Highs and lows were something that I began to notice when I first started a home based business. I have many years of top level management experience in "traditional" corporations and have experienced lots of business cycles (corporate "ups and downs"), but natural "ups and downs" that occur in a home business (particularly in early stages) can be emotionally brutal if you don’t prepare yourself in advance for fact that it is a basic law of nature...it will be a rocky road until you have spent enough time and effort to build your business to a level that sort of smoothes out peaks and valleys.

The impact of highs and lows you will probably experience in developing your home based business is amplified by fact that you are now in business on your own. You are boss and get to make all decisions, but you are also on your own in dealing with frustrations that will occur along way while you are developing your business.

Don't lose that passion. Just realize and accept that now other things will also be required.

A price, for example. Asking "Well, what do you think it's worth to you?" won't work.

If you're planning to conduct your business online, you'll need a website and some basic goodies. You're in luck - this sort of thing gets easier to do by day, it seems. There's cool full packages like Sitesell, Easy Web Site Builder and Build A Web Site Tonight . Heck, if you're real DIY type, you can grab a template from BasicWebTemplates and then download a very cool FR*E website editor called Nvu.

There's a great book mentioned in resource box that I'm told comes in really handy for getting started.

For a good dose of reality, try this: Do a Google or Yahoo search for forums for your hobby. All you gotta do is enter "rat racing+forums" in little search box (without those quote marks!)and away you go. See if people talk about making money with it. If no one does talk about it, ask them! At very worst, they'll say, "What, are you crazy???"

Either way, you get an education.

Of course, you can also search for your hobby alone and see who has a business site for it. Whatever you do, don't get yourself all discouraged and stuff just because someone else is doing it or even seems to be doing it very well. It's one darn big Internet, my friend.

When you see that making your hobby a business can be done and it can even be done by you, you'll have cleared probably biggest hurdle of all.

Roll up those sleeves and open for business!!

Dan Reinhold is proud author of "The WAHumor Way: Reality Check, Please!", essential primer for everyone starting a home business or even thinking about it. With two boys, a dog, a cat, a rat, a wife and a household to keep together to boot, Dan's also editor of WAHumor to hang on to his sanity by showing how insane work-at-home community can be! Subscribe quickly at WAHumor@aweber.com You could Win Big!!

Dan Reinhold is the proud author of "The WAHumor Way: Reality Check, Please!", the essential primer for everyone starting a home business or even thinking about it. With two boys, a dog, a cat, a rat, a wife and a household to keep together to boot, Dan's also the editor of WAHumor to hang on to his sanity by showing how insane the work-at-home community can be! Subscribe quickly at WAHumor@aweber.com You could Win Big!!