Statistical Benefits of a Home Based Business Versus Traditional Job
12 July 2010 - Filed under Articles
We’ve all grown up listening to instructions on how to live the American Dream: go to school to get a good education, get a good job working for someone else, and you will be taken care of, and have a nice retirement plan in your golden years. Is this ‘American Dream’ still in place?
As of the Summer of 2010, unemployment rate has been just under 10% (though REAL unemployment is estimated 20%). The Obama Administration is stating that the 8.5 million jobs lost will probably never come back. Health care coverage is so bad that people actually want the government to run it! And Social Security is expected to run out by 2018.
The following are statistics detailing the plight of the average American family:
• Taxes – for four months and a week, or 3 hours out of every 8-hour day, you’re working for Uncle Sam – (The average American family of four with a median income of $47,012 will pay $10,250 in federal taxes and another $6,110 in state and local taxes for a total “tax liability” of $16,36
• average childcare costs – $7000 per year
• higher standard of living – make more/spend more – Average American spends $1.22 for every dollar they earn
• gasoline – $1200 per year
• spend hundreds on dry cleaning and biz wardrobe
• eating out for lunches $2000
• auto insurance – $500
• costs of raising a child – (quarter million $ to raise child birth-17) ($17,000 for 1st yr)
Does working for someone else equate to the American Dream or the American Nightmare? Due to these disturbing economic factors, more people are seeking different opportunities for generating income, and starting a home based business is a popular alternative. After all, why work to generate revenue for someone else when you could do this for yourself?
According to IDC, a top national research firm, there are between 34.3 million and 36.6 million home office households in the United States alone generating over $427 billion dollars of revenue. To put this dollar amount into perspective, $427 billion is more than the medical industry, the food industry, and the medical drug industry combined. In fact, the Small Business Administration estimates that more than half the businesses being started in this economy are home based or online businesses. And this trend is expected to continue due to low start up costs and higher success rates.
The following are some statistics about home based businesses:
• About 70% of home-based businesses will last over a three-year period, compared to 29% of other business ventures, according to the Home-Based Business Institute.
• 89% with household incomes greater than $80,000 have a home office compared to 14% of those with incomes below $25,000 (Find/SVP).
• According to IDC, home-based businesses create an estimated 8,500 new jobs daily, or one new business every 11 seconds
• Over 85% of small business owners still have their small business 3 years later, which is a much higher success rate than the traditional brick and mortar business.
For some people, working from home may be a method of supplementing their ‘real-world’ income, and for others it may be the only way to work because of other responsibilities or lack of other opportunities. In any case, work-from-home jobs provide you the luxury of working at the time you like, while staying close to your loved ones.
Online marketing is one of the most popular work-from-home jobs. A wide variety of products are sold online using different marketing techniques, such as online social media marketing and pay-per-click marketing. Online marketing is also one of the techniques that can help you earn enough to take care of your everyday needs, monthly bills and more.
A word of advice: find a topic that you are passionate about, find out if the industry is successful, and focus on that item. For example, I have always enjoyed buying and selling gold and silver coins. Who doesn’t like collecting money?! The industry for numismatic coins is booming. The numismatic industry does more than $10 billion dollars of business in North America alone, and also that 9,023,500 American Silver Eagle coins were sold by the US Mint in the first three months of 2010. The worldwide numismatic business is well over $100 billion. Therefore, focusing on a rapidly growing industry that I have a passion for makes perfect sense and has lead to great financial success.
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