The best online business opportunities should be free to join, have multiple affiliate programs to choose from, and offer free website design and setup. This type of opportunity is totally free and provides residual income streams. Your only monetary requirement is to pay for website hosting, an autoresponder service, and advertising your new website. Your website hosting and autoresponder service can vary significantly, so check pricing before committing, and your advertising budget is totally up to you. If your advertising budget is tight, there are several free forms of advertising available. Take things slow and don’t get discouraged. It takes time to build a business.

1. Go out and do research, find resources, bring them altogether and then build a business from scratch

or

2. Start a turn key business that has everything you need to get started in one place including training, support, products and websites.

This article refers to business group number 2.

Believe me when I say not all work at home business opportunities are created equal. I learned hard way. Like an over excited greenhorn with dollar signs in his eyes I started a total of 5 Internet work at home businesses all within 1 week of discovering they even existed. That was equal to about $250/month in subscription fees!

I was basically a textbook example of what not to do.

Save yourself expense and effort (not to mention embarrassment of having to tell people about it later) by making sure any business you are interested in checks out for following points:

Most important - does company sell a product or service that is good quality, people want to buy and you would be proud to represent? Boom industries include health (e.g. vitamins, alternative medicine), communications (e.g. cell phone subscriptions), Internet marketing resources (leads, info products, articles and recordings from experts about building a business) and Internet technology (e.g. web building tools, face to face video conferencing). There is more but they are a good place to start.

Does business look professional? - you can easily get a "vibe" for a business by its presentation. Is web site beautiful? Does it load easily? Is spelling and grammar correct? While presentation is not only thing to look for in a business it can be all you need to decide whether to look further.

Is earnings structure fair? - usually payment plans in work at home business opportunities are confusing at best. But what you want to be sure of is that you are going to be fairly rewarded for your efforts. Typically you will be expected to either sell product or get new members to join your business before you make money. The latter is preferable method because then you have other people making you money as well. You should start earning once you have 3 to 4 people in your team. Be sure you know exactly how it works because there are companies around that expect you to have a team of 12 members before you see a cent; too hard for a beginner.