I'm thinking of putting together a website. Let me see what have a I tried.
First is straight teleworking- so doing a paid job from home. I used to work for channel 4 - teaching on homework high- mainly in the chat room. That was well paid and goood fun, but unfortunately channel 4 couldn't get enough sponsorship so they've turned it pretty much into a library only service.
Now I work for brainmass and AQA The advantage of both of those is that there are no fixed hours I can do as much or as little as I want. Both are good fun as well.
I've also run some home businesses. Mini-IQ and Phoenix cards- may be the ones you've heard of. Mini-IQ is a good opportunity if you want to do party plan as its new, run by a big organisation so there's plenty of opportunity to build up a team. However I have found party plan quite hard- because every time school holidays come I can't do a thing because of ds1's needs (he requires constant supervision and can't be taken woth me- not even to drop off orders). I'm not sure where I'm going to go with it really.
Phoenix is easier to fit in as it doesn't involve parties- always check out delivery prices on these sorts of thigns though. If you can routinely collect big orders then Phoenix is great- but if you have customers who want the odd card you iether have to hold a lot of stock (boxes boxes boxes) or you get killed on delivery charges. Phoenix is now due for renewal and I'm not sure yet whether I will or not.
I also run a business called Usana with Ghosty from mumsnet. That has lots of advatnages for me- I don't need to hold a lot of stock, I have a big interest in the things they're selling (nutritional products- very good quality ones). and I can reallyl run it from home (no parties) I'm thinikng of just concentrating on Usana as I think its probably the one that suits me best.It's been a bit of a case of sucking and seeing if you know what I mean though.
If you're looking at going into any of these direct marketing things you do have to watch out for scams. None of these things should be expensive to start up. If I do stop Mnni-IQ and Phoenix I will still have made some money- I won't have lost anything. Check delivery times. In the past I was a real nappy agent but found that really hard as the delivery times were long and I kept getting it in the neck although it was out of my control. All 3 mentioned above are good with delivery. You shouldn't have to buy up lots of stock, start up costs should be low and watch out in particular for companies who are cagey about their products. Direct sales are the best way to distribute some goods, but no-one should be hiding their product. Don't ever feel afraid of backing out either once you've started to investigate something.
I've tried too be very general in this as I don't want to be advertising. if you want to ask something that would be hard for me to answer wihout advertising then feel free to CAT me.