Franchise 101
Copyright © Joseph Rose
http://www.AjamiWealth.com

One of the options for an online home based business, if you don't have a creative dream about your own product, is to buy into a franchise. This, basically, is a way of living your own dream of having your own online home based business while jumping on the bandwagon of someone else’s proven dream. It’s also a way of learning from those who have already been there and done that. People and businesses who own franchises have generally created the initial idea themselves, have been through the trial and error process of making it succeed and are now ready, for a fee, to teach others what they learned, while guiding them to success.

Of course, there are drawbacks for buying a franchise as your way of getting an online home based business going. If you’re bent on being your own boss, you’ll find there are many franchises who place so many restrictions on what you can and can’t do, what your online home based business must offer and how, that you might feel like you’ve left your dream behind and taken up with someone else’s nightmare.

The first thing you’ll want to do before you settle on a franchise business opportunity is to determine where your interests and your skills are. Keep in mind that with a franchise you are still going to have a boss. It may be your own business, but you’ll be tightly regulated by the franchisor.

Next you have to determine how much money you can invest up front for your franchise business opportunity. Some franchises are just going to be too costly to get into. The dream of a McDonald’s franchise ownership will cost you $1 million up front. A Chem-dry franchise, on the other hand, only requires $8000 to start.

You’ll have to determine if you want a large franchise with great brand name awareness or a smaller one that gives you more hands on support with a personal touch and more responsiveness when you run into a business problem.

Make sure before you decide on the franchise business opportunity that you have investigated the life of the business. Some franchises are fads that fade out quickly. When it comes times to think about financing your business, do your own math. Don’t let the franchisor feed you their numbers. Find out how much you need up front and how much you are going to take home at the end of your business day. Make sure you know the royalty fee. Most franchise royalties range from three to ten percent of the franchisee’s gross.

Make sure you know the kind of support you can expect from the franchisor before you launch your franchise business opportunity. You'll want to know if you have any help with ad design, with advertising placement and its cost, with marketing, human resource and recruitment issues, and bookkeeping. Find out what type of training is involved, whether it’s at the home office or they come to you, and how often.

Make sure that you hire an attorney experienced in franchise law to help you pore over the documents before you sign on the dotted line.

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