As more and more people opt-out of conventional jobs and instead choose to work from their homes, number of work-at-home scams has also increased. Each year thousands of people find out hard way that opportunities which are too good to be true usually are but not before they invest and waste millions of dollars a year.

You don't have to be one of those unfortunate people. All you need to do is to become more informed, ask appropriate questions, and know what to do if you are victim of illegitimate opportunity.

Become More Informed

One of first things you should become aware of are types of business opportunities which are most frequently scams.

One of oldest of these scams are stuffing envelopes and/or assembling items in your home. You'll find these opportunities in lots of sources, even some that are legitimate. However, what most of these ads fail to say is that you have to pay them a fee to begin. Then after you complete your job, your work is often rejected as substandard and, of course, you never see a penny. The other thing that happens is that you have to send in money only to receive instructions on how to place an ad just like one that you've just placed in order to bring individuals just like yourself.

Another common work-at-home scams are Pyramid schemes. Pyramid schemes are often passed off as MLM (multi-level marketing) opportunities, but there is a key difference. Pyramid schemes are more concerned with having you bring in more people and less concerned with selling products. The reason is that they aren't making their money off of selling anything to actual customers but from taking money from hopeful entrepreneurs like you. Most of these schemes ask you to make an investment or a purchase in order to become a full-fledged participant and/or to receive all of your potential profits. Generally, you never see any of earnings promised in their advertisements.

Did you read all stuff about New Year resolutions in press? Articles on what to do, how to lose weight, how to detox, how to diet and how to save money. Are you fed up of sight of them?

Its true that Christmas and New Year is a time for reflection and taking stock. It is often only time that you have a few quiet days away from work to think about where you are and what you want to do. And it is equally true that a lot of people do make decisions about things they want to change in their lives.

Generally if you want to make changes to your life it falls into one of three areas: making more money, having more free time or having more fun/a better life. Most of new year resolutions we hear and read about fall into last category and relate to improving your personal situation for example losing weight or getting fit.

However, a few people do look at bigger picture and decide they want to do something completely new. If this is you your reasons are probably a desire to take control, have more money, totally change your lifestyle, and often means chosen to achieve this is to start your own business.

So if this is you – then how do you make it happen? It is true that you can create a life with more money, more free time and more enjoyment by running your own business, but where do you start?

What does it mean to you?

So you’ve decided you want to run your own business? What does that mean to you? Think about what it means in terms of your lifestyle, time you want to spend and what you want to achieve, as well as what precisely you want to do as a business.

Do you know? I hear from quite a few people who have decided to run their own business or work from home but don’t actually know what business they want to be in! If this is you don’t worry – you’re not alone.

Clearly until you decide you cannot move on to next stage of actually getting going, so if you don’t know think about what you enjoy doing, what skills you have and what experience you have. What could you do with these? And don’t just think about obvious things – you don’t have to just “give yourself a job” doing what you did for your last employer.

Talk it over with other people, they will see different things to you so will give you a different aspect on your thought process. If you don’t have something of your own perhaps you might want to look at buying a franchise – there are many different types of business available.

Do some research. Look into type of business you want to run and find out what is happening in industry, where demand is and how you could fit into that.

Once you know what you want to do, you want to get it right first time if you can. We have all read statistics about new businesses – some 80% of them don’t make it. So how to you give yourself best chance?

How do you make it happen?

In order to get your business off to best start I think there are a number of things that you can do. In a nutshell they are planning, passion, people and practicalities.

Firstly passion - will you be doing something that you enjoy? I hope so! If you don’t answer yes to this question, then why are you thinking of doing it? If you enjoy what you’re doing it will seem a lot easier and you will ultimately be more successful than someone who doesn’t.