I congratulate you for making the decision to start your own home-based business. I know this is something that you are seriously considering because you are reading this article. You wouldn’t be reading this article if you didn’t want to earn more money and escape that dreaded JOB!If you really want to start your own home-based business it is my recommendation that you look at online opportunities. There are a number of reasons for this but I outline the main three below:You don’t actually have to work from home- If you have a laptop and an online business you don’t actually have to run your online business from home. You could get yourself a 3G modem or you could head down to your favourite cafe with a free WiFI connection. You don’t have to be stuck at home or in an office with an online business. Also, you can take your business with you when you travel. If it is all online, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world. Just to give you an example. I like to regularly travel to New York City. With my netbook, I can do work in my downtime and still make money whilst I am travelling. I can keep my existing and long term customers very, very happy.There are plenty of useful marketing tools online that are free or extremely cheap- Promoting and advertising your business offline can be expensive. If you run your home-based business online there are a lot of free tools that you can utilise in order to market and promote your business. You can set up a free blog, you can set up a Facebook Fan page and you can set up a Twitter account. You can also participate in online forums and use social bookmarking sites.You have a worldwide marketplace- Another benefit of the internet is that it gives you access to a worldwide market place. You could be working on the internet in Australia, like I do, and sell to clients in the US, the UK and every country in-between. Only the internet gives you the power to leverage yourself to a worldwide audience without leaving your home office.I would heartily encourage you all to start your own new home-based business on the internet. There is no other business with as much flexibility, you can get access to a variety of free online tools and you have access to a worldwide marketplace.