An eBusiness of Your Own

Wouldn't it be great to have your own eBusiness that you could run from home. Nothing too grand, just big enough to support you and your family. You would be your own boss and you could work the hours you choose. No more sitting in traffic queues for hours on end, or sitting in some soulless cubicle in an office block.

It does sound great, and judging by the number of emails that I receive on the subject it's a dream that appeals to many people. Unfortunately, it's also a dream that is easy to exploit. A high proportion of the Spam email messages you receive will be "Business Opportunities", "Work from Home", "Earn £5000 a month" or something similar. They always sound convincing and they make it sound so easy.

 As I'm sure you're aware, most of these schemes are unlikely to make you money, in fact most will probably end up losing you money.

So is it possible to make a living by running a home-based business over the Internet? Some people seem to manage it, so clearly the answer has to be yes. The next question is inevitably "How do you do it?". Clearly there isn't a simple answer, otherwise everyone would running their own business, but there must be something that differentiates the successful and profitable home-based eBusinesses from those that are doomed to failure.

 In this series of articles over the next 12 weeks I'm going to look at how you can run a viable eBusiness from home. By viable, I mean a business that you will be able to earn a reasonable living from. I'll cover all the various types of home business and will attempt to pick out those that are most likely to successful. I'll also be looking at resources that are available to help, both on the Net and Elsewhere, and I'll try to put together what will amount to a template for a successful small eBusiness.

At this stage, the one thing I can say confidently is that there is no easy way to run your own business. Success depends on a combination of good planning, a little luck, and above all a lot of time and effort. If you are serious about running a business from home you can forget any ideas you have of putting in a couple of hours a day and spending the rest of your time gardening. It just doesn't work that way. You'll be working full time and then some. You should also forget any ideas of getting rich. You may be able to make a living, maybe even a comfortable living, but unless you're exceptionally lucky or exceptionally talented you probably won't make a fortune.

If I haven't totally put you off, then the first article in the series will look at pre-packaged business solutions - businesses you can buy off the shelf or businesses you can buy into. I'll also look at Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) schemes. (Surprisingly, not all of them are bad!)