Top 10 Success Factors - Your Roadmap for
Evaluating the Best Work From Home Businesses

Whether you're a mom wanting to earn a little income, a disenfranchised employee wanting out of the rat race, an aging adult concerned about retirement, whatever your reason...you're searching for a legitimate business that will produce income while working from home. The good news is that there are a lot of great, honest opportunities around. The question is, how to find them while sorting through the hundreds, even thousands of home-based businesses around.

1. Company Track Record and Stability
Find out about the company and what people are saying about it. The Internet is filled with bulletin boards and complete sites devoted to tracking the performance of home-based businesses and the "word on the street." Run a Dun & Bradstreet report on the company. Visit the company's own website. If the company is public, request annual reports, 10k reports, and other public domain info which in most cases can be accessed directly from the company's website. How long has the company been around? Be wary of those firms just starting out and promising "ground level" opportunities. The failure rate with these companies are high. It would be a terrible shame if you worked hard to build your business only to have the company go bankrupt on you. Minimize your risk by choosing an existing company with a proven track record.

2. Unique Consumable Products
Are the products exclusive? Can you get them anywhere else? Are the products high quality? Are they proprietary formulas or protected by patents? Are they consumable (i.e., do consumers use and use up the products)? I don't think I need to go into details about how hard it is to build a business with run-of-the-mill "me too" products. And if the products aren't consumed quickly, when can you expect the next orders?

3. Personal Production Requirement
What do you have to personally do for the business? Are you required to hold inventories, make deliveries, collect money? Keep in mind, you want to minimize the amount of distractions or busy work that doesn't directly grow your business. If a lot of your time is consumed in paperwork, deliveries, follow-up visits vs. finding new customers or increasing revenues, when will you have the time to grow your business?

4. Management Strength
Who are the key managers? What is their track record? How well do they work together? What are their strengths/weaknesses? Do they have experience running an entity? Be cautious with companies that have been started by former home-based business successes. Success in developing an organization doesn't always translate to success in running a complex corporation.

6. Reorder Rate and Attrition
Ask how often customers reorder. What is the average amount of the order? What is the attrition rate (or the percentage of customers that leave)? This is an clear indication of how stable the business is and how hard you're going to have to work at your business.

7. Investment
What is your initial investment? How much is needed to get the business started? Are you required to hold inventory? Are there monthly sales quotas? All of these factors have a bearing on the amount of cash tied up in the business.

8. Timing
Are there timing considerations? Are certain people granted special status because they're getting in early? Be wary about these types of opportunities because it's just a matter of time when the only people that are making any money are the ones that got in early. Eventually, the business stalls, and, perhaps even dies.

9. Compensation and Marketing Plan
Review the compensation and marketing plans in detail, but don't get caught up in the lingo - forced this, and binary that. Ask direct questions - What can I expect to make after a month/6 months/year? What is the average amount of money that I can earn at certain levels of performance? What is the range? How long does it take for people to achieve that level? What kind of effort does it take? Do you have breakaways? (Note: breakaways are common in the home-based businesses industry. In short, it penalizes you for finding people that outperform you. Although it's common, there are several businesses that don't believe in breakaways. They encourage you to find people that are better.)

10. Risk
What is the company's refund policy? Do they offer a no-questions-asked, money-back, satisfaction guarantee? And does that apply to your initial investment? Basically, you want to know what, if any, cash you place at risk if you decide not to do the business after a short period of time. Strong, legitimate companies happily refund your money. The others, well....don't.the company's refund policy? Do they offer a no-questions-asked, money-back, satisfaction guarantee? And does that apply to your initial investment? Basically, you want to know what, if any, cash you place at risk if you decide not to do the business after a short period of time. Strong, legitimate companies happily refund your money. The others, well....don't.