There are essentially two types of home businesses: Small time businesses, and legitimate home based business. What’s the difference? Well… There are actually quite a few differences. We’ve only got the time and space to list the most integral differences, of course, but each one requires different levels of responsibility and each one will reward you at different levels. Here are the primary differences.A Legit Business Pays the BillsYou can make a living, you can find real wealth with a legitimate business. This comes down to the scale of each business. Smalltime business is fine if you want to make a little extra money here and there, but you can’t really support yourself with it until you’re ready to take the next step. If you want to run a smaller little storefront on the web, that’s fine and good, but if you want to make a living, you need to be more ambitious.A Legitimate Business Requires More PaperworkWith a bigger, more legitimate business, you have quite a few more forms to fill out. You need to apply for licenses and permits, you need to keep track of every dollar for tax purposes, and you need to cover your bases to ensure that you don’t wind up being hit with an audit or steep fines. Technically… Smalltime business requires all that stuff, too, but the fact is that the tax man doesn’t really care if you’re making less than your weekly grocery bill.Legit Business = Higher Startup CostYou can start a smaller business without a dollar to your name, but a bigger business requires a bigger startup investment. Luckily, you don’t need to take a loan out, and you don’t need to find investors. Rather, you can start a small business for free, then take the money you earn from that, and roll that into expansion, or starting a whole new business entirely. But the rule here is: Once you’ve started, don’t put anymore of your own income into the business, let it pay for itself.Legit Business is TougherIf you just keep it small, you can keep it fun. When things get too tricky, you can just scrap the whole thing and start another project for fun. It’s up to you how big you want it to be, whether or not the extra income is worth the extra responsibility. When you get to the point where you’re considering going big, you’ll want to think about getting a real business education. Luckily, you can forget business school. Truth be told, everything you need to know to get started, you can learn from an online course or seminar on learning how to think like a business pro.Legit Business is, Well, Real BusinessA smalltime business really is more of a hobby that gets you a little extra income here and there. A legitimate business makes you a legitimate business owner, and it really is a bigger responsibility. So you need to seriously consider whether that’s something you want to dedicate yourself to. At first, starting it up, doing the marketing, getting everything in order, may actually require much more work than your day job, BUT… It will pay off in the end.Discover those legitimate home based business chances online. There are several home based business chances, but not all are legitimate.