You may be considering starting a small business and you need to decide whether or not you should operate your business from a home office or if your small business will require a more traditional office setting. Below you will see 5 reasons to operate your business from home if your specific business allows for home-based operations.

Start-Up Costs:

When evaluating your small business’ start-up expenses you will find that starting a small business and operating your business from home will usually have fewer start-up expenses. When starting a traditional office-based business you may have start-up expenses associated with 1st and last month rent, security deposits, establishing utilities, furnishing the office with desks, computers, ect. By operating your small business from home you may be able to significantly reduce these costs or eliminate them altogether.

Hours of Operation:

While many traditional offices hours are restricted to 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, home-based businesses can be open 24 hours a day 7 days a week. With an online business designed to process payment and outsource orders to a warehouse or distributer, people from around the world can purchase your products or services on your small business website while you are working, when you’re not working, while you are sleeping, even when you are sick or on vacation.

Customer Base:

Many brick and mortar business’ customers are restricted to locals or people willing to travel to the business’s location. When you operate a home-based business, especially an online business, it allows you to have a customer base worldwide.

Start Slow:

One great benefit of starting a small business from home is the fact that you don’t have to jump in with both feet right away. You can start slow by operating your business in your spare time, while remaining employed with your current employer. You should be sure that operating your small business does not violate any noncompeting clauses that you may have signed with your current employer. You can speak to your employer or legal council before starting a business to determine if starting your new home-based business will violate a noncompeting clause that you have signed.

Resources:

It today’s environment of information at the click of a button, there is vast amount of home-based small business resources easily accessible to business owners. Much of this information is available for free or at minimal cost online. You can find tutorials, forums, blogs, courses, ebooks, and other forms of information to help your small home-based business start and grow to become successful.

With all of the benefits of starting a small business and operating it from home, unless your small business industry is unsuitable for home-based business operations, you should definitely take operating from home into consideration when deciding to start a small business. Even if you decide to operate your small business from a traditional office I would still recommend that you also build and develop a small business website and web presence where you can take orders and process payments so that your small business is not restricted to local customers and your hours of operation.