It never ceases to amaze me the sheer numbers of listings online for "work at home", "home business", "business opportunity", "make money", "home based business", "making money", "make money online", "home-based business", "home business", and all the other terms you can come up with for researching work at home business opportunities. The competition is staggering, and it seems almost everyone wants to give you information on his or her own business opportunity. What's worse is many of these would be "good Samaritans" offer you information and links based on the marketing materials provided by their chosen company to promote rather than their own real life experiences promoting those companies. Which would you rather have from these promoters, their companies marketing professional's copy write touting the benefits of pushing the company products/services or the real life experiences the promoters have experienced and the success they have enjoyed through promoting the home based business? Worse yet, what happens when you run into someone new to the home-based business they are promoting who has nothing they can offer when it comes to their success in promoting the home business and how well they have done with their online endeavors of making money online?

In researching the "work at home" keywords mentioned above, there are 73,636 daily real world searches according to Web CEO for those keywords alone. These statistics show that you can make money in work at home opportunities and it is a driving force for would be entrepreneurs to flock to the internet as a means to make money online. An even more staggering statistic is that according to Web CEO there are 36,145,000 competing web pages for these terms. That's quite a bit of information to sort out if you are researching work at home opportunities to make money on the internet. With so much competition out there and so many web sites wanting you to visit them for your work at home needs, how can you know what home business opportunity works and which home based business idea is a flop that will leech your hard earned cash from you? With all that competition, the nature of the web as a home for the unscrupulous to take advantage of our naivety, and the lack of credible information available through such web sites, it all adds up to a dangerous combination for the would be work at home enthusiast.

Almost everyone has visions of the "Great American Dream". And there probably isn't a one of you reading this article that hasn't been fed up and sick with their present job. Faced with the hype of these work at home hucksters combined with the get rich quick dream and more and more people hating their jobs, more and more people are being lured to these sites as a means to solve their making money from home needs. People will sign up for every home business program they can, copy and paste some text into their hastily built websites, add a signature line to their emails and forum posts, add lines of text to their business cards, and then sit back and wonder why they aren't too successful with their newly found business opportunity. All too often these home business opportunity seekers get scammed into self perpetuating programs or other get rich quick schemes. Most of these schemes only pay off for those at the top of the chain who found the program in it's infancy before everyone and their brother was promoting it, or are the ones that founded the scheme and a way to entice people to promote it.

The reality is this. There are only a couple sure-fire ways to start a home based business to make money at home through online endeavors. The first is to create your own product or services and find ways to sell them online. This type of work at home business opportunity is always a sure bet but, like everything else, takes time, effort, and money. You will make money at home quicker in a work at home business based on this business opportunity model because you are the one receiving the profits; not some other company you are promoting which decides what it is going to give you in commissions. You call all the shots, you own the products or services sold and you determine what they should cost your customers. Best of all, you don't have to worry about the credibility of the home based business opportunity.

The next best way to realize your dreams to make money from home in a work at home business opportunity is to sell other people's products or services. This is the tricky part where affiliate programs come to mind. This particular home business can help you make money on the internet if you are careful in the way you go about it. The first thing is to check the company's credibility. Is it a realistic home business opportunity where you can make money, or is the company's information so full of hype and promises that it's just to good to be true? Keep in mind that a realistic home business opportunity takes time, effort, and money. But there are also limitations to spending that money too, especially when a work at home business opportunity promoter wants you to pay money in exchange for making money online.

Don't get me wrong; the old adage "It takes money to make money" is true. But the money spent should be money spent in producing your products or services, or spent in marketing you products or services for sale, NOT to show someone you are "serious" about their work at home business. Be very careful of these types of home based business opportunities where they want you to pay for the "privilege" of promoting their products or services. From my experience, most of these work at home or work at home opportunities are scams, or self perpetuating programs. Remember that the only ones that prosper from these types of home business opportunity are either those that start them, or those that find them before everyone else is promoting them and before people begin to learn the truth behind this type of scam.

Think of it this way. It's like going to a job interview at a local corporation for a job you feel you are qualified for. Common sense says that you are already interested in this job. You have done the research, dressed the part, and you have spent your valuable time to get there; not to mention the amount of time you will be spending in the interview. The interviewer is professionally dressed in a business suite and shakes your hand firmly when you arrive. Before sitting down to interview you, he suddenly states "Before we can start this interview process, I need to collect $10.00 from you just to make sure you are serious about this position. We've had allot of 'tire kickers' coming through here lately and this is the only way we can make sure that you will benefit from our job position and ensure that you are really ready to accept this position". Would you hand over the $10.00 to "prove your sincerity" or would you be insulted? Personally speaking, I would be insulted, but you are welcome to your own feelings on this subject.

The point is when you decide to promote another person's products or services as the choice of your work at home business, you become an employee of sorts. Although you set your own hours and choose your own means of promoting their products, which makes you an independent contractor or an affiliate by definition, it's still the same concept as the $10.00 interview. If a company has to ask you to pay money for their business opportunity so you can make money from home, then how good is the business opportunity to begin with? Legitimate and successful businesses offering a home based business opportunity have already figured expenses into their marketing budget and know that budget is tax deductible. They realize it's a cost of doing business, and absorb that cost instead of passing it on to their work at home affiliates. The business opportunities asking you for such fees more than likely make their living by charging those fees and NOT selling the products, or services, they want you to promote. If they aren't making their money from their own products or services then how do you expect to make money on the internet by promoting their products or services?

There are many business opportunities that will offer you additional things for their fees; like your very own hosted website. Although you are getting a website, you are getting a cookie cutter website that you can not control, and you are stuck with their design and layout. If their products or services don't make you money, you have no means to insert additional work at home business opportunities into that site as a means to help make money online. But there's another thing they don't want you to know about this process, and that is that the website will not be indexed by the search engines, or if it is, it will show up in hundreds of pages listed for the same business. Worse yet, it is likely that NONE of your pages will even be shown close enough to the top to get you any real benefits from your spending; if you see any benefits at all. The other problem is that your page will look just like everyone else's page who are promoting the same product or service. What benefit does that give you for the cash investment? You'll do much better hosting your own web site where you can post as many work at home business opportunities as you want. By building an interesting, content rich web site, you will bring visitors to your cyber doors while being found and ranked decently by the search engines.

There is only ONE work at home business opportunity I have even found online that I have made money from, and they provide the same kind of cookie cutter web sites for free. They aren't a get rich quick scheme, and promoting their products and services takes time, effort, and money, but they do not charge a fee for the "privilege" to promote their products. This same work at home business opportunity is one that I have actually made money through at home. Have I retired yet? Am I a millionaire? Do I drive a big fancy sports car or own my own mansion? None of the above. A slow, steady process takes time, effort, and money to pursue. Have I aggressively promoted it? No. I have sat back, placed a couple links in my site, and left the sponsor above me place some people in my downline. Yes, it is MLM.

The money I invested in this home business or work at home business opportunity? I've invested roughly $30.00 per month in things that my business needed already. It qualified me for the next income level for the business opportunity, and it gave me valuable tools to tweak my web site and learn to market that web site and home business opportunity more affectively. This investment was money that I was going to spend on the same tools, but I chose to buy those tools from a company I promote that was going to give me something in return for my investment; and that was affiliate checks based on sales volume. Did I mention that the cash spent was normally covered by the affiliate checks I received? That's like getting FREE tools to promote my home business. Did I also mention that my downline is growing in this home based business? Will I tell you how much money I made? No. I won't do that because then if you don't make the same kind of money I do, or more, then you will say that I lied to you and that my information is just from another person pushing work at home business opportunities to make money. You will probably even think that I haven't even really made any money using any of the programs I promote.

The point is you can make money on the internet through a work at home business opportunity IF you know which home based business to promote, how to promote it, and what to watch out for in choosing how you begin making money from home. You also need to be realistic. There is no one work at home business that is going to make EVERYONE rich. If that was the case, then why are there so few people out there that are rich? It simply doesn't exist. Everyone is different. I will make money in ways that you will probably not. Then again, you will make money in ways that I will probably not. The point of this article is using care in the work at home business or make money at home business opportunity that you choose. Spending the time to make sure it is a good fit for you, and is something that you believe in. Failure to realize that a home based business opportunity is like any other business, and requires time, effort, and money, will almost assure that your dreams of making money at home will be fruitless. You need to realize that making money online also requires spending money, but knowing where to spend that money to affectively market or produce your products or services is the important part. Do these things right and you will find a work at home business opportunity you enjoy, believe in, and can promote to gain you the money online.

For those of you wondering what that one company is that I have honestly made money with, feel free to drop by my web site and drop me an email. I'll be more than glad to give you a bunch of links to information that will give you the pro's and con's, educate you on the home business opportunity, and help you make an INFORMED decision. Till next article, may your work at home business opportunity come true, and may the information presented in this article help you to make money online.

About the author: James R. Sanders is the owner of Sanders Consultation Group Plus. He has been a webmaster and web site designer since 1997, and involved in self-employment ventures since 1992. He is presently a contributing author of NewbieHangout, and has been published through WebProNews. You can email him at webmaster@sanders-consultation-group-plus.com.