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The Perfect Business
The Advantages and Benefits
of a Home-Based Internet Business
There are many advantages to doing business from your home.
There are many advantages to doing business on the Internet.
Put them together – that is, do business from a home office using the Internet – and you combine two very powerful sets of advantages to create fantastic opportunities. Let’s look at each set of benefits separately.
Home-Based Benefits
Higher Average Income – Unlimited Potential
If you’re working for someone else, don’t count on making as much money as the guy who has five years more seniority. And don’t even think about doubling your salary in one year ... let alone earning twice as much as your boss! Are you sick of hitting your head on the "income ceiling?" Then break through it! When you work for yourself, your earning potential is virtually limitless.
Job Security
You’ll never be fired, laid off, or demoted. Face it – job security in corporate America is gone forever. No matter where you are on the corporate ladder – chances are you won’t survive the downsizing and cutbacks long enough to get your gold watch. That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news: it’s easier than ever to take your job security into your own hands by starting your own home business.
Freedom and Independence
Be your own boss. Create your own job description. Set your own schedule. As the owner of your home-based business, you call the shots; you decide when you’ll work and when you won’t. You set the schedule. Want to go to your child’s performance at the school assembly? Go! Want to play a little tennis in the middle of the day or take a long vacation? It’s your call!
A 30-Second Commute
One of the great things about having a home-based business is being able to roll out of bed in the morning and know that you can be in your office in about a half-minute. The 30-second commute will give you a rush – not a rush-hour headache.
Greater Family Cohesiveness
A home business lets you enjoy a more integrated career/family lifestyle and avoid the latchkey syndrome. If emergencies arise, you’re home to handle them. Just having a parent in the house – even when you’re "off limits" to typical interruptions when you’re working – is real security for the kids ... and for the parent, too. Millions of parents who might not otherwise have careers or businesses because of their responsibilities with children have discovered that they can "have it all" by creating a home-based business.
Tax Advantages
Experts agree: a home-based business is one of the last bastions of tax relief available to the American taxpayer. If you meet the tax code requirements, you can take money-saving deductions for a bona-fide home office, business expenses, and more. Put the money you’d otherwise spend on office rent into a house payment. You’ll be able to afford a better home and build up your equity faster. (These deductions are for home offices that meet the IRS requirements. Consult a tax expert for details.)
Loose Dress Code
When you work at home the dress code is whatever you want it to be. Sweats? Pajamas? Those baggy old painter’s jeans? Go ahead – even a bathrobe is okay! Get comfortable. Plus, you’ll save wardrobe and cleaning expenses.
No Large Office Stress and Politics.
Working in groups has its drawback. The fact is, people can be petty and jealous, and it’s easy to get hurt in the cross-fire of the politics and maneuverings that pollute the typical work place. Think of the energy that’s wasted and the stress that’s created because of these intra-office intrigues. You escape all this by working on your own in your own home.
Benefits Once Reserved for Company Employees
The fear of losing the benefits that are available to employees in most companies – health insurance, pension plans, and so on – is one of the primary reasons why people don’t quit their regular jobs and dive into their home businesses when the time is right. But is it a valid fear? Definitely not – at least not anymore.
Huge numbers of independent, home-based business people are coming together to form associations to provide their members with affordably priced benefits by turning their large numbers into tremendous group buying power. The mission of these associations is to give their home-based entrepreneur members the support and resources they need to succeed.
Some of these resources are benefits to replace those that are lost when leaving the corporate arena. They may include affordable health, disability, and term life insurance plans, retirement income programs, and a wide spectrum of support services, such as low-rate long distance service, 800 number service, communications including newsletters and magazines, on-line computer services, check payment by telephone programs, check verification and recovery services, revolving credit lines, prepaid legal services, and discount buying opportunities.
Internet Advantages
A World-Wide Market
The Internet is international in scope. In fact, it delivers its full power and diversity everywhere anyone with a computer and a modem taps into it, whether that be in a business high-rise in Los Angeles or in a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas.
Those who speak English are especially lucky, because English is the standard language of the Internet, and because so much of the world’s population is acquainted with English. But language need not be a barrier. If it makes sense, you can offer your Internet pages in more than one language.
With hundreds of million of people already online and more hooking up every day, the Internet has become an expansive marketing tool that is unrivalled in the history of the world.
Your "Store" Never Closes
The Internet never closes. If your business is on it, you are "open for business" 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This unique marketing and communications medium is unsurpassed in terms of its ability to be there whenever someone wants to tap into it.
According to one Internet entrepreneur, "I have hits on it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I get on the Internet at my leisure each day, pull up my orders, and process them. Plus, customers can place orders right there on my Web site, or they can order via e-mail. I’ve set it up so that I don’t have to be here all the time."
A Fortune 500 Image for a One-Person Shop
One of the most wonderful things about the Internet is that it lets little businesses look as big and as capable as the "big boys." As long as small business people are willing to put in the effort and relatively small expense to create and maintain top-notch Web sites, they can have equal footing in terms of image with corporations that are hundreds or thousands of times larger.
Immediate Response
With a strong Web presence, you don’t have to force customers to send their orders via "snail mail" or even place a phone call. Both methods require more time and effort than it takes to place an order over the Web. These orders, like any communications via the Internet, are instantaneous. Plus, you can update your Web site at any time and publish the update to the Web instantly. For example, you could list a certain product you are selling on your Web page, and immediately unlist that product when you’ve sold out of it. That sort of immediacy is impossible with direct mail pieces or newspaper ads!
More Bang for the Buck
Advertising people often measure the relative value of a marketing medium by calculating the cost per thousand of potential buyers reached. On this basis, having a site on the Internet qualifies as the best marketing value around because the cost is low and the exposure is world-wide to hundreds of millions of people.
This ability to market your products or services at a relatively low cost on the Internet lets you do business with a national or even an international clientele from a small office in your home. Let’s say you have a home-based business that requires getting catalogs out to potential and existing customers. The cost of producing a traditional printed catalog and mailing it is high and perhaps prohibitively expensive. An electronic catalog on the Internet offers a less expensive solution, and may bring great returns if done right. In short, the cost of on online catalog is so low for the amount of exposure you get, many experts believe that the Internet is the best form of advertising you can get for the price.