Things You'll Need:
- start-up money
- computer
- government booklets
- internet information
- plan for saving money
- people to join your business
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Step 1
With the advent of the Second Industrial Revolution, the Global Economy, the Recessions of 1990-91, 2001-07 and the so-called Great Recession of 2008-09, millions of Americans are attempting to harness the technology of the Computer Revolution and the Information Explosion are attempting to become self-employed to earn money in a world where the Jobless Society is engulfing the entire globe. Many Americans find the notion of self-employment an attractive alternative to the traditional wage-job while many other Americans see no other alternative to the need to make money in the face of 40 years of downsizing, outsourcing, mechanization and H1-B visa workers.
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Step 2
The first thing, paradoxically, that a person attempting become self-employed will need is MONEY. There are 4 ways to get money to finance the start-up of a home business- 1) a job, 2) a bank loan, 3) government grants and 4) saving money from your current income - whatever that source of income may be. People who lose their jobs and acquire unemployment benefits in its place or who work at a job that pays sub-standard wages should try to save a little money from that income by strict budgeting (to avoid the embarassment of asking family members for money). If you go to a bank to ask for a loan of, say $2000, BE WARNED! You must sit at the table of a bank's loan officer and present to him or her an envelope stuffed with $2,500 of your own money. This money is the collateral the bank will demand in advance in case your home business fails so that they can get back not only their principal that they loan to you but also any interest that you will owe them. It seems absurdly paradoxical that a bank will demand the same amount of money (and more) in advance before they loan you money- but that's how the system works. You can also try to obtain a government grant for money for your business but government grants are approved only for "firms" and not for one-man or one-woman operations. As a demonstration of this requirement the Small Business Administration (SBA) in Washington DC loans out business start-up money that averages $175,000 per business! The SBA also has a Small Loan Program of $50,000 or less but, again, if you are a lone entrepreneur, the odds of you getting federal monies to start-up your business are nil. For that reason, when you start up a home business, you will need to form a group of people starting up a business together and then go to court together to declare yourselves to be a business "firm."
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Step 3
Most home busineses and small shops will require permits and licenses to allow the entrepreneur to operate the business. To find out what is required, contact your state government for brochures and internet print-outs that will inform you of the requirements and procedures to obtain these permits and licenses. BE WARNED! These permits and licenses are not free and may cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. You mightr even be required to study for a state license, i.e. selling health, accident and life insurance, working as a mortgage broker, selling as a real estate agent. You will then have to buy study books (about $100), pay for a required training class (about $100) and then pay for (about $100) and sit for and pass a licensing examination.
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Step 4
Once you are ready, alone or with partners, to start-up your enterprise you will encounter endless and relentlessly nagging logistical problems, i.e. finding a workplace, workplace overhead costs, advertising costs, hiring & paying of employees, and telephone bills. Without advertsing your business will sink to the bottom of the ocean. If your business loses its telephone line - for want of paying the telephone company - your business will come to a screeching halt. The lion's share of the money that you save to get your business up and running will go to advertising costs and the business-telephone bill in the early-going of your business. These expenditures are the 2 critical payments that must be made to keep your business running in its early days. Any income that you make in your first few months of business activity should go first and foremost to paying for advertising and the phone bill. Worry about profits later.
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Step 5
Well before you start-up your business you must do throrough reserach on exactly what it is you want to do. Do you want to sell nutritional supplments on-line? Do you want to sell financial plans to people in their homes? Do you want to sell items to people in Mexico, or Germany, or the Philippines, or Russia? Do you want to sell health and accident insurance? Do you want to sell life insurance? Do you want to be an insurance broker? Do you want to run a translation bureau. Do you want work at-home as medical biller and coder? To start with choose a service or product to sell that you know something about in a field that interests you. If you are, for example, a laid-off hospital technician it would be better to sell vitamin pills on-line than, say, vaccum-cleaners in a client's house. Once you choose a service or product you must do research to find out if that market, in your home town, is saturated with competitors. If every household on your block is selling vitamin pills on-line then you are going to have a tough time earning money. Contact government agencies, the Better Business Bureau and internet sources to find about the potential of a market as well as to steer clear of scams, frauds, Ponzi Schemes, and Multi-Level Marketing frauds so should you attempt to obtain a "sponsoring" company to help you with your home business. Such phony outfits will gleefully tell you that there is a "great market" out there for you without telling you that selling over-priced goods and services, in their behalf, will kill your business in 2 weeks.
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Step 6
Starting up a home business will take many months, even years before you start earning decent money. If you have a "day job"- try to keep it. If you are laid-off or fired from your day job- apply for unemployment benefits right away. Whether working or not you need to persistently budget your household expenses so you always have some cash-on-hand to maintain your struggling home business. Again, in the early going, there are two crucial expenditures that must be financed- 1) the phone bill, and 2) advertising expenses. Potential customers must be able to get through to you on the phone or they will ditch you for a competitor. Advertising must go out every week via fliers, business cards, phone calls and internet ads to make sure that potential customers and clients know about you. Buy a customer lists from companies who research and print such lists to avoid calling anyone customer too often in a certain time period. Remember- an angry customer is an ex-customer!
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Step 7
As hard as it sounds, starting up two or even three businesses together in as short a time as you can makes economic sense in a world where job destruction is PERMANENT. Permanent job destruction means endless recurrent recessions which are sure to kill off many businesses. If you have 2 or even 3 home businesses running concurrently you may be able to survive one business' failure by relying on the other two enterprises. For example if you sell vitamins on-line, sell health-insurance in people's homes, and translate documents from Spanish to English at your residence - if the vitamin sales plummet you can put more time and work into insurance and translation. Speaking of translation - learning another language - most likely Spanish - is indispensable. The United States is quickly becoming a bi-lingual country. In the future the person most in demand to sell services and goods will be bi-lingual If you speak only English- that's not enough. If you speak only Spanish - that's not enough. But if you speak BOTH English and Spanish then that ability improves your chances to earn money.
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Step 8
Finally, in this Brave New World of economic upheaval- opportunism is a desirable trait. Offer your services to people ON-THE-SPOT as you meet and greet them in public venues, i.e. fast-food restaurants, public libraries, office lobbies, police stations, courtroom hallways, department stores, supermarkets, doctors' offices, dentists' offices,
lawyer's offices, real estate officers, wherever. You might net a $10 by sitting down with your customer or client at a table at McDonalds or at the public library to do some quick work for them and get paid cash- in-hand. Indeed, the "Ten Dollar Opportunist" is the wave of the future.
GOOD LUCK IN EARNING MONEY IN OUR NEW GLOBAL ECONOMY!
