no such thing as a free lunch...

I found this article via a BizAssist.co.za newsletter... interesting, if somewhat obvious :) but then again, one never knows...

Making sure of Working From Home Smalls ads
It usually starts off like this: "wouldn't you like to stay at home today, not fight the commute to work, and be able to have that extra cup of coffee in the morning and read the paper." The advertisement will then go on to talk about all of the great money you can make immediately. Sometimes, the claims are upwards to R10 000 a month and guess what, you can make that amount for part-time hours, a maximum of 20 hours a week. My advice is to let your eyes flow right on past this kind of advertisement. Every time I see this kind of sales pitch, I am reminded of the time I was at university in desperate need of a job that would pay some good money. I walked into class one day and on my chair was a slip of paper advertising a job that would pay me R50 an hour. Now, to a university kid, that seems like plenty of cash. Of course, there wasn't a whole lot of details as to how I was going to make this R50 an hour. Being very naive, I called the number, interviewed for the position, was told it was a very professional company and that with my "great attributes," I would fit right in. The job was going around selling knives to the general public. During and after my initial training, I was told what was really meant by the wage of R50 an hour. My trainer told me that if I sold a certain number of the sets, my pay would figure out to be at least R50 an hour. At the same time, I was told not to worry because I could put in 5 to 7 hours a week and make R3 000 for the week. Well, needless to say, that job lasted about a month. I found out very quickly that if someone where to make the kind of money they were talking about; you would have to work 60-70 hours a week. And even then, there was no guarantee. What am I saying here? Every claim made is not what its cracked up to be.

Research the Claims
If you think an opportunity looks really great, it may be, but check it out first. Do some research, find out exactly what will be involved, what exactly will you have to do and how much money will you have to put into it.

It will Take Work
The best policy to live by is this: if anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And that means good old hard work. Find out what you like to do, then do your homework and find out how you can turn that like into a business. You will be investing your time, money, and hard work into your business and hopefully you will make it work, but at least you're going into things with your eyes wide opened.