Does Financial Success or An Online Home Based Business Require an MBA?Several months ago I started my online home based business. I was brought up at a time and in a family where education was a given. My father was a successful lawyer so my mother never had to work. It was a given that when I completed my private school education which my father worked hard to provide for me, that I would attend college.In my world at that time there was no other conceivable possibility. You graduated high school and then you went to college – Period. So I did. The first year was a miserable failure and I left after it and began my working career. I would ultimately go back to college and finally get a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, while I worked.So here I am, over thirty years after high school, having worked all those years. The most money I ever made on a job was a salary of $52,000 per year. The last company I worked for, I rose from Controller to the underpaid President and the company shut down. Now I am one of the millions of unemployed Americans.I, like many millions of people, looked for an opportunity to create an online home based business. I have been at it for a few months. My success is growing. I picked internet marketing and network marketing because I enjoyed blogging in my last job. I also had been spending time studying internet marketing on my own. Today I belong to a couple of network marketing organizations and have my own blog, which I post to almost every day.I have become an entrepreneur, and like many online home based business entrepreneurs, I am driven and committed to success. But success does not come easy in the online home based business arena. My primary products are the network marketing programs to which I belong. They provide the opportunity to achieve financial success by following a specific program of internet marketing and entrepreneurial education, and marketing the programs to others looking for a business opportunity.Network marketing has been around for a long time and despite its negative reputation, it is a viable business model that can lead to tremendous financial rewards. I have seen, and personally know a number of people that have achieved amazing success in an online home based business of network marketing. Many did achieve this incredible level of success through hard work, but without a college degree.There are many things you need to learn to become successful at internet marketing or network marketing as an online home based business. But you don’t have to go to an Ivy League college and spend five or six years and $200,000 to learn what you need to know. You don’t need an MBA or even a bachelor’s degree to be a success in network marketing.You can learn how to make an amazing living by joining these network marketing companies at a fraction of the cost of a college education. Now there are millions of people looking right now for a business opportunity like an online home based business. To achieve success in network marketing, like any other business, requires an investment.Just like college is an investment in yourself that you or your parents pay for, joining a network marketing program is an investment in yourself for which you must pay. There are no free lunches. Starting an online home based business requires and investment of time and money. It is that simple.But when you compare the value of the investment you make in a network marketing company that provides you with the system, tools and education that allows you to create unlimited success and wealth, with the value of a college education, you might be surprised.If you are an entrepreneur or want to be an entrepreneur with your own online home based business, you need to have the skill set and mind set of an entrepreneur. I suppose you can get most of it going through college and graduate school, spending years and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or you can cut to the chase, so to speak, and get the education, skill set, and mind set much quicker and for a lot less money. And while you are learning and developing you are making money.This is the reality of our world today. This is the reality of the knowledge based worker era. You get to choose your path in life and you have to live with the results. No way around it, success requires work. But the path you choose is up to you. One way or another if you want to achieve financial success today, you need to invest in yourself. If you don’t you limit your opportunities in life.You can invest in a college degree and hope that you are able to find a job. You can work for somebody else your whole life and watch all the benefits go to the owner. Or you can invest in yourself and join a network marketing program with unlimited earning potential and the satisfaction of owning your own online home based business.

Working from home is an exciting experience that everyone should try at least once in the lifetime. There is something liberating about not being stuffed into a cubicle under glaring fluorescent lights for eight or more hours per day. When some people make the change to work from home, they choose to establish a home based business rather than working for someone else.The first question that usually enters the mind of someone who wants to work from home online is what type of home based business to establish. There are many choices because the Internet has made it possible to do things virtually that traditionally could only be accomplished face to face. Examples include education and product or service sales, each of which is relatively easy to set up and market.Some people have great product ideas or already specialize in a certain service such as tutoring. These folks can take their skills to the online world and form a home based business designed around what they already enjoy. Someone who enjoys cooking could establish a Web site containing cooking tips and recipes, while using an affiliate marketing program to sell kitchen tools and appliances. Those who tutor can offer their services to a worldwide audience for a reasonable fee.Finding the proper type of home based business only requires tapping into one’s skills and interests. With a little creativity, many things can be tailored to a format designed to earn Internet money. Someone who enjoys sewing can establish an Internet business offering custom-designed clothing or knitted items. Shoppers can visit the site, choose their colors and styles, and pay online for the order.No matter what type of business is established to make money from home, the key to its success is whether people are aware of it. Publicizing the Internet business requires doing Web marketing such as search engine optimization. This makes the site more visible to those who are looking for the products or services it offers, resulting in additional sales.When faced with what type of home based business to begin, let the imagination be the guide. Consider different hobbies, areas of interest, and unusual skills and then establish an online business compatible with the one that is chosen. With some effective Internet marketing, the business will enable individuals to make money from home for many years, freeing them from the chains of the traditional corporate office.

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.