Home Based Business for Stay at Home Moms

							My passion is to help work at
home moms create lucrative
and fulfilling home based
businesses.


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This guide and accompanying teleclass transcripts are my gift to you.
I hope that the resources will be a help to you as you work to create the life you want
for your family.



Bonus Transcript Download Links:
   • Personality Types & Choosing a Business
   • Can You Really Make Money Online?
Reasons to Stay Home
There are a hundred different reasons why a woman chooses to either stay home with
her children or go to work outside the home.

As Moms we want to raise our kids with a firm moral foundation. We have to make
choices about our lifestyle everyday, asking ourselves how it will affect our parenting.
For many of you it will mean that you choose to stay home full time with your kids.

Most people will agree, nobody cares for your kids like you do. There are wonderful
child care providers out there, I know because I was one of them for eight years! But,
even the best daycare may not be instilling the values that you want your children to
learn.

There is no perfect choice. Some women would go nuts if they stayed home full time!
They love their kids and treasure the time they have with them, but they feel most
fulfilled when they are able to pursue a career outside of the home.

One of my closest friends was a nurse for 15 years. She raised her first two children
with the support of daycares and her family. After a divorce and remarriage she had two
more kids and this time around she feels that God has called her to be home full time. It
meant giving up a good paying job. It also meant giving up a lot of ‘status’ that came
with her work. But she hasn't regretted it. It's going on ten years now.

I have another friend who has two lovely kids and a new baby just a few months old.
Her job doesn't pay all that much but it satisfies her love for working with people and
gets her out of the house on a regular basis. She has a child care provider that she is
100% confident in and she was happy to get back to work.

Please don't make your decision in this area based on other people's opinions. You have
to follow your own heart.

Many Moms don't have a choice about whether they are going to work, especially
single Moms. The rent comes due every month and the costs of raising kids never go
down.

I hear women who work outside the home say that they would love to be home full
time, if only they could still help pay the bills.
Needing money is the motivation behind the majority of women who begin a work at
home business.

But not every stay at home woman is meant to have a home based business. My friend
who gave up a nursing career now raises a family of six on her husband's income, and
his income isn't huge! There have been many times that they have struggled financially.
But she has prayed about finding ways to earn an income and feels strongly that God
wants her to focus on her family. (With four boys, is it any wonder?)

Between football games and wrestling matches with the older boys and playground duty
with the younger boys, when would she have time to operate a home business? She and
her husband have chosen to rely on God for the increase they need from time to time
and while God has seemed to take them to the limit several times, He has always
provided what they need.

For those who are considering a work at home opportunity, they usually have an
amount of money in mind that they really need to bring into the home. Maybe it’s
grocery money or entertainment money. Maybe it’s for Christmas and birthday money.

Of course, not every Mom is motivated by a need for money. They just long to do
something that will allow them to express their creativity.

I want to encourage you – whether you’re motivated by a financial need or a personal
desire to achieve - it’s important that you have a clear idea of your reasons and your
goals for the home business that you’re starting. If you don’t have a target – how will
you know if you’re hitting it? I’ll touch on this more at the end of the guide.
Making an Income Online
It really is possible to earn an income on the internet – even in today’s tough economy.
I’m doing it – and if I can do it – anybody can.

There are a lot of potential pitfalls so let me warn you about a few.

   • Never pay for a job – Real employers would never even think of charging you
     to apply for their available positions.

   • If it sounds too good to be true – it’s a lot of crap. Really. There are no
     exceptions to this rule.

   • Anyone offering you a Business Opportunity is in it for themselves. I know
     this sounds jaded, but it’s true. They may be really nice but they’re still sharing
     their opportunity with you because they will benefit if you sign up. Never, ever
     take their word for anything.

   • If you don’t value your time, noone else will. There are lots of programs that
     offer you the opportunity to make a few pennies at a time. Surveys, reading
     emails, writing for a share of ad income, etc. The people who run these programs
     have figured out a way to profit from your efforts – even if you never will.

It sucks to start things out with so much negativity – I just don’t want you to be drawn
in by false promises. There are so many GREAT ways to develop an income on the
web – so let’s move on to that!
        Ways
So Many Ways To Earn Extra Money
Telecommuting
Telecommuting is working for a company by virtual means. Most telecommuting jobs
involve customer service work. There are many companies that hire moms to take
orders, field phone calls and man live support help desks. There is a lot of competition
for these jobs as you can well imagine. If throw your hat in the ring with all the others,
you must approach it the same way you would if you were looking for work in your
own town. Get your resume up to date and start submitting them everywhere you can.

eBay/Auctions
Auctions remain a great way to market a product online. You can get started by selling
what you have – a virtual garage sale in the making! You can move on to explore drop
shipping options that let you run auctions for products offered by wholesalers. You
make the sale, they ship the product, you pay them their price and pocket the difference.

Start a Business selling your own Products
I know several moms who are doing quite well marketing something that they make.
Crafts, home décor, custom clothing, art, etc. Then there are those that are selling
digital products like ebooks, patterns and how to guides. If you’re creative or have
special knowledge, you could start something that will earn income for you long term.

Start a Business selling your own Services
If you need to earn income right away, this is the quickest route to cash. Trading your
hours for dollars can take many forms. You can write articles, make blog posts, create
graphics or provide administrative services of some kind. I’m a business coach, I sell
my coaching services by the hour and do really well with it.

Direct Sales Marketing
Direct Sales is a wonderful business option for a social go getter. I personally love the
home party system. It’s fun and profitable. There are hundreds of options. Sell
makeup, food, home décor, crafts, scrapbook supplies, etc. Direct Sales has a multi
level aspect to it, so you can build a team and earn even more.

Affiliate Marketing
You can actually build an online income by acting as an affiliate for other people’s
products and services. Start a blog about your passion for family pets and monetize it
with product recommendations. When your readers take your advice, you earn a
commission.
What Should I Do?
Have you ever heard of Spiritual Gifts? God has gifted you with a unique set of skills
and interests that bring out the best in you when you work in an area where they are
most useful.

Here is a list (not a complete one) of these gifts. I picked out just a few that will give
you come clues about what you might be good at when you pick a work at home job.
(If you would like to learn more about this, please don't hesitate to ask me!!)

Encouragement
To encourage someone is to cheer them on, build them up, tell them what is good about
them and help them to see what they are destined to become. (An exhorter does not tell
people all "nice" things, they also tell them the truth, which occasionally can be
painful.) They encourage others to be the best that they can be. An Encourager makes a
great life coach!

They also make a great team leader. Let's consider if you chose a work at home
opportunity in Direct Sales. You pick a product that you are excited about and can
really stand behind. As an Encourager, you are probably going to be a great recruiter
and find a lot of other women who will be interested in the same thing.

The Encourager will want to stay away from opportunities that keep them home alone
all the time. They are going to love to be with people!

Leadership
A person with a God given gift of Leadership is a Visionary. They don't take other
people's opportunities, they make their own! They see a need or recognize a niche that
hasn't been taken advantage of yet and build up a business to meet the need. Usually it
will involve something that they are passionate about.

A very good example of this is Kay Green of My Precious Kid.com. She recognized a
need for simple, affordable products that parents can use to keep important
identification information about their children. Her passion for keeping children safe
extends now to a wide variety of products. Kay is a good example not only of
Leadership in action but also of Encouragement because she encouraged and builds up
a growing number of My Precious Kid Representatives.
Mercy
The woman with the gift of Mercy just loves people. They long to help another person
improve their circumstances. They can listen for hours and they have an abundance of
patience. I think Mercy women make the best Avon, Mary Kay or other personal care
sellers! You need to have an abundance of tact and compassion for your customers
when you are trying to teach them how to care for their skin and find a look that suits
them.

Service or Helps
The Servant's heart just wants to be helpful. They love to "do things" for others. You
will be great at a product that you create yourself. You will be able to stay motivated to
complete your projects.

Teaching
The Teacher wants to share information. They will write eBooks or develop
informational websites. Making money from this gifting can be tricky because you are
motivated to educate first but it is possible! You can become an expert in your area of
interest and promote products related to that topic.

Administration
The women with a gift of administration can take a good look at a situation and tell you
how best to organize and make it work. These gals make great Virtual Assistants or
project advisors.

Hospitality
The woman with a gift of Hospitality loves to fuss with the "froo froo" in life! They
make great home decorating demonstrators and caterers. They also make great daycare
providers if they enjoy children.

These are just a few thoughts to help get you thinking about how you are gifted and
how that might help you in a work at home job.

Another important aspect to consider in choosing a business is your Personality Type.
Are you a take charge Choleric or a fun filled Sanguine? Do you pay close attention to
details like the Melancholy or would you rather just relax and go with the flow like the
Phlegmatic?

I did a special teleclass on this topic – and I’m including the transcript along with this
guide to help you identify your personality type and make a smart decision about your
business.
If you come this far and still don’t know what you want to do to work from home – you
could benefit from some one on one coaching. I enjoy spending time brainstorming
business ideas with Moms and I am available for telephone coaching.



Where Do I Start?
Have you picked a home business idea? Do
you have a perfect home based dream job in
mind? Now it's time to do your homework!
Visit websites and see what other WAHMs are
doing. But don't copy them; find your own
flavor and style.

If you have chosen a Direct Sales company, do
yourself a favor and take your time deciding
who to sign up with. Your recruiter will be
your trainer and you need someone reliable and patient!

Take advantage of every training opportunity. Go to sales meetings and give their
business development suggestions a try. Too many women join a company because
they like the product but when it comes time to begin to market the product, they refuse
to do it the way that company recommends and they suffer for it. Every woman has her
own way of communicating, but the business of Direct Sales has tried and true ways of
growing and succeeded and you won't do well if you ignore them.

The worst thing you can do is sit back and wait for business to come to you. If someone
told you that your Direct Sales business or any other business will just grow on its own,
they lied. You will have to promote your product!

If there is an original product or service that you are going to launch, you won't have
someone to train you, but there is still an abundance of information on the internet
about developing a new business.

Either way you have got to listen to WAHM Talk Radio every week! You will learn
something valuable to benefit you

Don't take a wild leap into anything until you have a good grasp on what you want to
do. A wise man once told me to "Plan your Work and then Work your Plan."
The World Wide Web
Will your new business benefit from a website? Yes!
Every business can benefit from some sort of website! And
please skip the free websites that give you a long
complicated web address. It is not expensive to create a
simple website these days.

If you are going into a Direct Sales company, don't overpay for a company website.
Most distributorship companies will give you a sub domain company website for free.
If they ask you for money, check with some other WAHMs and get advice about
whether it is a good value or not.

To begin you will need to register a domain name. Pick a domain name that fits your
business and is preferably easy to remember. This can be very challenging! But really
take your time with this because once you pick it, it will not be something you will want
to change lightly. Avoid goofy spellings, that's been done to death! Do try to
incorporate your business name if you can. Do try to get a .com rather than anything
else.

For hosting, I can tell you exactly where to go: Mom Webs! (In the interest of full
disclosure, I own Mom Webs!) But I was a customer before I was an owner – our
support staff is second to none and they never get tired of helping newcomers.

Check us out here: http://www.momwebs.com

You can hire someone to make you a website or you can tackle it yourself. Either way,
I highly recommend building your new website with Wordpress.

Wordpress is a Content Management System, most commonly used to create a blog.
The script is free to use, easy to learn and totally customizable. You can make it do
pretty much anything you want it to and you won’t need any expensive web design
software installed on your computer system.
Website Promotion that Works!
The WAHM community is filled with people telling you how to promote your website.
Let me start right out by telling you plainly to completely avoid the following:

   •   Banner Exchanges
   •   Traffic Exchanges
   •   Traffic Schemes
   •   Buying Traffic
   •   Search Engine Submission Services

I'm not going into detail but none of the above is going to have any real positive effect
on your business. It may bring you some traffic, but it won't be buying traffic.

You need people to visit your site who are interested in what you have to offer. And if
they came looking on purpose, you have the greatest chance of converting them to a
sale! So you need to learn how to use search engines to market your website. This
means you have to get a grasp of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click
(PPC) advertising.

SEO when it is done right brings you tons of great traffic and it doesn't cost you a think.
PPC brings you incredibly targeted traffic for a per click price, usually quite
inexpensively!

Both are huge topics and there is a lot of information on the net about both practices
that will damage your long term standings with the search engines, so you have to be
careful and research before you put anything into practice.

This is where I just have to plug MomMasterminds.com. This is my exclusive
membership website. I mentor Moms in business and teach them the step by step basics
about SEO, PPC and many other important internet marketing principles. This is a paid
membership site, the monthly fee is $49.97 but don't let the price tag keep you from
checking it out. We offer a 7 day free trial so you can check it out without risk – and if
you do decide to stay, you’ll only pay for your membership for 12 months and then
you’ll be a lifetime graduate with forever free access!

A tried and true marketing practice that will help build your website traffic is Article
Marketing. You write interesting, informative or entertaining articles that will appeal to
your target market. You place these articles on your website and then also send them
out to free content directories to encourage others to publish your content on their
websites as well. Every article carries your author bio and website link so this helps to
pull your target market to your website and helps with your Search Engine placement as
well.

To learn more about Article Marketing and how to make it work for your business,
subscribe to the free email course at EasyArticleMarketing.com.

Be sure to keep listening to WAHM Talk Radio every week because we often talk
about ways to drive traffic to your website.

Develop your List
From the first day that your website is up and running you are working very hard to pull
traffic into it. You hope of course that every visitor will fall in love with what you have
                            to offer and buy out the entire store right then and there.

                            The truth is that few visitors make a purchase on the first
                            visit – unless they have search for and found exactly what
                            they’re looking for and even then they may waiver
                            undecided. It would be a tragedy for you to lose that
                            potential customer and there is a way to make sure that you
                            don’t.

                           Every business needs to have a mailing list. The mailing list
                           sign up box on your website is the golden opportunity for a
potential customer to say yes to your products and services without taking out their
credit card.

If they like what they see but just can’t make a decision – they are very likely to drop
their email address into your form because they know that they’ll have a future
opportunity to reconsider what you have to offer.

Your business mailing list may take many forms. There are so many wonderful options
to choose from. You can offer weekly specials, or a monthly ezine full of information
that your target market will enjoy. You can provide a multi-part email course to teach
them something valuable. Whatever you do, every email is another exposure for your
business and if you’re doing it correctly – it’s bringing you sales!

Setting up a list is easy, I use Aweber.com to host and manage all of my mailing lists.
You can have as many as you want to so it’s perfect for the busy online marketer.
Networking for Business Growth!
WAHMs are my target market since I provide
a service to them, so of course I see
networking as an opportunity to promote
myself. But I see it as a natural extension of
my networking, not the sole purpose of it.

Networking for the online WAHM should
provide a few definite benefits:

Learning
You learn when you network. You ask questions and get answers. You share ideas and
get feedback.

Ideas
When you are hanging out with other people in your line of business, you pick up on
what is working for them and you can put it to work in your own corner of the world.
Or, you can spot a missing link by observing what others offer and find a way to fill the
hole and meet a need that you wouldn't otherwise have known existed.

Brainstorming
I love to grab a topic or idea and start to throw it around with some smart women. If
you have a business idea you can get some great insights by sharing it with others.

Referrals
The WAHM you're visiting with may not be your best customer, but they may refer
someone to you who will be.

Resources
I continue to learn about awesome resources online every week. The web is so BIG!
No one can claim to know it through and through. So when we network we often learn
about something new and oh so useful for our business.

Last but not least: Sales
Yes, occasionally, you do make a sale from a fellow WAHM. But this is not your
focus. Please, if you ever want to make a successful business, set your selling sites
outside of the WAHM community!
Some simple WAHM community networking rules:

   • Introduce yourself. Talk more about you than your business the first time
     around.
   • Ask Questions. Lots and lots of questions.
   • Answer Questions. If you know it, share it.
   • Pay attention to the posting rules and make sure that your sales ads are fitting into
     the requirements.
   • Post more than just ads consistently.
   • Follow links and find new networking opportunities.



Ethics, Giving and Balance in Business
If I promised you my personal secrets to a successful online business, you may want to
know, is Kelly truly successful online? Well I came into my home business with a goal
of making $200 a month extra to make ends meet. I exceeded those goals long ago and
in March of 2006 I resigned my day job, having more than replaced my full time
income.

So here are my personal tips for a successful online business:

Don't Abuse Your Circle of Influence
Please, please, please don't call all of your long lost friends to tell them about your
business. I don't care what anyone tells you, this is using people. If they were not
important enough to you to talk to about anything else in the last year, they do not need
to hear about your new direct sales party plan either.

Fair Pricing
Honest Shipping & Handling costs, Clear ordering information and a Fair Return
Policy.

Networking
Networking with other business owners is smart. Learning from others and gleaning
good business practices is smart. Stealing ideas is not.

Giving
Giving is a powerful thing. When money is tight and there’s no hope in sight – give
something. Help another WAHM. Offer free services or discounted products when
possible. Have an attitude of generosity and charity.
Lastly, Balance!

You decided to explore work at home jobs because you wanted to be home with your
kids. Now you have to work at keeping it all in balance. It can be real easy to get in
front of the computer or be tucked away in the craft room for hours on end.

On the internet, there are always new "opportunities" to attract your attention with
promises of extra cash. But each one takes time. If you end up working tons of hours at
home - are you really spending the quality time with your kids that you long to?

The important thing is to not imagine that "a little more money" will make you happy.
Increased income tends to bring increased expenditures despite our best intentions. If
you are going to start carving out time to make extra money, make sure that you keep it
"extra" and don't add debt that makes it a necessity. The beauty of working at home is
that it is something we do in our own time, on our own terms.

Remember at the beginning, I told you it would be really important to know why you
are starting a business. If you keep your true goals in mind, you’ll be careful about
your decisions and work hard to keep the main thing, the Main Thing. ;)
Ready to Dig In?
This short guide gives you a quick overview of the steps to take to get going with your
own business. If you’re ready to go for it, I invite you to grab a copy of my newly
published 182 page workbook that digs deeper in all areas.

Choose between a real soft cover print version or instant download ebook!


 The Complete Internet Marketing
      Moms Start Up Guide




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