Working from home misconceptions – it really is work

People often times get the wrong idea about work from home businesses. Because of all of the hype and lies floating around the internet and on tv today, it’s easy to see why. If you think that every work from home business idea results in you being able to wake up at noon and make fat cash sitting at your kitchen table in your underwear, you’re sadly mistaken.

While there are plenty of people that literally make fat cash roaming around in their underwear all day, chances are it hasn’t always been this way for most people. While undoubtedly some people stumble upon the perfect work from home opportunity that causes them to become successful almost overnight; these situations of ‘overnight success’ are extremely rare. In almost every case of home business success, there is a period of work, and often times a lot of work is involved.

Of course, success is relative to one’s personality. While some people would consider success with a home based business as being able to work from home, though still spending roughly 6-8 hours a day working; others view success as getting an almost automated system setup so that income comes in, regardless of the amount of hours put in. While there are very few work from home businesses that require zero upkeep, there are plenty of systems that will allow an individual to keep money coming in with only a few hours of management throughout any given week with considerations to the occasional time period when a new product or service is being developed, but in the end it still averages out to a few hours a week.

Working from home can involve more work than a 9-5 job

Personally, I work more hours in a week than I would if I only worked a 9-5 job. You’ll find this as a generally true situation with people that offer services from home; web developers, freelance writers, programmers, search engine optimizers, etc – often times if you ask, these people put in many more hours a week than they would with a ‘normal’ hourly job.

So – if working from home involves spending more time working than an ‘hourly’ job does, why do it? For me, it’s about freedom. Sure, I sometimes pull 15 hour days, and other days I don’t work at all. Personally, I hate feeling trapped. There’s nothing worse to me than wasting your time and evenly trading it for a one-time paycheck.

Let me explain. When you are working a conventional 9-5 job, you are trading your time for a one time payday. When I work, I am not only working on “one time” projects for a one time payday, I am also working to automate my business so that I receive a bigger return than my time investment could afford me. In normal circumstances, a 9-5 job doesn’t give you the opportunity to work on additional streams of income while you’re on the clock.

Even if you’re not interested in working on an automated income stream, working from home gives you the added benefit of freedom. I work a lot, but I have ultimate flexibility to spend time with my wife and child. I don’t have to ask for a day off, I don’t have to explain to my child that I can only see her 4 hours a day because “daddy has to work”; I can at will head off to the park with my family, go out to eat, take a walk, whatever I want to do. I dictate what I do with my time, not someone else.

While working from home can often times involve more work than a typical 9-5 job, at least initially; it affords you the opportunity to spend more time with your family as well as work on building a reoccurring income, something that simply isn’t possible working for “the man”. Maybe it is more work, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

[tags]work from home,working from home,home business[/tags]