There is of course a huge difference and if you’re looking for something that you really can do part-time, then its likely you’ll be looking for a work at home idea.

Let’s bear in mind all those self-employed electricians, carpenters, plumbers and gardeners are all working from home. They do not have an office in town with a staff to answer phones and take care of accounts etc. They probably have an office  (or something that substitutes for one) at home but the majority of their work is undertaken elsewhere. They are not working at home.

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Small business ideas tend to fall into three broad categories;

• Work at home
• Work from home
• Office or factory based enterprise perhaps with staff

So which category is really right for you? The answer will be at least partially determined by your personality type.

Those who need flexibility in their lifestyles and who can apply themselves and maintain personal discipline will find the first option attractive. They will however need to be happy spending long stretches alone without the company and stimulation of a team around them.

Those who can be flexible but who enjoy getting out and about mixing with different folk constantly will like the second category. They will however need to be very mindful of the other mundane tasks that need to be done, filing, book-keeping etc.

Those who like company around them, the buzz from good teamwork and the challenges of  maintaining and motivating employees will of course opt for the third category but may end up feeling they no longer have the flexibility that working alone offered.

So, there are pro’s and con’s to all small business ideas that can affect our success or failure quite apart from the basic business profitability. If we are to succeed with any small business idea we must recognise our own personality type and its strengths and limitations.

We can be successful in the short term with an enterprise that makes a profit but without a deeper attachment to the activity our enthusiasm will tend to fade and the venture suffer.

So sift through all the small business ideas you can find but don’t just pick something based on its profit potential. Pick an idea that is likely to work for you on a personal level and you will remain motivated enough to overcome the various challenges that will no doubt come your way.

There’s a whole bunch of work at home business ideas on the home business ideas page.

People searching for work at home opportunities fall into several groups:

Entrepreneurs on the lookout for new business ideas
Newly retired or unemployed people looking for alternative incomes
Dissatisfied employees looking for alternatives to their employment
People finding themselves confined to the home by reason of health or young family
People desperate for more money for any reason

I’ve been in pretty much all those categories myself at one stage or another so I can relate to the various driving factors from experience. Are those folks making money? Well yes some of them are! Are they making enough? Again yes some are.

A work at home review might look at how many folks now earn the majority of their living at home and while I’m not sure anyone has the figures on it, I’m willing to bet it is still a very small part of the population. That is because not everyone has the necessary dedication to making it work or they are misinformed as to the potential of their particular activities.

One thing that has struck me in this sector of business is the huge amount of disinformation and outright scams that one comes across. Some of the work at home reviews I come across are not at all helpful in this. How many times have you come across a review which just lists lots of paid survey type sites? A lot I’ll bet. The truth is that while there are some legitimate paid survey sites out there, there are plenty who have left nothing but frustration in their wake, frustration at not getting the promised hundreds of dollars a day that is.

That is just one example of the traps I see, unrealistic expectations from a work at home idea. The other is the lack of planning. A business is a business whether it is a small one or a large one. It takes planning and commitment to make it work. Don’t go into home business thinking you can work just a couple of hours a day and make it big, maybe a small few do but the reality for most of us is just not so.

So think long and hard about what you want to do and how you will achieve it, the work at home road is not the easy one some reviews make it out to be…

For most of us starting the new venture on a part-time basis is the answer. You can test your ideas out, maybe build a simple website rather than the flashy one you plan on for later etc. Now this part-time approach requires just as much commitment as the other way and thats where the approach sometimes falls over. We find ourselves juggling family commitments as well as work commitments, friends, activities and the rest all tend to soak up our time and energy. Here are a few pointers that might help you do it part-time:

Firstly make sure your family is onboard with the idea. You’re going to be spending many hours working on it. Best they understand what you are up to and some hours are set aside for it.

Are there aspects of your existing employment that could be useful to your plan? Maybe you can even spend some of your down time like lunch periods researching your ideas online? Understand I’m not suggesting you steal from the company, just be smart about the knowledge you have gained and your use of time. You will need to be aware of your own employment conditions on the subject of other interests.

Share the load with someone. Find someone to partner with and you’ll have not just a way to spread the work load but a sounding board for ideas. Two heads are invariably better than one so you’ll have someone to talk about your ideas with and agree on a consensus. Talk about it and inevitably one of you will think of something the other did not.

Set definite times for yourself and your partner to work together in one spot. It might be just one weekend day spent together while the other hours are worked alone on weekday evenings. Having that little bit of added pressure to live up to the others expectations provides motivation to perform as none of us likes letting others down.

Start small. If your great business idea has come about through a hobby interest then use your leisure time to test your idea in a small way. If the idea works and a profit is produced at the small part-time level then it will almost certainly scale up to larger profit at the full time level.

Use the findings of your small scale tests to set your targets as to what level is required in order to support you and your partner in a full time venture. Is it a certain number of website visitors? A weekly number of sales leads? Ensure the triggers for jumping in full time are agreed by you and your partner. Then when you know you can or will hit those trigger points you know its time to go full time.

Good Luck with it.

Write out your to-do lists. Yes that is lists, plural, because you’ll have more than one! There are daily tasks like answering emails, checking sales figures and the like, there are weekly or monthly tasks like catching up on paperwork or accounts, reviewing and planning the weeks ahead and then there are all the other tasks that constantly crop up which need to be addressed. Important things like actual business opportunities and calls or emails from customers for instance. Now we are going to make some sense of those lists.

One of the best tips I got for organizing all of these things to do is to put them into a simple matrix. Take a sheet of paper and divide it into four sections by drawing lines through the middle from top to bottom and side to side. Put the important and urgent tasks for the day into the top left, the still urgent but less important ones to the top right. The bottom left section can contain important but not so urgent tasks and bottom right can hold the not important and not urgent ones.

Remember that the importance of the task to the success of your business is the prime consideration with urgency being the second. Now every day you revisit this little matrix and change it as necessary to ensure all the various tasks ahead are divided up appropriately. Remove the completed tasks, move others as required to the correct sector. Don’t worry if this seems a little confusing at first, just do it and it will become clear and obvious very quickly.

When working through your day concentrate on the top left section first then review other urgent tasks but only in the light of the important ones still to be completed. You’ll be amazed how many seemingly urgent tasks suddenly start to take up less of your ‘headspace’ and your time when you view them in terms of their real importance to your business!

This approach to handling tasks has been one of the most useful work at home tips I’ve come across, try it for yourself and see how it can truly help you stay very much on-track and focused.

Let me make it clear; any business activity which relies on a status quo is a very vulnerable one!

The fact is many factors contribute to business success and the more you spread the risk the better off you will be. This might sound a bit counter-intuitive when you’re trying to concentrate on a single niche or single source of business but in reality you need a spread of risk to give you a little cushion against nasty surprises.

If you are entirely dependant on one supplier, one source of business referrals, one search engine, one type of customer or one anything really you are in a poor position. A change of circumstances outside your control can decimate your business.

The recent shifts in western economy for instance have seen a downturn in discretionary spending so if your business is dependant on non essential spending you’ll be feeling the pinch by now.

On the other hand if you have a mix of product types and customers you might well not have even noticed the change.

The lesson? Don’t put your eggs…