Reinvent Yourself!

If you're like me, you were a career woman at one time and after a series of events found yourself suddenly knee deep in dirty laundry, balancing a baby on one hip, a cell phone in the other, and you've learned to somehow do everything one handed or with your teeth.  Just because your job title has changed to "domestic engineer", doesn't mean that suddenly your skills and experience are worth nothing.

I get asked constantly, how stay at home moms can make money from home.  The problem that I see, though, with most of the women that ask me that question is they don't believe in themselves.  Too often women think that the only skills they have to offer involve typing or customer service.  Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not putting those jobs down.  The problem with many of those jobs is that they don't pay well.  The truth is that many of the women asking me how to make money from home posses all the skills necessary to start and run their own business from home.  The rewards from running your own business from home, both monetary and emotionally are only limited by YOU.  How great is that?  You are the one that decides how hard you want to work or how much money you want to make.  In fact, I find that many women sadly let fear hold them back from taking the leap.  I see it all too often.  These same women that I speak of are so talented and have so much to offer that it's sad that they don't realize their own potential.

You may have wondered where the heck I've been for the past couple of months.  (Or maybe not, I don't know!)  I've been contemplating something that I have now been inspired to write about and I hope that someone out there will benefit from all of the time and effort that I've put into this research.  You may already know that I have been a stay at home "mompreneur", working from home for the past seven years now.  I've been pretty proud of the fact that I've been able to earn money from home doing various things and ended up able to stay home with my children all this time.  When I started out, I wondered just how long I'd be able to stay home.  If there was ever a time that the money ran out, I was certainly going to have to go back to work.  Here I am seven years later, writing this blog to help others find their way.  Is your way my way?  Probably not.  Since I began there are better paths than the ones I took.  There are so many more options out there than when I started.  One thing I know for sure is that if you really want to make money from home, there is a way.  Another thing I've learned is that the best way to make the most money from home is to:

1. Do something you love.
2. Work for yourself.
3. DO SOMETHING YOU LOVE
4. Constantly reinvent yourself.
5. Listen to your heart, not your fears.
6. Take Action

That brings me to my point for this post.  I have been inspired myself to return to college at 39 years of age.  I got married before I ever actually got a degree.  Looking back, it's always been something that has bothered me.  Do I need a degree right now?  Maybe not, but it sure couldn't hurt.  Not only that, but no one in my family ever graduated from college.  I want to set an example for my three boys.  I hope that I'm showing them by example that you're never too old to finish what you started and that you should never give up.  In doing all of this preparation for going back, I have found that it is so much easier to go to school than it ever has been.  More online, night, and weekend courses are being offered than ever before.  More grants, scholarships and loans are being issued.  There is a greater variety of subject matter that's being taught.  What does this mean for you?  It means that more opportunities exist for you right now than ever before.

I picked up a local course catalog for Adult and Community Education classes recently.  I was amazed at the variety of courses being offered and the potential for income from home that was lurking right there in those pages!  Amazing!  One class was a class on Windows XP Movie Maker.  They would teach you how to use old photos, digital photos, and digital movies to create your own movies or slide shows.  They teach you how to do voice overs, music and special effects.  What a great business this would be!  How many people are out there that have all of these things, but don't really know how or have the time to do anything with them?

Another class was for Power Point Memory Albums.  They teach you how to create memory albums for graduations, weddings, birthdays, family reunions, etc.  The cost was only $52.00!  How's that for a cheap start up?  How could you go wrong offering that service for graduations and weddings?  The first couple of jobs alone should more than pay for the tuition of the class.

Of course there were other classes like how to install ceramic tile, home staging, operating an eBay store or business, writing courses, foreign language courses, cake decorating, portrait drawing, sewing, etc.  There was even a class on how to make fused glass windchimes.  I could go on and on. A good percentage of the courses in the course schedule had the potential of being at home money makers.

One of my favorite quotes is:  "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step".  You might find that your first step to your journey to becoming a stay at home mompreneur is to find a class at your local community college and take the leap.  Turn your interests and your hobbies into a sideline money maker or a full blown business.  The point is, it's up to you.  I even saw a course on how to start your own business if your dreams are a little bigger than most.

As always, I wish you all luck and happiness and if there's ever anything that I can do to help my readers, please feel free to contact me.

Real Estate Money Making For Stay At Home Moms

This year, I have embarked upon a new venture that I'm quite excited about and I wanted to share what I have learned with you.  For a couple of years now, I have been researching various ways to invest in real estate.  You see, I believe that real estate investing is just about the perfect money maker for stay at home moms.  The problem is that most women simply do not know how to go about this.  For that matter, in this market, there are a lot of experienced real estate investors that don't know how to go about making money in a down market.

Now I don't claim to be any kind of real estate investing guru, but what I have learned has been pretty exciting.  You see, real estate investing does require a time commitment, but it can be worked according to your schedule and the money making potential is unbelievable.

Here's a little bit of the back story so you can see where I'm coming from.

My husband sells cars for a living.  Last year, a man walks into my husbands office and asks if there is any way that he could trade land for a used car.  The man had made the same offer at who knows how many other car lots that same day, only to be turned down.  My husband has some real estate investing experience and recognized that this could potentially be a great deal.  Turns out, the man had 8 acres of land to trade.  My husband had connections with wholesalers of used cars and we ended up buying a used car at a wholesale price and trading the land for the car.  We ended up only paying about $4,000 for the car.  We estimated the land to be worth somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 in today's down market.  Not a bad rate of return.

Now here's the interesting part that I wanted to share.  This all happened last year and honestly we had no idea what we wanted to do with the land.  We knew that whatever we did, we wanted to absolutely optimize our profits.  Here's the problem, though:  real estate is just not selling very well and banks aren't lending like they used to.  We wondered if we were just going to have to hold onto the land until the market came back.  Could be 3 years, 4 years, 5 years or more, who knows. 

Here's what we decided to do.  We checked with the restrictions in the neighborhood and noticed that we could divide the land into two 4 acre lots.  Then, we decided that we would owner finance the land.  We'd sell each half at the price we would have expected to get in a good market, $30,000.  Then we'd ask for $5,000 down, 10% interest for 30 years without regard to credit history.  Now this would mean that we would receive a monthly payment from the owners of $219.39 basically for 30 years.  Now $219.39 a month is not going to allow me to hire a personal chef or limo driver.  After 30 years time, though, we will have collected a sum of $83,980.40 on half of the ground!

This means that on our $4,000 investment on 8 acres of ground, we would have the potential of receiving $167,960.80.  Now that's what I call optimizing an investment.

There are quite a lot of people out there with land they'd like to sell that's just not selling.  They simply do not know how to sell it in this market so the possibility to cut a sharp deal is there.

Now I have learned that it is possible to invest in real estate without a lot of money in your pocket and you really don't need to sit back and wait for some guy to come offer you the kind of deal that we got. If you are interested in finding out more, I'd recommend reading a book by Dean Graziosi called Profit From Real Estate Right Now! The Proven No Money Down System For Today's Market. I'm not getting any money to promote his book. I've read the book and he explains in detail how to make money from real estate without any money what-so-ever. Again, I want to emphasize that I am not getting any money from anyone if you buy his book. In fact, I would just recommend checking with your local library to see if they have a copy.

I plan on venturing into real estate this year and will be sharing every detail of whatever I do with all of you.  If I fail, you'll know about it.  If I succeed, you'll know about that too.  One thing is for sure, though, we're going to learn something about real estate investing together!

From Idea To Reality: IdealSamples.com

Sheena Repath is working on a dream, a really big dream, and she’s passionate about it. She helps people bring their dreams, ideas and products to life.
She has 10 years of professional experience as designer, entrepreneur, adviser in the fashion/apparel industry. Her expertise ranges from concept creation, design, product development, manufacturing, wholesale, retail and online distribution.
She started Ideal Samples Inc in 2008 to fill a growing need in the marketplace for individuals and businesses that have ideas or concepts that need samples or products produced or help bringing them to market.

With the guidance of seasoned mentors, her own experience and the proverbial school of hard knocks. Sheena’s identified the critical steps necessary to successfully bring an idea or product to life and then to market.

Sheena and her team of experts have worked on hundreds of ideas and products for such leading brands as Indian Motorcycle, American Brands, Asics, MainStreet, The Answer, V and Kids Clothes That Fit just to name a few.

To learn more about Sheena and Ideal Samples visit them at www.IdealSamples.com.

Finding Inspiration: Famous Entrepreneur Quotes

I was feeling particularly inspired today from the progress of this blog and I wanted to share the feeling.  I recognize how difficult it can be to keep your spirits up when you are contemplating starting your own work from home business venture or if you are just looking for a way to make money from home.  Whatever your situation, it's good to take a deep breath and find something to inspire you to continue on.  Whatever you desire out of your life, is possible, believe it.

Here's a few famous entrepreneur quotes to help keep you inspired:

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.Thomas Edison

Have the end in mind and every day make sure you're working towards it. 
Ryan Allis

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't so you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't.  A student in Warren G. Tracy's class

Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company 
Booker T. Washington

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. 
Mark Twain

Fall seven times, stand up eight.  
Japanese Proverb

I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.  
Thomas Alva Edison

Do not wait to strike until the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.  
William B. Sprague

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.  
Les Brown

You get in life what you have courage to ask for.  Always continue the climb.  
Oprah Winfrey

So What's This Blog All About And Who Is This "Carla" Person?

Today I realized that I have been focusing so enthusiastically on putting this blog together that I have failed to get a little bit more personal with my blog friends.  I'd like to take a moment today to explain where it is that I'm coming from, who I am, what my vision is for this blog and what will be coming up. 

First of all, let me just say that I consider every single reader of this blog a personal friend of mine.  I do not care whether there are 100 readers or 10,000 readers sometime in the future, I consider each one of you a personal friend of mine and I vow to do my very best to provide a reputable tool that you can use to find legitimate work from home opportunities or even to build your own business from home.  This blog will be one of 100% integrity and I guarantee that.  Scams or opportunities that I feel are not 100% on the "up and up" have no place on this blog.  It is my mission to provide quality information and to provide help to those moms who are out there wanting to find a way to make money from home.

On that note, let me tell you a little bit about myself and how this blog came to be.   I'm thirty-nine, a mother of 3 boys, ages 10, 6 and 16 months.  My oldest son has special needs and I adopted him as a single mom before I married my husband.  Before I became a mom, I had a career working for hotels like Embassy Suites, Radisson, and Holiday Inn.  It was my goal to one day become a general manager of a large hotel.  I was well on my way when suddenly everything changed.  I thought I would be a working mom, as my mom had been.  I was very focused on my career but my son required quite a bit of time and needed physical, occupational and speech therapies.  I decided that my job had to be helping my son and suddenly my career no longer fit into the equation.  I still needed to bring in money but had absolutely no idea about what to do or how to do it.  Like many of you, I searched and searched only to be disheartened by all of the scams.  It became very difficult to distinguish legitimate opportunities from all of the scams.  I began to think that working from home was just going to be impossible.

I decided to take a chance and go it alone.  I began by selling personalized stepping stools and banks on the internet.  I sold the products on eBay and on a Yahoo storefront.  I was surprised at how well I did and was encouraged to keep moving forward.  The money I brought in was enough so that I could cut my work hours back to part time and I could be at home to help my son more and more.

Over the years, I created my own work from home opportunities, getting paid to do market research, buying and reselling items on the internet, writing articles for webmasters, and eventually I taught myself how to build websites and built about 100 websites.  I placed various affiliate ads on the websites and ended up making around $42,000/year just from those websites.  The exciting part was that after my initial learning curve (which was very steep) on building the websites, it only took me about three weeks to build the sites.  I built five websites a day for three weeks straight.  The websites made money on their own whether I worked on them or not 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It didn't matter whether or not my kids were sick or I had mad laundry to do, I was making money even while I slept.

I still dabble in website creation and in blog writing.  I have slowed down quite a bit for the moment and am focusing on my youngest son.  I knew that this would be a great opportunity to create a blog to help other women find a way to earn money from home.  Whether they want that to be their sole income or if they need to earn extra income to compliment whatever they are earning in their job.  I know that right now there are a lot of people unemployed and there are a lot of people who fear what may be coming in the future.  That's why I'm here.

As you may have already noticed, I am providing tips for women who are looking for work from home opportunities and I'm providing reviews of various work from home opportunities with the essential information that you might need to decide whether or not that opportunity is right for you.  I receive absolutely no monetary compensation of any kind from any of the businesses that I review.  It is highly important to me that my reviews are 100% impartial, honest reviews.  I am so passionate about this blog and in helping other women who are in the place that I was in almost ten years ago.  As the saying goes, I've been there and done that and now I'm here to help you.

One of the ways that I want to help my friends is to invite you to email me.  If there is a topic that you'd like to have covered in the blog or a question that you have, I'd like to hear from you.  I will try to help answer your questions as best that I can and if I find that I am not able to, I will try to find the answer for you or locate someone who can help.  Feel free to email me at any time at MomsHaveDreamsToo@yahoo.com. 

I'm planning to continue working on work from home opportunity reviews as well as more tips for becoming a stay at home mompreneur.  I'll also be covering more of my experiences in making money and how you can do it too.  We'll have some guest blog posts that I'm sure you'll find extremely helpful and I'd love to get some interviews on here from other women who are successful work from home mompreneurs.

Thanks so much for following and/or reading this blog.  If you like what you read, please grab the html code for my button on the right hand side of this blog and post it on your MySpace, Facebook, blog, or website.
I look forward to hearing from you!

Step 3 To Becoming A Mompreneur: Network, Network, Network

Hopefully you've completed steps 1 and 2 and are raring to go with the third step in becoming not only a mompreneur, but a successful mompreneur.  The third step is this:  Network, Network, Network.  Get yourself out there in the internet world and in the real world.  Introduce yourself to as many other work from home moms as you possibly can.  Let them know that you are interested in becoming a work from home mom and ask them about what they do and how they do it.  This is something you'll want to continue doing even after you're bringing in six figures from home.  No matter how good you are, there's somebody out there doing it better.

So you need to join blogs (like this one, hint, hint), websites, forums, chats, or any other place where other moms that work from home frequent.  Be sure to budget your time wisely though.  Spend 30 minutes a day talking to other moms about their businesses.  Even with all of my years of making money online and researching work from home job opportunities, I still learn something new almost every day.  Networking is key to keeping up with what works and what doesn't work.  This is even more true if your marketing plan includes online marketing.  What worked five years ago, isn't as effective in today's world.  Networking will help you keep up with those trends.



If you're looking for a direct selling opportunity or if you are looking for another way of working from home, networking can help you find something that will fit what you are looking for.  Find out what other women are doing.  How are they able to stay home?  How much do they bring in?  What do they do exactly?  How do they like it?  How much time does it take per day...per week?  How long did it take them to build their business?  What was the start up cost? What do they do to get business?  This blog is a great way to find out bare bones information about the numerous direct selling opportunities that are out there.  If you haven't checked out some of the reviews, I encourage you to do so.  I'd like to remind everyone that I do the reviews strictly from an impartial perspective.  I am in no way affiliated with any of the direct sales opportunities and receive no monetary compensation from any of the companies that I review.  If direct selling is an option for you, be sure to follow this blog so you don't miss future reviews.
 
If you are looking to start up your own business from home, networking can give you a feel for what needs are out there that are not being met.  You can then build a business to fit those needs.  Forums or message boards are a great place to do research for work from home business opportunities of any kind.



Networking may make you realize that working from home is not for you.  I still am amazed at the number of women who come to me asking for help in finding work they can do from home.  I constantly get the feeling that they think working from home means sitting by their pool in a lounge chair with a laptop in front of them. I don't think women realize the amount of time and effort that is actually involved in working a business from your home.  Even after eight years of working from home, I still quite often work 7 days a week and sometimes ten or fifteen hours a day.  I work harder at home than I ever did in my 9-5 career.

Homework assignment:

Ahh yes, the homework assignment.  First of all, be sure that you completed the homework assignments from steps 1 and 2 of becoming a mompreneur, then you can find five women who work from home either online or in "real life".  Introduce yourself and let them know of your desire to work from home.  Then ask them these questions:

• What do they do?
• How do they like it?
• How long did it take them to build their business?
• How much time do they spend per week on their business?

Be sure to keep your "contacts" in a place where you can refer to them later.  Take notes if you have to.  You may want to even consider filling out an index card for each contact with their contact information on the front and some notes about the person on the back.  Keep the index cards in an inexpensive recipe box or keep track of everything on your computer in a file.  The main thing is that you start getting yourself out there and start building a contact list.  Happy networking!

Working From Home Writing Articles

As some of you know, I have been a stay at home mom for over 8 years and still counting.  I did many different things to earn money from home over the years, some of which I have already shared on this blog and still others will be revealed in the future.  One of the most profitable things that I did was to build highly search engine optimized websites and became a publisher for Google Adsense.  I have personally built somewhere in the neighborhood of 100+ websites.  The websites were centered around highly profitable keywords which just means that I found out what subjects had a high number of searches on Google per month and payed well by advertisers on Google Adwords.  Let me see if I can simplify that a little bit more.  Owners of websites might want to advertise their sites to get more visitors to their websites.  One of the ways they would advertise is to buy advertisement through Google's Adwords program.  If you look in the upper right hand corner of this blog, you'll probably see two Google Ads.  Those are the ads that I'm speaking of, you've probably seen them a million times on the internet.  Every time someone clicks on those ads, the publisher (the website displaying the ads) gets paid.  Now, the amount per click varies depending on the demand for the advertising space and the number of publishers available to publish the ads.  It might be as little as one cent or maybe even as much as five or ten dollars, or perhaps more.

Now there's a lot more involved in making money from Google Adsense and I'll have to introduce that in many more blog posts.  The main reason that I'm bringing this up is to prove to you that I do have some experience in what I'm about to say.  Even if you don't know a thing about building websites or search engine optimization or keywords or Google Adsense, etc, you can make money by writing articles for the owners of websites who are trying to make money from Google, by selling products, or by other affiliate methods.

I can personally attest to the fact that there is a very high demand for writers of good quality articles or articles that are keyword rich (meaning written around a particular subject with the subject keyword sprinkled throughout the article).  Many webmasters (website owners), want to build sites but simply don't have the time or the desire to use their time to write articles.  They are willing to pay to have those articles written for them so that they can spend their time on other things.



The rate of pay per article will vary depending on the quality of the article, the number of words, and the webmaster himself.  Some, quite honestly are looking for quick, cheap articles, while others want higher quality, more in-depth articles.  On average, you might get paid somewhere between $5 and $25 per 500 word article.  How much you make depends on how fast and well you can write and how aggressive you are in finding webmasters to write for.  There is a high degree of flexibility, although you'll need to meet the webmaster's time requirements.  Start up costs are basically $0 and anyone with a moderate understanding of writing, typing, computers and the english language are more than qualified to do this kind of work.  Don't think that you must be a highly skilled author, that's not the case at all.  Writing articles online for a living does require some degree of self-discipline and I will be quite honest and say that this is not for everyone.  I only say this because writing article after article can become very mundane after a few days.  Honestly that's the most difficult part of writing articles, at least it was for me.  But, if you pace yourself and set daily writing goals, this is very doable for just about anyone.  The opportunity is out there, all you have to do is do something with it.

There are several different places you can go to find webmasters who want to pay to have articles written.  Some of the more reputable places are:

• iFreelance.com
• Elance.com
• Craigslist (not as secure as other methods)
• AssociatedContent.com

Many writers find the content for their articles simply by entering the keyword or phrase into a search engine, like Google, and locating articles on places like EzineArticles.com and rewriting them in their own words.  The more often that you write, the faster, and better you will become and thus, the more you will get paid.  You will need to make sure that your articles are not copied or plagiarized because many webmasters will check them against online content to make sure that you're not pulling a fast one on them.  If you do good work, you will make a good name for yourself and likely will get even more offers from other webmasters.  



Take a look at the videos of real people who have either supplemented or replaced their income by writing articles from home. 

Work From Home Opportunity Without Selling A Thing

If I had a nickel for every time a mom asked me how they can earn money from home without selling products, I'd be laying on a beach right now, sipping some tropical frozen beverage with lots of those cute little umbrellas in it.  My main mission in creating this blog is to help to answer that question for lots and lots of moms.  I know the desperation of the mom who realizes that her maternity leave is just about to end and she is suddenly faced with the reality of having to hand over her precious baby to someone else to care for.  I know, because I've been there.  I made a decision to stay home and to never look back.  I decided that I would do whatever it took to make that happen and if there was indeed any possible way for me to make money from home, I was going to find it.  The number of scams out there made it a lot more difficult to find those legitimate opportunities.  Out of frustration I began to look inward rather than to others for help making my work from home plan a reality.

You see, I realized that I have skills and experience that are marketable and I bet a lot of you out there are the same way.  I had worked for 15 years in the hospitality industry in sales, accounting, customer service, reservations and management.  In my search for finding work from home opportunities, I ran across a website that lots of aspiring stay at home moms still do not know about.  The website I'm speaking of is Elance.com. 
It's a wonderful tool you can use today to earn money from home with lots and lots of individuals and companies that need help now.  Here's how it works in a nutshell:  A company or an individual needs help with a project or even for a long term position and they sign up and create an account with Elance.  They post whatever jobs or positions that they have available on the site.  Individuals who have certain skill sets sign up with Elance and bid on those jobs and then they can be chosen by the original poster to complete the job that they posted. 

There are jobs out there for typists, appointment makers, virtual assistants, customer service representatives, writers, data entry, accountants, bookkeepers, and the list goes on and on and on.  All you have to do in order to be considered for these jobs is to create a profile and list your skills and experience.  You can then take skills tests to prove your abilities and thus making you even more an even more desirable candidate.  The more jobs that you complete successfully, the more desirable you are as well.

Sometimes companies will even invite you to bid on a project that they post based on your profile, so it's important to build as complete a profile as possible.  To get you started, you should check out this brief tutorial.

Traffic Generation For The Work From Home Mom: A Direct Sales Must

So what if you already are a stay at home mompreneur?  I've got some valuable tips for you too!  A lot of moms out there are already set up with an at-home business.  They've forked over some money to begin selling Avon, BeautiControl, Veema, or any number of the products now on the direct selling market.  The company with which you signed up provided you with a website where you can send potential customers and clients.  You are of the mindset that if you build it, they will come.  I hate to burst your bubble, but the internet is NOT the field of dreams.  If you build your baseball field (i.e. website) out in the middle of a corn field (the internet), nobody's going to be sitting in your bleachers, that is not unless you know how to build traffic to your website.

A website without traffic is a useless sales tool for your direct sales business.  This is where a lot of direct sales businesses will bite the dust.  After they exhaust methods of selling to friends and family, their "business" sort of dries up and blows away.  The truth is that building traffic to your website is somewhat like pushing a big boulder up a hill.  In the beginning of your traffic building campaign, you must work extremely hard to get the big rock moving.  If you work hard and put your efforts in the right place though, that big boulder will eventually crest the hill and begin moving under it's own power and that, my friend, is a beautiful thing.



There are several ways to get traffic to your website.  One thing that you must always keep in mind is the quality of the traffic that you'll need to your website.  There are services on the internet where you can pay a fee to basically have them send a certain number of visitors to your website.  If this is the path that you decide to take, you'll want to make sure that the traffic that you get is highly targeted quality traffic.  After all, you don't want some innocent bozo that's looking for a beer can hat to be directed to your Mary Kay site.  That kind of traffic will not convert to sales and basically you'll just be wasting your time and money.

You can also go the route of buying advertising through Google Adwords or buy advertising space on other blogs and websites.  This can be a very effective means of advertising your website, but again I caution you to do your homework before using services like Google Adwords.  You must understand fully what you're getting into when your money is on the line.



Personally I like generating free traffic.  Generating inbound links to your website are a great way to build traffic.  To generate links, you can trade links with other website owners, or blogs.  Again, this is effective, but it takes a great deal of manpower to get every single link to your site.  My favorite means of generating inbound links is to write articles.  I write articles on areas in which I have expertise or in areas where there is high demand where I can research the subject thoroughly.  I then submit those articles to article directory websites like EzineArticles.  In the resource box on each article I include two links to pages within whatever website that I am promoting.  Once the articles are published by various webmasters, my links begin growing exponentially.  This type of leveraging of your time and resources is the way you must think to be a successful stay at home mompreneur.  More links equals more traffic.

You may not have the time to spend writing articles or may not feel confident in your writing abilities and that's perfectly fine too.  You can hire writers at a reasonable price to write articles for you via Elance or even Craigslist.   A quality article will cost you a bit more money to have written but you can usually get a good deal on a bundle of articles.  Articles related to the content of your site or that would compliment your website will bring you a higher quality of traffic than completely unrelated articles. 

Search engine optimization is another way to build big time traffic to your website.  This is a highly effective way to build free traffic to your website but it's a difficult nut to crack for most beginning webmasters.  Basically the concept is that you sprinkle keywords throughout your website that get a high number of searches per month and a low number of competition.  Google offers a keyword research tool to use in order to help you in your research.  To achieve and maintain a high ranking in the search engines, you will likely need unique content, a website that builds in content over time, and strong linking to your website.  There are so many ins and outs to the process that it may be worth checking into hiring someone with experience in search engine optimization to help you in your endeavors.

As with anything in your home based business, find something that works and do it over and over again.  Don't waste your time or efforts with any type of marketing that is not giving you the results that you desire.  Most importantly however, is to do SOMETHING.  Even if whatever you do is wrong, at least you've learned what not to do and you can move on to try something else and if you keep doing this over and over, you'll eventually find your way to success.

Step 2 To Becoming A Mompreneur: Know Yourself

Now that you're in the right frame of mind for success, it's time to plan out a path.  Most moms think that the legitimate opportunities to earn money from home are just few and far between or even non-existent altogether.  The fact of the matter is that opportunities to work from home are all over the place and the biggest problem that you might face is deciding in which direction you want to go because of the vast array of opportunities that actually do exist.

Today we want to focus on our interests and your homework assignment is to make a list of things that you like and areas in which your natural talents lie.  I also want you to make a list of your areas of weakness.  My lists would look something like this:
     

      Natural Talents

• Artistic
• Finding Bargains
• Marketing
• Sales

         Areas of Interest/Hobbies

• Shopping
• Website Building
• Search Engine Optimization
• Blogging
• Networking
• Beaches/Travel
• Children/Babies

       Weaknesses

• Lack of Patience
• Short Attention Span
• Temper
• Math

Now these list will be highly important in leading you in the direction where you are most likely to be successful.  You may want to keep the list in a place where you can refer to it over and over again.  For any business venture that you consider now or in the future, you'll want to consider your list very carefully.  The areas in which you have the highest chance for success are when you can combine your areas of interest with your natural talents.  You want to either avoid business opportunities that involve your weaknesses or partner with someone who is strong in the areas in which you are weak.

Consider the items that you listed as hobbies.  Ask yourself if there is a way to make money from those hobbies.  For example, on my list of likes I have listed shopping and on my list of natural talents I have listed bargain hunting.  I also have listed sales under natural talents.  Now I would ask myself how could I turn my hobby of shopping into a business while using my natural talents of bargain hunting and sales?  One of the things that I could do is to buy name brand baby clothes on clearance (out of season) and hold them until they are in season.  Then I could either sell them on Ebay or Craigslist for profit.  I actually know of several people who would specialize in buying just Gymboree baby clothes (because the demand was very high).  They would buy the clothes on clearance and then had set up an Ebay store specializing in Gymboree clothes.  Now that would be something that I would likely enjoy, but I'm not sure that I would have the patience to wait until the clothes were in season to get started.  There are, of course, other factors that you would need to consider as well such as time investment, money investment, expenses and potential profit margin to name a few.  We'll get into each of those things in a later blog.  For now, take some time and brainstorm to begin your lists!

Step 1 To Becoming A Mompreneur: Change Your Mind

You must change your mindset NOW!  You have to believe not only in yourself and your abilities but that working from home successfully and raising your children CAN be done.  If family or friends tell you that you are crazy or they give you 100 reasons why you cannot be a stay at home mom and make money from home, do not listen.  Surrounding yourself with people who are supportive and believe in you is vital in being a successful person in general.  Perhaps it's time to take inventory of those people in your life who only know how to criticize and spew negativity.

Homework:  What?  You didn't know there would be homework?  Relax, it's an easy assignment.  I want you to find 5 minutes of quiet, alone time. I realize that I may be asking the impossible here, but just try.  If you have to lock yourself in the bathroom for five minuets, do it.  Next I want you to visualize yourself being a stay at home mom and working from home.  Visualize as many details of it as you possibly can.

You should really do this at least once a day for the next two weeks.  Believe it or not, you may unconsciously have the mindset of a person who believes that they will never be successful in their own ventures.  Many of us grew up with both parents working outside the home or with our moms who stayed home and cooked and did laundry all day.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, however, it can lead you to believe subconsciously that that's what we're supposed to do and that's the only way to support our families.  Your thoughts and beliefs play a very important role in what we are able to accomplish in our lives.  Our thoughts and beliefs can either propel us forward or hold us back.

First Things First...Why Most Women Do Not Ever Work From Home

I have been inspired to create this blog by various acquaintances and friends who have been searching for ways to make money. They, like me, have a great need for extra income and very little extra time on their hands. Let's face it, finding legitimate ways to bring in money while running down a 16 month old, isn't as easy as one might think.

One question that has plagued me for quite some
time is why can't women have a successful career AND stay at home? Actually I do have some experience in this subject, although I wonder why other women have such a difficult time. I am slightly biased on the subject but women are incredible creations of God. I mean, we can direct our kids to clean their rooms while cleaning an unidentified stain out of the carpet while talking on our cell phones. Why is it that we can't take care of our children AND make money? We are amazing creatures whose talents are never ending. Actually I already have the answers to these questions. I KNOW what holds most of us back from succeeding in the work-from-home world. The answer is within ourselves. You have to BELIEVE that you are capable of making money from home.


You see most women have searched for a legitimate opportunity and once they run across several scams, they then BELIEVE that no true opportunities exist. What's more is they don't believe that they can actually do it. I can attest to the fact that it can be done because I have, indeed, done it. I continue to find ways of making legitimate money from home and continue to entertain new ideas for creating wealth from home. The opportunities are out there, all over the place actually and in this blog I'm going to share various opportunities that I find along with bits and pieces of information that will assist any mom in her quest to be a successful "Mompreneur".


I have, over the years, acquired pretty considerable knowledge about marketing, search engine optimization, website building, traffic generation and lot of other information that I will share on this blog. I'm also considering tackling a money making venture in a few weeks and blogging about every aspect of what I do and the results of my tactics. I think it will be a fun way to document my experiences and share with you the knowledge that I acquire first hand. I'm excited to begin this adventure and hope that you will follow along by subscribing to the blog. Meanwhile if there is any specific topic or question that you would like to see addressed on this blog, I encourage you to email me at momshavedreamstoo@yahoo.com. Hope to see you around!