any of you budding entrepreneurs want to open a franchise, there's a magazine on the shelves till may 5 called "entrepreneur" with a list of low cost business start ups you can buy. Low cost usually means under 20k from reading the article.

sure you can start your own business for much less, but the marketing-advertising-branding power of national "chains" can be hard to beat, depending on the niche.

the magazine lists the web page entrepreneur.com.

The problem with that magazine is that it touts every business adventure it promotes (advertises, if truth be known) as the business to get into. In the bulk of the cases it is the one that requires the least amount of actual work that gets touted the most.

All franchises require considerable sums just to get started and then you pay them a percentage of your work. If it seems to be a low startup cost then the percentage you pay them is exorbitant. A franchise owner isn’t truly self employed, just financially liable for a company he will never truly own. Working for a franchise is just like working for somebody else you’d be better off in the long run by going at it yourself in whatever you do.

in some areas the setup that the franchise delivers is valuable information and a built in marketing system that will pay for itself. in some other markets franchise setups do not deliver. much to this topic but there is no sure thing either way in terms of yea or nay to franchises.

Sure there are the seemingly sure deals like McDonalds but even those don’t make it everywhere.

Some are reasonably priced startups, the franchise fee is isn’t such a burden due to the marketing supplied by the franchise but they limit your area/territory that you can do business in. You will most likely be competing against several other fellow franchise owners in the same city. Everything that you use for the business has to be bought from the franchise and the only way to expand is to buy another area/territory.

Asking permission to do what you want with the company isn’t ownership it’s modern day servitude to a master.

Start your own company and you can undercut any franchise. I’m not saying it’ll be easy but it can be done, with hard work.