The demand for child day care in the US is rising. This is due to many factors including but not limited to the steady increase of working single mothers, more and more married couples working during the day and parents seeing the benefits of day care on a social and educational level.

A viable opportunity exists for day care in most US markets. In 2002 two thirds of all women with preschool aged children worked outside their home. In 1975 only 39% of all women with preschool aged children worked outside their home.

It is very attractive to work from home while running a day care business but careful examination of all the details must be considered to ensure success and compliance with the law. You must treat home day care like a true business. This requires planning, preparation, vision, discipline and dedication. Many people love the idea of owning their own business only to be blown away by all the headaches and responsibilities that come with it. Once you are in business for yourself there is no boss to keep you motivated. You must remain self motivated and you must remain accountable for your actions.

Below are five essential ingredients for successfully starting a home based day care center.

1. Determine the business license requirements for your state, county and city. Some local jurisdictions require a floor plan of your house or the area of the house that will be designated as the day care facility. Be sure to read all of the requirements of the business license. When inquiring about your business license always be friendly when dealing with government employees. There can be nothing worse than getting on the bad side of these employees. This can stonewall the whole application process for months. Once you have befriended one of the state, county or city employees don't be afraid to ask them plenty of questions about the license. These people can be a wealth of information and ensure you have everything correct the first time.

2. Check on local zoning codes and local laws regarding home day care facilities. Some jurisdictions may have specific zoning requirements if you are running a business out of your home. This may not always be the case but be sure to look into it. Also check any and all local laws pertaining to home based day care facilities. Some states have limits to the amount of children you can care for out of your home.

3. Determine if you can hire employees. While you may start off as just yourself it may surprise you how fast your business grows once you build up a good reputation. Hiring employees can really help you expand your business to greater levels. Always, always, always do full background checks and a full 9 panel drug screen before hiring any employee outside your family. This can be a great selling point to your business and nothing makes your client parents feel better than hearing this level of screening is conducted on all employees.

4. When advertising your business never depend on one avenue of marketing. Be sure to implement as many marketing avenues as you can. Word of mouth is the first and possibly most effective marketing avenue. Print up cards and give them away at specific locations or events. For example see if you can give your card to workout gyms that have their own day care center. You are not competing with the day care of the gym. The day care of gyms are part of the membership. Ads in the paper can be good. Think of all the ways to get your message in front of your prospective clients.

5. Pace your growth. It will surprise you how fast this kind of business can grow. Make sure your business can maintain its high quality care as it grows. Some things to avoid are a sharp influx of registration. You may think an extra 10-15 kids wont be that bad. The managing challenge will go up ten fold. Also stay away from a sharp increase of hired employees to accommodate any increase in registration.

It should also be noted that you should have experience with children before diving into this business. Even if you love children and love the idea of running a day care you need to have experience doing this. The reason for this is two fold. First, you don't want to go through all this trouble of starting your own business and find out that you can not stand the stress of dealing with children all day long.

Secondly, experience will only help your credentials and will be attractive to many of your customers. For example if you had worked as a nanny for a few years then decided to open up your own day care this would make sense to many of your clients. This background would also make parents feel more comfortable with you.