It can be a real minefield when looking for a home business opportunity. There are so many different opportunities out there it's easy to get overwhelmed, plus the fact that there are scams out there and un-ethical people wanting to make a quick buck. It can get tricky!

The fact is that many people across the world are making full time incomes from home working online so it is a viable option. You need to put in some hard work though and be prepared to educate yourself, to make it work.

Direct sales and Network Marketing are the two main business models I would recommend you look at. You might also want to look at being an affiliate marketer where you sell a product that someone else has created, they do the work of creating it and you just sell it for a onetime commission.

With an MLM business you will be developing a team of distributors under you. You will earn a commission for the sales that they make. There's no doubt this is an extremely good business model, get enough people under you and your residual cheques will be coming in for work that you did just once. MLM is well worth considering.

With a top tier business you will earn large commissions on the front end when you make a sale of the product or service, normally there is not much potential for creating passive wealth as you often just get paid on your teams efforts one level deep. High buy in products are called 'High Ticket', they are expensive to join, thus the high commissions, they can be extremely profitable but you will probably have to prospect more folks in order to make a sale. High ticket has distinct advantages, one of these being a higher profit margin, giving you more scope for paid advertising.

It's no good spending $500 to make 5 sales on a $100 product, but with a high ticket business paying a commission of £2,000, it's very worth it.

Its always worth checking out any business you are thinking about joining, see if there is any negative information about it. 99% of the time you will need to find a sponsor, someone you will join under; you need to pick wisely. Its a fact of the industry that there are people around who don't deliver on their promises of support and coaching. Once you have joined some will magically disappear or become difficult to contact!

Make sure you research any proposed mentor and test them out, email them, phone them, satisfy yourself they are genuine and will give you the help that you will need.

When researching the company see how long they have been trading for. Getting into a company at ground level can reap some massive rewards, but on the other hand there is no track record and many new companies come and go every week. It's often easier to recruit into a new company than it is into one thats been around for donkeys years. Follow your instinct and always consider if the products would sell well, even if there was no compensation plan attached to them.

Regardless of what business you are looking to join there are many key factors that you need to take into consideration, missing out on just one could mean your failure in the industry.