You finally decided to join the thousands of others who work from home. The home business you decide to pursue is network marketing.

Now, before you just up and join any network marketing company that looks good on the surface, seems to have a good product, etc. and so forth, STOP! Why stop? Because there are crucial steps you need to take to avoid being in the 93% failure rate of most people who join a network marketing company. Follow these tips and you will way ahead of many other home-based business opportunity seekers.

Tip #1: Commit to doing your research FIRST. I can't say enough how important this is. Starting a home-based business is a big decision and should never be done hastily and without careful thought. Commit to doing 5 or 6 hours of research on a number of companies. This one simple tip can greatly increase your level of success and save you years of frustration, being scammed, and most importantly, quitting.

Tip #2: When looking at a network marketing opportunity, make sure the product the company promotes meets the needs of a hot and hungry market. In other words, whatever company you are looking to join, make sure there are people out there clamoring for the product and would buy it even if there were no business opportunity associated with it.

You see, many people get so emotionally attached to a product or outcome that they totally miss the importance of seeing if there is even a market for it. If there is no market, you will have no success at all.

Tip #3: Use Overture. When researching if there is a hot and hungry market for a product, Overture.com is a great way to see how many people are searching for any particular product or service in a given month. If your research shows only 1,000 people are searching for a product, it would be a waste of time for you to join a network marketing company that sells it. However, if you see searches for 30,000, 50,000, 100,000 or even more, you are on the right track!

Tip #4: Check out the competitors of a product. Go the search engines Yahoo, Google, and MSN and look at the first 10 companies that are listed. If the first 10 are the same company, it's not good. However, if there are a variety of companies selling the product, this is good because it means that there is more of a demand for it.

Tip #5: Use Overture's bid tool. By doing this, you will be able to see if there are many people interested in a product and how much they are willing to pay per click to have folks come and visit their site. If there isn't a lot of bidding going, that's a bad sign. If there are quite a few people bidding on a specific term related to the product the network marketing opportunity promotes, that is a very good thing.

These are simple strategies and tools you can use to research if the network marketing opportunity is worth your time and money. If you follow these tips, and your research shows the home-based business opportunity is worth pursuing, go for it!