$500 Start Up

This is the definitive guide to understanding whether working at home for a company or owning your own online business is right for you.

Many people are on the search for real work from home businesses and the exact how to steps to get to work from home.  It actually has two components.  Some people want to work from home but work for someone else.  Other people want to work from home but start their own company.  Let’s explore both career paths to help you decide which one is right for you.

People who want to work at home but work for a company are looking more for an assured paycheck or set income.  They find that they are not ready to take on the risk of starting their own company and feel better at knowing that once they start working they will instantly be making money.  The opportunities range from working in customer service to light assembly or manufacturing work.

People who want to start their own work at home business are looking to break free from working for someone else.  You would be striving to build a constant monthly income source where you call the shots and at the end of the day the company is your own.  You would have to be comfortable with risk and understand that your positive cash flow from your business will not be overnight.

Take this quick quiz to see which setting is right for you.
1. Can you wait to make money or do you need immediate cash flow?
2. What is your tolerance to business risk?
3. How much money do you have saved to start a company or can wait before it has to make money?
4. Do you prefer to work for someone else or do you want to start your own company?
5. What do you like to do?
6. Do you have any obligations that could prevent you from starting your company?
7. Are the people around you with you in starting a company or against it?  Would they prefer you to work for someone else?
8. Do you need a steady paycheck or amount per hour that must count on?

Being honest with the quiz will let you know which work at home situation fits you best.  There are many business opportunities and jobs that you can do that are home based.  After you have decided which one works for you then you are on your way to uncovering the best suitable work at home career.  Starting an online business is easier than one thinks.  It is for anyone that has an internet connection and can write at least an email.  It doesn’t take a technical background to make good residual income from a home based business. 

Starting a company can be very stressful but then so is working for someone else.  Just know that the pressures and stresses are different but very real.  Be honest with your answers and you will know whether you should work for someone or start your own work from home business. 

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Many people want to start their own online business but then many people don’t have advanced web programming skills.  Thanks to the advances we now see in the Internet world it no longer takes a web company to have a nice website or thousands of dollars to instantly start making money.  Once you’ve evaluated your life to see if starting a company is right for you, you now need to figure out which type of company you should start.

When you look on the Internet you will see many work from home business opportunities promising thousands of dollars almost overnight.  True you can make money in 24 hours but its highly unlikely that it will be thousands of dollars.  How can I promise making money in 24 hours?  Look around your home and you’ll see things that you could sell and make quick money.  Many people are making a great living with an eBay business or even buying and selling things on Craigslist a free classified ads website.

Starting an internet business is all based on what you want to do and how do you want to go about doing it.  The nice thing about starting a business with an established audience is that you can get to selling immediately.  The hardest thing about an online business is not what you should sell but how are you going to get people to find out about it.  Want to know the biggest SECRET about successful internet companies?

The secret is that success depends on having a buying audience or not.  Its what advanced online business people call “your list”.  The nice thing about having an ebay or Yahoo storefront is the built in “list” of shoppers.  You don’t have to build a list and wait for people to find you.  That takes a long time and you have to be able to weather the storm as you wait for your list of potential customers to grow big enough to convert into actual customers ultimately resulting in enough monthly income to where you are happy.

Starting an internet business with pre-established audiences takes less work since you are just using their preformatted selling pages and its like email or click and paste easy.  Obviously as you get more advanced their are tricks and time busting skills that you should put into place as an advanced seller.  

Creating an online business startup is another matter entirely since you are starting from scratch.  You have to decide whether to do it as a website or a blog.  There are also many things you need to do to optimize people finding you like search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and utilizing keywords to your advantage.   Even this can be easy where pretty much anyone can do it if you choose a template like on a wordpress blog and just modify easily to your liking.

When you have an eBay, Yahoo storefront or even a Craigslist business you are just selling a product or service.  When you have an internet business startup from scratch you could be selling ad space on your blog or have a membership site.  Many ways to have a business of your own that anyone can do.  It just takes the right business opportunity that fits you.

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Work from home business, work from home job or go back to work?  Good question with several important factors to consider as you wrestle how to make money, pay your bills, save for retirement, do things you want to do, and take care of your children.  Home based business opportunities whether they be one you create for yourself or one where you work for someone else have the advantage of obviously being home. The difference lies in how much risk and reward you are willing to take. 

Some people want to reap all the benefits of their hard work and have the risk tolerance to start their own company.  Others want to work at home but have a job that allows them to do that.  They are looking for an assured amount of money per hour, job, week etc…  When it comes to a job, working from home is a nice perk.  Especially for Moms that have to go back to work.

As mothers are faced with anxiety having to leave their young child at daycare or to someone else they are also wracked with guilt.  The question every mother needs to ask is “do I really need to go back to work or can I find a work at home business opportunity that makes enough income to replace my job?”

Working at home is not “magic” it is possible because everyone knows someone or of someone that has figured out the “magic” behind online businesses that allows them to work wherever they want to.  The problem is trying to sift out all of the junk as scammers have littered the internet with fake internet business opportunities or get rich quick schemes.

The sound of a work from home job is too good to be true and it can actually be more time consuming and defintely less financially rewarding as having your own online business.  It really doesn’t take much more risk nowadays with the advent of the internet and the tools that followed.  Real businesses can be started with little money and payment can actually be done quickly depending on the type of work from home business you start.

You can have a successful home based online business if you do your homework and build yourself a business built on knowledge than trying to buy any kind of instant millionaire kit.  Some people have honestly found themselves with a real income producing business in just a couple of months.  It all depends on what kind of business you start, the product or service and whether you have an established potential customer base or list.

In order to properly determine which scenario of going back to work or working for home is right for you, you need to evaluate your life and its contributing factors.  Do you have the time and money to devote to starting and running your own business?  Do you have the money for startup costs and maintenance?  Do you want to stay at home with your kids or do you need to just get out of the house?  Is your family behind your decision to either go back to work or work from home?  What are your finances like?  How much does daycare and gas cost getting there vs. your paycheck going back to work? How well would your children do going to daycare vs. staying at home with you? 

Life is not just about money its true but if you can’t make ends meet then you need to make some rapid changes.  Sit down with a piece of paper and calculator and see on just a financial basis what works or doesn’t.  How much would you make going to work for someone else?  Factor in the costs of you going there, your meals, childcare costs, gas to get there and such.  Then you need to write down how much it would cost to start your own online business.  How much money do you have to work with and (very important) how long can you survive before your internet business has to make sales?  Compare the two.

Now you need to consider the human element of what is the cost of your children going to daycare vs. staying at home with you?  Would they learn more from you?  Would they be happier with you at home or at daycare?  Which situation would make you happier?  Then you need to factor in the opportunity cost for any decision you make for once you choose you are forsaking any other opportunities you could do with your precious time and money.

Many people have found that when you factor in the financial and the human elements that they need to make money but their family life would be better if they could stay at home.  That is where work at home businesses come into such great favor.  They are a hybrid, a wonderful compromise between having a job or just staying at home. Even if you don’t have kids, the ability to make as much as you currently do at a job or more but staying in the comforts of your home is your personal piece of heaven.

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Making money online is easier than ever before.  There are many work from home business opportunities but the question is which ones are real and then which one fits you. If you have already have a large network or can tap into one then your home based business is off to a fast start.  Internet businesses live and die by their network.  If you do nothing else in your life then start and maintain an active contact list and your future is secure.  Making money on the internet is easy when you have a plan and an education on the exact online business opportunity that you want to do.   Even if you don’t know which business to start or which work at home job you want to do, getting informed and educated in the niche that you are interested in is the secret to success.

The common problem that most work from home opportunity seekers have is how to seperate the scams from what is real.  Do a search online and you are bombarded with more work at home business opportunities than leaves on a tree.  Sorting through all of that is not only time consuming but discouraging.  Real work from home businesses that you can do should not require you to pay them first.  Unless you are looking at a franchise with a big, reputable company. 

Real home based businesses can be done inexpensively and effectively so this multi-part series delves into the business of making money online.  It is based on the book “$500 Startup” currently available at the book’s website www.500DollarStartup.com.  It really picks up where the popular best seller “4-Hour Workweek” left off.

Whether you are looking for a work at home job or a work at home business opportunity, what you are really looking for is extra or replacement income.  The first question after that acknowledgment is how much tolerance to risk do you have and what do you want to sell?  There are pros and cons to both sides of the fence.  Working a job keeps you tied to a certain pay rate with little to no advancements and no future windfall of a business you can call your own.  At the same time you are assured a predetermined pay check and of course much lower risk.

When you start your own company you are taking on all the risks of a startup but then you are also able to reap all the rewards should it do well.  Having an online company actually eliminates much of the financial risk that entrepreneurs take on.  Doing a home based online business eliminates office or retail rent, utilities, business insurance etc…  That puts you at a great advantage above all other types of companies that people start.  Making money online takes first an introspective moment where you need to sit down and evaluate who you are, how much you want to earn/make, what do you like to do, how much risk can you take on etc… All worksheets to help you evaluate all this are available in the book and are very powerful to make sure that your goals and business approach matches up.  Self-help evaluation then business to match are the corner stones to a happy career.  We discussed the biggest secret to online success and how to evaluate yourself honestly for the right career move.  Watch out for the followup in this multi-part story.

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Today I will expose the LIE that caused the housing bubble. This is Lie #4 from my new book the $500 Start Up. Big banks believed this lie. Mortgage brokers believed this lie. Realtors believed this lie. And Home Buyers believed this lie. Are you ready for it?
Equity = an asset.

Your homes equity was never an asset! I dont care what it said on the loan application. An asset puts money in your pocket every month. A liabilty takes money out of it every month. Equity is just a number on some piece of paper. You don’t have sh#% until you have cash in your pocket.

This lie is what caused millions of people to run out and get stupid loans on houses that were supposed to go up forever. This is why banks are needing bailouts.

And unless people wake up to this lie, it will just repeat itself again in 20 years. This isn’t new. It happened in the late 80’s. Didn’t anyone over 50 learn anything from that one?

Anyway.. now you know one of the biggest financial fallacies out there and that’s half the battle.

So what is the solution?

Create real assets. You can start an automated company for as little as $500. Even if you made just $500 a month, you would be beating 99% of the investors out there that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on houses they can’t rent.

The greatest return on investment comes from investing in yourself.

Tags: $500 Start Up, bank bailouts, Recession, start a company

There is this fallacy in the business world that says you have to spend alot of money to make alot of money. While that may be true in the capital intensive ‘Old Economy,’ in the ‘New Economy’ it couldn’t be further from the truth. There is little to no correlation between investment and profit in the digital realm.

If dollars invested equaled profits earned times X, then the dotcom bubble would never have burst. The equation for profit potential is very simple:

Profit = value created - expenses

In a virtual world there are few limits on how much value you can create. Information and automated services scale massively. So the key to retaining that value created as profit comes from keeping costs to a minimum. That is precisely the philosophy of the book. There are so many tools and resources available to you that cost nothing to use.

The next time someone tells you that you have to spend alot to make alot, just remind them that they live in the 21st century and the rules of business have changed.

Tags: New Economy, the profit equation, virtualization