Working at home has been a dream of many that goes back many years. Staying at home and enjoying watching the kids grow up is a goal worth fighting for.

Let's take a look into making a living or part time living from the comfort of your home. You owe it to yourself to gain the freedom a home business can offer.

In the past, there have been multi-level marketing plans to sell everything from vitamins to soap. There have been mail order catalog opportunities. Many tried buying and selling real estate. Each of these opportunities made many people a lot of money, but each of them also cost many people more money.

More people have spent money than have made money in every business venture.

The problem is many inexperienced people get into moneymaking schemes after attending a meeting somewhere. The offer may be legitimate, but most people fail in business.

According to the US Small Business Administration, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail with the first five years. That is a scary statistic.

This means that the average business is doomed to fail from the beginning. It also means that you will lose a lot of money if you start a business. WOW! No wonder you are leery about putting up your hard-earned cash for what is statically a crapshoot, a roll of the dice.

So, what is the answer for the average person who does not want to lose their savings and even their home equity in a business? Start building a "digital business" online. Create a website that generates its income without you needing to invest in inventory or even lease a building to house your business. Then create two or ten more websites generating income for you.

You may not know how to create a website today. It is an easily learned skill. There is software you can buy or download free that will help you. There are tutorials on making a website profitable. You can do this.

Once you have a website online you can put other people’s advertising on your site and be paid when someone buys one of their products. This is called affiliate marketing. If this was my baby toys webpage and I mentioned a great baby toy with a link to my advertiser’s toy page you might go there and buy the toy. If you did, I would get a commission.

You could also put ads on your pages that only require someone to click on the ad for you to be paid. Again, if you were on my baby toy page and an ad talks about a toy. You click on the ad to go see it and I am paid for you clicking on the ad.

The advertiser feels their sales page is compelling enough for them to sell enough of that toy to cover their cost of the clicks that got you there.

Some advertisers do not require you to buy the product when you click on an ad, but you will not be paid unless you fill out their application. This is usually seen on sites like insurance sites or loan application sites. You do not have to get a policy or take out a loan for me to be paid. When you fill out the form, I qualify for my commission for sending you to the advertiser.

These are typically the ways a beginning website entrepreneur starts generating income on the Internet. Once you understand that part of internet marketing, you may move on to selling your own digital products.

A digital product is one that can be downloaded from your website. You can sell your own ebook you wrote yourself or an ebook you purchased and have the rights to sell online.

If you are a programmer, you can sell you own computer program from your site.

You could also sell someone else's program that you purchased the rights to sell. Notice that not all of the above ideas require you to invest in a lot of inventory. Even the products are free if you create them yourself. Not everything you are doing so far requires a large investment of your hard earned money. It does require a large investment of your time.

All of the material you need to create a website can be found free online if you do not want to purchase some popular program. Your only expense SHOULD be a domain of your own, such as yourdomain.com. You can get free hosting from various places but for moneymaking venture, this is not advised.

For a small investment, you too can be PRESIDENT OF YOUR OWN COMPANY.

Maybe the statistics are the same for success online as they are in other businesses, but this is a chance to find out without losing the farm doing it.

The reason most online / home based businesses fail or never make any money, is because of the lack of a plan. As with a brick and mortar business you have to know where you want to go, how you will get there and when. The old saying, "those who fail to plan, plan to fail" has never been more true than building an online business.