This is a question I get asked a lot. “How do you evaluate a business opportunity?” Let me first start off by saying that the best business is the one that you create yourself. No prepackaged business can give you the income opportunity of your own creation. Having said that, there are those of us who simply don’t have the skills or desires to start our own business from scratch. So in that case, how DO you evaluate a business op? This article will give you three key things to look at that will hopefully help you in coming to a decision on one.

The first thing you look at is history. That’s right. I know everybody loves jumping on the latest and greatest thing but with any new company, there is always risk involved because you don’t know for certain that they are going to be around six months later. For example, even though I create my own products and services, there is one company that has been around for about 6 or 7 years that I would very highly recommend to others. The reason is very simple. They’ve been around that long and have a solid product that fills a need. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have success with it, but it’s a great starting point.

The next thing you want to look at is the pay plan. Some pay plans, quite honestly, are just not worth getting into no matter how great the company is. Without mentioning any names, there is one company in particular that pays out $1 for every member you bring in. Now, I don’t know about you, but for a $10 a month charge, that’s not much of a pay plan if you ask me. I’d want to look for something that was a little more substantial. Most decent companies will at least give you between 40% and 50% of what they take in.

The last thing you want to look at, and by no means the least important, is if the company has a viable product. The reason for this has more to do with legalities than anything else. There are quite a few regulations, as weakly enforced as they are, that state that a company must sell a viable product and cannot simply be a means of passing money from one person to another. That’s why you see all these gifting programs coming and going because they’re being shut down eventually. So make sure the company you want to get involved with actually sells a product.

These are the basics of hooking up with a decent company, though by no means is this list the be all and end all. There is of course customer service and a number of other issues that we haven’t even gotten into. But if you at least make sure of these, you should have a pretty good chance of coming away with something worth getting involved in.