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Starting Your Own Work at Home Business!

So you have decided to take the plunge and start your own work at home business!  Fabulous!  Here are some tips to make sure it is a winner and you love your new job!! 

How do you FIND the perfect business for you?  First, think about what you love or love to do.  Do you scrap in your spare time?   Do you love coffee and treats? How about kids, love them, have them?  Did you know there are tons of businesses dedicated to them?  Or it could be something like cleaning.  There are organizational businesses; cleaning franchises. Anything you can think of exists.  You just need to find what YOU love to do and what you can see yourself doing for a long time.

Go to the internet and use the hundreds of sites dedicated to WAHM (work at home mom) businesses.  Most have listing’s of party plan information and companies and are a great resource and great place to start.

 

Another thing to do is ask your family, friends and neighbors. Think about different parties that you have been to.  What businesses have you frequented that you enjoyed?

 

Now that you have narrowed down the choices for your new business, your first task at hand is to: RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH!   You cannot find out enough about a company before signing on the dotted line.  Some things that you may want to think about asking the person showing you the opportunity would be as follows.
1.   Are there minimum orders that need to be put in?  If so what is the criteria?
2.   Do I need a sales tax ID from the state to account for all sales tax due them?  Some large companies will report it for you, but if you are joining a small company, then you are responsible to report your earnings and sales tax due to the state as well as charge your customers accordingly.
3.   Is this a party plan business? What are the hostess benefits? Are there fees associated with placing the orders and for the free gifts? What are the payment policies?  Do you need a credit card to sign up or for the orders to be billed to?
4.   What about returns? Are they allowed and how are they handled?
5.   How is the signup fee handled?  Do you have a renewal fee at the end of your first year and each year after to stay active? What if you don’t like the business or company?  Are you able to do a kit return?
6.   If this is a party plan, what is in your kit?  Are you going to need to buy extra items to get going or is the kit items sufficient? Look at books and forms especially. Make sure the total cost is affordable.  You want to have some money to invest in getting your new business off the ground.
7.   If you have a sponsor, what do they expect from you?  What can You expect from her or him?  Good to ask some questions here if you like to run your own business, but your sponsor likes to be very involved.  Some like that kind of relationship, others don’t.  What do you like??  If you find you don’t care for their methods or you don’t click, make sure you are able to work with them before signing on the bottom line.  It is important to have someone that you can learn from and vise verse.
8.   Are meetings required?  How often are they held? What is your schedule like and your attendance rate going to be? Meetings are very important for training and basic information and sharing.  You need to be able to commit to some meetings.
9.   How many reps are in your area?  How many are active and going well in their business?  You want to gain some insight as far as the saturation level in your area.  Very important in the customer search area of your new business.
10.   How thorough is their training?  Are there websites available with training lessons there or special meetings for newcomers locally?

These questions should get you enough information that you can make an educated choice about the business.  Never be afraid to ask any kind of question.  This new business could be the one you have been hunting for!  Good Luck!!

 

Copyright 2006 by Chris Carroll
Chris is a direct seller through and through and loves sharing and teaching others to grow their direct sales business as well.  She does this through her site at http://DirectSalesTalk.com

These articles are free to be used as long as you keep the author bio in tact and provide a live link to the Direct Sales Talk website.