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So What's Your Business Idea?
Do You Have the Time?
There are only so many hours in a day, and you want to save some
of them for yourself. If you're planning on, for example, making
small products and selling them, will you really have enough
time to take orders, make them, pack them up and post them? If
you're not careful, you can find yourself doing tedious work all
day and all night for $2 per hour.
Remember that time is money: the only way to make the income you
want is set an hourly rate you're happy with, and then work out
pricing as your rate plus expenses. If you don't have enough
time to do the work, then increase the rate or hire someone who
does. It's simple supply and demand.
Do You Have the Qualifications?
One of the traps that people most often fall into is wanting to
take a skill they have and turn it into a business, without
realising that their customers will expect them to have formal
qualifications. Sure, you were a full-time mother for years, but
people would still like you to have a child-care qualification.
This goes double if you plan to become some kind of therapist -
if you don't have the qualifications, how are people supposed to
know that you're not just making it up as you go along?
What's more, qualifications serve to create scarcity in the
market. A business will do better if only qualified people can
provide its services than if any joker can. That's why people
like doctors and dentists command such high wages: they have to
study for years to get their skills, which creates scarcity in
the marketplace.
If you already have the skills, you should find it easy to pass
the tests - and who knows, you might learn something new. Enrol
on an evening course at your local college (try to avoid
'distance learning', as the prices are usually stupidly high
compared to what you get out of it). It can be good fun, and
you'll probably end up with some good contacts in your chosen
industry. Many people have started better home businesses by
creating a 'network' of others they know doing the same business
in the local area. This lets everyone specialise in their best
area.
Do You Have the Space?
If you're planning to have deliveries to your house and then
send items out to people, you need to think it through very
carefully. Do you really have enough space to act as a
warehouse? Will you be cutting the size of your home in half for
the sake of your business? It's also worth considering whether
you can really let big delivery lorries drive up into your road
without doing some damage - there's nothing worse than getting
your first delivery and finding that the lorry didn't fit in
your street and the boxes don't fit in your house.
The best way to solve this problem is to make sure that your
home business doesn't require any inventory. Home businesses
where you provide a service - whether it's over the phone, on
the Internet or in person - almost always work out better than
ones that involve you packing and posting things.
Of course, even for more service-oriented businesses, space can
still be a problem: if you plan to be a fitness trainer from
home, make sure you have somewhere to put all that fitness
equipment!
Money, Money, Money
Consider the kind of expense you'd need to go to when you start
your business, as well as the day-to-day running costs. Then,
and this is the vital part, work out the maximum number of
customers you think you could deal with, and cut it in half (you
won't actually get that many customers, at least to begin with).
Work out how much you'd have to charge each of those customers
to break even for your first year. If the price comes out far
too high, then it's time to think again.
About the author:
Original Source: Articles-Galore.com
Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of The Home Income Portal
Home of Serious Online Business Options.