Home Business Big Business: The Definitive Guide to Starting and Operating On-Line and Traditional Home-Based Ventures

Every year the trend toward working at home continues to grow, fueled by downsizing and ever-more-affordable office equipment. Author Mel Cook explains how to get started making your self-employment dreams come true, even on a shoestring budget, and provides dozens of examples of real-life success stories about men and women who took their chances and are now making millions. From choosing your business to financing, day-to-day operations, marketing, and publicity, Home Business • Big Business is the only reference guide you'll need to become a successful home entrepreneur. This revised and expanded edition features a new section on Web-based companies and the cybermarketing opportunities that can be run from your home computer. Even novice entrepreneurs will be able to establish a global presence on the Internet—and at no cost. Plus, you'll find highlights such as:

• Profiles of entrepreneurs who began in spare rooms and basement apartments and became wealthy, featuring inside information on how they went from their kitchen table to their own executive suite.
• Descriptions of 120 home business opportunities with proven track records.
• Advice on how to select a product or service that gives you a competitive edge and quick profits.
• Tips on how to market a product with little capital—using low-cost promotional techniques, free advertising, and national distribution through mail-order catalog houses.
• Listing of:
  • Firms that sell products and services through home-based entrepreneurs
  • 28 franchise and nonfranchise business opportunities that can be run from the home
  • 29 types of companies that regularly use homeworkers
  • 13 popular freelance occupations for work-at-home professionals.

A highly readable, entertaining, and informative guide, this book should be in the hands of anyone who has entertained the idea of working from home. Visit us online at http://www.mgr.com

While not everyone who opens a home-based business will make it to the top, a number of notable success stories--including mail-order mogul Lillian Vernon, Borland International's Philippe Kahn, and Rebecca Matthias of Mothers Work--have proven it is possible to buck the odds and go from kitchen-table entrepreneur to big-time corporate honcho. The recently revised and expanded edition of Home Business, Big Business: The Definitive Guide to Starting and Operating On-Line and Traditional Home-Based Ventures, by consultant and retired CEO Mel Cook, is aimed at readers who hope to follow in their footsteps.

Cook opens with short inspirational profiles of these and other formerly home-based high-achievers, and then lays out many of the basic details that can help one get from here to there. He touches on everything from initial planning and product/service pricing to daily operation and preparations for future growth. He also describes more than 100 work-at-home options, divided into categories like crafts, personal service, mail order, and manufacturing and repair, and has added a section about using the Net to launch and grow such enterprises. Final chapters deal with turnkey business ventures, legal considerations, opportunities for the elderly and disabled, and further resources. -- Howard Rothman