by Esther Andrews

Created on: August 03, 2008   Last Updated: August 22, 2008

A woman will have unique goals and objectives in seeking out franchise opportunities. She may want to own a business that typically markets primarily to women such as women's fitness, weight loss, cosmetics, or hair care. She may have expertise in home care and home improvement for which she would like to start earning financial rewards. She may have been a stay-at-home mother who would like to parlay what she's learned into a child care, child fitness, or tutoring business. Or she might still be a full-time mother looking for a business opportunity that only requires a part-time commitment. There are practically limitless options for women to invest and reap the rewards of a franchise business.

Home-based franchises are one good option for women. While these franchises don't necessarily mean working from home 100% of the time, they do offer more flexibility than women typically find in the workplace. Home-based franchises often don't require as large a cash investment or carry as much risk as the costlier franchises that must be run from retail or office locations and home-based franchises even offer the benefit of an IRS tax deduction for space used within the home to run the business.

While six of the top ten home-based franchises according to Entrepreneur.com are business or home cleaning services including Jani-King, Bonus Building Care, Jan-Pro, Servpro, Chem-Dry, and ServiceMaster; other home-based businesses to consider are financial services, home organization & improvement, children's services, fitness, travel, pet care, photography and more.

Know something about tools? It's not just a man's world. Two other top home-based franchises are tool distributors Matco Tools and Snap-on Tools. Alternatively, as baby boomers retire, there will be increasing demand for senior care and companionship, offering opportunities for interesting home-based franchises like Home Helpers/Direct Link or Comfort Keepers to flourish.

There are also many franchising opportunities in child care, education, tutoring, and art that may appeal to women. Some franchises enable you to offer online educational or tutoring services, while others have fixed storefronts, and still others enable you to utilize space in existing schools and community centers. A unique franchise Abrakadoodle allows you to offer art programs for schools that otherwise might not be able to fund these programs. You don't need to be a trained artist to own this franchise, just enthusiasm and motivation to teach art to young children.

Interested in beauty or fitness? There are tanning center franchises including Planet Beach Tanning or Hollywood Tans as well as cosmetics franchises Merle Norman and Faces Cosmetics & Skin Care. For fitness, there's the Snap Fitness 24-7 fitness center that appeals to the needs of women to have more flexible schedules to exercise.

Want to express your creative flair? You could try an Edible Arrangements franchise where you could create beautiful, unique, and delicious fruit bouquets. Or you could invest in a CLIX franchise that offers you the option to run a studio or on-location photography business, even if you have no prior photography experience. They provide you with the training you need to be successful both in photography and in running a photography business.

With a little research and ingenuity, a woman can pinpoint an interesting and exciting franchising opportunity that don't cost a bundle in potentially risky start-up costs and that affords her the opportunity to not only run a successful business, but also pursue her passion.

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