124 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Truly a First-Rate Effort, May 21, 1999
In remarking about her entrepreneurial success, Liz Claiborne once said, 'Start with a low overhead and be willing to do everything yourself'. While I am very impressed with the comprehensive knowledge that the Edwards team possesses and conveys on the subject of home business, and the thoughtful, intelligent organization of their book, I believe that their thinking falls short in a couple of areas.
The key word for this book is: outsourcing. They believe, and are very likely correct, that outsourcing is the future. Everything that you or a company would have done yourself a decade ago you are now outsourcing to others to do for you today. They also appear to ignore the fundamental organizational and economic implications of the world wide web. The barriers to entry on the internet are almost non-existent for practical purposes. Anything that you can do, someone ten thousand miles away in Rangoon can do, too- most likely for less. Outsourcing is touted as giving you more control, allowing you to work less while giving you more. However, many who engage in outsourcing are actually working harder than they were when they held full-time jobs. Proximity, or the close location of business to client, does have its merits, but these are more often weakened rather than strengthened by computers and the internet. Outsourcing and proximity can work for the home business, but they more often work against it.
Yet, this does not mean that the Edwards team did not write an excellent book. In many ways, this is probably the best book out there for those who are not one hundred percent technology literate or computer savvy. Whereever possible the Edwards team encourages the reader to support and work with other home business people. Bluntly speaking, the real selling point of this book is not its computer aspects, but its ability to prepare the prospective entrepreneur to carefully consider the market for his or her product and work with computers and high technology to do business.
The book is organized into seven thoughtful chapters brimming with information. As advertised on the cover, the focus of the book is computer centered home based businesses, and the first chapter is a simple sketch and summary of one hundred such businesses. Each summary includes a list of resources (books, web-sites, and organizations) as well as a basic run-down of the type of business, its profit potential, the time committment, and start-up costs. However, some of the resources cited in the book tend to carry a high price tag, and are either out of print, out of date, unavailable, irrelevant to the business described, or not very useful. Many of the book's business ideas reflect the increasing subdivision and specialization occuring in many industries. Also, some of the business ideas are either quite related (billing and invoicing, payroll, and bookkeeping- all subdivisions of accounting) or highly ambiguous (HTML programmer and web designer, desk top publishing, publishing, and form design service).
The book is good simply because it tells you everything you need to do to be taken seriously as a business. One chapter each is devoted to outfitting your office, getting good phone service, and selecting the best computer for your home office. One of their main points is that the telephone is a very important piece of equipment for the home business, and they strongly suggest that the entrepreneur have as many lines as possible. One minor flaw with the book is that the computer information, though fairly up to date for a 1997 publishing date, is repeated ad nauseum, and could have been better presented perhaps as a separate chapter, chart or table listing the software and hardware needs for the different businesses.
Although some readers may be more advanced than others, overall, there is a lot of good, straightforward, and practical advice to be found in this book. The book is not only thorough, comprehensive and exhaustive, but also addresses all of the major (and minor) questions of the fledgling entrepreneur (though not in the order I would have liked). Aside from the exaggerated projections of potential profit for the various ventures, this book is definitely worth reading twice at least. The Edwards should be commended for producing such a straightforward, hype-free, and first-rate volume.
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63 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but dated, January 4, 2003
This is a good book with some good ideas, and it is cross-referenced so that you know what kind of business each idea involves. There are some ideas that I did not think of, along with additional resources listed.
The only problem is that the book is very dated now. This book was born when the internet was still gaining in popularity. One of the job descriptions suggests that companies are still unsure of how the internet can best be used.
I'd love to see an undated version of this book. Until then, it's a good, but limited resource for my needs.
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40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Plenty of useful information, June 18, 2000
By A Customer
I host a work at home parents bulletin board and I highly recommend this book to my posters. It's packed with a lot of useful information about taxes, business set-ups and ideas for starting a work-at-home business.
The only complaint I would have is about the brevity of some of the ideas. In the interest of condensing the size of the book, the authors seem to have chopped several much-needed paragraphs from many of the ideas, such as suggestions for researching the idea and talking with people already in the field.
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