One of the best things about a WSI franchise is that it offers a combination of the benefits of being in business for yourself and having a traditional employment situation. Every franchise is part of the WSI family, able to draw on resources such as training, common information sources, and so forth. However, each is also a business unto itself, and a franchise owner is able to look at the profitability question in a whole new way — as the boss!

In a traditional employment arrangement, there is a certain amount of job comfort. After all, there is a clearly-defined set of goals and rules that have to be met, and the employee gets paid for doing so. As long as the parent company remains profitable, the employee should have a job.

However, that statement right there shows the nature of the beast: the parent company’s profitability is the key concern. Many middle managers who were doing quite well, have found themselves out of work in recent years, because the company as a whole needed to cut back. Many of us – in one way or another – have felt the pressures from the economic challenges of recent years.

Given that the current economic downturn seems content to carry itself on for at least another year, why would starting a WSI Franchise right now be a good idea? Times are risky… isn’t that the time to play things more conservatively?

The fact is, owning your own business comes with a certain level of security that other options simply can not offer.

With your own business, you can secure better sources of credit, improve your general credit rating by making good investments in your business needs and gain a number of skills that can be of help to you in the future.

When considering the potential rate of the return on investment (ROI) on your WSI franchise, it’s important to remember that the ROI of any company is broken up into several types. Returning to a recent article in Entrepreneur magazine, we find a good overview of how to break down the parts of a return on investment into easily-understood categories.

First, there is the return on the monetary portion

This is the lion’s share of most people’s concerns when discussing investments. You sink a lot of money into starting up a business, and you want to be sure that it will pay back out and keep you comfortable. The simplest way to consider it is in terms of percentage. If you invest $50,000 and want a 10 percent annual rate of return, the business will need to pay back $5,000 every year.

When presented with the options a WSI franchise offers, many people are initially skeptical, especially given the times we live in.

“In an economy like this, why would anyone take a risk and try to own their own business?” they ask.

Well, it turns out that there are a lot of reasons why someone might want to take on a WSI franchise, even in days like this.

One of the most important is that a WSI franchise does not prohibit you from taking on other work. Are you an aspiring writer looking for more time in your day to pursue your passion, but not ready to take the plunge into living on your writing fees alone? A WSI franchise allows you to control your schedule so that you can balance work and your passion on your terms, not someone else’s.

We’ve made it clear that having a WSI franchise can be tremendously rewarding — you can make money, have fun and develop the kind of lifestyle you want to lead. It almost seems like there’s no downside at all; clearly, there has to be a catch, right? After all, we’ve heard too-good-to-be-true news before.

What evidence is there that someone like you should still consider WSI a sound investment for the future?

Well, WSI franchises specialize in providing business solutions through digital marketing. In 2009, people spent $54 billion dollars on advertising — that’s billion with a “b.” Further, it’s expected to grow to more than $70 billion by 2012.
To make a comparison, the United States military spent only $7.4 billion on missile defenses in 2002.
To put it another way, the amount that people increase their spending on online advertising is more than the largest military in the world spends in total on a major military project.
So clearly, if people wanting to raise the awareness of their online presence can grow faster than the military’s budget, there’s some room for new players to the field of digital marketing and business solutions.