Be a Scam Free Work at Home Mom

Being a mom is a full-time job. If your kids are of school age, there are always book reports and science projects, not to mention the parent-teacher conferences and the occasional visit to the principal's office to find out why little Johnny threw a book at his teacher. The list goes on and on.

The days are long gone when a mom stayed at home and cleaned the house while the kids were at school, and had freshly baked cookies waiting for them when they got off of the bus. These days, the role of moms has taken on much more than laundry and dusting the home; The are out and about in the workforce trying to hold down a career and move up the corporate ladder, all while trying to be "June Cleaver" to make their home the sanctuary that everyone would like it to be.

Since the invention of the internet, the world had gotten a much smaller place. With a click of the mouse, you can correspond to a friend in Hawaii, go grocery shopping and make vacation plans. The internet has changes the world, and it's time to start utilizing the advantages to allow you to work at home.

The fact is that more and more parents, moms and dads alike, are starting to work from home. If you're lucky enough to hold a position which will allow this to happen, the benefits can be amazingly beneficial to you and your family.

First, your daycare bill will be cut if not eliminated completely. This can save you hundreds of dollars a month without batting an eyelash. It can take some time to adjust to "bringing your kids to work everyday", but the benefits of being there when your kids need you is priceless.

Commuting expenses will be gone forever. No more huge fuel bills for your car, not to mention the wear and tear of your vehicle. You can grab a quick lunch at home too, thus saving you more money each week. All of these smaller expenses add up quickly to the money that you will save, or the money that you do not need to make.

The majority of Americans are not working in a position where they can do their work from home. Trying to find a job where you are able to work from home can be incredibly time consuming and frustrating, as there are so many scams out there just waiting for you to take their bait. What is the option? Why not start your own business? It's not as tricky as you may think - You just need a good idea and marketing plan to set you off in the right direction.

The first step to starting your own business is to figure out what you like to do, that way it won't seem like you're working everyday, it will be more like "funning" everyday instead - and who wouldn't love to do that? Ask yourself what you would like to do and ask for the advice of your family and friends, they would most likely love to help your cause.

If you're a creative mom, maybe you should consider what exactly you're creative about. Do you like to paint or make things pretty? Does your brain go wild with excitement when your daughter wants to do her room over? Do you bounce off the walls when someone that you know is getting married or having a baby because you want to make the favors for their shower? Each of these creations that you may like to do is 100% marketable and will capture the audience of those in need of these types of services that don't have the creativity and resources available to them.

Let's take for example my home based business. I make candy bar wrappers for all sorts of special occasions from Baptisms and Bat Mitzvah's to grand openings of Laundromats. My endeavors have been very successful for the amount of time and effort that I have put into it, so I really can't complain. I have several customers who re-order on a regular basis. This is important because even though Weddings and babies are year round events, it's nice to have a few customers that you can count on for repeat business.

I started my endeavors about one and a half years ago, starting very small as I was a full-time retail manager back then. When my daughter's birthday came around, I made the invitations on chocolate bar wrappers for her to give out to her friends. On the inside of the wrapper, I had my company name and phone number placed on a small sticker inside the label. I received one phone call from a mom who wanted me to do the same for her daughter's birthday invitations. I was off and running.

After making birthday party favors in the same manner for my daughter, and not getting any responses, I got frustrated. Looking back, I realize how dumb it was to feel like that. But anyways, I decided to market what I thought to be a fabulous idea to help the better good of the community - Fundraisers!

I found the hand carrying boxes (gable boxes) online at a paper store, just incase I needed them, and set off to my new marketing campaign. Realizing that fundraisers would have to be wholesaled out so that the organization could make money, I found where I could cut my costs a bit. Instead of using a high quality photo paper, I opted for the everyday photo paper instead. The quality difference between the two wasn't incredibly noticeable, so I went ahead and made samples for local schools and mailed them out with a nice letter of intent. It worked! I sold 500 chocolate bars at $1.00 each (I made about $.50 on each bar), and the local school organization made $500 for selling the bars for $2.00 each. We were both very happy, and the word began to spread. I didn't even have to order any gable boxes because the school decided to sell the chocolate bars at local school events like basketball games.

How I Decided on Chocolate Bar Wrappers for My Work at Home Business

Since I am one of those moms who likes to make things look pretty, and could spend hours on the computer designing different greeting cards and such (if I had nothing else to do), I decided to go about this route when I stumbled onto a website called WAHM- Work at Home Moms. They had articles of different ideas to work at home, so I decided to research it a bit more.

What I found out was very interesting. Besides a good mark-up on the product, the permits that I would be needing to start this business were minimal if I played my cards right. I found out that if you never actually touch the bar of chocolate itself, you won't need a food permit and all of the headaches that can come with them. So I decided to offer two types of wrapper options, neither of which I would touch the actual chocolate. One style of the wrapper has crimped ends which I place directly over the existing wrapper, while the other requires that foil be placed over the existing wrapper and then my custom wrapper is placed over the foil. The second of the two is the most popular as it looks more authentic and "Old School".

Since I had no idea how I was going to make the wrapper itself, I bought a program for my computer. All that I had to do was fill in the blanks with the templates from this program, which gave me many different styles, backgrounds and special occasions to choose from. I could design a wrapper in under five minutes.
But that got boring relatively quick, so I started making my own templates where I could place pictures wherever I wanted to instead of the place where the template on the program did it for me. This also allows me to be more creative and give many more options for my customers. For instance, I recently made a template for a 50th Anniversary in which I placed a copy of the couple's original wedding photo on the left and put a recent photo on the right with the caption "That was then, This is Now". They absolutely loved it and so did I. I got the opportunity to use my creative mind to give someone a great memory, and all of the earnings were for me - not for some corporate big wig that could care less about me and my family.

Currently, I am filling an average of eight to ten orders a month, with about $500 a month in net profit. But you need to remember, I haven't added anything to my marketing or advertising campaigns as this is where I want to be right now. I am making money to help my family with the little extras, I'm not putting commuting miles on my car and I have lunch at home everyday. All of this saves me some serious cash at the end of the month. Also, I am the one who gets my kids off of the bus every day as well as a few other neighborhood children who have both of their parents out in the workforce, so I am helping them out, too.

Another part of my personal fulfillment is writing articles, much like this one and to help some parents learn how they can work from home while realizing that they will not need to make as much money when they do work from home as they think they do. Commuting is a headache which I do not miss at all, and I wouldn't trade the extra time with my family for all of the money in the world.