Legitimate Home Business Opportunities: What You Should Know

Posted by sdp

October 24th, 2009

When you want to start working from home, you are looking for a legitimate business opportunity, and you must be able to investigate and tell between different internet business models. The choices for an online work at home business in today’s internet age are almost unlimited. There are two different categories of home based businesses: you can decide to start offering your own product or service to consumers, or you can become an independent distributor or affiliate for an existing product or service. In this article I will focus on network marketing opportunities, as this is the most common choice of those who start a new work at home venture.

The home business industry can allow average people to match or even exceed the earnings of executives and CEO’s of corporate America. Choosing the right business or company can propel you to a five or six figure yearly income, regardless of your educational background or your previous experiences. It gives motivated people the opportunity to start and build a business on a small budget, and to then achieve their financial goals.

It can also be the playground for many scams and deceptive businesses, especially in those times of recession, so it is important to know how to tell the difference.

First I want to address the issue of pyramid schemes and how to spot one, because they are illegal thus you should avoid them like the plague. A pyramid scheme is a situation where there is no product or service offered, only the exchange of money. It’s a situation where you are encouraged to join an organization for a certain amount of money, and the promise is that your so called investment will grow to several times that amount. You don’t buy a product, you don’t sell a product, you simply find other people who agree to pay the same amount to join the organization. So the first thing you want to look at is if there is a product or service offered. If not, stay away.

Then, there are the multi-level marketing (MLM) companies, who offer a legitimate home business opportunity, and who use network marketing as a distribution model. Network marketing is often the distribution method of choice for companies with unique and high-quality products. This often allows for more product information to be given to the consumer than what could be accomplished by selling the product through retail stores. And it can be a very profitable and rewarding business opportunity for the average person, whether they work their business part time or full time.

Before starting a work at home business in the MLM industry in 2009, however, you should keep this in mind: first, the attrition level facing MLM’ers is very high. 97% of people in this industry are still failing to make money. And people get started in your team but drop out within the first 90 days, all the more so as the initial investment is often so low that people don’t loose much money by quitting. Then, the old-school methods of prospecting (buying leads, doing surveys, handing out flyers, cold calling, chasing friends & family) are far from attractive and most of the time will not bring you any results. You can be very successful in MLM, but if you really want to achieve success you’ll need to have access to good training programs and turnkey marketing systems that will enable you to generate leads, brand yourself and attract people to you.

Eventually, there is what is called GPT (stands for Get Paid Today). This model gives serious entrepreneurs the opportunity to quickly achieve 5 to 6 figure incomes. Most of your commissions are paid upfront by the company, and you also have the opportunity to earn a substantial residual income from your team. The initial investment varies from a few hundred dollars to several thousands, and entrepreneurs who join at the higher levels of investment are less likely to quit because of their investment. Now, if they do quit it isn’t such a big deal for you because you have been paid your commissions upfront. This commission structure tends to attract more committed entrepreneurs than the MLM model. You also have access to a turnkey marketing system that eliminates or highly reduces cold calling, selling, pitching, as well as a complete training and support system you can depend upon to actually train you on how to market and leverage the power of the internet.

So, when you want to start working from home, make sure you do your due diligence. There are some awesome companies out there which meet and exceed all the principles above, but there are also plenty who don’t. If you do your research then you can find the company that suits you and have the success and the lifestyle you are looking for.

Posted by: sdp

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