Working from home is, for some people, the epitome of the American dream. You set your own hours, and you get to decide which twelve hours of the day are considered working. With the rise of the commercial internet, there have never been more opportunities to work from home and make your business thrive, particularly if you have a marketable skill that doesn’t need a large advertising budget or office infrastructure.

However, there are some things to learn before going into business for your-self from home. Learn from the mistakes of others, you don’t have time to make them all yourself.

First and foremost – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Your mother told you this one when you were ten, and it’s still valid now. Working from home is, well, working. You may be working on things you enjoy doing (like writing, or painting). You may be working in a field where you have a set of clients from a former employer, but it is, still, work.

You need to have the discipline to get up and go to the computer (or go to your home office) every single day, rather than sleep in. You need to be circumspect about making dates with clients and keeping them, or you won’t have clients…and you’ll be handling a lot of the administrative stuff that nobody really likes to do, like cold calling for clients, running the accounts receivables, and handling your own marketing and advertising.

So, anyone offering you a work from home business opportunity that promises you a six-figure income in your bathrobe…proceed with caution. There are careers you can do from home that can generate that sort of income but it still takes a lot of work and determination to reach that level; bestselling novelists, day traders, and affiliate marketers are a few that come to mind. However, you still need a certain level of skill, knowledge, and talent to make any of those ventures a success.

Set goals. This is part and parcel of having the discipline to run your own business from home – you need to set a daily and weekly goal, and then review whether you’ve hit it. One of the most important business skills out there is taking metrics – assessing what you’ve done, what you can improve on, and looking for ways your business can grow.

And lastly, be realistic about how much you can get done during the day. One of the hazards of working from home is that without the structure of meetings and deadlines to show what’s going on, its way too easy to over-commit yourself, to take on more work than you can handle, especially if the work you do tends to all come in at the same time from your clients.

Working from home is a fantastic opportunity for anyone who considers themselves a self-starter. But with enough determination, even the biggest procrastinator can make a home business very successful.

posted by Chris Simpson