“You should start your own business working from home” comments your friends over at a barbeque and you get to thinking “that’s a great idea!” – but why should you start your own business from home? Let’s look at some of the reasons…

If the idea of being in charge of your own time, working when it suits you, doing something you really enjoy, with the opportunity to earn the money you’ve always wanted to really earn, and then, because of that money, really enjoy the lifestyle you’ve always wanted, then it’s likely that starting your own business working from home is for you.

But you also need to consider this…

You need to be highly self-motivated (getting yourself out of bed and focused on work when no-one but you is pushing you is not something everyone can do).

You need to very organised otherwise you will have both business and family life rolling into each other, both of which will then be negatively affected.

You need to be committed and disciplined – in other words, when you say you’re working, you really are working, achieving the tasks you set out to do, regardless of the potential distractions that will definitely come along.

You need to be good at time management, to clearly define how to use your time in an effective and productive way.

You need to be a great goal-setter to ensure that you have clearly defined what you need to do, then track your achievements alongside the goals you set on yourself.

Realise that ‘making money’ is the purpose of being in your own business – don’t be afraid to be accept that -. It isn’t money itself that’s the key to it all – in time, when you have as much as you want, you will realise it isn’t about ‘how much’ money you have; it is the freedom of options and choices having enough money gives you to do things in the world and affect it in whatever way motivates you.

But it all rests with your ability to ‘make money’ first …it’s the old clich that “Money can’t buy you love, but with enough money you can still have a lot of fun looking for it!”.

Starting your home-based business offers to huge benefits 1) your ability to personally determine what you earn, and 2) your ability to be in control of your time to determine when you work and when you play – and both these reasons are why so many choose to be in business for themselves from the comfort of their own homes.

Thinking of taking the step to start your own business working from home, or perhaps you have already taken the step… what are the things you need to consider?

Well right from the start, if you haven’t yet started your own business from home but it attracts you, I think it’s only fair that I give you some ‘working from home’ insights I’ve picked up from spending the best part of my last 20 years working from home. Even if you have already started to work from home, you might get some value from some of the things I’ve learned.

With this in mind, here are some of the not-so glamorous elements of trying to run a business from home…

Firstly, not everyone in your home will understand you’re trying to be professional and run a business from your house. You will get family members chatting away at the wrong time right when your thoughts are bang in the middle of your work; you will get friends ‘dropping by’ just because you were ‘at home’; you will get dogs barking just as you make that key ‘phone call, and the love of your life will ask you about “the right colour for the kitchen” just as you started to do something really important on one of your work projects – yep, be prepared, not everyone will appreciate you are running a business from home.

Secondly, be prepared that your business will intrude on EVERY element of your life – with paperwork possibly everywhere, phones ringing with business calls whilst everyone’s watching TV, children and their friends packed into the lounge just when you needed to spread out some work – the separation between your home environment and your business environment is not a clear one, and the way they intrude on each other will definitely frustrate you at times.

Thirdly, do you have a couple of cars or do you live off one ‘family car’? If you do just have one car, you might need to re-think that because that may have been fine when you had other modes of transport to get to your work when you worked away from home, but now you’re working from home there will come a time when you will need your own transport specifically for work. Many people make the mistake of thinking that because they work from home, they won’t need any transport of their own. That may well be the case for you and you may be right that you don’t, but you need to give it some thought – do you need to make any deliveries, post mail, meet suppliers or potential customers, attend trainings, if so, trying to cope with just the one ‘family car’ will end up being very frustrating because just when you go to grab the car keys, you can guarantee someone else in the family beat you to it and to car’s no-where to be found.

There are a lot of valuable benefits to working from home, which make running your own business from your house so worthwhile, none more so than the ability it offers to give you a much stronger and valuable quality of life with those you care about most. But people don’t always hear about the ‘other side’ of running a home-based business – hope these insights now have helped give you a more rounded perspective.

You’ve made the decision you want to start a home-based business – you’re clear on all the reasons why you’re doing this, you’ve realised the disruption and inconvenience it could cause to your home life, asking your family to fit around a business run from home, but the benefits clearly outweigh the negatives, and so you’ve made the decision to ‘do it’.

Plus the idea of ‘being your own boss’ combined with the significant reason to increase your income, all give you the motivation to start your own business. OK, great decision – the decision’s made – great job! …now here’s where it all starts, what do you do? …you want to increase your income, give yourself and your family a better quality of life, have the fun and benefits of working from the comfort of your own home, BUT what are you actually going to do?

Before we look at ‘how’ you make money from home, and go into every detail on how we are going to create together a successful home-based business , let’s first look at the various things you can do from home, to make you money, in other words ‘what’ you could do to make money working from home, either part-time or full-time.

I have spent over 20 years helping people on how to successfully establish and run their own businesses from their homes, and I would say generally those home-based businesses drop into 5 key categories some of which are online (solely built over the internet), some are offline (built without using the internet), and some use a combination of online and offline (combination of internet and more traditional non-internet methods).

Those 5 Categories are:

Service-based Businesses (online & offline) – some examples of this would be child-minding, web development, writing, gardening, catering, etc – it’s a endless list. In fact if there’s something you’re good at, it can easily be turned into a service that people need and are willing to pay for.

MLM or Network Marketing (online and offline) Businesses – regardless of what your initial opinion is of this category (if you indeed ever had one on this category), there are literally thousands of very good companies to choose from. The key areas of product lines from the most successful MLM companies tend to be health care products, skin and body products, and communication services, but there are many other companies with new emerging products. You will need to research product lines and compensation plans to find a company that is a good match for you. Building a solid business through MLM generally requires both recruiting people into the business and selling products.

Affiliate Marketing Businesses (online) – similar in some ways to network marketing (above) in that you earn a commission for sales that you make. These programs are promoted primarily online (though you can promote offline if you choose). While some merchants offer a 2nd payment tier for recruiting new affiliates, the majority of your income is derived from sales. Becoming an Affiliate Marketer is one of the easiest and most popular ways to earn money online.

Product-based Businesses (online & offline) – these can considt of producing/sourcing a variety of products that enthuse you or you feel there is a market for, then selling those products through either/both online and offline methods. The products can be either ‘physical products’ – products that you can physically touch and handle such as soft toys, car accessories, health products, etc – or ‘digital products’ – products that are downloaded such as an MP3 audio file, ebooks or guides, training videos, programs and utilities. The key with all product-based businesses is to be able to identify what a market needs, develop it (or have it developed) and market it properly.

Blogging (online) – this is something that any marketer should consider in addition to whatever business model they choose – it is as much a marketing plan as it is a business model. That said, blogging can also serve as a stand-alone opportunity to work from home and earn a decent income. You can monetize (make money from) a blog with affiliate programs, by selling advertising or sponsorships, by creating and selling products to your readers, or even by participating in the paid-to-blog opportunities.

Lots of people have the idea of working their own business from home, but is it all it’s cracked up to be? Let’s consider now some of the ups and downs of your own home-based business.

Firstly, let’s look at the downside to having your own business based in your house…

1. Working from home means you will have intrusion into all elements of your home and family life; phones ringing, perhaps people calling at the front door, paperwork everyone, hogging computers, etc – whether you like it or not, or even think you can avoid it, you need to recognise right up front that your business and home life will be entwined once you run a business from your home.

2. Your family may not be that sympathetic to the fact you are trying to run a business from home. They won’t always allow you to have a quiet area to work – you will have to fight against TVs, people on the phone, toys, computer games, friends over for tea, and more – all this will be going on when you’re are trying to make that key sales call!

3. Other family members in the home will get fed and frustrated with you because you’re there but not really there. What I mean by this is they will see you around and so think it’s fine to ask you to do something, yet you may well be in the middle of a key business proposal or drafting a quote, yet they won’t understand that, thinking as you’re there why can’t you help them.

4. It’s sometimes hard to often get the motivation – when it’s you on your own working from home, with no work colleagues around you, it can be hard sometimes to find personal motivation to get ‘into gear’ workwise, and to really get stuck into your work.

5. Others will think because you are ‘at home’ then its absolutely OK just to pop in for a coffee, chat, catch-up on latest gossip, etc. Being at home doesn’t mean your not working, yet that can often be hard to get the ‘I’m working’ message across to others.

Yet, with all these minor ‘downs’ to running your business from home, the upside is very positive and hugely rewarding…

- Control of your own time, having time off when it suits you and working when it suits you.

- Highly cost effective, often offsetting many home costs to your home-based business.

- Quality of life is much better, allowing you to spend much more time with those you love.

- Dramatically reduced ‘travel time’ – no more long boring trips to work …you only have to walk across the house to wherever your ‘home office’ is, taking you minutes rather than hours.

- Greatly reducing stress levels and much better for relationships and overall well being.

I’ve spent 20+ years helping people start their own businesses working from home, and increase their incomes with their own home-based business – part-time and full time – and I can wholly endorse the huge ‘ups’ of working from home far outweigh the ‘downs’.

Now why anyone would want to live in Death Valley is beyond me but here but Albert Mussey Johnson decided to built his vacation home in Death Valley. It was supposedly built with the money from the gold mine that he had backed but in fact, there was no gold mine and so it was certainly not built with funds from one.

Walter Scott was a miner, a dreamer and apparently a scammer to boot. He convinced Mr. Johnson to invest in the gold mine in Death Valley. It was probably going along just fine (with Scott getting his money from the investment) until Mr. Johnson decided to visit. He thought a tour of the mine would be a good idea. It was hard to do since there wasn’t a mine to see.

Mr. Johnson and his wife decided that even though there wasn’t a mine in Death Valley they liked the area anyway. With that in mind they decided to build a vacation retreat. The retreat was named Death Valley Ranch but to those that were local and knew the story of Mr. Scott it was known as Scotty’s Castle.

The vacation retreat became a tourist attraction. The rich and famous came to see the castle built from the riches of the gold mine. Mr. Johnson never disputed the fact that the retreat was built with the money made from the gold mine. Probably a good thing for Mr. Scott or he would have been known for the liar he was.

Today there are tours of the castle for anyone that wants to see it. There are interactive displays, living history exhibits and other displays inside the house. There are guided tours available daily on the hour.

There is a second tour that you can take while at the castle. It is the tour of the underground area of the castle. It shows you the technology incorporated a the time to produce electricity and see the 1/4 mile underground tunnel system that runs under the house.

Thanks for the National Park Service the castle is maintained for people to visit. Technology from the past and present are both used in the lower level of the castle to keep it functioning as it should. You will enjoy the tour and the history of the castle.