A great many people these days want to have a business they can run from their . For some, it’s because they fear losing their income. For others, the idea of earning extra income is appealing. To a large cross-section of the population, becoming financially self sufficient becomes one of their main goals.

Some people who start businesses from their home office do it part time, while there are plenty of home business owners who work full-time at their businesses. There are many home business opportunities that can provide a high level of income, so the idea of working from home is appealing. This has to be tempered with the reality that most people who try to make money from home fail in their attempt and give up before they see any real money generated.

Two main issues are the usual causes of home business failure:

* No experience in the business

* No marketing skill

If you want to succeed at building your own home business and becoming the “captain of your own ship”, you only need to pay attention to these two things and you will be rewarded. If you ignore this, your chance of success is nil.

Ignore these two basic issues and your home business will not survive. Let’s look at each and see why you need to consider and pay attention to them.

First, going into a business in which you have no knowledge or experience. It is surprising how many people take for granted that they can be successful at something they know nothing about but for some reason they don’t think it’s important. Education and/or experience should be paramount when starting a home business. That’s because when you’re working from home, usually you are working alone and don’t have a team of people to rely on and probably not a lot of money either. Also, if you don’t consider the money or effort the business will require, you will become bogged down. So, it’s important to know what you’re doing from the get-go.

For example, let’s say you want to start a business selling stuff on eBay. Even if you’ve sold a few things on eBay, that’s not the same as doing it as a business. It’s more than just the technical stuff, like taking and uploading photos, answering emails from buyers, and writing a description. We’re talking about the business side of it:

* How will you source the stuff you will be selling ?

* How much money can be made ?

* Will you inventory your products ?

* How will you receive payments ?

* How will you ship the items ?

* How will returns be handled ?

* Do you have a bookkeeping system ?

So there’s more to just knowing a little bit about something to make a business from it. eBay is a good example, because people are aware of eBay as a place to sell stuff, but do you recall the many eBay businesses that were established around the country? Most of them failed, because the owners only knew that eBay was a place to sell stuff, and didn’t have the experience or knowledge about the other things they needed to know.

The other major item that is the cause of home business failure is a lack of marketing knowledge. In fact, this is probably the least understood and insidious problem faced by home business owners because they usually don’t consider it as much as they should. Many inexperienced business owners “think” they know how to market their business. After all, people feel that with the internet, it should be easy to reach their target market. As in the example with eBay, clueless business owners think that Google AdWords is all they need for advertising their product or service. Again, this thinking usually leads to failure and is the result of the business owner not knowing anything about internet marketing.

To build a successful home business, visit The Home Office Team and learn from others who have built successful home businesses.

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