What Does Working At Home Actually Mean?

You may think that working at home means being hired from a company to sit at a computer and type for them. You may believe that someone is going to Fed Ex you 5000 copies of a flyer to literally "stuff" into 5000 envelopes. You may even believe that someone will pay you to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. If you believe any of these stories, you must stop. These are not true. If they were, then everyone would be doing it. Please, for just one minute think about these things and ask how in the world they could possibly be true? I bet you are having a hard time believing it. That's because you know deep down that it's not true. So what is true then? What does working at home really mean then? Continue reading and I will tell you.

First of all, you will really be working from your home, so I'm sure that you will be happy about that. Second of all, do not expect to be paid on an hourly or salary basis, it's probably not going to happen. These work at home jobs are usually on a commission only basis. So what does this mean exactly?

You will join up with a company to be a distributor of either an actual tangible product or an informational product or service. There is usually a fee to do this. I'll explain more about the fee later. After you sign up you will get all the details that you need to market for this company. Most work at home and business opportunities are going to be marketable on and off the internet. However, you will see that most are geared towards the internet. Let's run with that then.

Along with your information you will probably receive a self-replicated webpage to help market the product. What is a self-replicated webpage? Basically, it is a webpage that looks exactly like the one you went to to sign up originally. This webpage will have your unique distributor number attached to the URL. This way the owners of the company can keep track of all of your sales.

Now that you know what you will have to work with, let's get back to the fee. Please don't let a fee scare you. So many people write to me saying that they don't want to start with a company that charges a fee, mostly because they believe that it is a scam. DO NOT let the fee scare you off. This can be a very costly mistake. So why a fee and how can this fee actually benefit you in the future?

Let's first answer the question, "why a fee"? The fee is charged because you are buying a product or service from this company. You are not paying to actually join the business opportunity itself, because that would be illegal. You are paying for the product and then you have an option of whether or not you would like to distribute that same product to others. The company uses the money that they get from the sale of their products to pay for the products themselves as well as paying you a commission and still make a profit for themselves.

I think the best way to explain this is by example. You sign up with a company and pay a $40.00 fee. The company tells you that you will be paid $5.00 for each "sale" or "sign-up" that you receive. (Sale and sign up are the same thing.) When your company tells you this they are counting on the fact that you will not make enough sales to get back the original fee that you paid. Even if you get three sales, they still made $25.00 off of you. They count on the fact that you will sign-up, pay the fee for the products, and then never even try to sell any of the products. You can EASILY beat them at this!

This is the part that answers the question, "how can the fee benefit me?" You want a fee, so the company has a steady flow of funds coming in. You need them to have money, so they can pay you money. So how do you get that money? Simply sell their product like crazy. You will more then make up for the nominal fee that you paid up front for your own products. Let some other person take the fall when they don't make any sales. That person does not have to be you.

There are some people who join an opportunity for the products alone. This is perfectly fine. There are some really great informational and tangible products out there that you can get some really great prices on. If you do decide to just get the products and not promote the products as well, then you should let your sponsor know your intentions. Your sponsor being the person that you bought your own products from. You may think you bought them directly from the company, but chances are that you bought them from a distributor. Just drop them a quick note and tell them that you are not interested in the business opportunity side of it and that you don't want to promote. This way, you won't keep getting e-mails from your sponsor, asking you why you haven't made any sales. They will already know that you don't have any intentions to.

If you do decide to delve into the business opportunity side of the company you need to steer clear of a few misconceptions and problems. One misconception about business opportunities is that you will make thousands of dollars a month doing this. That is going to be really hard to do. Hard, but not impossible. To make $1200.00 in one month, you will have to make 8 sales a day, everyday. You have to remember that you will not be the only sales representative, so you will have competition. It's better to start will smaller sales goals and work up to larger ones. A realistic goal may be to make 5 sales a week, would be an extra $25.00 a week, or about $100.00 a month. (Figures based on a $5.00 commission per sale).

If you would like to earn more than that, you have a few options. You can either sell more or you can work for more than one company. If you worked for 3 companies and made 5 sales a week, for each of the three companies, then you would triple your money (based on the same commission structure).

You may still be saying that you know, or heard of someone, who works at home for a company that does pay them hourly or salary. Those people are the ones who have worked for a very large corporation, usually for a long period of time, who is given the offer to work out of their home instead of from a office. This often occurs after a woman has a baby and wants to stay home. These jobs are not readily available to the public. This happens internally in a company with present employees. If you are not already employed with a company that allows this, then this option is not going to be available to you. (Plus, who would want to be tied down to a certain salary or hourly wage, when you could have unlimited income potential with business opportunities.)

Just because your away from home boss, hasn't offered you the option to do your work from home, it does not mean that you can not work at home. You can! It is just going to take some time, work, and sometimes a little money. Don't be fooled by false promises. You will need to spend time on marketing these products. There will be times when you actually put in a 40 hour work week. However, with commission based sales, usually the more time that you put in, the more money that you will make.

The decision to work at home is a great one! Although you will still be working, you will be able to do it on your own time. This means more family, friend and YOU time!