Is a free home-based business really free?

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Is it really a free home based business opportunity? Can I make money without paying anything at all? - Those are about the most often repeated queries put forward by people who are hoping to find a way to make money at home online. People who see an advertisement for a free home based business opportunity want to be reassured that "free" means it will never cost them a penny to run their home based business and that they can easily make money at home online without investing anything. I'm amazed they could even start to believe such a thing could be possible.

When people ask me the "is it really free?" type of question, I give them an honest answer. The answer to both question is usually "yes, but�" and they tend to be disappointed and feel that they've been tricked and that the advertisers lied when they offered a free home based business opportunity. It is true that fortunes can be made from a free home based business on the Internet and it can be easy to make money at home online but that is not the whole answer.

I am completely anti-hype but I don't think all internet advertising is as misleading as people often claim. If you consider the average internet advertisement, its wording is no worse than the standard "up to 50% off" claims we take for granted in offline advertising. We know that only a selected few items will actually be reduced by 50% and we don't feel at all cheated if we find a bargain with just 20% off its usual price. The thing is, people see things differently when they aresearching the Internet for ways to make money at home online, their expectations are far higher, they are more willing to believe improbable claims and their disappointment is, therefore, quick and keenly felt..

If you tried to tell the same people that they could make money at home with an offline business without incurring any costs, they would laugh you out of the auditorium. However, the Internet is a strange environment and people need to get acclimatised before they can recognise a legitimate way to make money at home online and to understand what is "free" in the context of a free home based business opportunity. After just a small amount of experience, people will realise that the free home based business opportunity is going to cost them money one way or another if they want to see profits accumulating at any significant rate. The ones who persevere also eventually realise that the cost of running a free home based business online is far less than the cost of running an offline business.

Let's think seriously about staring a business. First, how about an offline business. Suppose you decide you want to open a shop and sell dresses. Before you see any profit at all, you will have to pay out for premises (rent and taxes), services (fuel, water, phone), stock, insurance and advertising. If you are going to continue with your current employment while you build up the new business, you will also need to find staff and add wages to your list of expenses.

Now let's think about our free home based business opportunity on the Internet. You need to budget for a product (the equivalent of the stock of dresses), a website (the equivalent of the shop premises) and advertising. The list is shorter and now the Internet home based business opportunity is looking like a much better deal by comparison. The products can be obtained either free of charge or for a small price, the cost of a website is small change compared to the cost of premises, this will be a home based business, so you won't incur any additional service charges or insurance. An Internet home based business can be set up to run 24/7 with just a couple of hours work a day, so you can continue to earn money at your currently employment without having to spend anything on staff wages. That just leaves advertising costs.

Advertising your free home based business is the thing that's going to take up the biggest part of your budget. If you were opening your first shop on a limited budget, you would not be able to afford large premises in the prime part of the busiest shopping district where you would benefit from passing trade. You would have to be content with a small side street based shop and, to make customers aware of your business, you would have to advertise. In order to get a steady stream of visitors to your shop, you would need to advertise consistently and continuously. You would need to place your advertisements where they can reach your target market and you would need to make sure your advertisements appeal to your prospective customers so that they would be prepared to make the detour from the main street to check out your products.

The Internet works in the same way. Nobody will know about your new free home based business unless you tell them. You can have the best website in the whole word but, if you don't advertise it, it would be like keeping your shop door locked, the blinds closed and the lights off. No visitors means no potential sales and that inevitably means no profit. You have no advertise, simple as that. There are many free advertising resources available online for your home based business but you need to be selective as, although there are some very good free advertising resources, the results to be obtained from the free companies are not always as good as paid advertising. Another factor to consider is that using the free advertising resources can take up a lot of time and you need to place a value on your time and decide how it can be spent to best effect.

A free home based business opportunity does sound like the ideal thing for the numerous people who are looking for ways to make money at home online but are unwilling or unable to spend any money to do it. Many people leap into the first free home based business opportunity they see advertised and just as quickly give up when they find out they need to invest time and money in order to make money at home online with an Internet based home business. If these people would think things through, they would realise that starting an online home based business is far less costly than starting an offline business and the stage of getting into profit can come very early. Even if a free home based business it is not entirely free to run, being your own boss rather than being someone else's employee is priceless.

Elaine Currie has a Work At Home Directory at her Plug-In Profit Site to help everyone who wants to work at home: http://www.huntingvenus.com