling to is one of the challenges of any business. It’s a huge part of how you pick offers to make to potential customers and clients. You can guess about it, but if you don’t know who’s coming to your site you may be missing out on a lot of sales.

It’s hard to figure out the exact demographics coming to a website. It’s not like you can look at your visitors and take a guess about what you like by how they appear. You have to use the information that’s available to you.

Search Queries

Seeing how people arrive at your website through the search engines is one way to learn about them. The kinds of queries they put in can tell you a lot about what they’re looking for.

If you’re selling a product or service for example, you want to see that people are searching on terms that are more likely to lead to a sale. “Laptop computer” isn’t going to make nearly as many as “Sony VAIO VF111FX/B”.

The People You’re Trying to Target

You shouldn’t just be relying on search queries. Even before you make friends with the search engines and start getting traffic you need to have some idea who you want to sell to.

And the answer is never “everyone.”

You could be selling chocolate and the answer still wouldn’t be “everyone.” Not everyone likes the same kind of chocolates. Some like milk chocolate, some prefer dark. Some will buy whatever’s on sale at the grocery store, some love their gourmet chocolates from far away.

Who is your customer? Age, gender, occupation, hobbies… how can you define your customers?

Now match that to what you’re offering. This will effect the tone you take on your site. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog post or a sales page. Your tone should be appropriate to whoever you want to be reading it. You want them to stick around, to buy what you have to offer.

What If the Rest of the World Comes Knocking?

You’re going to encounter people who want something related to what you’re offering but aren’t quite there. Are they worth your time?

You can sell to anyone, but some customers and clients will want more time than they’re worth. That’s what you have to think about. If what they want isn’t what you can provide, you aren’t doing them or yourself a favor by changing what you offer to suit them.

Sometimes you’re better off referring a sale elsewhere because someone else’s site is exactly what they want.

Other times it’s all near enough that you can help them. Be sensible. If it’s going to take an excess of effort to help someone because you don’t really carry what they’re after or don’t really understand their needs, you’re better off referring them elsewhere or just saying you can’t do what they want.

Saying no is tough but it’s a great skill.

Keep your focus on the people you mean to be helping. If you get too distracted by others, you will struggle to keep up with the things you really know how to do. That’s not a great way to run a home business.

Reading on some sites, you would think that building an email newsletter is the one true way to build a successful business. It’s true that there are a lot of advantages to having an email newsletter. But you have to figure out if it will work for your business model.

Know Your Goals for Your Newsletter

Before you start a newsletter you should have some goals in mind. It’s not as simple as signing up for a service and dropping the form on your site.

The most obvious goal is to increase your income. Anything else and you’re probably wasting valuable time. But knowing that you want to increase your income isn’t very helpful. You need to know how you’re going to go about it.

Your newsletter often won’t be just an ad. Listing specials is a good thing, but it’s not going to appeal to as wide a crowd as something more informative in many niches.

If you have a network marketing business, for example, your emails can include product specials plus tips on using products, and sometimes a bit about why the opportunity is so great. Your goals then would be to increase both sales and your downline.

Is a Newsletter the Right Model?

There are more ways of building a list than just a newsletter. You may do better with an ecourse in some niches.

This works best if you have a specific goal in mind, and have products you can recommend throughout the course. An ecourse should be very informative and the product highly relevant.

I have a niche like this on one of my sites. A newsletter would take more time than I feel is needed to present the benefits of what is being offered. The ecourse is long enough to give good information to subscribers and to encourage them to buy what I’m offering.

If you go with the ecourse model, remember the saying about it taking about seven exposures to get someone to make a purchase. You will want your course to be at least that long, with no more than a week between lessons.

You can combine a newsletter with an ecourse as well. The course can be the main information needed, with the newsletter allowing you to keep in contact with the list you have built.

Can You Keep Up?

From my own experience, I can tell you that sometimes keeping up with sending out a newsletter is a real pain. It’s not always easy to remember to send it out on time.

Don’t let too long go between emails. Wait a couple months in between and you increase the odds of your messages being labeled as spam.

Subscribers like being able to know when they will get their emails. A sudden increase is going to disturb them in much the same way as a disappearance followed by a reappearance. Be consistent.

Pay for a Quality Service

Strictly speaking, yes, you can run a newsletter list off your own website. But if you’re sending the emails off your computer your ISP may have something to say about the volume, and you’re not going to like it. Get spam complaints and you have trouble with your hosting company too.

And all newsletters get spam complaints, no matter how careful you are about subscriptions. Some people consider it spam as soon as they get bored with the newsletter, and hit the spam key rather than the unsubscribe.

I would suggest paying for either Aweber or GetResponse. They’re both good companies that have been around for a long time. It’s an expense, but one well worth it, knowing that they will handle keeping track of subscriptions, unsubscriptions and spam complaints.

Running a newsletter may or may not be profitable, depending on your niche and how you offer products, but in most markets it’s at least worth a test. Give it a try and remember that a good business goal is to make money by providing quality information or products.

There’s a lot to think about when you’re picking a home business. You’re taking a risk with your time and your money. Not a lot of money with most home businesses, at least compared to what a brick and mortar business would cost, but still a risk. It can be a pretty big deal. You need to consider a lot of factors.

1. Cost.

Whether you’re joining a business opportunity or starting something entirely on your own, consider what it’s going to cost you. You don’t want to risk more than you can afford to lose, especially if you are just after a small supplement to your income.

There is of course something to the old saw about it taking money to make money, and that’s why starting out with something that’s completely free is often the slowest way to start your home business. It’s not impossible to start for free, but the disadvantages can outweigh the advantages, especially if you go for free blogs and such. Paying for your own domain name and hosting gives you a lot more freedom.

2. Viability.

You need to do enough research to be sure that you have at least a chance that the market you’re after is viable. Are there buyers or does everyone want it all for free?

Odds are good that you aren’t starting an entirely unique business. If you are, you’ve just cut your odds of viability way down. But if your business has something in common with other home businesses, you can do some research to make your best guess as to whether or not people are buying that kind of product or service.

Check how many people are in the industry, for example. See if many are buying pay per click ads consistently. Find out how long their websites have been running. These details can give you some pretty good hints as to whether or not the industry is viable.

3. Testimonials.

This is really only relevant if you’re buying into a business opportunity. You don’t have to just go by testimonials on the site. You should be able to contact some of the people who gave testimonials to see what they really think now.

Some sites have used fake testimonials in the past and may continue to do so. It can be hard to tell if it’s a real person or not when the testimonial is from someone called “J. Smith” with no city or website listed. Do not put all of your faith in testimonials.

4. Scam research.

Once again, this has to do with business opportunities. You want to find out if the opportunity is, in fact, a scam.

Many people like to start with the BBB, but that’s really not the best of resources. It can tell you sometimes if a business is no good, but it’s not 100% reliable and many newer opportunities simply will not be listed.

A simple search is the business name plus the word scam; however many businesses have caught on and reviews will be posted asking if the business is a scam and concluding it’s not. Makes figuring things out quite a bit trickier.

Check scam busting websites to see what you can find. While people on these sites can get a bit jaded about home business opportunities they can also be excellent at spotting red flags.

5. Proof of earnings.

Yes, another detail for home business opportunities.

If an opportunity makes income claims, they need to be able to prove it. Many will show the high levels. The FTC now expects all opportunities to also clearly show what average earnings will be. I personally think that’s challenging, as many people who buy into a home business opportunity will never do anything at all with it, making the average extremely low.

6. Passion.

Are you going to love your business or are you going to end up dreading working on it, doing it just because you really, really need the money?

Passion for what you do really helps you to succeed. Your enthusiasm for your business can help you to succeed.

7. Time.

Time can mean a lot of things in home business. Will you have enough time to work on the business? How much time will it take to start showing a profit? How much time will it take from your family? Are there particular hours of the day that you will need to be working so that you are available to customers or clients?

You will want to figure out how the time the business needs will fit into your life. If you don’t have the time to work at it, how are you going to succeed?

Then there’s the amount of time that the opportunity has been around, if you’re joining a network marketing or other home business opportunity. New ones fail quite regularly, but older ones may have a lot of competition in your area. You will want to consider the amount of time they’ve been around, as if the company fails, so does your business.

Starting any kind of a home business isn’t something you should do without thought. Taking a little time to really figure out how you’re going to make it all work improves your chances for success.