Home Business Guide: $120,000 Hindsight. Part 3 of 8
A GOOD home business guide is essential if you are intending to buy any advertised opportunity. Any new journey generally benefits from a decent guide, guidebook or map. They allow you to follow a beaten path, whilst illuminating potential dangers, and generally speeding up the journey.
Unfortunately in the home business industry many if not most guides are really nothing more than sales tools or platforms.
Rating A Home Business Guide:
Before you read one word, always assess the source of the information. This was about the only useful thing I learnt at University.
* Experience - do they know what they are talking about?
* Have they done it themselves? - or are they just copying others' works or using opinion?
* Motivation - why are they doing it? What is their motive to help you?
* Similarity - Are they or their circumstances similar to yours?
A guide should satisfy all 4 of these questions. If not alarm bells should start ringing.
DIY Guide
You can make your own home business guide by compiling snippets of information that you believe are useful from all the different sources of information: newsletters, websites, forums, blogs etc. This reduces the risk of relying solely on one source that maybe, probably is, trying to make a sale. It is however a long and tedious process.
A guide - in addition to self-assessment - is vitally important in assessing which home business is best for you. It can also be of benefit in giving a structure for setting up and going through the reality of the day-to-day work needed to make any enterprise work.
You - 88% Of The Equation
The guide needs to be pertinent to YOU. Not just the business category it is describing. You can get a brilliant guide on how to spread bet, yet with a bad entrepreneurial match it cannot prevent the inevitable disaster. It is important to look inside as well as outside.
Business analysts quote the management of any company being up to 88% responsible for the success or failure of any business undertaking. Therefore a home business guide can only be a great asset - if it is RELEVANT to you.
A Guide Or Just A Sales Tool?
Though we all make a rough assessment on the trust we put in a guide or person, in this industry the world of sales and marketing works hard to persuade and influence our assessments with psychological trickery. Most sellers use a perception of expertise i.e. a guide, to influence you purely to sell a particular product or service.
99% of reviews are just using the 'us and them' sales trick: 'you don't want to buy that one... you want to buy this one'. Before you start looking at any guide I strongly recommend learning about copywriting and sales processes. This can help in recognising and differentiating a sales piece from a decent home business guide.
Charles Challis is the managing director of Applied Serendipity Ltd. He has spent the last 3 years and over $120,000/66,000 GBP researching and testing home businesses. The company website: http://www.home-business-consultant.com is a must-read for prospective home business entrepreneurs. Visit http://www.home-business-consultant.com to save your time and money.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Home Business Guide: $120,000 Hindsight. Part 3 of 8