Advantages of Running A
Home Based Business

Some of the most common advantages of a home based craft business are:

• The opportunity to satisfy your creative drive. This allows for personal growth, self-fulfillment, and freedom of expression. Small craft businesses are more creative, productive, and responsive to changing conditions in the marketplace than are large mass-producing corporations.
• Advantages of having low rent, or rather, no rent, running a craft business from your home not only cuts location costs, but also allows you as a homeowner to deduct a portion of your mortgage payments and utilities as a part of doing business. Most crafters say that maintaining a low overhead is the most important rule of business, especially when you're just starting out. Operating a business at home not only helps you save money, but it also eliminates the risks of signing a long-term lease or acquiring a lengthy list of liabilities.
• Today's trend of dual-income couples or single parents will undoubtedly continue, leaving parents with the double pressure of wanting to work and raise their children at the same time. Operating a part-time or full-time craft business from your home helps you as a parent to combine the roles of career and raising a family. You can work any time you want; so if you have young children who need care and attention, working flexible hours can accommodate your personal and lifestyle needs.
• Your spouse and family members can be employed by the business.
• Your commuting time and expense are reduced or eliminated giving you as much as three or four extra hours of productive time each day.
• Computerization has had a profound impact on home based businesses. Equipment such as facsimile (fax) machines, photocopiers, personal computers, modems, and specialized software is not only smaller and more compact, but affordably priced. The advent of the personal computer was the turning point for many home based business.

  For the first time, it is possible for one person to perform dozens of tasks--correspondence, tracking bills, invoicing and taking inventory, bookkeeping, graphics, charts, mailing lists and record-keeping--more quickly and efficiently than if three or four people were doing it by hand. Cellular phones, memory pagers, and answering machines also make it possible to provide accessibility to the business world. A home office can have all the technical sophistication and professional image of a traditional business office outside the home.

• You can determine your own style and type of work environment. You can decorate and set-up your workshop or studio how you would like to have it, and it's your decision if you prefer background music or silence.
• Your start-up and operating cost are much lower, and therefore your business is easier to get established and less risky. There is no need to invest in a costly plant and equipment. Most handcrafted products are made with the simplest of tools and equipment, rarely costing more than a few hundred dollars and in many cases much less.
• Recognizing the advantages of reduced overhead, traveling costs, tax savings, setting your own hours, and with modern technology has made home based business the most rapidly expanding kind of business activity in North America making their contribution impressive and vital to the economy.

Disadvantages of Running A Home Based Business
Running a business from home also has its disadvantages.

Establishing Your Home Business
Establishing your home business involves the legal aspects of starting a business.