Starting Your
Own
Home-Based
Business
By Ginny Grimsley
Dreaming of launching a business from your home? You’ll join an
ever-growing number of entrepreneurs, according to a broad new
report based on 6,000 surveys.
“I started out helping other stay-at-home moms who wanted to create
businesses, but there are men and women of all ages who want the
freedom and independence you get from owning your own business
and keeping it in the home.”
Christine says she learned a lot from early colossal failures and from
her successes, too.
“A lot of people just starting out don’t think in terms of, ‘Will this
choice still work in five years if the business is very successful?’ You
need to consider that because it’s difficult and sometimes bad for
business to go back and change things once you’ve become established,” she says.
If you’re thinking about starting a home-based business, she shares
some tips for laying the groundwork.
• It all starts with an idea – is yours a good one?
You need to be able to easily explain your idea (product or service) in
one or two sentences because that’s all you’ll get to “sell” it to customers, investors and the media, including bloggers who you seek out
for reviews. If you can’t explain it well in two sentences, either work
on a simpler way to describe it or come up with a new idea.
Photo by Timur Suleymanov
• Determine whether your idea has been done before or if it’s brand
new.
There are generally three possibilities: It has been done but there’s
still demand; it has been done and the market is saturated; or it has
never been done. You can be successful in any of these scenarios, if
you know where your idea falls and strategize appropriately. Search
keyword phrases to see if what you have in mind already exists. If
you come up empty, there’s either no demand or it’s never been done
before. If it’s been done, sea ɍ