Whether you are already working and looking for additional income or are currently unemployed, the lure of a home-based business is undeniable. In what other workplace can you tumble out of bed, work on your own schedule, and have the freedom and flexibility to change the direction of your job at your discretion? There is a great deal to be said for working from home.

Choosing a Business

The most logical approach to starting a business at home is to choose something you are already trained to do or for which you have a talent. For the former office supervisor staying at home to raise children or care for a family member, the opportunities to share a talent for organization, paperwork processing, expediting and other office tasks are available at many levels. Consider offering your services as a typist, a billing service, answering service or bookkeeper. There are as many options as there are clients:

• If you are available to be out and about during the daytime, a personal assistant is just what many harried business people and professionals would gratefully welcome into their busy lives. Organizing paperwork, gathering data, researching information, and running the dozens of errands that many people find little time for can reap a tidy profit for the home-based worker.
• Are you patient with plenty of time to kill? Consider offering services such as grocery shopping, gift shopping, even taking vehicles through inspection or for repair. Think of the things that take the biggest chunk of time out of your own day and offer to do them for others for a fee.
• Are you good with children? Child care is an obvious home-based business, but what about tutoring? Are you reliable enough to ferry children to and from appointments when parents can’t make it? (Note: If you are considering working with children, you may need to gather personal recommendations from friends, as most parents are leery of leaving their children with strangers.)
• Do you like animals? Dog-walking is a going trade in urban areas. Pet-sitting, transporting animals to and from veterinary appointments or grooming sessions, or, if you’ve got some experience, grooming animals on-site might be your ticket.
• In rural areas where farms abound, replacement farm hands are hard to come by. Barn-sitters, milkers, field hands, and temporary workers of all sorts are in demand.

eBay, Anyone?

The online auction sites, headed by the financial monster, eBay, are a wonderful source of quick income if you are willing to put in the time to learn the ropes and are also willing to begin by failing. Stories about simple folk selling toast carved into religious icons and making a mint are legion. The reality is that you are probably going to fail the first few times you attempt an auction. It takes some experience to write advertising copy, which is what the auctions listings are. The old saying, though, that one man's trash is another man's treasure, holds true nowhere as much as on the auction sites. Follow these rules, and you have a good shot at either making some quick cash or finding a long-running source of income on the auction sites:

1. Spend some time watching auctions on whichever site you've chosen. Learn what sells and when, and at what price. Choose one or two items of the type you are thinking of offering, and keep track of their progress. If the seller relists the item because it hasn't sold, check the relisting for changes. Make note of what works and what doesn't.
2. If you are capable of producing something that other people want to buy, start small with one or two auctions. If your product sells, then you can increase the number of listings.
3. Don't give up too quickly. Like all retail markets, the online auctions have a cyclic nature. Think about where you would sell your items if you had a brick-and-mortar store, and during which season you would expect the majority of your sales.
4. Keep careful records of what you have sold and at what price. eBay sometimes makes mistakes.
5. Use the online cash transfer options. Paypal is owned by eBay, which is owned by Yahoo!, so it's a closed-circuit and reasonably safe. There will always be glitches, but you're less likely to be stiffed by a buyer if you have the cash transferred directly to an online paypal account than if you accept a personal check or money order.
6. Have a back-up plan. If this doesn't work out, what will you do next?

What to Avoid

If you are prone to believing in fairy tales, then the ads that promise hundreds of dollars in weekly income for stuffing envelopes or doing mailings are right up your alley. If you have enough sense to recognize something that is too good to be true (and isn’t!), then save your time and energy and avoid falling into the “easy way out” trap. The promises of wealth are real, but it’s not the home-based worker making the money; it’s the entrepreneur selling the pre-packaged business who is experiencing the financial windfall.

In addition:

• Avoid businesses that require traffic to and from your home. Your town will have ordinances governing what is and is not allowed in a residential neighborhood. Unless you are prepared to file for variances and risk additional taxes being levied, stick to services where your business can be conducted on-site at the client’s home or business location, by telephone, or via mail or computer.
• Avoid making assumptions about the market at which you are aiming. Urban centers can be wonderful areas in which to operate, but check to make sure the competition isn’t so great that you won’t stand a chance. Find out who is doing what you’re planning and how well they’re doing it. If you have to compete, make sure you offer something slightly different from what the others offer.
• Avoid complicating your life and your schedule to the point where you cannot be scrupulous about keeping appointments. Word-of-mouth is important to the small business. Don’t ruin yours by taking on more than you can handle or jumping into a business before you have worked out all the details.
• Avoid allowing your business to become too scattered. If you are offering a typing service, the fact that someone would also like you to organize their office doesn’t mean you need to add that service to your roster. You might want to try it as a one-shot experiment, but don’t change direction until you are sure you can handle the additional work and do it professionally.
• Avoid a business that is too labor-intensive. If growing your business means hiring additional workers, that’s a step in the right direction. If, on the other hand, you can only increase your business by increasing your own working hours beyond what is reasonable and sane, that may be a bad move. Many craft businesses fall into that category. If you are the only artisan in your business capable of making the goods, you will reach an income ceiling beyond which your business simply cannot rise.

When You're Ready to Begin

• There are many, many books available on the subject of starting a home business. Some offer surveys that help you decide what you are good at and what you will most likely enjoy doing. If you can’t find such titles in your local library, then make the tax-deductible investment and buy one or two.
• Make a business plan (forms are available in many of the books, or through your local college or businessmen’s association). As the famous saying goes: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!
• Get advice from a professional. Many local colleges offer short courses or programs for up-and-coming businesses.
• Get tax advice. Don’t risk losing what you’ve earned in taxes and penalties when a simple solution might be readily available.
• Talk to your friends, neighbors, family and anyone else who’s willing to listen. Not only will you gain insight into the kind of businesses that are in demand, but you will cement in your mind your motivation and desire to move forward with your project.
• GET STARTED! Put together a brochure, run an ad in the local paper, or post a sign at the supermarket or the gym. You have nothing to lose and so very much to gain!