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At a first glance, Work From Home: 100+ Businesses You Can Start From Home Right Now with Little or No Money by Mark Raatz sounds like a wonderful investment. For $2.99, you get more than 100 ideas that you can potentially implement from home and start making money—109, actually. But my expectations of Raatz’s work were not met.
Raatz introduces his list with generalizations about the world: “The job market of the future will not be what the conventional wisdom tells us. A college degree will not have the same influence on the marketplace as it used to. Computers will continue to change the importance of some jobs.” His assumptions might be true, but he does nothing to prove these statements. I was expecting the usual research to back up Raatz’s claims, but he does nothing of the sort, which gave me little reason to find him credible.
His list of ideas is also lacking in research and credibility. I had hopes that, with each listed item, Raatz would expound on how he or someone else implemented the idea. In the Amazon description, the book implies that it provides “examples of successful home businesses,” but the book is without real world examples. Raatz simply lists all of his ideas and then leaves readers without any indication of how to get started. At times, he provides different links for readers to visit, but, for the most part, once you have his idea, you’re on your own.
Not only does Raatz lack further research and instruction for his items, but he also offers suggestions that require further education. For example, number 53 reads, “Learn sign language and be an interpreter or instructor.” And number 54 reads, “Learn how to make balloon animals and get paid to go to parties and other kid events.” While his list does offer a perspective that could potentially encourage the reader to look at his or her skills in a new light, for those of us who have exhausted every avenue, the suggestion that we should learn a new skill is old and hardly worth the money.
For $2.99 on Amazon, you can buy a 14-page list of from-home business ideas. But that’s all this is: a list. Raatz doesn’t go into detail or give any personal accounts of how others did it. While his list may help some readers realize that there’s more than one way to go about things, for someone who needs real resources for his or her potential at-home business, Google is more valuable.
