For many people starting a home-based business requires being creative, ingenious and smart in how the businesses startup funds get used. With so many opportunities that will come your way, the question to answer is; which businesses get a crack at the available funds and which will have to wait another day? These are tough choices especially when someone is just starting out and does not know how to decipher the true and valuable opportunities from those disguised as good opportunities but are simply weak.

Along with the many opportunities that exist that require you to pay for their services, there seem to be just as many and if not more free resource opportunities that should be investigated before committing yourself to any particular group or company.

In my experience, the first thing to do is research your competitor's websites. Do your own marketing research, find the websites that have been around for a few years and see who they are doing business with; they will have already weeded out the pretenders from the pack. See if you can track any trends in the businesses other website owners are working with. If a trend emerges then there probably is consensus between the website owners.

The next step is to signup for some of the free newsletters that many internet-marketing companies publish, especially the Search Engine Optimization ("SEO") companies. These newsletters will have many terrific ideas to help you on the internet and at the same time will provide you with an internet commerce education. Just type "SEO" into any search engine and you will find hundreds of websites to get you started.

Besides these free resource opportunities that have already been mentioned, here are a few more that you should look into;

* The Federal Citizen Information Center promotes and distributes useful consumer information to the public. As an example, the small business offering has for $1.00 a "Virtual Small Business Workshop CD-ROM". The CD covers a variety of small business tax issues including payroll, taxes, electronic filing, and record keeping. * Free financial spreadsheet templates are available from Microsoft. These templates include budgeting, cash flow statements and small business startup checklists. * Free message board software to include on your website, phpbb.com open-source bulletin board software is free to download and install on your web site. * Free small business startup assistance through the Small Business Administration, SBA.gov.

Working on the internet from home does not have to be expensive if you are patient and willing to take your time researching the alternatives. There is only one paying service that I fully recommend that you do not compromise on and that is the company that provides your hosting service. Make sure that you signup for a top domain hosting service such as yahoo.com. Many of the search engines such as Google do not like the free hosting service companies and this can hurt you in the web site rankings within the search engines.

Good luck in starting your home-based business, and I look forward to hearing from you.



About the author:

Peter Engelbrecht is President of Diagonal Street Business Services which operates the web site www.BestBusinesses4u.com. The site offers practical home business ideas to stay at home moms.