When working from home, people often quit before they start earning any money. This article will discuss how long you should expect to wait before you start making money with your home business.

With the exception of some not for profit organizations most people go into business in order to produce revenue (income) and profit. Unfortunately, when it comes to a home business, and especially network marketing, many people forget this important point.

Your home business must be in profit to survive, and if you are watching your numbers, then if things start turning sour… you may make suitable adjustments to get back on track. That means making a profit and increasing that profit over time.

Most home business fail because the distributors fail to treat them like a real business. It doesn’t matter if you are drop shipping, network marketing, affiliate marketing, etc… you will fail if you don’t treat your business accordingly.

Two common happenings:

1) Many people have the attitude that since they didnt have to invest much to begin with they really dont have to be too concerned about whether they make money or not, or how soon. Of course, that often ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. Its not just that way with a business, but with many things in life. If you come to own something that cost a great deal or required a lot of effort to acquire you tend to appreciate it more than something of lesser perceived value.

When you consider that network marketing has made some people just as much if not more money than many other traditional kinds of businesses, with incomes of as much as $1 million a month or more being achieved, treating a MLM as if it isnt a serious or real business is a huge mistake!

2) Because the entry cost can be so low people overlook the cost of not making money, and also have a tendency not to pay attention to how much their other expenses associated with their business (such as trips, conventions, and/or buying extra products or services over and above what you really need) add up over time.

For example, lets say that you spend $500 to sign up for a new business. Not a lot of money at all, maybe the price of a cup of coffee a day and some change.

Weeks, months, and years go by… you are still not earning any money. This isn’t probably a big worry because you think to yourself „I spent such a small amount to get started, it really is no bother“.

With some companies though, this investment doesn’t include the products… so you have been paying extra for those too. Nothing wrong with that, unless you are buying more than you need to qualify for the certain commission levels, providing you start earning in the future. Then you might be attending meetings, using the phone and internet to run your business, and even placing a few newspaper ads.

So, even though you really havent paid much attention because you only invested $500 to begin with, if your business hasnt yet started making you money then you are really spending AND LOSING $2,400 a year, in this hypothetical example. And, here again, in reality many people often end up spending much, much more.

Looking back at the traditional bricks-and-mortar business example before, their operating costs are much much higher than you could imagine. If you where to run a McDonalds or a Starbucks… it wouldn’t be uncommon to be in business for a year before you make your money back and then only starting to make a profit.

In contrast — though networking marketing is NOT designed necessarily to make you a very large amount of money overnight — you can and should be able to generate an ever increasing residual income for yourself over time, and starting in relatively short order.

It’s acceptable to take a few weeks or even a month to prepare for your new home business, just as it is acceptable to get started right away and set your goal to be in profit the first month of operation. It’s entirely up to you… just make that commitment to treat your MLM home business as a real business, because it is!

Certainly within 90 days you will want to start seeing some kind of payoff in return for your efforts. And no more than 6 months should go by without positively starting to see income coming in. In fact, ideally, you should try whenever possible to not only earn enough money to cover your original startup costs, but you absolutely should be making a profit (in other words, extra money) within this time.

If you don’t start making money, get some help and evaluate your business so you may fix those leaks and get some positive traction.

In summary:

1) Always remember to track ALL of your directly related business expenses, including how much you spend on leads, products and services, meetings, trips and conventions, training, etc. You must add these expenses to your original startup costs.

2) Subtract how much money youve earned from the number above (your total expenses) and this will tell you how much money youve made (profit), or how much money youve lost and/or are losing.

3) To repeat: If after 30 to 90 days, 6 months maximum, you are not making a profit, you should seriously reevaluate!

Dont continue down the same path if you are only spending more money than you are making, and not making any profit in return.

The purpose of you starting a home business is to be in profit, so that means earning more money than you are spending.