Here we are, mid way through 2009. Wow! I get quite a few emails from people about what some of their best options are for starting a business from home. There are actually quite a few. Let me list some of them:
1) Landscaping – For about $1,000 start-up (if you already have a truck), begin making about $100-$200 per day net. It’s hard work, but cutting about 3-5 yards per day can be a decent way to break free from a job. Getting those jobs is the hard part. Getting flyers, magnetic signs for your truck, door-to-door, etc. is going to be necessary. You can branch out and do shrubs, trees, and other landscaping things too. I really don’t know why more people don’t do this.
2) MLM Company – Robert Kiyosaki and Robert Shemin are both very big on this. MLM is good… but you have to get past the hype and all the negative crap that some naysayers will throw your way. But, let me be the first to say that MLM isn’t easy and it isn’t for everyone. I have spoken with many, many happy people involved in MLM. If you’re going to do this, do it right and join a good company. Don’t play around with the fly-by-night companies.
3) Affliate Marketing – In most cases, this is selling other people’s items or services and earning a commission for doing so. Creating websites and driving traffic to those websites is the primary way that this is done. The hard part is driving the traffic. It must be targeted traffic an you have to decide if you’re going to try and get free traffic by getting your sites ranked high in the search engines (SEO) or if you are going to pay for with something like Google Adwords.
4) Consulting – Everybody is an expert at something or can learn to be an expert by spending a few bucks on books from Barnes and Noble. There are all kinds of consultants – home organization, baby, business, sports, baskets, etc. One of the best ways to get started in this is to go pick up one of those magazines at the book store on Home Businesses. These are the ones that have 1001 ideas every month for making money from home.
5) Real Estate – Many aspire to do this but few ever go down this road because of the intimidation of putting $100K down for a home. It really doesn’t work that way. I love real estate, and that is one of my primary goals over the next 3 years is to get several rental properties in my portfolio. But, I have been learning from Lifestyles Unlimited. There isn’t a better organization that I know of. Stay away from those companies that come to your town and want to charge you $4-$10,000 to learn their system. It’s a waste of money.
6) Etc. There are hundreds and hundreds of ideas you can pursue here. Like the idea above, go hang out at Borders or Barnes and Noble. Go to the magazines and in the business section, find some of the Home Business, Success, Work From Home magazines and sit down with a cup of coffee and go through them. There are so many great ideas. I have a friend who started his vending business with one of these magazines and has a nice business running.
But, what about today? What would I do today?
Knowing what I know, if I was starting from scratch here is what I would do:
1) Get started with affiliate marketing using the Clickbank Code course to learn how to do it. Clickbank Code is one of the best courses I’ve seen in a long, long time to teach how to get up and running and making a decent income with affiliate marketing. I would put my heart and soul into this and not get distracted by anything else. One of the reasons I like affiliate marketing more than MLM, Consulting, Landscaping, etc. is that you can truly walk away and go on vacation, take a mission trip, etc.
Think about it. Landscaping is great, but if you take a week off, there is no money coming in because you didn’t mow a lawn (there are ways to fix this, but you get the idea). If you are doing an MLM, your cell phone is constantly ringing whether you are home, at Disney World, at the White House, or in the jungles of the Congo.
With affiliate marketing, you can get away more than any other business. And, if you’re going to do this, use Clickbank Code to get started.
2) Real Estate – once I got myself established wiht affiliate marketing, I would use Real Estate to stablize my income and provide long-term, retirement security for my family. While nothing is perfect, I think real estate is one of the ideal businesses to get involved with.
Anyway, I hope that helps… now… get started with something. Take some action to get going.