Starting a Small Home Business

the Right Way

Starting a small home business is easy. Unfortunately, it's also easy to make the wrong choice and end up wasting either your money, your time, or both on it. Whatever business it is you end up pursuing therefore, it had better satisfy these criteria:

1. You don't want to waste your money; and

2. You don't want to waste your time with it.

It's pretty easy to make sure that your choice fulfills the first criteria. I don't know how much money you expect your small home business to cost you, but it's a fairly safe bet to assume that, when you're talking of only a few hundred dollars a year, you can be satisfied that the money issue is taken care of.

Naturally, anything costing that little needs more investigation, because if you end up wasting your time on it, then ANY amount of money you invest in it is wasted, no matter how little it may be.

One way to be sure you won't waste your time on a home business is to find one that has an established track record of successful owners, and it should be easy to verify it.

It also needs to be reliable. You want to know that it's been around for a long time so you don't run the risk of succumbing to a fly-by-night operator.

Needless to say, it must be profitable - but there is one additional criteria that must be fulfilled to maximize your chances for success: It must give you the wherewithal and the opportunity to discover and pursue your passion.

Your passion is your driving force. Without it, maybe you can hold on to a dead-end, boring job that pays well for a long enough time, but your own business? Forget it. "That dog won't hunt," as they say in Texas.

By pursuing a business you already have a passion for, you are already making sure you fulfill the next requirement: Your new home business needs to deal with a subject you already know something about. If you feel passionate about it, you more likely than not have already pursued the subject at least, even without it having turned into an actual income source.