In these difficult financial times that we find ourselves, many people are looking for ways to create additional income for themselves. Yet they don’t know where to go to find the necessary information. These simple 7 steps will hopefully help you decide which type of home business is right for you at this stage of your life and career and where to begin to turn your dream business into reality.A HOME BUSINESS is simply a small business that operates from the business owner’s home office, lounge or kitchen. It is usually operated in one’s spare time and is often based around the interests of the business owner.Here are 7 simple steps to help you choose the Home Business that is right for you.Step 1: What is your Passion?Some of the most successful home businesses have been built around the owner’s passion for something. Catering businesses are built around a passion for cooking and seeing people enjoy your food. Network Marketing businesses are often built around a passion for talking to people, one’s love for the products and helping people develop their own home businesses as part of the team.So the first thing you need to do is look for something that you are passionate about, that you love doing in your spare time, and see if there is a business opportunity there. One of the fastest growing hobbies worldwide is Scrapbooking and many small business opportunities are being born out of this recent trend to turn a photo album into a vivid and colorful experience.So whether it is woodworking or baking or writing short stories or whatever, your degree of success is likely to be higher if the home business is based on something that you love doing.Have you heard the statement “Follow your Bliss”? Well, what is your Bliss? Because if you can link your home business to your Bliss, or Passion, you will be ahead of the game already.Step 2: How much Free Time can you dedicate to your home business?For most of us, our home business will be started and operated in our spare time. So now you need to decide how much time you will be able to devote to your new business. And for those of you who say “but I have no spare time for anything new”, I say, “look at how you spend your days and nights and you will see how much time you waste on non-productive stuff”. A good, and useful, exercise is to keep track of what you do over the period of a week, in the 6 basic categories of Work, Family Time, TV, Entertainment Out, Lazing Around and Sleep. All you will need to do is find some 8 to 10 hours a week that you can redirect, and you will have enough time to develop and grow and successful home based business.Step 3: How Much Money is available to invest in your Home Business?This is often another obstacle that people find to starting up a home based business. It is important to realize that some $$ will be required to make a go of anything, but some types of home based businesses require a lot more $$ than others. Often where less $$ are needed, more time is needed, but this is not always the case. And for most of us, the reason for starting up a home based business is to generate additional income because there is never enough money left over at the end of the month, or as they say “the money runs out before the month does”.A Network Marketing business, for example, will often be able to be started for a couple of hundred dollars and a commitment to spend another $50 to $100 a month on training material, conferences and the like. But these sorts of businesses, if you follow the system properly, can start to deliver income within a few months. An Internet based home business may require a larger outlay in the beginning, maybe a few thousand dollars for the training program and software required and can become cashflow positive within 6 to 9 months. Buying into a Franchise on the other hand may require many tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. So look at your cash flow and decide what expenses you can give up temporarily, so as to free up some money to invest into your business. No business can be truly successful, if you are not prepared to invest some money into it from the beginning.Step 4: What are your Specific Skills – what are you good at?The next step is for you to decide how you can use your personal skills in your new business venture. What are you good at? This is linked to the first step, identifying your passion – but it is more about what you can do well and are confident about. So, if you are great with people and love to meet new people and can chat easily to strangers, then a Network Marketing business may be right for you. You will be given training on how to approach people, depending on which company you decide to work with, but your people skills will put you in a strong position to succeed.If you are good with words, are a good writer and can put complex ideas into simple terms, of if you are creative and can think outside the box, or if you are good at getting other people to do things for you (a good delegator) then an internet based business may be perfect for you. In this modern age, more and more people are searching for information on any number of topics and are prepared to pay someone to provide that specific information for them.If you are more business focused, a numbers person and can look at a balance sheet and see the clear picture, then maybe buying an existing small business and running it “hands off” may be a good option. This is also good for people with less free time, although some time will be required to make sure the business goes in the direction you want it to.Step 5: Look at the Options that fit your profileThis is where you will start to narrow down the options that fit in with your Passion, your available Time, the Money you can free up to invest and your specific Skill Set. There are many hundreds of websites available that will be able to offer you the introductions to the various businesses available to you. You can go to http://www.google.com and enter one of the four sets of words as a starting point to find out what options are available. The four main categories are Network Marketing Business Opportunities, Internet Based Marketing Opportunities, Franchise Business Opportunities and Small Businesses for Sale. In each of these categories, add the city or area where you live to limit the options presented to those ones that are more suitable for you.Step 6: Do your more detailed research.Once you have identified 2 or 3 business options or ideas that look good for you, then you need to do some more detailed research into those options. Is there a market need for your Product? Is the Network Marketing Company growing strongly in your area and does it have good leadership? Is the small business you are looking to buy producing a positive cash flow with a good client base? Talk to friends or find someone who is doing something similar and discuss with them. Speak to a business broker if this is the direction you are going in. Once you have whittled your choice down and are confident you can make a go of it, now you are ready to start your business.Step 7: Take the First Step and Do ItThere is nothing more exciting, when starting to develop a new business, than to get going, so now you are ready to do something to implement your business. Find out where meetings are being held to do with the Network marketing business you have chosen. Go to a seminar on Internet Marketing if that is your chosen direction and take the plunge. Most of these sort of home based businesses offer a cooling off period, or a money back guarantee, so you will have a month or maybe longer to decide if the direction is right for you. But the longer you put off doing something, putting your dream business idea into action, the less likely you are to actually get it up and running.If you would like to know more about this subject, or have any questions about Home Based Businesses, log onto http://stuartfish.biz You will find a number of articles on internet marketing there.