4 Tips For Newbies in Setting Up a Home Based Internet Business

Over the past week, I have been researching home business opportunities, filtering out the ones that look like scams in an effort to figure out what this home business deal is really all about. Here are a few tips I stumbled upon for newbies who can get disoriented by the deluge of marketing material and links to home businesses that pop up. You can save yourself a lot of headache if you make an effort to research other people’s businesses that purport to help you start yours, before you buy into them.

At the very beginning, I clicked a Google link that appeared in my gmail interface. It took me to one of the many hundreds (maybe thousands or tens of thousands) of home businesses that advertise on the internet. A few years ago, I had signed up to someone’s email list for a product unrelated to marketing and subsequently kept getting emails about this person’s marketing strategies and where to go to buy in on them. I had accumulated about a hundred of these emails before I finally dumped them in the trash. It wasn’t that they weren’t useful – they very well might have been to other people who were at a different point in the process. I just wasn’t ready to fork over a hefty sum (to a poor grad student in debt). I had a gut feeling that whatever information I was getting access to was not going to help my specific situation, since I had no idea what the heck this is all about. But that’s who internet marketers are targeting the most – people who don’t know a thing about the huge world they’re about to dive into head first!

1. Stop! Don’t buy anything yet!

First, do not, I repeat, do not buy anything on impulse unless you are 100% sure about the details of what you are getting and how it is going to help you. This means newbies should not buy anything that you see right away! There are a lot of websites that have great sales pitches, but be warned that many of these are just pitches. Do not expect to buy a product and wake up the next morning with money. If you see these kinds of stories, treat them as such – stories that illustrate a point. Remember the movie “Princess Bride”? I remember a line that Wesley says: “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.” Setting up your own business may not necessarily be painful, but it is going to require much more than buying a product and reading a simple instruction manual. The manual will typically tell you to do things that involve a lot of work and skills or knowledge that you don’t have. If you had them, you would have no need for the product. Sales pitches are for selling.

2. Look for special deals on products that are the apple of your eye.

If and when you find a product that you think is genuine, even though it still cost a price, close the window. Sometimes an automated IM box pops up that will give you a discount. Remember to write down the name of the website first so that you can go back if that chat box didn’t pop up. Alternatively, if you sign up for free emails, sometimes the emails will contain a special offer, like a trial for a week or month for $1. It might not be the first email you receive so be patient.

3. Do research before you spend money. You’ll end up doing research anyway.

I discovered the world of affiliate marketing through one of the deals I signed up for. This is where most people make their internet riches. I didn’t pay $100 or $50 or even $10 to find out how to make money. I sort of stumbled on it in my many hours of research. Before buying a domain, hosting package, or any web resources that will definitely cost money, I recommend doing your own research using search engines and looking for terms that keep popping up, like affiliate marketing. If you persist enough, are motivated enough to do research until you learn what you need to (I did a significant amount in a week), you can get yourself going while investing a minimum amount of money. If you don’t have the time to figure some things out on your own, buying a “starter package” will speed up the process, but it won’t do all the legwork for you. Internet marketing “secrets” that you either pay for or discover yourself basically get you going in the right direction, skipping the hassle of paying others for hope in a pipedream that doesn’t deliver.

4. Find a good forum where people will share information.

They are hard to find, but there are good forums where like-minded people share information and give each other pointers on internet marketing. Some of these forums are contained in home business products that you have to buy in order to access them. Those are the better home business products. There are also free forums out there in cyberspace. Sometimes a forum might be spread across links on blogs. Again, doing a little legwork to find them will help you save time and effort that you would otherwise spend on fruitless ads or websites.

If you’re on a tight budget, spending a little time following footprints in your searches will help you learn what many people have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on in trial and error, depending on their “mentors” to guide them through this process. When you’re ready to fork over some cash for a mentor’s advice, remember that mentors spend most of their time and effort making their own money. Whatever advice they give you will probably benefit them as well. It won’t be a handheld process as you are led to believe in so many sales pitches.

(BUT, when you’re ready, investing a little money will cut out a lot of the “inventing the wheel” process. If you have some disposable income to invest, and you’re ready to follow through and commit to your business to turn that money into more disposable income, by all means, do it – it is money well spent.)