I recently posted about things to consider before you start so you should really check that out as well.

But let’s look at 10 ways people are making money on line.

1: Affiliate Marketing

This is where you promote other company’s products and services on your website. When a sale is made, you get a commission on that sale. You’re going to need to be able to generate your own traffic, write about the products in a way that convinces people that are worthwhile, but retains your credibility. You’ll need to also learn a bit out PPC (pay per click) marketing.

2: Blogging Blogging

A blog is a website filled with articles, reviews, stories, anecdotes and journal-style writing. I’m sure you’ve visited many. You’ll need to build traffic (people coming to your site) and then you can sell advertising or incorporate affiliate marketing on a blog to earn money. You’ll need to be able to write in a way that people find interesting, understand social networking (Facebook, etc) affiliate marketing (see above) and web marketing.

3: eBay & Auction Selling

This is where you buy and sell products on an online marketplace like Ebay, Amazon Auctions, or Craigslist. For example, you spot bargains, buy them and sell them on for a profit. You can also accumulate stuff in the real world from your neighborhood. Now you know why people arrive at yard sales at 8am. You can sell used goods, buy goods wholesale, or use a drop-shipping service. The Ebay learning service is a great resource.

4: Internet Research Business

If you’ve been involved in research and or libraries you can provide a service to companies doing internet research. Think about law firms  and even private investigators here! You’ll take your research skills and add customer service to undertake this top 10 home based business opportunity online

5: E-Commerce

You’re going to take on Amazon! Selling products or a technology-based service on your own website. be careful as this is arguably the most difficult one of all and where many of the biggest failures have occurred. You’re going to need just about every web based skill imaginable. These are the most risky Internet home based businesses.

6: Arts & Crafts

If you have a skill and a passion for creating your own arts and crafts, the web is the perfect place for you to display them. Alongside your creative talents, you’ll need to think about photography (pictures are important here) sales and e-commerce.

7: Freelance Services

Why not use your skills in administrative work, copy writing, photography, programming, etc. You’ll bill at an hourly rate. One of our members started on the administrative route and became so overloaded that she hired a friend, and another, and another…. She now runs the relationship side and farms out the admin work to her team. Once again your sales relationship management and networking skills will be key.

8: Recruiting

Use your network and professional experience to create a resource for companies to hire people. You get a fee  when each hire is made. Focus on your specialized area – a niche. You are going to need sales, relationship building and networking skills to make this a success.

9: Consulting

We have two consulting businesses. You’re again going to take your skills and experience and sell them on a contract base. Don’t underestimate sign off times for big companies. Relationship management, sales, customer service and presentations skills are critical.

10: Tech support

Small businesses can’t afford full time tech support for their PC’s, Mac’s and networks. Take your skills in this area and start a virtual support business. you can either negotiate contracts or hourly rates. There’s a huge demand for this. In addition to your tech skills you’re going to need patience by the truck load (but you know that!) and relationship and sales skills.

There you have it, the top 10 home based business opportunities online, complete with the skills you need. At We Dared To Dream we can help you work out which is best for you and take you step by step till you’re making money.

You’ve probably noticed that there are many websites promising you instant wealth, guaranteed six figure monthly income and all from your sofa in your pyjamas for 2 hours of work per day.

It sounds great! Pay them some money and now what? Here’s the first of two parts showing you how you can make money.

We’ve built several Internet businesses, we’ve been backed by VC’s and we’ve made real money. So let’s get the good news out of the way first.

You can make money on line from home. We do it, you can too. In my next post I’ll show you ten great ways to make money. But check out these 5 tips first – it’s important.

In fact, you can make a lot of money and you can have a lifestyle that will be the envy of your friends and neighbors. One of the weirdest things Rob and I experience is when we try and explain our business to non web savvy people at parties. We get these glazed over looks. They love the idea, but have no ability to comprehend how it’s possible. But they are fascinated… and jealous!

Check out these 5 tips first

1. To start Internet based home businesses and make money you’re going to have to do some hard work. Your revenue will not grow to great heights over night. Most people significantly under estimate the time it takes to build any business.  That’s because they’ve read the success stories and are optimists at heart. We all want to believe.
2. You’re going to have to learn some new skills. You’ll need to cover the basics of html, SEO (search engine optimization), social media marketing, website marketing, niche marketing and traditional marketing and sales.
3. Don’t give up your day job – you can start your on line business in a few hours a day and you’ll need the ongoing revenue from that other job.
4. Develop a realistic approach that factors in how much time you’ll spend on your new web business.
5. Create a financial plan that does not have you earning $100k per month after 12 weeks! You’ll thank us for this as it will stop you becoming quickly disappointed help you plan out the next year of your own personal cash

Don’t despair though. At We Dared To Dream we help people with all of the above and the planning and finances of your business. our goal is to make you successful as quickly as possible.

I’ll show you the ten best Internet based home businesses in my next post!

Over the past two years we have developed the “We Dared To Dream” coaching club, step by step, following our own principles.

It’s been quite a journey that I guess started when the two of us were introduced by a business colleague in 2003.

We have some very exciting news…

A few weeks ago we decided to seek feedback on our Coaching Club. We wanted to know how we could improve.

We contacted leading business professors at the top 3 business schools in the US and asked them for their feedback and their critique on the Coaching Club.

We reached out to the very best.

• Stanford Business School
• Kellogg School of Management
• Chicago Booth School of Business

We just got off the phone and exchange emails with the professors and their feedback was consistent and specific.

Let’s talk about Professor of Marketing – Michaela Draganska at Stanford.

“The brilliance of Rob & Angelique’s system is that they took their amazing experiences, the best and latest thinking and turned it into an easy to follow plan that anyone can follow to start their own business.”

“Their personal coaching is the key and I don’t care if you’re starting on line marketing or a local store. You’re more likely to succeed with We Dared To Dream.”

Professor of Management & Strategy – Shane Greenstein at Kellogg continued:

“We see people launching into new businesses with no support, systems or even ideas. Rob and Angelique are successes on their own.”

“Their combination of coaching and a step-by-step approach dramatically increases the chances of success.”

and if that was not enough, Professor of Economics – Brent Neiman at the Chicago Booth School of Business echoed:

“Starting your own business can be daunting. Rob and Angelique’s approach understands this.”

“You will be able to move step by step whilst receiving support provided by superb mentors. Your chances of success just increased.”

That felt good!

Of course we were thrilled to read and hear their comments. We’ve put a great deal of work into building the Coaching Club.

If you’re starting your own business, looking to work at home, or simply want to increase your income, we couldn’t have said it better. We can increase the chances of your success.

And staying personal, let me embarrass Angelique in public.

Well done partner! It’s been a rewarding, exciting and fun six years.
Rob

When you start your own business, even when you’re working at home, you need to think about insurance. We’ll show you what you really need.

We’ve put some guidelines together for you. We’ll cover what you legally have to get and what you should consider as you take your decisions.

Here are two golden rules:

• Insurance is all about covering reasonable risk. It’s not about trying to think of the most obscure possibilities.
• Insurance is about protecting yourself against calamity and disaster, so don’t try and insure for minor events. You’ll lose money.

So what Small Business Owner insurance  should you get?

1. Workers Compensation (often called Workers comp).If you plan on hiring anyone this is a legal requirement in all states except Texas. It basically covers you for injuries to your staff. You as an owner, don’t need this and it also not necessary for contractors and volunteers.
2. General liability – Covers legal expenses for claims of negligence that relate to injury or property damage. From my perspective, these are the two main insurance policies. Now there are others you may want to consider.
3. Criminal insurance - This is covering you for theft of equipment and inventory, employee embezzlement , vandalism. We’ve never used this type of insurance, mainly because most of our businesses have been built around IP 9intellectual property) rather than inventory and physical goods.
4. Internet business insurance - Insurance companies have tried to sell this to us endlessly, but we’ve resisted in most cases. You’re covering yourself against hackers, viruses, electronic copyright infringement, etc.
5. Home based business insurance – Be careful if you’re working out of home because your home owners policy does not cover your business. In our experience general liability insurance and workers comp covers most of what you’ll need here.
6. Key man insurance - At Rob’s first company the venture investor insisted that this was taken out to cover him. the idea is that a persons death or illness will critically damage the company. It’s an unusual policy for small businesses at an early stage as you are your own key person!  it seems to be more a venture investor requirement.
7. Malpractice insurance - Generally taken by professionals such as doctor’s and accountants
8. Others - There is a variety of other policies from the obvious  commercial auto insurance through to executive kidnapping. Yeah, when I was running global marketing for a multi billion dollar business, I sat in hotel bars in Latin America with other execs and this was a frequent topic of discussion.

Different businesses have different needs. if you’re dealing with dangerous manufacturing equipment, you have a different risk profile to the person working on their computer at home.

We wanted to show you what’s available. Ultimately you need to decide the best small business owner insurance for you.

Let’s explode that myth right away. The best plans are concise, focused and practical – and not hard to write. OK?

I’ve also put together many tips on business plans in our start up guide. It’s totally free – you’ll find them in the section on business planning! You can get it right here.

Your business plan is one of the foundations of your success. A good plan will help you stay focused, manage your business, raise cash and avoid critical mistakes.

Remember that most business plans or for one year. It’s hard to predict 3 years out, particularly when you’re just starting your business.

So let’s look at business plan template free, that you’ll find really useful. I’ve created a series of areas that you’ll need to fill out. You’ll go step by step and be surprised how easy it really is.

1. Table of contents – You’ll fill this out last of all
2. Executive summary – Your plan on a single page. if you’re going to ask for a loan or an investment this should be the first thing they will read. So make it attractive to read, be enthusiastic, but not overly optimistic. You should write this when you’ve completed the
3. Description – What is your business, it’s products and service? What are your goals over the next year and how are you going to achieve them? We recommend three goals, not a laundry list! Finally, what are the keys to your success?
4. The market – Your market and competition. It’s not just about your business. You need to think about the environment in which you’ll be working. The best plans have estimates of size of the market and their competitors, including a brief summary of the strengths and weaknesses of each major competitor.
5. The consumer – Who are they and what are they like(target). What do they want and why are you relevant (product benefits)? How will you get your product to them (distribution)?
6. Operations – This should cover your supply chain and employees. Identify the risks you foresee.
7. Financials – Most investors skip straight to this section. Ultimately, there are two documents you need. First, there are revenue and cost assumptions that will yield profitability. Second is a cash flow analysis that will show how much cash you need for the period.

I looked at one template and it was 31 pages of different sections. It would take you months to complete and you’d have ended up with something bigger and more complex than the plans Rob developed when he ran a multi billion dollar business.

One of the main reasons for investing the time in preparing a thoughtful business plan is that you’ll get to understand your business, your market and the challenges ahead. That’s important, it’s not just a chore!

A well focused, concise plan is easier to you to work with and will be easier for potential investors as well. This is your business plan template free sample.

Let me know if you have any questions.

So let me surprise you and say this is not going to be about banks, loans, credit lines, venture capital, seed money, angels or anything else like that.

We need to get to the nuts and bolts of financing your own business. OK?

Here are our 4 rules of finance for your own business:

1) Get your own finances under control

If your personal situation is not in order, it’s unlikely you’ll manage your business finances any better. Starting your own business will incur some costs. So look at your personal expenditure and make sure that you’re only spending what you need. We have tools to help you do this.

It’s amazing how much you can save and how much fun it can to do it. Tightening your belt and being frugal is a skill you should learn. There’s nothing wrong with it!

Now look at your assets. Stock, bank balances, etc. This will help you understand how much you can afford to invest in your new business. Each month you save money, add it to the pot.

This is finance in business at the micro end, but it’s just as important!

2) Don’t give up your current job

You do not need to give up your job if you’re thinking about starting your own business. It’s probably your main source of income at the moment and you’ll need it as long as you can. We call this “moonlighting” and it’s done by most people who start their own business.

What you don’t want to do is give up the day job and then realize that your idea does not work! That’s a disaster, particularly at the moment, in the current economic mess.

3) Make smart plans

As you develop your business idea you’ll create your first business plan. Part of this plan will be an assessment of how much cash you need. The smart plan also looks at what we call cash flow.

One of the mistakes people make is to just think of the cash they need to launch or start your business. You will need a reserve of cash until you are profitable. So plan for the equipment and start up expenses and then plan for the losses you’ll incur before you are cash flow positive.

4) Spend wisely

It drives Angelique and I nuts when we walk into a new business and see the owner with expensive office furniture, nice offices and all that stuff. Don’t fall into this trap.

Spend money on what you need and not what you want. Cash is your life blood. Don’t throw it away on excesses. You won’t be impressing anyone. Once you’re profitable, there will be time for perks.

Finance in business starts with getting the first things right. As we move forwards we will cover other issues for you.

You’ve been bitten by the start up bug. You want to start out on your own… It just feels daunting and you’re not sure where to start or what to do. It’s strange how many people never get past that point. What’s even stranger is that when you burst through that obstacle it suddenly seems to obvious!

Here’s a tip that we share with our members and once they’ve thought about it, everything seems so much easier.

Move step by step!

Huh? I can hear you thinking. But check this out. If you want to take a long journey and you use Google maps for directions. You don’t get one direction from the start point to the destination. You get a series of turns, roads, junctions and directions.

It’s the same thing with starting a business. You can break it down into easy to manage steps that will have you wondering why you didn’t start ages ago.

If you are thinking about business own start up then check out these steps. It’s this easy!

Here are four things you’ll need to do before your launch and you won’t even give up your day job.

1) Develop and test an idea

2) Create a business plan

3) Establish your cash needs

4) Set Up For Launch

Already we have broken your journey down into four steps. Now we look at each of these and break them down into smaller steps. Just like that Google road map!

So lets look at the first area – your idea. I am assuming that you have one. No worries if you don’t, that’s OK as well. We help people find ideas that work for them.

We are going to break the idea phase into smaller steps

a) Know yourself

We help people understand their own skills, their experience and their personal objectives for the business. These should be both personal and financial. If you don’t know yourself, how can you know if a business idea is right for you?

b) List ideas

Many people have one idea. However, we push members to think of quite a few because this often helps you look differently at your original idea. It also throws up surprises! Get your friends and family yo to help you. We have a range of tools that can help you do this – it’s quite fun.

c) Narrow your list

You should look at each of your ideas and see how it works with your skills, experience and personals goals that you outlined in one. After all, if the idea isn’t a good fit with yourself, it’s probably not going to be a success.

Not too difficult so far? You’d be amazed how many people miss these steps and get bitten at a later date!

d) Test your idea

You’re going to spend some time researching the validity of your ideas. You’ll look at it from several angles that include a competitor perspective, a customer viewpoint and also resources and finance. What will you need and how much will it cost to set up your idea?

Don’t worry – this is a quick check to try and find obvious holes in your idea. We’ll get more rigorous at the business plan phase.

You’re about to embark on your business own start. Beginning a business seems like a huge challenge, but when you break it down into manageable chunks and then move step by step, the whole thing becomes much simpler.

Good luck!

Can you indulge me for just a moment? I want to play at being the contrarian. Let’s swim against the stream and be a bit rebellious. I need to have a rant for a moment.

If you visit a site that claims to tell you the top small business opportunities you should run a mile or at least be very careful. These lists are worthless and I’ll show you why.

Lets talk about the best way to find the right opportunity for you! Opportunities that match your experience, ideas that fit with your skills. Businesses that you can afford and that you’d actually like to do.

So what if we could talk about you for a moment and what you’d like to do. What if we could take inventory of your experience, your interests, your skills and your passion and come up with something that each day you’ll get out of bed and be excited to be a part of. Well, that’s what Rob and I are interested in.

So let’s look at three hilarious top 10 businesses lists I’ve seen recently.

My mouth dropped as I read that the number two franchise is McDonald’s. Now I’m not saying anything against the Golden Arches. However, there’s one little catch here. You’ll need somewhere between $1-2 million dollars to play. That’s great if you have millions of dollars, but most of the people we meet, don’t have that type of money.

Next up is a top 10 small businesses list that claims that shoe washing is the best idea for stay at home moms. The idea is that you wash people’s training shoes for them with chemicals that make them fresh. Here’s a basic question for yourself. How much would you pay to have your sneakers cleaned? $5, no? Ok, $10, how about $25, I doubt it. They claim that you’ll be earning handsome money! This is their number one idea!

And finally, another Top 10 list gave its best idea as “The internet”. Their advice is to “Just stick up a web site and watch the cash roll in.” Of course, it’s that easy! That makes me so mad.

If you are looking for a list of top 10 businesses ask yourself why. Rob and I have a strong point of view that your best idea will be based upon

Your experience

Your skills

Your passion

It’s not about top 10 businesses lists at all. It’s all about you!

So here are some tips. We’re going to cover what it takes to be successful working at home? We’ll also show you the steps you should take to get started.

So what do you need to work at home?

1. Self starter – You’ll need to be a self starter as there’s nobody to chase you. One of the biggest risks faced by the person working at home is putting stuff off.
2. Stay focused – One of the dangers we see is people drifting along getting nothing done. the Internet is at your fingertips, the TV may be in the same room, there are 1001 distractions… The opposite here is that it’s very easy when you work at home, to never stop. You need to put time fences round your work and not burn out.
3. Task oriented – Start each week and each day with a list of things you’re going to accomplish. You’ll feel great when they are done. Angelique and I use an online service called Toodledo. We have iPhones and it even syncs with them.
4. Take breaks – I don’t mean browse the web. Get out of the house and do something. I jump on my mountain bike most days and go off into the hills for an hour. Angelique climbs. I also go running. Taking an exercise break in the daylight makes a huge difference to how you feel and how effective you are.
5. The rule – it’s not how long you work that counts, it’s what you get done!

Five steps to starting

1. Mark out your territory. If you can, have a separate space where you work. A place where the kids, family or whoever, won’t be messing about and messing up your thinking, papers or files. It’s important that even with home work jobs you feel like you’re at work.
2. Get your technology sorted.  Angelique and I use Macs because they seem to always work and AppleCare solves all our issues really quickly. I have a wireless network and everything is on all the time. PC’s are cheaper, but my experience is that you pay for that in the long term with down time. Either way, you don’t want to be down. It’s wasting time, money and you look like an amateur to your customers.
3. Agree the rules – if you have kids and a family you need a contract with them. No interruptions. You cannot be fixing the PlayStation, making snacks, running errands, etc. it just does not work and it leads to frustrations on both sides. My experience with others shows that this is one of the biggest downfalls.
4. Zoning – Most people live in residential spaces that are zoned. This is the city ensuring the development and use of space does not go crazy. For most home based jobs you should be OK. But check it out, you’re better off finding out now. Type planning and your city name into Google and you’re there! Simple.
5. Tax – There are real tax benefits to working at home. At this stage my advice is for you to collect all your receipts. We’ll cover this is more detail later.

We love home work jobs and we’ve made a success out of doing it. You can too!

I’ve worked in many corporate offices and hated most of them. The day started with commutes that ranged from 30-75 minutes each way. Before I had my own parking space, I’d spend ages and real money parking my car. In fact there are people I used to work with paying over $500 per month! When I finally arrived at the church of work I was greeted by windows that never opened, AC that seemed solely designed to spread germs, fluorescent lights that gave us headaches. Don’t forget the color scheme. Beige, more, beige, brown and magnolia. Sounds more like a law firm!

The kitchen space was either a health hazard, a war zone, or both, as people fought over powdered milk and nasty cold coffee. Then there was the office politics, the gossiping and the interminable meetings. Don’t even get me started on my PC and tech support. I could go on, but you know what I mean. The only office I loved was built in an old house in London. Of course, the reason was obvious, it felt like I was working at home.

Do you know something?

My home based business work has been very different. The commute involves a gentle walk to the kitchen which on a bad day, involving severe kid congestion, can last about 2 minutes. There are special treats. Yep, I can be a dad who takes his kids to school. It’s a 5 minute drive as they are both dropped off.

I once calculated that if I worked for 50 weeks a year, my home based business was saving me 2 hours a day commuting and an hour a day from needless meetings. Here’s the point. I could take about 14 weeks extra vacation a year and still get more done. Now that’s a thought!

This is not my office! The windows are open, the music will often be on and I can work at my pace. At 9am it’s freshly ground (Peet’s) coffee, toast and marmalade. Lunch is a sandwich that is a creation that’s a culinary pleasure rather than something that looked like it crawled onto my desk having escaped from the back of the office fridge. Water is purified and from the tap and 45 seconds from my desk – round trip.

Technology at home involves Skype, wireless headphones, Mac and music. The whole house is wireless. It just works and it’s a pleasure rather than a frustration.

So many women work at home and they’re smart. Home based business is not just for the inhabitants of Venus!

The point is that your home based business work experiences can be a huge benefit rather then a constant source of pain and frustration. There’s a reason that millions are changing and for most, they’ll never go back!

Funny story, my neighbors were confused at first. Where do you work? What’s your job? They are so, so envious as they leave at the crack of dawn for their life on the free way slow lane.

Be excited about working at home. Get off that treadmill for ever!

What do you think?