Seven Home Based Business Ideas

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 28th, 2010

What kind of home based business should you try to start? After all, in these days when companies all over the world are down sizing or outsourcing, even the most highly educated and well trained workers may find themselves out of a job!

Used to be that if you got a job with a major company, or a state or local government job, that you were set for life. Handsome pensions, medical care benefits for yourself and family, union protection from unethical mean or desperate management, all of this and more helped to create a sense of security for American workers.

Now the worm has turned, and many well educated and well trained people find themselves at the mercy of bean counters and buyout artists, shady politicians trying to make their bones at the expense of the workforce, why a friend of mine who worked for a catholic church (and did a good job in my opinion) was sacked just the day before the Christmas holiday! The recent contract negotiations between the New York Mayor Bloomberg and the Transit Workers Union is another perfect example of why you should consider starting a home based business to protect your income, and your family's security.

You might say, " What have I got to offer?". Well everybody brings something to the table. Do you enjoy photography? Why for goodness sake, you can make some money on the side doing weddings, school events, even free lance photography for your local newspapers!

And by the way, do you know anything about Direct Tv and satellite dishes? Just that the digital signal is great and that you can get a free dvr for as litlle as $19.95 per month? Well then you can get a free affiliate account and make up to $105 for every deal you sign up. And there is no customer service or follow up required.

Ladies who like makeup? Well just sign up with Mary Kay, invite a few friends and colleagues over for a make up party, and before you know it, you can be raking in the dough! One of the wealthiest women in my home town is a Mary Kay rep. It's the magic of residual income, and the beauty of sharing in the revenue of everyone who you recruit to join the Mary Kay network.

But what about web based businesses? Is there a way that you can have products to sell, promotional materials, and an automated customer service solution where you can watch the money roll in and not have to know a thing about web hosting, shopping carts or web design? There sure is, and they provide a free ten part course, where I learned about just such an automated affiliate income system!

It's called firstpromotion, and it utilizes the ClickBank Marketplace to help you create a cash churning 24 hour a day residual income machine. You can customize the portal to fit your desired look, even to the point of deciding which categories or particular products you want to feature. They offer the option of having your portal served by them, or having a domain name hosted with them, or on your own web site.

Let's go back to the example of wedding photography. Utilizing the above referenced system, you can have a web portal based on your affiliate id that will pay you you! say you are assisting a wedding photographer, taking second shot, to gain experience and get your name out. Just have a business card with a link to your customized wedding portal, a phone # and your email, which you hand out at interviews, wedding reheasals, meetings, evan at lunch with colleagues and friends.

That's method # 1 to take your own skills and interests and turn them into income opportunities. It's a prime example of affiliate marketing, which is probably the main method work at home business entreupners use.

The products which are offered through the above income system, are generally downloadable digital products. But you can make some decent money selling real products as an affiliate. All you have to do is join Commission Junction, BeFree (they have merged now), ShareASale or Linkshare. They are affiliate marketin networks which offer you access to hundreds even thousands of legitimate real world merchants, all of whom offer ready made promotional materials with your id embedded.

However, you do need at least one website to qualify for the above affiliate programs. You can get a free site, or you can find cheap easy web hosting just to get you off the ground! Once you have your site you can use pay perclick advertising to promote the real life products available from CJ and Linkshare, as well as serving Adsense ads on your pages, to offset, and sometimes even profit from your google Adwords campaigns!

Just what is google Adwords? Well if you haven't heard, it is a fantastic easy and cost effective (if you are careful) method to get the word out about your product, affiliate product or any website you choose!

You write teny tiny clasifiied ads, and link to either your site, or an affiliate site that you have a relationship with, and you can watch the cash roll in on a massive passive income stream. It's not as easy as 1-2-3, but if you have a knack for writing copy that grips, and you have identified a good converting site, why by golly, you can literally be making, 10s, hundreds, even thousands of dollars a day using google adwords.