There's thousands of articles on how to promote your business, and other related materials, but very little on how to choose your business. The normal response to a request for information on starting a business is glowing recommendations from current reps and how fabulous their opportunities is. The problem is, while they may be in perfect business for them it may not be perfect business for you. Thus causing problems later on.

You may have been given advice before you started on how to choose your business. You may have heard "go with your passion, you need to love products!". Some may not have heard this at all, but joined your business because of compensation plan. While both of these points are important, they aren't only thing you should look at when joining a company.

The first thing to decide is if you want to be an interior designer or just do interior decorating. It may not seem like a big difference, but it actually is. An Interior Designer has to graduate from an accredited Interior Design program, and in many States, person must take an exam and are licensed. However, if you don’t want to attend school right now or ever, you can opt to be an interior decorator instead.

Before selling your interior decorating services, you must practice. Learn some of tricks to decorating on a budget, and get ideas about what services you want to provide to your customers. Try these services out in your own home, and offer them for free in homes of your family and friends. It is great practice and can help to build your portfolio.

To build your portfolio take before and after pictures of each project you do, whether it is large or small. You should have fifteen to twenty pictures in your portfolio and letters of recommendation from happy clients. It is also a good practice to create design boards for each project, and keep them with your portfolio.

Once you have decided on opening an interior decorating business, you should call around to different competitors to get an idea of services they provide and fees they charge for their services. This is a great way to decide on how to charge your clients.

There are several ways to price your interior decorating services. They include using a flat fee, hourly fee, percentage fee, cost plus, retail cost or per square foot fee. Most interior decorating businesses use cost plus method for their fees.