Home Based Businesses are a lot like nutritional products - everybody claims they have the best - so who do you believe. Well here are 10 tips to guide you through those murky waters.

1. Look for a home based business in the hot areas - like nutrition where there is the huge base of baby boomer customers with income to spend on your product. Don't be fooled by some startup company with some new idea and you think you're going to get in on a groundfloor opportunity. It ain't an opportunity if no one wants the product. Analyze what the market is - there is a reason why heavy hitters are heavy hitters - they are able to accurately judge the market.

2. Check this out - the home based business you're looking at may be in a hot area like nutrition but they may be in a stagnant sub-area of nutrition. You want to look for the sub-areas of nutrition that are the fastest growing - the fastest growing is the nutritional drink or health beverage area. Most likely due to the ease of just drinking your nutrition - fast and easy. So following this model the company you select in the nutritional field should have a flagship nutritional drink product.

3. Is it as startup, or established home based business company? - The problem with startups is they way too often don't live up to their obligations, go out of business, or both. Often with an established company you may have missed the best timing to get in with them. The opportunity is over so to speak. What to look for is an established reputable company poised for explosive growth.

4. Look for the credibility behind the home based business company - lack of established credibility often dooms the company to go under and you're left holding the bag and also your reputation suffers.

5. Discover a hot product before the masses do - This one is big - this ingredient is what often establishes the big money earners and allows people who have never made money before to make some nice incomes. Find a hot product destined to be a mega-seller before virtually anyone has heard of it. Get in early and ride it for all it's worth.

This one factor alone is how most heavy hitters became to be heavy hitters in this industry. It's not that they are much better networkers than others, you could essentially say they were in the right place at the right time and took massive action. However, it's a little more than that - their persistence and determination in the industry has allowed them to make some nice contacts so that when the right opportunity comes along they can pull key players on board and go from there.

Also this heavy hitter person usually has a keen sense of the market which allows them to pick the right opportunity and avoid all the pitfalls and fools gold of the startup companies. Nobody follows someone even if they are ''finally right'' about something if they have used up all their credibility on programs that never panned out.

6. This can be almost as important as a hot product - The Marketing or Compensation Plan. Things to look for - does the plan provide extra rewards for the upline helping those underneath them? Like with matching enroller bonuses where the upline can enroll people under individuals in their organization and earn a percentage of that persons check in bonuses. This is much better than a forced binary plan, because in a forced binary plan, people that don't want to work get in the way and drag down others.

A bonus system like this will allow you to help the people who want a successful home based business and bypass those who are lazy and not interested.

More things to look for in the compensation plan. Does the plan pay a number of levels deep or does it stop after a few levels and the levels below this are infinity levels based upon sales volume? Also how many legs are required to maximize the pay plan? Does the plan require you to have numerous legs to earn the maximum bonuses? The point is this, a plan that only pays a few levels before infinity bonuses and/or requires numerous legs really limits the amount of upline help you will receive - in other words you're virtually on your own.

7. Get with the right distributors at the right time - Years ago my wife and me sold a house. We had several options but they came down to listing the house with this relatively new agent down the street or the hotshot million dollar sales earner. We went with the latter - big mistake - he was so busy with his big deals he didn't have time to mess with our little house. The house sat month after month before selling and we had already moved out of town. The lady down the street would have pushed it to the max.

The point is don't just sign up with some big name distributor because of their name - they could be semi-retired or too busy to give you the attention you need. The best scenario for you is to find some experienced heavy hitters who because of a hot product have just recently started marketing that product and are rapidly building their organization. This essentially allows you to not only get in on the ground floor with a hot product but also with very experienced people looking to build huge organizations. This is a case of being at the right place at the right time. All that is required of the individual is to take a lot of action.

8. Does the company have an emotional product? - the point here is people talk about two things to others - things that interest them and things that leave an emotional impression on them. Certain types of products like nutritional products can much easier cause an emotional reaction in people than other products. If someone feels much better health wise from taking a nutritional product they are much more likely to tell others than they would about some insurance or laundry product for example. And face it, you want people talking about your product - word of mouth advertising is the most effective form.

9. Does the home based business company have exclusive products you can't get elsewhere and/or expert marketing to justify their winning products as superior products and actually a better value than similar products?

10. Reusable products - It kind of goes without saying but any product or service, which someone uses and reuses on a monthly basis is best because you continue to earn on that person month after month.

Bonus Tips: To monitor the strength of a business opportunity here are a couple things to look for:

Are there plenty of excited people on the conference calls along with numerous calls - absence of these items can indicate a ''dead'' business opportunity.

Also find out what's been going on in the last 6 months - 2 years - are a number of people advancing up through the ranks - if not once again you could be looking at a ''dead'' business opportunity.