These are some of the questions you will need to ask when choosing a home based business opportunity.

1. Will you be cold-calling?
2. Are there start-up costs; do you need to purchase inventory?
3. Is the product/service reasonably priced?
4. What are the commissions and bonuses?
5. Is there a demand for these products/services?
6. How do you advertise your new business?

If the home based business is a business to consumer (B2C) opportunity, the most important question you need to ask yourself is this: Do you have a “warm network” of family and friends in place? When I met with the rep from Melaleuca, she told me:

When someone says they want to do this business but they only want to talk to strangers, I tell them this is not for them.

Someone may tell you they made $17K+ last month, but this is not typical, not even close. For home based businesses with minimal startup costs, the failures far exceed the successes. Home based businesses take a lot of work, and sometimes require skills people didn’t necessarily have when they worked for others. It is essential to have all the facts about how to be successful in a home based business.

It is so easy to research businesses nowadays. Enter the name of the business followed by the word “scam” in your favorite search engine and see what comes up. If there are websites full of angry comments from people who feel wronged by this company, you will know in an instant. But if you do find negative comments, be sure to read them carefully and determine yourself if the feedback is warranted. Remember, it’s easy to criticize; sometimes people write bad reviews and falsely place blame where it doesn’t belong to explain their failures.

Do your due diligence. If the home based business you want to start requires selling to your friends and family members, you might want to send a sample email to 10 or 12 of your closest peeps. This way, you’ll be able to gauge their support. Most of all, beware exaggerated claims. This is easy: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

This list of legitimate home based business opportunities and resources is updated regularly:

http://www.home-based-business-opportunities.com/

http://www.wealthathomer.com/

http://www.problogger.net/archives/category/blogging-for-dollars/

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2. Lower the bills you have.  Did you know you can cancel an expensive land line telephone service when you sign up with Phone Power, an eco-friendly company that can save you money.   Phone Power has residential and small business service packages that range from ultra-low-cost metered outbound calls, unlimited inbound residential service, all the way up to virtually unlimited outbound calls including a secondary Cloned Line and virtual numbers. All of the residential packages come with Phone Power’s rock-solid feature set, including Click2Call built into their website. The service does not require additional software and works with any operating system with a modern web browser.
3. Find your niche. There are so many opportunities for small businesses now. Entrepreneurs first need to research their unique areas of interest and expertise, then they need to look for  ways to tap into the market.  Now more than ever, entrepreneurs comfortable with business to consumer (B2C) selling have a wide-open market of consumers looking for high quality products and services they can obtain on the World Wide Web.I recently heard about a business opportunity, working for a company called Melaleuca. I sent out a message to my friends who I thought might be interested in it.

Have you ever heard of Melaleuca? It is a 26-year-old online wellness company that provides high quality, environmentally and socially conscious products that in many cases are higher quality and cost less than products we are all already buying at stores like Costco, Target, and Walmart. Among the products are nontoxic concentrated cleaning products the user dilutes in reusable spray bottles, thereby saving massive amounts of plastic waste.

Everything I heard about this company sounds phenomenal and I normally run like the wind from anything that sounds like MLM. The woman told me it’s absolutely not MLM. She likened the company structure to any successful store where the managers get bonuses if the sales team does well. They manufacture and sell their own cleaning products, bath and beauty products, and a line of supplements that is money-back guaranteed – they will refund if the person says they used the product for 90 days and didn’t feel a noticeable difference.

This is not even half of what they offer – there is a membership fee of $29 for the first year, and $12 thereafter. And for that, there are discounts at major stores like Macys, Best Buy, Home Depot, to name a few. Plus, they have a rewards program so people get back their membership fee back and more over the year of shopping at Melaleuca – theoretically. I am going to join and find out if this is actually the case. The company has an A+ BBB rating and other awards for integrity and value. It is truly a customer-oriented company.

I found out my friend’s husband had once been a Melaleuca distributor. I told her “I was bowled over by the woman I met. I know I can be gullible, but this sounds like a win win for all concerned. So I wanted to find out from others what it’s all about. Got any dish?”

My friend said: “It was not win win. Very few end up making a living at it.”

I said: “What if I wasn’t expecting to make a living on Melaleuca? Is it worthwhile being a shopper? Do you get high quality products conveniently delivered to your door that are affordable and unique? And all the discounts? She made it sound so good, especially with gas so expensive, I would love to have home deliveries if the products were good and affordable. If I’m just sucked into pie in the sky, please tell me. Thank you very much. I’m so grateful for firsthand experience.”

She said: “The products are excellent and all natural, nontoxic, and they do come promptly in the mail. Beware there is a minimum order per month. You should try it out, you can always stop.

I said: “Thank you. I will sign up and see what I think. If the idea spreads like wildfire and in a year I’m making $4000 a month commissions and bonuses, that would be great. But I’m not expecting it or counting on it. Again – I’m so glad to get this first hand experience!!!”

My cousin, who is a nurse, wrote, “Melaleuca has always had a good reputation. Re prescriptions, some meds come in generics on a $4 list.” This was a surprise and I look forward to getting more information from her.

She had me in tears, I was so moved by what she shared with me. Then I found this article - http://thecoastnews.com/2012/01/more4families-helps-find-whats-important/ . They have an ad on craigslist that says no selling, no inventory, no cold calling. So we’ll see.

I received calls from Robert Half Agency in UTC and San Diego Jobs in Mission Valley. Both agencies saw my resume on www.monster.com, so that was encouraging. There are so many great resources for jobseekers, including people who want to work from home, and I will provide more links soon as I can.

One of my great discoveries was that professional resume writers give free feedback on resumes. The feedback was so clear, I was able to update my resume myself. One website that offers free resume evaluations is www.climber.com. Another is www.getinterviews.com. Of course, they want to rewrite it for you, for a fee. I’m sure they do a fabulous job, especially www.climber.com, but they are expensive.

This got me thinking that I could write resumes for jobseekers. As much as I love to edit and format other people’s writing – something I could do from home - it’s a natural.

As I was writing this, I got a call from  www.climber.com (seemingly out of the blue - I was so excited to tell the rep I was blogging about her!) She spent a lot of time with me and it sounds like such a good company. I wish I could afford to hire them to write my resume, but now is not the time.

They also have a service for jobseekers who provide their own resumes – the rep said their services tend to cut the average time it takes to find new jobs in half. It costs $39.95/mo., which is not an amount I can spend at this point. But I will consider it when I get my unemployment check.

Yah! Something to look forward to.

A quick introduction to Joy—an extremely talented writer and amazingly focused proof reader. She will find the hidden errors in anything!

I am passionate about writing and words, especially providing clear, concise, optimized web content that is grammatically correct and easy to read. Consistency is my middle name – I pay very close attention to the finest details.

My experience comes from three separate careers.

For the past eight years, I was part of a team that developed e-learning courseware for the IRS, the U.S. Navy, University of California San Diego, and other clients. I have extensive experience with editing and wordsmithing:

• e-learning
• Print products (tutorials, proposals, marketing materials)
• PowerPoint Presentations

At Heartbeat Family Partnership, I coordinated the Family Support Partner training program. My role included:

• Developing a website, marketing materials, training materials, and handouts
• Recruiting participants
• Securing a facility/liaison
• Strengthening the curriculum
• Group supervision

As a legal secretary, I:

• Interacted with people from all walks of life
• Developed administrative and organizational skills including complex calendaring, planning events, organizing voluminous files, and advanced word processing
• Learned about the law – personal injury, real estate, corporate, and bankruptcy
• Learned about documentation and how to write

That is exactly how I see it. I am grateful I had that job for the last eight and a half years. I raised my son, got him started in college, remodeled my condo, bought a convertible - and developed a lot of great skills as part of the illustrious Webtechteam. But it is time to move on and I am excited about the future.

I started reading a book called The Well Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman. Check him out, this book is a step-by-step manual for becoming a freelance commercial writer. Check out his website:

Once upon a time, there was this salesperson at a video dating club (no lie…) who wanted to be a freelance writer. NOT someone who happily took on freelance writing jobs for .05 a word or $5 an hour. No “starving” writing careers for this boy. He was after well-paid freelance writing. One tiny problem: he had NO freelance writing background and NO paid professional writing experience. In fact, he had zero PAID freelance writing jobs to his name. Nada. Zilch.  

But one day, he stumbled across the field of  “commercial” freelance writing, where writing buyers will pay smart, strategic freelance copywriters rates of $50-$125+ an hour. As money-making ideas for writers went, this was a pretty good one. The light bulb went on.

That works, he thought. Well, four months later, he was indeed a full-time, “paying-all-the-bills” freelance writer. After a few pretty groovy years like this, his freelance writing income rising each year, building a great commercial freelance writing portfolio, and living a free and flexible lifestyle most would kill for, he said… (more)

I’ve only read the introduction but I’ve savored every word. There are great resources on the website and so many testimonials!

“Please let me know if you are still looking for a blogger – If you wouldn’t mind sending me an example of what you want, I’d like to see if I can do it. I’m new here – I am a copyeditor trying to find my own way in the world.”

 And I also found a fabulous site for copyeditors. http://mywriteword.weebly.com/index.html I wrote to  ask if they hired copyeditors. ”Are you hiring copyeditors? I have years of experience and recent UCSD Copyeditor Certification. I guarantee my work.”

Like everything else, it’s a numbers game. If I send out enough queries, I should be able to get something started…we shall see.

This sounds good: Userlytics.com is looking for people like you to test websites. Simply browse websites while we record your interaction with the site and earn money! Usability testing has never been so easy! With our usability testing application you will be able to browse through different websites and applications, complete the provided task, and get paid for it. As simple as that!
Connect your webcam and microphone to your PC, follow the instructions and get ready to go!

To get started, go to http://www.userlytics.com/?page=becometester and get signed-up.
Become a tester now and make your opinion count!

 I sent this message:

I would love to be one of your testers. I have 8 years of experience performing usability testing, 10 years of progressive webmaster training, and a previous career as a legal secretary, where 100% accuracy is required. I am also a copyeditor. I am looking for 8 to 10 hours of work a week. Hope to hear from you soon.

I didn’t read the whole ad until just now – I wonder if there’s something to purchase to become one of the testers. That is always the worry with any Internet offers. Do they have a great hookup or is it simply an offer to sell you something that will connect you to the great hookup? And even if it turns out to be exactly what it sounds like, the pay could prohibitively low. I’m excited to find out, though. I think I may be onto something.