Starting a home-based business is exciting but it requires doing enough research to ensure you are happy with it and that you CAN do the business the way you want it.
Use this list to pick the best business for you:
1. Do you enjoy the product and would you recommend it to your friends and family? I recommend trying the product first as a costumer to see if it’s something you will use and enjoy.
2. Consumable or hard goods? Direct sales or MLM (Multi Level Marketing)? These questions are important in helping you figure out what type of business will you be doing.
Direct sales companies focus more on product selling with higher sales commission while MLM companies focuses on building a downline and rewarding builders. There are pros and cons on the two systems. And each individual has a different way of doing business. Some prefer selling and servicing customers than selling the opportunity to others. Pick yours wisely.
3. Does the company have an attractive compensation plan? For me, attractive means rewarding me well for my sales as well as for my recruits. I joined a company once which claimed to have the best compensation plan in the business. I found out the hard way that my sales did not amount much, unless I quickly build up a huge following. So the top recruiters get paid top dollars while the slow starters with more sales get the least.
4. Start-up cost. Can you afford it? Will the company allow you to build your business slowly up or do you have to invest it the big way?
5. What’s in the starter kit? Will it include products or just literature? It is important that you have a few products to show and tell.
6. Will the company allow you to promote your business online? I think this is a crucial component of a successful home-based business. More and more people are realizing that they can’t promote their business online the way thought they would. Read the fine print before you sign up with a company to make sure you can promote it online.
Some companies allow you to promote your business online ONLY if you use their pre-made websites. The problem with this is that most company provided websites are expensive for most people to afford. The second problem is that it is a dublicate of all the other rep’s websites and therefore will not get found on google.
Affordable montly website should be $15 and less. Having a company website allows your customer to place order online. But this is not the best way to promote your business however. It is best to have a blog where you can talk about your business and then direct them to your company site to order. But some companies do not allow you to do that.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
#6
Company’s have a reason for not allowing their reps to promote online.
The non-online rule is to prevent miss information mostly from over zealous reps.
Bad PR never dies, remember Amway??
It is true that companies must implement policies to protect their brand.
But direct sales companies that don’t have a workable internet model are not going to be viable for any reps in the 21st century when the majority of the population use the internet to search for something they need.
For a rep to make enough money and work less (because most of them are moms) they need to leverage the power of the internet.
I think the best way to prevent abuse from over zealous reps is to set bounderies instead of banning online advertising.