Who doesn’t want to earn a handsome amount of money every month, and that too working from home But it may not be all that easy, very often you must have planned of doing so but haven’t gone ahead with the plans. Or may be you worked a bit on the project and it didn’t go successful for you. Or could be you just thought about it and then warded away the thought because you didn’t know what to do and more importantly how to do it. What can decide the fate of your small home based business, that is whether it will be fruitful or futile, is your choice of the nature of business, and the base work you do before you implement your idea and start working in actual.

No business can neither be run by the whims and fancies of the owner, nor by daydreaming. You need to work hard on it, or rather you need to work smart on it, and go by logic and an evaluative judgment.

For those who intend to start a home based business, we have this startup guide to help you go methodically about the whole start up process.

1. Selecting the right business: if this basic choice of yours in not done thoughtfully, in ninety percent chances you are bound to fail, and even if it does work out you may not be happy later on. Don’t jump for the very first idea that comes across, do a bit of research get hold of magazines, search the net and try to find out more possible ideas. Once the list is ready prioritize the ideas based on your interest, your skills and capability. Then go on and rate them on the probable profitability, reasoning well why you think it can be possible and to what extent is it workable. Then just keep the first two or three which rate equally well on both your indices, the rest you can just strike them off. Scan these remaining ideas, in detail, about what all is required to set them up, like the manpower, finance, space and equipment, also check them for the risk involved. All this done you will be in a better position to decide what you should get on with.

2. Planning: once you are certain about what you must do, keep the idea in the centre and start planning around it. Planning would include deciding about the space you are going to use and how would you organize every thing into that space. But to be able to do that you need to have a carefully planned list of what all equipments and gadgets are required, only then can you decide what place must be allocated to each. When planning for physical set up is done, move on to check how much and what type of manpower is required, from where all can you generate that manpower, and what will be the terms and conditions for the job will you set up. How much are you willing to pay for each of the posts, and also writing down the details of what each job would entail. Next move on to the budget check for how much money would be required it total and how you plan to allocate the funds for the different things. More importantly how will you manage to generate the required funds.

3. strategy making: now its time for you to look at the bigger picture, and while planning for how to operate the business you need to decide what strategies are required to make your small home business get profitable for you. You must analyze and see who your tentative customers are going to be, who are your competitors and who can be your collaborators. It’s important to decide on how will you attract the customers to come to your business and how will you stand strong against the competitors. Chalk out your marketing and advertising plan, keeping the budget constraints in mind. You can also carry out an analysis of your situation with a popular concept in business called SWOT analysis. You have to decide on the pricing strategy as well keeping in mind the competitors pricing.

4. Legal and statutory: get hold of a good commercial lawyer to find out the legal technicalities involved in the business. Get the process of getting permissions, licenses and registrations to be done started up, as they generally take a bit of time. But before you go for all this you must be clear who the proprietor will be and what will be the name of your new enterprise. While deciding on the name keep a few things in mind- it should be unique, should not be a trade mark or brand name of any existing concern, the name should be easy to remember and easy to say, should not sound offensive or hurt the sentiments of some group of people, and finally what goes well with the type of business and the image you wish to create.

5. Financing: during the planning stage you had made a tentative budget, now its time for a more detailed and elaborate budget. Evaluate how much do you need initially and what will come out to be the monthly operating cost of the business. When making the budget keep margin for any unexpected expenses which can arise later on, generally a five to ten percent is good enough. Include the first two months running cost to the start up budget. Get a financial consultant if you need. Check for all possible ways you can have the finances arranged. There are banks, small business financing units, industry specific financing units; private grants from the company, venture capital are some of the ways you could generate finances. Once the finances are arranged its time to go into full action. Start executing your plan.

If you follow these very basic and simple steps your success is indeed guaranteed.