A lot of people ask me this question: “What are my options for a Home Based Business Opportunity?”
Personally, I don’t particularly like the word ‘opportunity’, because it sounds vague, it sounds like it is something you could miss out on. And often – I may lose some readers saying this – but I often do feel that people seeking an ‘opportunity’ aren’t being particularly serious in their business approach.
Let me explain…
People seeking an opportunity are often looking for something easy, something instant, something ‘secret’ so to speak. Instant money is what they want. Sorry folks, but no such thing exists other than in a lottery win.
So opportunity seekers are not actually thinking logically about creating a viable and sustainable business.
15 years ago I was a business ‘opportunity’ seeker: I bought loads of stuff which was advertised in magazines, direct mail and to be honest, I didn’t have a clue. I just wanted to make money… as quickly as possible.
Luckily, I stayed interested in the online business world for years. I kept reading and I kept studying and I kept trying different things. It was during this process that my mentality changed from a business opportunity seeker to actually beginning to think like a business owner.
Let me be frank with you… Forget the business ‘opportunity’ approach – Being a business OWNER is where the money is made. What concerns me most about the term business opportunity is that it attract people who may be interested in network Internet Marketing, which I personally don’t think is a very robust or serious business model.
I will explain why in a second…
Making money from home with an online business is not easy. It can be fun and very rewarding, but it is not easy. It takes commitment, it takes knowledge and it takes skills, the last two you have to learn and develop. If you are not interested in putting in a substantial amount of effort then to be honest you will be hard-pushed to make any sort of significant money online.
That is why in order to make your internet home-based business work for you need to START THINKING AND ACTING LIKE A BUSINESS OWNER. You need to be dedicated and tenacious, not an opportunist.
Just coming back to network marketing – or multi-level e-Marketing as it is sometimes known – I was interested in that years ago but feel that I have grown out of it as I became more serious in business.
The reason is that with network marketing you are depending on one company for your entire income pretty much. You are doing all this work with the assumption that the company is going to always be around, and also the problem is the focus is not on selling the product but on selling the opportunity and really a business should be selling a product not selling an opportunity. If you are selling an opportunity, other people are selling an opportunity and so on and so forth.
The whole set up feels flimsy, like a pack of cards.
Years ago when I was looking at network marketing companies I was talking to someone who was very successful – he was in the UK and he was making £250,000 a year from network marketing (roughly 350,000 dollars) – but then the company went out of business. And overnight his income collapsed to zero.
So that is the main danger, the company you relying on for your income suddenly disappearing.
But also, just as importantly, you are not building an asset. You are not building something you can actually sell. The benefit of actually building a business if you choose to do that – either developing websites or else developing a business – is that you are developing an asset which one day you can sell for a lot of money. And that I feel is a lot more robust and a lot more genuine and can be a lot more profitable than building up a network marketing business.
Obviously the network marketing dream is you do some work then you can stop working and then the money keeps coming in and it keeps growing and keeps growing. And that happens for some people but I would say they are the exception rather than the norm.
So this is just my opinion. But I would say that if you are serious about making good part-time income – or even great full-time income – I would advise leaning more towards a proper business, learning the ropes and developing the skills and developing an asset that one day you can sell for a surprising amount of money. That way it could provide for a comfortable retirement, or else instantly give you a fund that you can use to invest into property and live off the rental income for example.
So remember, be a business owner, not a business opportunist. Build an asset not an opportunity.
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