8 Tips to Start a Home-Based Business
Low-Cost Business With High Profit Potential
If you plan on starting a Home-Based Business with passive Income while doing your daily chores and studies this article is just for you!
If you have Leadership skills or Risk-Taking characteristics or if you think you’re not fit to live like an employee, this article will help you find your ideal job from home while doing daily activities, chores, etc., and as your business grows, you may consider it as your main job.
In this article, we will point out: “how to start a home-based business from scratch” which is finding profitable ideas until its implementation, and for each stage of the process, I will provide you with practical solutions. What I mean by practical solutions is that topics in this article are written in a way that’ll help you with your journey, and It doesn’t matter if your job is as simple as selling a cactus on Instagram or building up an empire as big as Apple’s company.
After reading this article, you will understand how to start a home-based business and make money without spending much.
Writing this article is the result of more than two years of experience, research, and study.
To write this article, I have read the working lives of many successful directors and leaders around the world and prepared their experiences and secrets of success.
If you’re ready, let’s start with the life story of one of the successful people;
How a Homeless Man Made Millions of Dollars
If you ask people why they can’t do something, they will always have an answer ready for it. the way to break this loop is to ask them: “what would’ve happened if you could do it”?
One of the reasons that people fail in their jobs is that the key to success is hard-working, and it’s difficult for them to set a goal followed by step-by-step monitoring to achieve it. It’s easier for them to avoid doing things, instead of making a life plan, taking advantage of time, they think about how to make money.
However, there are people in the world whose lifestyle and success inspire us.
People who go through hardships of life, poverty, and many other challenges and they don’t make an excuse, they work with their teeth and claws to achieve their goals to live a better life.
Among these people, Steve Job’s strong will, Bill Gate’s Wealth Creation, and Jeff Bezos’s Creativity(President, CEO, Founder of Amazon), if we believe what they achieved is unattainable, there will be no room for improvement.
One of these people that you probably haven’t heard of and his name is Robert Herjavec. He was only eight years old when he was forced to emigrate with his family due to his father’s escape from prison. They moved from Croatia to Canada and settled in one of their acquaintance’s basements. Living conditions were extremely difficult for Robert and his family. They couldn’t even speak English and communicate well with the people of the city. All that they had was 20 Dollar cash and a suitcase.
But none of these stopped Robert from moving forward and he graduated from the University of Toronto with two degrees in English Literature and Political Science. Along with studying, he sold newspapers throughout the city to pay the family expense, and in his spare time, instead of going to a bar and wandering around the city, he served as a waiter in a restaurant. (Definitely rough!)
After a while, Robert started working for a software company called Logiquest. but since he had no expertise in computer science, the company rejected his application. However, Robert insisted on giving him six months to work and learn without a payment. During this time, he was so hardworking that he got promoted to the Company’s public Community Manager.
Of course, some issues at work made him get fired from the company very soon. But Robert instead did not grieve for losing his job, He set up his first Internet security, BRAK Systems in the garage of his house using the experience he gained from working in the Logiquest company. Ten years later, in 2000, He sold his company to AT&T Canada, For 30.2 million dollars.
How Will Home-Based Business Affect my Career
As we read in Robert Herjavec’s story of life, He was able to reach success by starting his own home-based business, a success that is a dream to many people. Once Robert and his family had no place to live and stay, but now they own a luxury mansion in Toronto. They went from poverty to great wealth.
After selling his company, Robert started another business called Herjavec Group and guess what, at home again! But why did he start his own home business even though he made a huge amount of money by selling his previous company?
Next, we’ll show you some of the reasons why it’s a good idea to start a home-based business.
How To Start a Business With a Small-Investment
In a home-based business, you don’t have to invest much money to expand your business; Because you do not pay the extra funds for the workplace. I mean workshop, equipment, and hiring employees, etc. and that is specifically why a home business is very cost-effective and you can eliminate the extra costs, therefore, a business with a small investment takes place.
According to reliable statistics, 44% of home-based businesses invest less than $ 5,000 for start-ups. It’s true that at first, it may seem like a scary amount of money, but I emphasize again that in the beginning, you can reduce this amount to nearly zero dollars!
Generating Money
Herjavec’s Company now generates more than $ 125 million in sales and has grown by 643%. If we look at this on a larger scale, we can see that last year the revenue of home-based businesses in the US was about $ 427 billion. and that’s a huge amount!
Job Creation for Women
Many women give up on making money altogether because of the hassle and difficulty of working outside the house thus men earn 2.5 times more than women. For this reason, the comfort of being at home, flexible working hours, more supervision over housework and children, the possibility of making money and taking care of housework at the same time, make home-businesses a very suitable job for women.
Personal Life
Years ago in 1980, Alvin Toffler predicted in his book named “The Third Wave” stated: the way technology is developing and considering the growth, it would change the way of living, and so it totally did! One of the factors that make the conflict between work and life is long working hours; However, one of the benefits of a home-based business is that you can take advantage of time and balance your life and work as you wish.
For example, if you want to leave the house at 3 pm, visit a football stadium without worrying about asking for permission and taking leave. Or spend this time with your family or friends or go home and your chores.
9 Personal Reasons Why People Decided to Start a Home-Based Business Based on a Survey, as Follows:
60% wanted to balance personal life and work-life
45% Due to better performance
47% Due to traffic avoidance
44% to have more focus and less distraction than home
38% Due to stress at the workplace
43% Due to calm workplace
44% Due to ease of commuting to work
29% Support this type of work to spend more time with family and friends.
23% Said such businesses reduce environmental impact (Green economy)
55% For vehicle fuel costs
Challenges of a Home-Based Business
You’re probably telling yourself “Well, I’m starting my own home business”. “I’m the biggest entrepreneur in the world!” But let’s give a little intensity to these imaginary clouds above your head.
I don’t want to give you false hope, like some friends who work in the field of start-ups, success or the law of attraction, etc. I emphasize some, not all of them. Because I believe, to make better decisions, we should always look at things from different prospects to challenge ourselves and make better choices.
We also want to increase your chance of success by analyzing the issues and challenges that may come your way after starting a home-based business.
When you start your own home-based business, you will have some obstacles that will try to slow you down. You always have to keep them in mind, measure them, despite these problems, you can still start your business quite fine. You should have them in your mind so that they don’t confuse you at a later time. When I was working at home, I was involved in a few of these issues that I will share with you;
The first and probably the biggest challenge you will face early on in the process is after starting your business, you will often have to do many different things. (probably too often!) You may not even have the experience to do some of these things properly, but don’t worry you will learn them eventually. Although, in my opinion, you have a very good opportunity to learn many different things to gain experience by executing them. It all depends on how you want to approach them.
When you are busy working at home, having to stay in your room for many long hours during the day and night is exhausting. Maybe even working for half a day will get you exhausted! And well, if that doesn’t stop you from doing other things, like studying or scratching your head, unfortunately, I have to say that it will definitely cause you to lose your social status, become isolated and depressed. That’s why I suggest you step aside from time to time for other activities such as personal work, personal development, spending time with family and being in the social space, and so on.
Communication and Collaboration with other co-workers and companies are very important for your future. For example, consider your home business selling wedding table decorations… And at the suggestion of modern business media experts, you are producing content on your site to attract an audience. Well, you can easily answer your potential customers ‘ frequently asked questions and publish them on your blog.
But if you ask people who are professionals and experts in this field to link your website, they might hardly accept your offer since they don’t know you well. So one day if you want to expand your business, think about it from the very beginning to build a long-term relationship with other business partners.
Another reason that can be a stick in the wheel for your home business is the inability to manage time. This happens when you cannot resist tempting factors Like when you go out having fun with your friends, you forget about your job! To answer this, you should consider having regular working hours for yourself.
You can set it up to your liking, choose a time that is most convenient for you. And then… when you get home and sit on your chair to work you see oh… your brother turns up the music and suddenly it becomes very difficult for you to concentrate. Do you have a solution to this problem?
If you have never thought about these challenges, be sure to consider them when making a plan for your home-based business.
How to Start a Home-Based Business
You seem to be very determined, so be sure to keep on reading!
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It starts with an “Idea”
The first step in starting any business is to have a good idea. It all starts with an idea; Basically, our whole life, even our simplest form of daily activities are based on ideas. For example, when it hits you on an autumn evening, you go for a walk and hear the sound of rustling leaves, which is an idea by itself. But most of the time, these ideas are very common. Sometimes ideas are pure and innovative that is worth commercializing.
there are thousands of common ideas around us every day, but we ignore them without paying any attention. Well, here’s an important note that’s worthwhile and worth addressing: Where are these lovely business ideas that are blowing up the world, Where do they come from?! and How can I have one of them !!
Let me reveal a fact before I answer this question, me or probably no one else can give you an idea and say, “Comrade, you will succeed!” Because it’s like asking a fish to climb a tree, as Einstein said. While the fish is interested in swimming and certainly fails to climb the tree.
So before you start a business, you need to consider what your interests are and what you do well. You spend more time with your job during the day, even more than you do with your family. Undermining your passion and skills will make your life hell! All the time you would ask yourself “I would have been more successful if I did this, or that”.
So if you want to succeed, ask yourself what talents and skills you possess, What is it in your life that you are willing to sacrifice even your sweetest life for? What can you do to keep your customers faithful to you and your product/services rather than your potential competitors? Answering these questions is very important.
There is an unwritten rule which no one has ever told you about, You will understand this rule or better call it law when you complain about the whole world and people and shout”Do you know how much time I spent on this product ?! “People, you must buy this.” Well, we all know that the effort you put into making this product with your passion and skill is equal to selling more.
In fact, the day will come when you realize that the truth is something else;
For example, I used to love eating hamburgers and I had this special ability to eat five or six burgers in one meal 🙂 At some point, I wanted to eat hamburgers for a living, but no one in the world has ever valued my skills and feelings! So I had to turn my interests and ability to commercialize so that people would be willing to pay for it. This means a real business! (And so YouTube Food eating channels were made!)
On the contrary to a popular belief, money-making ideas do not come out of the minds of creative people, but rather because they pay attention to issues of life and try to fix things. In other words, instead of looking for business ideas, we should look into problems so that we can make people’s lives better and they will be willing to pay us for what we do for them.
Problems are everywhere! The world is always in need of people who can find the right solution for them and solve these problems. “People know their problems but they don’t know how to solve them,” says Rob Fitzpatrick. It’s your job as a business owner to find a solution for them.
For example, the founders of the start-up MommyCooks initially realized that many people do not have time to cook and on the other hand they do not get along with restaurant foods. So they started a business to solve this problem and started serving home-made foods for customers.
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Evaluating Ideas
Thus far, we know that the first step to succeeding in business is to know exactly what we want to do with all the difficulties along the way. My suggestion to you is to simply enter the field of work that you are interested in and do something that you are good at. Then we said you do not need to use your creativity to find a business idea. All you have to do is to find the problems around you and think of a solution. Now that you have an idea (or rather a problem to solve), it’s time to look at it together to see whether you can succeed or not.
Three Risks Formula
There are three unique possible risks you will go through when you’re starting a business that you should make sure not to fall into these traps before implementing the idea:
1. The Chosen Product(s) Risk
2. Marketing and Customer Risk
3. Competition Risk
Risk of Product of Services
Some time ago, a friend of mine suggested building an automatic machine for making fried onions. What this machine was supposed to do was to peel the onion several times by rotating the onion on a blade several times. In the second stage, the onion was sliced and diced, and finally, it was put on heat to fry well. The device looked very good and functional, and the manufacturer was sure to sell it with the market research he had done.
He was sure of selling it. So he took out a loan to build an automatic onion fryer. But after working on the machine for a while, he realized that there was a problem and could not finish manufacturing the machine. The risk was his work on his product. It’d have been better if he could make sure he can make the machine work and function properly before taking out a loan. He could even build a small, low-cost prototype of his final device on a trial basis.
Solution – Cost Estimation
The risk of a product or service is often due to a lack of financial resources (otherwise you could have built your product in any way possible with a lot of effort and by hiring professionals). Although it’s very affordable to start a home business, you will still need some money to get started. Run an estimation to see if you can afford to implement your business idea.
For example, if you want to set up an Instagram page to sell Medicinal herbs at home, How much money do you need to buy the raw material? How long you can afford to pay for the material? For example, to reduce your costs, make a deal with a Herbal medicine store and sell their products online, and when you have a good income, buy the product yourself (or if you’re thinking big, produce it!).
The important thing to keep in mind when estimating costs is your productivity, you should not spend too much at all. “You have to be able to separate real expenses from what you like to consider expense,” says Samuel Clason in one of his books, The Richest Man of Babylon. For example, if you want to have a site with your own design, you can start a site with minimal features. When you make a profit, expand it, and add any features you want.
“When I was just starting, I kept all the money I made for myself,” said Mike Clum, CEO of Clum Creative, a company that makes promotional videos. “I did everything by myself simply because I thought I did not have enough money to hire others.” You also have to learn to do your own thing. Of course, you really do not need to know how to do everything. You just have to know a little bit about everything.
Customer and market risk
Most of the reasons behind the failure of start-ups are related to this sector. About 47% of start-ups that fail to succeed in their expectation do not pay much attention to the marketing industry that they work in and their customers. Assuming you have a very good product, should you know that people actually need this product at all? Do they pay for it? Are there enough to satisfy customers? Do you have a persona ready for them? are you prepared?
If your idea is based on solving a problem, you have reduced that risk greatly. But there are still many twisted lines that require your attention. Consider this, many people forget to turn off the lights when they leave the room, and because of this, they pay so high electric bill.
Well, so far you have a good problem to solve and you decide to sell them motion sensor bulbs to reduce their costs. But have you not considered if these people were willing to pay to buy your product, would they not have to pay more for monthly electric bills? Except in rare cases where low energy consumption is important to them.
Solution – Make sure you sell your products/services
The best way you can find out if your product will sell or not is by talking to your customers! They can tell that to you better than anyone else whether they will buy your goods or not.
That’s why we do The Mom Test! The Mom Test is actually a series of simple rules for appropriate and good questions to learn how to talk to our potential future customers and to validate our idea. This test is described in the book The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick.
Competitive risk
This risk is not very scary and it can be solved very easily. Competitors risk generally says that when you want to start your business, consider what other people and companies are working on in your field. Can you compete with these companies? Can you offer products with the same or better quality?
Solution – Study your competitors
If you are the first business to enter a field, it will be very beneficial to you. You can bring your brand name to the forefront of innovation and have a lot of sales. However, be aware that innovation does not guarantee you for the rest of your life and many companies will start working in your field right after you. Just like when Curb(Magic Taxi) started as the first online taxi service, various other companies entered the field including Uber.
If you find yourself in a situation where you have to compete with reputable competitors, there is no reason to back down. Instead, you can target a segment of the market. You need to know the problems and needs in your business market and offer solutions to them. Ask yourself what services other businesses have to offer, How much they charge for them, possible for a simpler method to be substituted, How much would it cost if you were to use this new method?
What’s the reason behind using my suggested method? Well.. it is called special marketing. (meaning finding a special place in the market) The purpose of special marketing is to focus on producing a product or offering a service for a small segment of the market that the existing product or service has not been successful in the specified industry.
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Imagine your favorite day of work
Now that you have a profitable idea and know what products or services you’re going to offer, determine what exactly you want to achieve; At the beginning of the work, you should be aware that, for example, in the next six months, you want to sell X amount of one product per day. Or even think a little bigger, For example, you want to market a specific product over a longer period of 3 to 5 years.
If you want to succeed in your business, you need to do this planning. Because you shouldn’t be confused like a leaf moved by the wind. If you don’t know what you want, how do you want to succeed? If you can’t picture your favorite day, what chance do you have to make it? Maybe you spent it today. Who knows! Sit down and make a life plan for your goals, once and for all.
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Roll up your sleeves and get started
Quote by Walt Disney “quit talking and start doing!”
I myself have always struggled with this problem; When I wanted to start a business, I spent several months making decisions, researching ideas, and preparing prerequisites. By the time I read the story of launching the DropBox (cloud space provider), I was amazed at how DropBox was created on the bus! Houston, the founder of Dropbox, talks about starting his company:
“I usually had a flash drive with me that I held files related to my work. The story began when I was traveling from Boston to New York by bus. In the middle of the road, I realized I had forgotten the flash drive. I was very disappointed because it was not my first time. I thought to myself that this should not happen again. So I immediately opened my laptop and started coding. At first, I didn’t know what the result was going to be, but it was just the start. “Then, within two weeks, I found an interlocutor and we officially started working together.”
Time is of the essence, therefore starting the business quickly is important because you can get your products/services to the market faster. By doing this you will gain experience in the work field. When you do not offer your product/service you are wasting your time. Because the core value of any business is to have an excuse to engage with people and customers, and the evolution of the business is your second half.
Of course, the concept of the quick start-up does not simply mean turning our backs to everything and just work, but we must implement the principles we have learned so far, without getting too much involved; TL;DR; Get Started!
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Prepare your equipment
Prepare the equipment you need, do so with love. If you have a workroom or even a small desk at home, be sure to make it ready just for this purpose. try to avoid distraction at your workplace. The place you choose to work in must be away from things that might distract you, make sure your work and personal life do not interfere with each other. You can even choose the corner of the parking lot or basement as an office!
if your business involves manufacturing goods or if you need a workshop that requires tools to operate, you definitely need more than one desk and a computer. Also, if you need space to store goods, you can use the basement of your house or rent a small inexpensive warehouse for it.
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Build a low-cost website
Although having a website will be very profitable for your business and can play an important part in increasing your sales, building a website is very time consuming, complex and costly – You want to have your own website so you go to an individual or a team and order your site. Designing your site can take weeks to months. But the worst part is that you have to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on your website.
So you will be looking for another way, you have a friend that works in the web designing field, you connect with them and suddenly you are faced with a partnership offer. voila!
- Start of Marketing
If you have a good product, would you put it on the shelf to eat dust..? Basically, the goal of digital marketing is to understand and feel the customer’s needs, so that they can offer services that are suitable for them.
Although Marketing and Sales are two different things, Marketing will turn customers interested in your products or services into leads for sales. So a key role to the Marketing department is to understand the business from the perspective of customers who are the company’s target leads and foresee customer needs and find a solution for them ahead of time, Marketing is to lead a brand to different market segments and understand the customer persona which enables the ability for the company to generate money.
- The Rules of Home Business
Since all home businesses require a license, you should apply for a license so that you won’t run into legal issues. To register your home business, you need to go to the home business organization and fill out the relevant form. After application, you will be asked to contact the Department of Labor and Social Welfare to continue with the licensing process.
How long does It take to hear back about a job? Based on the data provided by Indeed;
- 44% hear from employers within a couple of weeks of applying
- 37% hear back within one week
- Only 4% hear back within one day.
To get a work license, you don’t have to be employed and your skills and expertise in your business must get qualified before receiving certification. Also, when the permit is issued, the labor office experts will visit your place of business at home and will issue the permit if you do not disturb the neighbors. (if loud sounds/noises are relevant to your job)
My other recommendation for starting a home business is to hire someone in person or online, do their legal work then make an appointment to state wages and work conditions (also called terms of employment). having a co-worker, sharing ideas, and assisting each other always helps.
Final words
Herjavec has achieved success in entrepreneurship, which is the dream of many people. He quotes: “People ask me, ‘Is entrepreneurship an inherent skill?’, ‘Are entrepreneurs born with such skill?’, ‘Is it possible to learn entrepreneurship?’ What I have come to realize during this time is that successful entrepreneurs are flexible in a variety of circumstances. “If I’m left in the middle of the forest, I can survive under difficult conditions and this is my greatest skill”.
He continued, at a young age, I doubted I could start my own business because I had no experience in business whatsoever and did not know about accounting and financial law. Many around said to me that I can’t succeed. But the secret to my success was that I did what I thought was right, I was trying to improve myself day by day, endured hardships and challenges, kept moving forward, one step closer toward my goal.
You too, have to step away from idealism and overcome the hardships to improve and advance. I know starting a home-based business, despite all its benefits, is not what you expect from it, but it can, and it will get you closer to your ideal job. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt: Do what you can with all you have, wherever you are…