If you follow step 2, chances are, if you hear same things repeatedly, you've found potential unmet needs or needs that aren't being adequately serviced by your competition. After all, if need is being met, it won't be subject of repeated questions.

4. Inventory your experience, interests and competencies

In order to decide what to focus on in particular out of a group of potential unmet or under-met needs, take account of your experience, interests and competencies. People are generally good at what they enjoy and are interested in, after all.

5. Fill unmet or under-met need

Once you've identified unmet need(s) in your sub-category, you can start thinking about how your business can fill that unmet need.

=> SURVEY THE MARKET AND YOUR COMPETITION

At this stage, you need to take your business idea and survey your niche market and your competition.

If you have competition, can you be better? If your market is dominated by a few large, well-established players and you really don't bring anything new or different to table, then competition is probably going to be too stiff. On other hand, if that competition is focused on high end of market leaving lower end largely uncatered for, then this could well be an excellent niche for you.

The bottom line is to identify your best competition in your niche and decide whether you can be better.

Only if you believe you can be best in your niche should you proceed. If not, keep looking until you find a niche perfectly suited to your particular blend of experience, interests and competencies in which you can be absolute best.

=> BUSINESS PLAN

Once you've identified your niche and surveyed your market and competition and are reasonably confident you can be at least as good as your best competitor, it's time to get down to brass tacks.

This is where you take your business idea and shape it into a battle plan. Formulating a business plan is goal-setting for your business. For a more detailed treatment of writing a business plan, read "Putting Plan Back Into Your Business Plan" at http://www.ahbbo.com/busplan.html .

Once you've thought through and recorded your business plan you should have an extremely thorough understanding of your industry and challenges you must overcome to make a success of your business. Take your business plan and establish objectives, goals (which support attainment of objectives) and tasks (which support attainment of goals).

Put your tasks and goals into action to achieve your objectives. Decide where you want your business to be in five years time and work backwards until you have 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 year objectives and goals to support them and tasks to support goals. The end result should be a daily to-do list of things that will directly lead you closer to achievement of your goals and objectives.

=> ACTION

Once you have your daily to-do list, DO IT! The best laid plans of mice and men are useless if not translated into action. It's action that will propel you and your business towards success. Mere thoughts and plans are necessary but insufficient. They must be translated into activity.

=> TRANSITION

If possible, transition from whatever you're doing now into your business. Test waters, in other words. If you're currently in a paid job, stay there and run your business part-time, taking risk on someone else's nickel until you can be confident this thing's going to float. Know when you're better off devoting your full time and attention to your business (i.e., know when an hour of your time is worth more when spent invested in your business than your job) for that is time to shift into full-time entrepreneurship.

=> MAKING THE LEAP

Finally, make leap with faith and courage. Sure, you'll have moments of self-doubt, thoughts of "can I do this?" when you're wondering where next order's going to come from and you think back to nice, safe, secure paycheck you used to be able to count on in your job. But recognize these insecurities for what they are. They are your mind playing tricks on you. You can do anything you set your mind to. You just have to want it badly enough. So, when time comes to make leap, do it and hold nothing back. Your success or failure is up to you alone. There are no excuses.

So, in answer to question "how do I start my own home business?", it's quite simple really. You do what it takes.

=> Approach Your Cold Market

Once you've approached your so-called "warm market", it's time to start on cold. Start by gathering up a list of businesses in your local area or industry that you think would have use of your services. Prepare a letter of introduction and send it, together with your business card, to your list of prospects. Your letter of introduction should make if very clear why you are writing. Identify yourself and specific skills that may appeal to reader and why.

Follow up in a week with a telephone call to make sure materials arrived safely. If other person is approachable, try and strike up a conversation about what you could do for business. Otherwise, thank person for their time, ask them to keep you in mind for future work and calendar to contact them again in 30 days' time.

Continue to work your market like this. Remember, persistence pays off. Don't be discouraged if you receive little warmth or interest in response to your approaches to your cold market. It takes time and persistence. Just don't take it personally. A good way to approach it is to tackle a fixed number per day. Start out by making a list of, say, 300 businesses you want to approach. Develop your list from Yellow Pages, local library and web to start with. Calendar to approach 10 businesses a day for next 30 days. That means ten calls a day, followed by 10 letters of introduction (together with a copy of your brochure/resume and business card) and a follow up phone call a week later.

Where there is interest, you may be able to schedule a meeting. Where there is no interest, schedule for a further follow up call in 30 days. If there is still no interest, schedule for a further call in 90 days. Or maybe you would prefer to do something else to stay in contact. A good way is to publish a newsletter for your clients and colleagues. Make it relevant to recipient and it's a good way of keeping your name in front of your prospects. A quarterly newsletter is probably frequent enough. Send it, with another of your business cards, to your list and, over time, you will see that it will start paying off in form of business.

=> Samples

Another idea to think about is to produce a set of samples of your work; a portfolio if you will. Make 8.5 x 11 copies of your work and keep them in an artist's portfolio for presentations when you're able to arrange face to face meetings with potential clients.

=> Advertising and Promotion

Next comes advertising. If you're a website designer, possibly your best advertisement is your own website. But don't stop there. Advertise in publications your target market reads.

Another good way to generate business is to join associations and groups affiliated with your industry. Chambers of Commerce are a good place to make handy contacts.

You will probably find that in early stages of your freelance career you spend more time marketing yourself and your services than you spend actually working. There's a financial cost to that, of course. How do you finance your marketing if you don't have any money coming in? For this reason, early days will be lean and mean. Make sure you have financial wherewithall to survive this period.

HOW DOES A FREELANCER MAKE MONEY?

You will only make money as a freelancer if you charge more that it costs you to do work in terms of your time, expenses and materials. Factor in a profit component to every job you quote for and make sure that that profit component is in ADDITION to an allowance for your time. For more on pricing your services, see "Pricing Yourself To Get and Stay In Business", at http://www.ahbbo.com/pricing.html .

Some freelancers charge by hour and others by project. In reality, you will probably use a combination of both methods depending on nature of job and client.

You can get an idea of current market rates by surveying your competitors. Don't be obvious about it though; competitors are, naturally enough, reluctant to divulge information about their businesses to their competitors. So you'll probably need to employ a bit of subterfuge here by posing as a potential customer, for example. In fact, it's in your legal interests that your competition doesn't give you pricing information if it knows you're a competitor. Such conduct can be construed as price fixing which can land both of you in extremely hot water. So, keep it safe and use circuitous methods of obtaining pricing information from competitors.

PROTECTING YOURSELF

A question often asked by freelancers is "do I need a contract?". Well, to start with, once you've negotiated a deal with a new client you have a contract. The question is whether it's oral or in writing. An oral contact is just as enforceable as a written one but problem becomes one of proof. How do you prove terms of your contract if all you have is one person's word against another's? For this reason, a written contract is always a good idea. It needn't be anything too elaborate. In fact, even an exchange of letters will do. Just be sure to include basic terms:

=> Describe job

What must you do to perform contract? Be as specific as possible here and try not to be open-ended. "Create a website for client" is too vague. What would you do if client came back after you'd finished and said, "but there's no shopping cart, there's no feedback form?" and you hadn't quoted your time for these things in striking price? Better to say, "Create website at client's direction consisting of (a) home page; (b) products and services page; (c) order page; (d) shopping cart and (e) feedback form". By requiring client to be very specific about what it is they want from their website, how they want it to look etc. you can go a long way to avoiding misunderstandings caused by vagueness.

=> Set price

State in unequivocal terms price you are to receive for job. This can be either a project cost such as $5,000 or an hourly rate such as "$150 hour or part thereof; minimum of ten (10) hours" or whatever.

=> State time for performance

Performance means not only when you will complete your part of bargain (i.e. delivering completed website to client) but when client must complete his or hers (i.e. by paying you).