Stay at Home Moms: Great Ways to Earn an Online Income at Home

Being a stay at home mom, for some are a necessity and for others a simple lifestyle choice. If you have become accustomed to a dual household income, reducing to just one income suddenly can be a frightening consideration. One day you decide to explore the internet for additional ways to supplement a single income. You have tried looking on search engines for things like, stay at home work, work from home, online income, etc.

Suddenly you have a bewildering amount of information and can easily be disheartened with deciding what is a legitimate program and what are potential scams. So lets begin with,

The Scams, what to look out for.

If you come across the following type of programs or search engine adverts with the following statements;

- Make $2800 a DAY............
- How I made $28,683 per month...........
- Make $200+ every day, tax free !!!!!!!! .......
- See my Clickbank earnings (showing several hundred dollars per day) proven system and read my valued testimonials.......

I'm sorry to say, they are garbage. Why? They are designed to elicit an emotional response. They are written to make you think....."hmmm, the program is only $50 and I could possibly make a killing in a very short period of time". You will simply sign up to these programs and discover as each program doesn't work for you, suddenly you have wasted hundreds of dollars and spent many dollars on futility.

No program, you join will be tax free, this is one of two things guaranteed in life.....death and taxes.
Proven system, proven by whom? What independent body or organization provides the proof?
Clickbank, incomes, with a sneaky little bit of photo shopping, I too can show you how to provide screen shots of incomes of 400+ dollars a day with Clickbank.

Any good affiliate marketer, eBay seller, article expert or work at home person worth any integrity will tell you up front, it had taken them quite a good period of time for them to make a decent income. Especially any of these people whom are earning an income large enough to actually quit their day job.

Let me put it this way, if they are earning enough to quit their jobs within 12 months of starting a program, then good timing, the right service or products and a bunch of other factors (aligning of the planets?) came into play at the right time for them, consider that they may be also a very qualified person in their respective field (potentially a former salesperson or marketer). Not only that, I imagine they gave up alot of things to make it happen too, for instance and please don't laugh, they probably spent many hours working hard on their business rather than doing something else like watching TV.

What you need to do to succeed in any online income generation or home based business.

First of all you need to set yourself two goals;

1. How much money to you desire to earn each day.
2. How many days per week and how many hours per day you will spend on your business.

Suggestions? If you decide to take an online approach, start towards an earning of $1.00 per day and one day per week. Why should you start with such a limit like this? You are starting something new and you need to find your feet. Yes, I know your thinking OK, thats $30.00 a month. It is not ground breaking income, but its an additional tank of gas a month, or $30.00 less off a mortgage or credit card per month. And its an extra $30.00 you didn't have last month.

Once you achieve that, then double it, target for $60.00 a month and two to three days per week. Rinse and repeat. How many hours you decide each day is entirely up to you, and the have the benefit of fitting it around your daily schedule. When you achieve each target, set a new income target and eventually you will find how many days to commit per week that best suits you.

Things to consider

Record Keeping - Keep an exercise book or spreadsheet on how many hours and how many dollars you are earning each day. Depending on your service or product, you may find which days are better than other days. Also you are keeping a record of your income (and always check with your accountant or tax adviser on the best way to keep and manage your records)

If you sell products - Record which products are your best sellers, your worst sellers, what would work for holiday times, different seasons, will it sell on specific days like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Mothers and Fathers Day, etc. This also helps to generate new ideas, for example, you may sell fashion clothing and find suitable accessories (rings, necklaces, bracelets, brooches, belts, etc) that compliments your clothing range.

Take your time - Start small, or with a couple of products. As you reputation grows, you can include more products or value add your existing ones. You are essentially also learning whilst you are earning. Hence, as you achieve sales, and these sales grow to more sales, this will improve your confidence. Also, since you are starting small this allows you the time to grow so you don't become overwhelmed and decide its all too much and give it away.

Be Patient - You will experience many days that do well, and alot of days that.....nothing seems to happen. Nada, no sales, no anything. Don't despair, if you find those sales are lacking on some days, spend some time doing some research, whats your competition doing? Can you add items to your sales range? Are you looking at implementing a larger range in the future? Spend this "downtime" reviewing your current goals and future plans for your business. Can you network with other moms? They may be also looking at what you are doing and if you have spent enough time on your business, maybe you can help or mentor them on their business.

Suggested programs to start you in the right direction

eBay - The worlds largest online auction site (as if you didn't know that already) a good place to start for clearing out the clutter and possibly an outlet for you if you have a hobby and can use the site to generate an income for that hobby.

Extra - eBay is not the only online auction site, its the largest and most well known, there are other sites that are similar and you can benefit by reducing your costs. I factor about 20% of my gross income on eBay as eBay related costs (eBay listing and final value fees, shipping and postage costs, etc)

Online Article Marketing - Whats an online article, well, your reading one right now. An article is a how to guide, a description of a service, product or technique, a writers viewpoint on a specified subject, a form of written information that provides value to the reader. Usually articles are anywhere between 150-1000 words.

How does article writing generate an income? Most article sites will pay you for submitting articles of information. Other sites are a great way to generate traffic (a percentage of readers will click on a link to your blog, website, online store, etc, usually found in your author bio) Some sites will do both pay and create traffic. Just about every article site is also free to join (I haven't found ones that require you a fee to join, but I am sure they are out there)

There are also two things to keep in mind, don't plagiarise (copy other peoples work) and don't break the rules (each site has a Terms Of Service, read it , then re-read it again). You may find your articles get rejected from time to time, due to mis-spelling, incorrect grammar, sentence structure and the like. Don't let this stop you, I have had more work rejected than has been accepted more often than I can count.

Here is a list and by no means exhaustive that can provide traffic, income or both (and these ones are free to join) the two examples listed after each site are articles I have written on these sites;

www.associatedcontent.com
example - www.associatedcontent.com/article/1060092/cheats_codes_glitches_hacks_for_myspace.html
www.ezinearticles.com
www.goarticles.com
www.squidoo.com
example - www.squidoo.com/menu-in-a-box
www.constantcontent.com
www.xomba.com
www.hubpages.com
www.quondia.com

How much can you earn? Depending on the site, some sites will pay for upfront submission, some will pay for views per thousand, some others will pay for content rights (this means that a buyer will pay for displaying your article on their online or offline ezine, or may pay for the privilege of owning the content outright with exclusive rights, this means you may or may not be considered the author of the article, but you are paid decently for it)

Blogging - Blog is a web log, and this can be literally any form of information that can be accessed on the web, yet it is usually from a personal viewpoint in nature. For example, you may have an interest in gardening, so you may have a blog that is dedicated to the subject, the blog may contain information on your plants, how to treat them to grow effectively, tips and tricks on looking after specific flowers and plants, pictures, videos and illustrations. You may also have a forum where people are asking questions to you and you answer their queries.

A blog can also be monetized, this means you may use a service like Google's Adsense to display adverts on your blog. Each time a site viewer clicks on one of these ads, you earn a few cents.

You may also have an affiliate program linked to your blog, so each time someone buys an affiliate product, they are taken to another web site to purchase, but you earn a percentage of that sale, which may be several dollars or more. This may be an advert showing as a display banner, a text link or a picture.

There are some free blogs available and most marketers move to having a paid for domain and website when they earn enough for the website to be self sufficient to run on its on income. Most sites today cost less than $20.00 per month to operate.

Here is a list and by no means exhaustive that are free to join blog sites;

www.blogger.com
wordpress.com
www.thoughts.com/free-blog
www.twitter.com (a micro-blogging site, each blog only allows up to 140 characters, but you can paste links to your site/s and readers can "follow" your tweets as well as make comments themselves)

Putting it all together - an example suggestion

One day, you decide to start selling on eBay, you sell recycled clothing and start to do reasonably well after a few months. You also after this time, start writing articles about the benefits of recycled clothing and not long after, setup a free blog. Each time you write an article, your author bio box lists the internet link for your blog.

On your blog, you have a few adsense adverts and an affiliate link for clothing accessories (which is in the price range you are happy with) as well as articles on the blog relating to the benefits of recycled clothing. Also on the blog, you have a forum and people are joining to discuss different ways to style their purchases, the best brands to find, where to get more information about your products etc. Your income becomes sufficient to move it to its own website and paid domain, this will provide for greater flexability in the creation, use and operation of your blog.

You have a twitter link on the blog so people can follow your suggestions, hints, tips and other information as often as you tweet (create twitter messages).

Using this example you may find that you are generating sufficient income for your needs. Continue to use what is working for you and tweak it as you see what will work best. Try different things, see what else works or doesn't work for you. And remember, keep a record and plan your days, to help stay on top of your business.