Home Businesses: Too Good to Be True?

You have no doubt heard about home based business opportunities. They’re the stuff of infomercials these days, with talking heads coming on your TV screens during channel downtimes to try and convince you that you can become a millionaire by working 10 minutes a week or some such thing. You’ll also see lots of ads for home based businesses in magazines and on the internet. They can sound tempting – after all, who wouldn’t love to work from home? And they always promise such easy money, leaving you plenty of time to spend with your family and doing the things you love. But are they too good to be true? Can a home based business really be the answer for you?

The answer is – it depends. Home based businesses can be a wonderful thing, but first you need to know the signs of a scam. The first, number one red flag you should watch out for is a scheme that requires an initial investment from you. Of course businesses involve some kind of investment on your part – after all, they say you have to spend money to make money – but there are certain kinds of things you should never pay to get. A company that offers you a list of contacts that they claim will pay you for whatever service or good your business is supposed to specialize in - for a fee – is one to definitely watch out for.

You should never pay money to get a list of contacts or sales leads, and paying money to get on someone’s “books” or to buy a kit that will allow you stuff envelopes or some other common home based business activity is not a good idea. Also beware of businesses in which you don’t really sell anything at all but rather you simply try to get people to pay money and sign up to be a “salesperson” in a business. If you only sell memberships and make a profit off of how many you sell – and you make a profit off of how many the people you sell to sell and so on – you’re involved in a pyramid scheme. It’s a rip off, and it’s not legal.

With those words of caution out of the way, there are plenty of home based businesses that can work. Instead of looking to buy into someone else’s business, think about starting your own. You could baby sit from home, cater parties, make jewelry, do transcription work, work as a personal assistant, work on the internet – the list is endless and is limited only by your imagination. If you want to start a home business with a company that is already going, look to one that is established and has a good reputation, like companies that allow you to sell make-up, jewelry, kitchen accessories and home decorating accessories. If you do your research and investigate things extensively before you leap, you can have a thriving home based business.

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