Home bases businesses are as varied as their are people working them and they range from excellent business opportunities to real rip offs that have as their only intent of making the originator rich. So, with all the options and all of the pitfalls out there how do you decide which one will work for you, your situation and your family? How do you decide which one is the one that will allow you to make money and have fun while you do it? Here are some tips that might help in making your decision.

First, home based businesses are a valid work/business option for the average American family that can’t afford to begin a business the old fashioned way. The cost of beginning a business the traditional way can cost thousands or even millions in start up money while starting a home based business can be very reasonable ranging from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars.

To begin your process of determining your best home based business options start by getting a pad and pen and begin to write down things about which you are passionate. What are your hobbies, what are the things you like to do, what are the things that you are now invested in with your money, time and resources, what are the things you like to talk about the most? When you have your list completed begin to prioritize them. These are going to be a basis for deciding what you want to do for a home based business.

There are a lot of different ways to make money from home. You can work for your current or previous employer on a contract or consulting basis which is generally called “telecommuting” or you can find a business that you own and run that pays you for some kind of activity. Basically in most businesses you trade time for money. In a home based business you can find positions that will trade time for money or you can find businesses that give you money for your results. Some examples of home based businesses are Affiliate Marketing Businesses, Direct Sales Businesses, Multi Level Marketing Businesses, Network Marketing Businesses and Webstore businesses. Each of these have different values and benefits as well as start up costs and ongoing operational costs.

You can go to a seminar to find out how to set up a website and start an affiliate marketing business where you have your own website and drive traffic through your site to some other site and when the customer buys something from that site you get paid a commission. People often end up spending several thousands of dollars for this approach but it can be very lucrative. Direct sales businesses generally have a product that you are responsible for selling to your friends, neighbors and through website traffic. The entry point in this business varies from product line and company to other product lines and companies. As you can see each business model is different and has a different cost associated with it.

After you have created your passion/interest lists and you now know the types of home based business models you need to know why you want to develop a home bases business. It might be to eliminate debt, to pay for a child’s education, to be able to survive the current economic downturn or any number of other reasons but regardless of your reason why, you must know your why. It will keep you going when times are hard and you are not getting the results you want or need.

When I went through this process I found that my wife and I found that we needed and wanted to pay off our credit card debt and to pay off our house. We wanted to be able to continue to fund our daughter’s college education, we want to travel and we want to provide for our financial future. We found that among our passions was shopping and saving. I love to negotiate and she loves the result of my negotiating. We know about coupons, discount shopping sites and all of the ways to get money back when you shop.

When we evaluated all of the options we found a program that helped us to save money when we shop and helps us make money. With this program we were able to make money without having to recruit others (which many home based business models are based on), there was a product that had intrinsic value and the entry point was very low. Basically it met all of our interests and requirements and the return on our investment of time and money could be substantial. The company had a complete, easy to follow marketing plan and there was a proven track record that the program could work when you worked it the right way.

The internet is among your best resources for researching home based business opportunities but don’t be fooled because there are a few people out there that have something bad to say about a person involved in the business or the organization itself. Everyone is going to make some enemies along the way. Ask the person to whom you speak for references. Ask for people that have done the business for a while and have been successful. Ask for someone that is just starting out and ask them why they choose this business model. Review the pay plan. Can you make money with it? Does it reward you for the things you are good at doing and want to do? If you hate sales and you are going to have to do a lot of sales this is probably not the business for you. If it’s mainly data input or sitting in front of a computer all day and you are a people person this is likely not the business for you. But, once you have found the one that fits your interests, your passion and you know your why you are in a position to be very successful with a home based business.

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

Millions of people, all over the country, dream of starting their own business from home, but this process is a long and trying one, and there is no guarantee that it will work out at the end of the day. So, where to begin learning about how to start a home base business? You begin by determining what kind of skills you have that would enable you to make profits from them. Do you have special qualifications such as accounting certifications, or do you simply want to sell products online? Do you want to become a freelance writer, or would you like to make a living visiting patients as a physiotherapist? Once you have determined what it is you are going to do, you can then move on to the finer points of starting a home based business.Researching your New BusinessBefore you can quit your job and begin working from home, you will need to make sure that you know exactly what type of business you will be running and what you will need to do to run it properly. You can start out with the location of the business; is it a viable option to run the business from home? Do you have enough space to set up an office and will you need to accommodate clients in your home office? If there is not enough space within your home, you might want to consider hiring a separate office that will meet all of your business-related needs.The next factor that you will need to consider is what you are going to be selling. Selling services, instead of products, means that you will not need storage space, and you might not need to invest a lot of capital into the startup.Saving the Capital to start your own BusinessStarting your own business from home can be a very exciting prospect, but you should not convince yourself that you will be making tons of money within the first few days; in fact, it might take up to six months to be able to support yourself on the profits of a new business, and you will need to make sure that you have enough capital to get through the leaner months. During the first six months, you will not only need to have enough capital to pay your personal bills; you will also need enough capital to run your business during this time, and this will take some planning.Advertising and Expanding your BusinessIt is important not to get over excited once your business starts bringing in profits, especially when you begin thinking about advertising and expanding your business. Many startup businesses fail because they spend too much, too quickly on expanding and advertising their business. Although these are integral aspects to consider, especially if you want to grow your business and increase your profits, but you need to make sure that you take a sufficient amount of time to determine whether it is the right time to widen the marketing budget and expand only when your company is ready to take on the extra expense of this process.Learning how to start a home base business is not difficult; you simply need to be prepared for the task ahead, and this comes with a lot of research, sufficient capital and the dedication to work long and hard to make your dreams come true.