As you search for options, you’ll likely run into mystery shopping, data processing, surveys, traffic exchanges, and various other work from home opportunities. Beware: these are work at home jobs, not businesses.

What’s the difference? If you’ve ever read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kyosaki, you know the answer: leverage. When you stop filling out surveys, clicking on ads, or shopping at new stores, will you still get paid? Not likely. But if you own a business, you make money while you sleep.

Tip #2) Know your budget. When starting a home business, you’re going to need some money. Contrary to what you might be told, or read online, there is no such thing as a truly free home based business.

Set aside money for marketing. Will you be writing articles like this one, using pay-per-click advertising, or maybe even run classifieds in your town’s paper? These things cost money and time.

Tip #3) Don’t reinvent the wheel. If you’re new to computer home based businesses, don’t start from scratch and reinvent the wheel. Starting a home business can be easy if build on the work of others and start with a proven system.

Franchises are the common example, here. Rather than develop a fast-food restaurant from the ground up, it’s much easier to just buy a McDonald’s franchise. They’ve figured everything out and put it in their operations manual. Paint by the numbers and you’ll succeed.

Starting a home business is no different. Follow a proven system and succeed with it, first. Once you’ve done that, then go invent your own new stuff, using what you’ve learned. But, seriously, don’t make it harder than it needs to be.

Tip #4) Build relationships. Your home based business will go nowhere without the participation of other people. On the simplest level, you need customers. But, starting a home business takes more than just customers.

You need mentors to teach you the ropes. You need joint venture partners to cross-promote your business. You need suppliers and manufacturers who produce the goods and services you sell. The list goes on and on. Like it or not, even your computer home based business is going to involve playing nice with others.

Tip #5) Become a master of marketing. The number one factor in your success or failure in starting a home business is this: do you understand marketing? It truly doesn’t matter how big your budget is, which system you go with, or how many people you know (unless one of them does the marketing for you.)

Your ability to find people who are interested in what you have, and your ability to offer it to them in a way that gets them to spend money, is the key to a successful home business. If you really understand marketing, it almost doesn’t matter which business you choose, you’ll make it work. Thus, the saying, “…she could sell ice to the eskimos.”

The phones have been ringing off the hook since the word got out, both from prospects and from new team members looking to get started. Naturally, there’ve also been questions, which brings me to this post…

If you were to look at a list of computer home-based businesses, which do you think would top the list in terms of training? In this video review, I go through my back-office, digging through the vast library of training you get as a My Internet Business owner.

I’ve only got 10 minutes — I wanted the video to fit on YouTube without having to be split — so I couldn’t cover everything, but… check it out. It should clear some things up for you.

There are, of course, a million and one answers to the question of, “How do I get started.” In this article, though, I’m going to focus on the process with My Internet Business.

For those of you who don’t know, My Internet Business is the latest brainchild of Darren Gaudry, the multi-millionaire internet marketer who was also behind the super-successful Passport to Wealth. My Internet Business is one of the best home-based businesses on the Internet, and getting started couldn’t be any easier.

The process looks something like this:

1. Sign up for My Internet Business. There’s no such thing as a free home-based business. Anything worthwhile is going to require some capital to get started. The good news is, My Internet Business has a package for everyone, with 4 levels to get in, and starts at just $495. This is a high-income business opportunity, and you won’t find a better one cheaper.The sign-up process is easy, requiring you to select which package you want, fill out a simple web form, accept and sign the terms of service, and then enter your payment details. When I signed up, I was pleasantly surprised at how quick and painless the process was. Within 20 minutes of starting, I was up and running!
2. Set up your merchant account. My Internet Business doesn’t make your financial decisions for you, but they do make the hard ones easier. Finding a good home business merchant account is no easy task. You’ve got rates to worry about, underwriters to deal with, and so on. With all of the competition out there, how is the novice to know what to do? Well, we’ve negotiated with one of the top global merchant account providers to make it easy for you to be up and running, charging credit cards from anywhere to your very own merchant account within 24 hours. And when I say anywhere, I mean this is a global business… imagine processing payments from customers all over the world and participating in the global economy… from home!
3. Configure your marketing site. You don’t have to explain My Internet Business to your prospects… your marketing site does it for you! Each prospect will be able to “take the tour” and learn all about the opportunity, products, compensation plan, training and testimonials. There’s even a business portfolio page where you can insert existing products and services, integrating your My Internet Business with any affiliate and network marketing programs you participate in. This is huge!
4. Set up your lead capture page. My Internet Business provides several lead capture pages out of the box. But, the truth is that all of the company’s top earners make their own lead capture pages. This is not a reflection of the quality of My Internet Business’s default capture pages as much as its a testimony to the power of personal branding. By effectively pre-selling yourself and your team before sending your prospects to the tour you’ll experience a much higher conversion rate. In other words, more people will sign up with you if you put more of yourself into your capture pages.
5. Use one of many traffic generation methods to funnel leads to your capture page. Here’s a useful metaphor to use when thinking about traffic: traffic is neither created nor destroyed… it is merely directed. People are going to be online, using the Internet, whether they encounter something that brings them to you or not. Those “somethings” that they run into comprise your online footprint, and the bigger it is the better. There are a million ways to increase your footprint, but the main ones are: article marketing, ezine advertising, forum marketing, online classified advertising, pay-per-click advertising, and social network marketing. My Internet Business has training on all of those, and if you have any questions you have the help of your sponsor. Obviously, whatever he or she did to attract you worked, and given that they make money when you succeed they’ll likely be happy to share.

Once the leads start coming into your system, your email autoresponder will follow up with them on a regular basis and keep them engaged. When they’re ready, they click a blue button in your tour to request a call back. At this point, your personal business assistant (a pool of the top-producing people in My Internet Business) will call the prospect, answer their questions, and close them.

Everyone gets paid, and all you had to do was make the commitment and sign up for My Internet Business, set up your merchant account, configure your marketing site and lead capture page, and funnel some traffic into the system.