| A major part of evaluating home business opportunities is determining if the product the entrepreneur wants to sell is marketable, if the market is saturated, and what a competitive asking price might be. Even if someone wants to start a home business opportunity that is not Internet based but rather marketed in the local area, an online auction vendor or aggregator site is still a great way to determine what is out there in the industry, and what the going price is. Rule of thumb, according to online merchant experts, is to price the item at about two thirds of what the major online auction sites are asking for the same or similar item, or 65 percent of the top bid over the past sixty days. In evaluating home business opportunities for local sales the buyer must take into consideration that the local cost of living can alter the asking price. Market research for evaluating home business opportunities in this case would weigh most heavily on other local competitors in the industry. Some of the standard procedures an entrepreneur should do in evaluating home business opportunities are to check both the credibility and the performance of the parent firm. Home Business opportunities should be evaluated poorly just because they don?t report big dollars in revenue. A small company can be a sound home business opportunity. One advantage of working with a small firm is the accessibility to the executives in the firm, to help answer the evaluating questions about the home business opportunity it represents but to help the entrepreneur get started. Great sources of information when evaluating home business opportunities are people you know and trust that have dealt with the company. If the small business owner doesn?t have any such resource she or he should then turn to financial statements if it?s a public corporation or to firms such as Hoovers for information about the stability of the firm. Local help would be the Chamber of Commerce and the Better Business Bureau. Vendors of the firm that the entrepreneur is evaluating for home business opportunity are great resources, as they can tell you that the firm pays their bills on time and has been ordering large quantities of products for an extended period. This means sales are good. One important thing for a hopeful entrepreneur to do in evaluating the company is to ask for current and former customers and contact them for honest critiques of the firm. Evaluating home business opportunities should never rely only on the clients the firm offers. The entrepreneur should seek out others that the firm hasn?t put forth as good testimonials. |
