Good Evening Nairalanders,

This is my first post and first topic here.

My name is Paul. I was once an employee working 8 hours a day (5 days a week) for 2 years before I quit to work for myself. Today I am a proud home based business personality (working from home since 2014) and I will be sharing my thoughts, experiences and some insights into how to start a business from home, grow it and earn a decent income from it.

Very soon I will be making available to you all a free report on 20 home based businesses you can start in Nigeria. These are not theoretical ideas but practical ones I know of that have earned a few peeps a decent income from home. But that is not want I am here to share with you all today.

Today it is 5 good reasons to start a home based business in Nigeria and here goes.

1. Low over head cost
This is easily the biggest benefit (for me) that I have come to associate with a home based business. It is definitely beneficial because you won't have to spend money daily commuting to work or paying rent for office or shop space. More over you don't need to worry about office/business taxes and levies because you are in your house. The running expenses will drop which in turn can translate to more profit for you

2. Flexible work hours
I wake up 4.30 am most days but start my work by 10am. I have breaks at 1pm to 3pm and 7pm to 9pm. I go to bed most times at 12 midnight but I can wake up tomorrow and decide to start my work at 8am. It will still work out fine for me.

3. Ability to combine several businesses
I have done private home tutoring, blogging, writing academic essays, taught kickboxing, sold marketing plans, partnered with event planners to organize tournaments, done feasibility reports and a host of other services sometimes doing 3 projects at a time. It isn't easy especially if you are not experienced and organized to do this but a regular job or business may not give you this kind of versatility to combine two or more ventures together.

4. More freedom
I now have more time to myself and surprisingly earn even more today than I ever have working for anyone. Some people wonder if I ever work at all because I am home while they struggle every morning to leave for work. I sometimes wake up late (if I had a hectic night like working till 3am sometimes I do this) while others are already at the office. I have once taken 2 months off (when I was fatigued and lost motivation to work which was earlier this year) and my account balance was still reasonable even without 2 months of getting paid. I had that luxury because of the freedom home business sometimes offers. More freedom also means no boss can insult me or threaten to sack me when I mess up or even sometimes the boss may just hate you or enjoy bullying his subordinates.

5. You can choose your career path
If you want to acquire more training and skills, you can do this at your pace. A regular employer may be jittery of you gaining vital skills that will make you more marketable in the job market and could be reluctant to support your aspirations. You could also decide how much you want to make if you work towards it. How easy is it for your employer to increase your salary yearly?

Bear in mind that there are also disadvantages of running a home based business in Nigeria and that will be the title of my second post (5 problems with running a home based business in Nigeria) stay tuned.

One more thing I will be doing some more articles and posts here on nairaland in the coming weeks mostly on how to make money online in Nigeria and how to start a home business in Nigeria

Meanwhile you can send me questions through pm or email: nigeriahomebusiness@gmail.com (reasonable questions please) on self-employment ideas or ways to make money online in Nigeria. I am open to them if this thread doesn't give you the answers you want.

Thanks and see you all around.