Money making businesses at home: all home businesses are money making ones, no matter if you deal in buttons, gift baskets, legal advice or Japanese paraphernalia. There is no niche that's not a money making enterprise. None.

So why, then, do so many of our ideas fail? Is making profit that hard for small businesses?

It's been calculated that 9 out of every 10 self-started small businesses will fail for one reason or another, but I'm pretty sure we can narrow down the reasons to just two.

Money has to do with neither of them.

Reason number one: small fish making noise in an ocean full of things with great big teeth. And these sharks just aren't the big corporations that sell what you do (or want to) at an ungodly bottom feeding price - there are also piranhas equally as skilled at knocking out their similarly-sized competition when their heads are down.

It's more often cunning than money that ends up making the difference.

Reason number two: there is no longer any possibility that your home business will ever be able to compete with the bigger, farther reaching guys in mainstream advertising. Their budgets are huge and so is their creative ambition - so forget about television, radio, and as bold as this may sound, print. The poster age is dead, mainly because it's had the life flogged out of it by the uncreative company.

Before you start feeling hopeless and begin wondering how your home businesses will ever become money making machines, let's look at the two reasons why smart home businesses will eventually overtake their rivals and generate the money they should.

Reason number one: successful money making home businesses will realize that mainstream advertising is in its death knell - it's too expensive and people are just too smart these days.

Reason number two: successful money making home businesses will take advantage of what is undoubtedly their best friend: the search engine. It should be the oracle for all businesses.

Why struggle to locate customers for your home business when they're already out there but just can't find you? A good SEO writer will know exactly what people are typing into Google, and with landing pages and article series on your web page (which, by the way, are 25% or less than the cost of a full page yellow pages spread) they can connect people's searches directly with your business.

You have what they want, and they'll now know exactly where to look for you - all it will take is a bit of research and precise writing on the part of the SEO expert. No matter what home businesses you're thinking of starting up, consider using the Internet and certified writing skills as tools if you want an easy and effective (not to mention budget-friendly) way of cornering your particular niche. Starting right now, home is where the money is.

Of all the money making businesses at home, be smart, use the Internet to your advantage, and be a part of the 10% that succeeds by making search engines your ace-in-the-hole advertising opportunity.