Work for someone else versus Starting Your Own Business?

There are stories and examples galore of those who started their own businesses at home.  But when I see people posting here about finding "work at home" jobs I get the feeling that they want the "security" of working for an employer who lets them work at home.  And I was quite surprised to find some examples of legitimate work at home jobs like the examples I noted before such as the disable woman that works from her home answering telephone calls from stranded motorists that belong to her employer which is an auto club.  So there are legitmate jobs out there that allows one to work from their home but the problem seems to be in them finding those companies that are legitmate.  They are out there however.

Like I posted in the subject line I agree with everything you said and I'd also like to point out that people have started "unusual" businesses as well!  I like the story of the two guys that like to mooch off of other people.  However they ran out of people to mooch off of.  So guess what they did?  They wrote a book about how to mooch off of people and they each now have their own beach house!

You cited examples of businesses that people can start and I listed on one of my pages how one could take one of their programs that they have on their computer and start a business of their own.  A woman actually started a answering machine message service using the programs that she already had installed on her computer.  Another woman took an astrology program and started a business doing astrology readings - but guess what - she added a twist - the astrology readings were for people's pets!  And we know how big the pet industry is - people love doing things for their pets.

So I don't know what it is.  Maybe people are afraid to start their own business or they don't think that they can do it.  Just look at all the people who have managed to start a successful business on ebay!  I know of a guy who does yard work in my area and he says that he has more business than he can handle!  Starting a day/childcare is always a good business to start because there is always a need for it.

I think the main concern for people is the money and how fast they will be able to make it - of course of which the answer is is that it will depend on them.

I think that the most encouraging piece of advice that I can give is that no matter what kind of business you want to start there is already someone out there who is actually doing it or something similar to it - and doing it successfully!