Work At Home - What Is The Best Home Based Business? - By Joan Masterson

As the owner of a site that offers work at home information I often get asked the question: What is the best home based business one can start?

Well, obviously there is no such thing as "the best home based business" - otherwise everybody would be doing it! There is only such a thing as "which is the best home based business for YOU".

The next question I get asked frequently is : What kind of business can I start? Where can I get business ideas from? And this really amazes me because everyone already has a business idea in themselves, they just need to realize it!

I think the problem mainly is that people have a hard time believing in themselves, and they don't think that what they have to offer is anything worth while. How do I know that? I used to be one of those people.

So, my first piece of advice to anyone who wants to start a home business is this: work on yourself and your attitude first. If you don't believe in yourself, you are never going to be successful. There are loads of excellent self improvement books and articles on the Internet - read some of them and take it from there. You have to develop a Millionaire Mindset first before you can become a millionaire!

The greatest obstacle to success is firstly, your own mindset, secondly, the fact that most people want success to happen overnight. If it does not happen right away, they give up and tell themselves that they just cannot do it! Successful people never give up - they just try a different approach.

So, the second piece of advice to you would be: have patience in building your business. Success will come if you will let it.

So, with the right mindset, what work at home business can you start? My suggestion would be to start with something that you love doing, and expanding on that. If you don't choose something that you are passionate about, you will be tempted to give up when the going gets a bit rough.

Make a list of things that you are passionate about. It could be anything, from reading to raising koy fish. What do you really like doing? What do you spend most of your time on in your spare hours? Take the one thing that your most passionate about, read widely about your subject and educate yourself about it thoroughly, follow a course if necessary, then build your home business around that.

For instance, I am passionate about helping people work for themselves, that is why I started my website. I knew absolutely nothing about the Internet when I first started 7 years ago, even less about website design! But I just kept hammering away at it, and now I can really call myself a pro (even if it is only in my own eyes Now I know what HTML is, I know how to install scripts and how to work with php pages - those things were all greek to me in the beginning but because I was passionate about it, I never gave up. Even now I am still learning how to do new things everyday - for instance with this blog! I had not a clue what Blogging and RSS and all the other geek speek was, but I set out to learn about it because my passion is my website and I am determined to have the best one I can have.

I spend hours online everyday updating it with relevant information - I cannot help them start their own home businesses but the information that I offer them might just help spark off their own bright business idea.

Now, not everyone would probably have such a profound interest in running a website or getting to know how to design one, so what you have to do is to sit and think of ways of how you can turn your passion into money.

For instance you could probably be interested in cross stitching or maybe cheesemaking, or pottery. Can you teach other people who are passionate about your subject something new about it? Or how to do it better? Where can you sell your products? Tour your town to find the best possible places to supply your product or service to, speak to others about it as often as you can. You will be surprised how other people can help you with prospective customers. You have to think out of the box - think of different and new ways to market your product.

Just as an example, my sister sells permanent licence disc holders. It is something that you stick on your windscreen to display your car licence disc instead of using stickers that mess up your windscreen when you have to take them off at the end of every year. Now, instead of trying to compete with hundreds of other people out there sellign the same product, she approached some of the local primary schools to use it as a fundraising product. She sells it to them at a certain price, they get the kids to sell it to their parents and family and friends at a different price. The kid who sells the most discs gets a cash prize, the class who sells the most discs get loads of free pizza. The school has a fantastic product to sell, they make a load of money for the shcool out of it, my sister makes her own profit out of it, and everyone is happy.

The second way she makes money out of the discs, is by approaching the car attendants at various local malls and shopping centres. These guys are only to glad to make a bit of extra money and they already have hundreds of potential customers around them - the car drivers!

She gives each car attendant about 5 discs to sell a day, next day she goes back to pick up the cash, give them their share, and give them some more discs. She does this at about 10 different locations, having about 25 car attendants a day selling her product - that is 125 discs a day. With smart thinking she has just leveraged her income and she just goes back to collect the cash - how great is that?

She is a typical example of something who works smart, not hard.

Try the same kind of thinking for your own business and I promise you, the ideas will just flow in.

Well, I hope I have given you something to think about. What you have to do now, is just to START!

Joan Masterson is the owner of http://www.womenatwork.co.za and http://www.set-4-success.com - sites that offers free work at home resources and information.

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