Find a contact person with company that will talk to you. Have a list of questions such as length of time in business, annual revenues, publicly traded or privately held, name of CEO and other company officers, names and contact info for other company representatives that you may call.

Check to see if company is a member of Direct Selling Association by visiting their web site at http://www.dsa.org

Check with your state's Attorney's General Office.

See if they are listed with Dun & Bradstreet, and if so, check their rating.

Talk to 3 or 4 representatives and find out how long they have been with company and get general feedback.

If you have found company or opportunity from a web site, look for contact information of person owning and representing site.

Make sure you get all of your questions answered to your satisfaction. Don't let anyone pressure you into making a decision.

Find out all up front costs. Also, find out if there are any recurring monthly or annual costs that you can anticipate.

What exactly is expected of you? Are there monthly sales quotas? What do you have to do to get paid? When will you get paid? Is there any fine print that you need to be aware of?

Listen to your gut instincts. They are usually right!

There are many profitable, legal and fun work at home business ideas both online, and offline. Just do your research.

Don't allow "bumps in road" to stop you from finding option that will work for you. Keep me moving in direction that will allow you to create a life that you love! It will happen, just keep looking!

Look at a program and ask yourself some of these questions:

Is product something that I would be proud to sell or promote? If answer is no, then stay away.

Make sure that there is an actual service or product that you will be selling. If you are just going to get paid for every new member you recruit, then it may very well be an illegal pyramid or ponzi scheme.

Is there contact information easily available at site? Do they show their email addresses, street address, names of principals, company name, telephone number? Send them a question and see if you get an answer or an automatic reply.

If you have a address or telephone number go to www.yellowpages.com or www.whitepages.com and check them out. You can use telephone number and do a "reverse directory check" which checks telephone number and gives you an name and address if one is on file.

Check out web site's domain name at http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois Just enter domain name i.e., whatevername.com and you can determine who administrative contact, normally owner, where they are located and how long site has been registered.

Do they offer you a free promotional site for your use with your own personal referral code? If you have to pay your entry or membership fee and then find out you have to pay another $100 or so to get a promotional site and email advertising package, and that is only way they allow you to promote it, be leery. They are making their money up front. I don't believe that you should have to pay a company for basic promotional tools to promote their company. They can take expense off as a business expense if they are for real.

Of course you will still have to make an informed decision on your own after doing your research. But you may find enough information from any one of these resources or all of them to sway you one way or other. Just make an informed decision before you spend your hard earned money and resources.

Joe Reinbold, Publisher of Home Income Quarterly E-dition, a free weekly on line marketing newsletter. To subscribe just mailto:subscribe@homebizlink.com Or visit The Entrepreneur's Home Business Link where you will find the solutions to your home business needs at: http://www.homebizlink.com