Recently I had someone come to me wanting more information on how to start a home business as a marketing consultant.

He had read one of my articles somewhere and said he wanted to believe it was an easy and profitable home business to start. He wanted what he heard me say to be true. But he just couldn't believe -- especially with all the other hyped-up home business "opportunities" out there -- it could be as simple, fast and easy to make money as I claimed.

Here's what I said:

I told him starting and running a home based marketing consulting business is as simple as doing some research on the basics (at first) of direct marketing -- which can be learned mostly online or at your local library.

After that, when you've got the basics of marketing down -- which if you put some time into it, shouldn't take all that long -- starting the actual business itself is as easy picking up the yellow pages and as cheap as paying your phone bill.

Because, you see, all you have to do is find businesses who are already spending money on advertising in the yellow pages -- and start calling them. If you don't want to call them yourself, you can hire a tele-marketer for $8 or $9 an hour.

And when the business owner answers, you or your tele-marketer simply say these exact words:

"Hello, is Mr. Brown in? Mr. Brown, this is Bob Jones. And I just wanted to let you know that I have a marketing approach to grow your business 25 to 100 percent or more without spending more money on advertising. Could I take 15 minutes to tell you a little bit more about it? Is that something you'd be interested in?"

And that's it. Very simple, very short and very much to the point.

In fact, it's a "hook." And the purpose of the hook is to simply buy 15-20 more minutes. Anyone interested in growing their business without getting soaked with more advertising costs and fees (which is a LOT of small business owners) is going to want to hear more.

So, then you go in for a face to face 15 minute meeting. And it's in that 15 minutes that you're going to take the prospect through some more qualifying questions. You're going to find out if the guy really has interest. You're going to find out if he has a need. You're going to find out if he can even afford you.

Then, you're going to find out what he's doing now, and show him, step by step, how you're going to increase his sales without spending any more advertising money.

Don't worry, when you get educated on just the very basics of direct marketing, you'll see, just by asking him questions, how you can do this. In many cases, just the simplest "tweak" here and there is all it takes to multiply a business's profits through the roof.

And that's the marketing consulting business.

Simple, fast and clean.

Best part:

The more you do it, the better you'll get at it. And the better you get at it, the more money you'll make. And the more money you make, the more resources you'll have to put into getting even better at it. And so on.

This is why I honestly believe the best home business in the world -- especially today -- is being a marketing consultant. As far as I'm concerned, nothing else even comes close.