Work From Home Job Blast: TeleTech@Home

There are more and more work from home companies out there who provide services for larger name companies.  TeleTech@Home is one of those companies.  What sets this company apart from the others is their dedication to treating their employees well.  See, they believe that if they treat their employees well, then in return their employees will treat their customers well.

If you have customer service experience, a high speed internet connection, a corded telephone, and a quiet work area then you probably have what you need to start earning money from home.  TeleTech@Home provides you with training through their TeleTech University.  They also provide you with a corded headset and a WorkBooth CD that connects you to everything you need, including your supervisor. 

TeleTech@Home allows you to track your own performance on a daily basis through their Empower program.  Employees are rewarded through higher pay according to their performance.  TeleTech@Home is also eager to provide jobs to members of the military and their spouses, which I think is outstanding.  It must be difficult to hold a job down when you move every few years to a new location.  A work from home job like TeleTech@Home would allow you to stay with the same company for as long as you wish.

If you are interested in exploring an opportunity with TeleTech@Home, there are 8 steps to complete before you can be hired:

1. Make sure that the position is right for you
2. Complete a fifteen minute application with pre-screening questions
3. Testing of your computer to make sure it will be sufficient for the job 
4. Initial phone screen followed by online assessment tests
5. Online group information session
6. Phone interview (Make sure that there is NO background noise during this time!)
7. Background check & PC Certification
8. Hiring!

If at any time, you do not pass one of the eight steps above, you will be sent an email letting you know.

If you are interested in receiving more work from home job blasts like this one, be sure to follow me on Twitter!

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

Time To Open Up A Lemonade Stand? Tips To Monetize Your MySpace, Facebook or Blog

If you have your own blog, Facebook or MySpace page, you already have the framework for creating extra money for yourself from home.  Time that you have spent adding friends and blogging doesn't have to be for nothing.  Affiliate programs can be a great way to add some extra money to your pocket.

One unique and fun affiliate program is www.Lemonade.com.  You can go to lemonade.com and build your own virtual lemonade stand filled with products that you recommnend from stores like Macy's, Gap, PetSmart, Wal-Mart, and the list goes on and on.  Whenever visitors to your blog, Facebook or MySpace buy anything from your recommended list of products in your virtual lemonade stand, you earn money.  You can keep the money or donate it to a charity. 

Another affiliate program you probably have already heard of is Google Adsense.  Now, while Adsense is a very quick and easy way to begin earning money on a blog or website, unless you #1) build several websites and/or blogs or #2) achieve massive amounts of traffic to your website or blog, you're likely not to see big amounts of income from Google.  I, in fact, earned up to $3,500 per month with Google, however my tactic was to build a large number of niche websites that achieved a decent search engine ranking.

Clickbank is an affiliate program that I would highly recommend if monetizing your blog or website is your focus.  Once you sign up as a publisher, you can either display ads or create links for products in your actual content.  Choosing products that will be targeted towards your readers is key in this process.  Whenever someone clicks on an ad link in your content or on a diplayed ad on your blog or website and makes a purchase, you will get paid a commission on that sale.

The most profitable way to earn money from your blog is to sell your own product, e-book, or advertising. 
Obviously you will maintain all of the profits from the sale of your own product or advertising.  Again, you'll need to target the products or e-books toward your readers.

You can sell advertising on your blog on your own, simply by letting your readers know how to contact you for advertising, or you can use scripts like OIO Publishing that will put your advertising space on auto-pilot for you.  This is a good thing if you don't want to have to keep up with payments, ad display times, and stats for your advertisers.  With OIO Publishing, you still get to keep 100% of your advertising sales.  The script is NOT free, though.  It does cost $47 to purchase currently.  For the month of April, only, they are running a special with coupon code BLOOM-MOMS which would give you a $10 discount off of the price.  If you have a Wordpress blog, the installation is as easy as installing a plug-in.

I would like to add that good content for your blog or website is the foundation for gaining readers, traffic and eventually income.  Shortcuts do exist, but if you do not have good content, they will not help you in the long run. 

Successful Work From Home Mom Interview: Scarlet P. From MomsWearYourTees.com

I am delighted to include an interview from Scarlet P. of MomsWearYourTees.com.  She is a very strong example of a stay at home mompreneur who thought outside of the box when it came to creating a work from home business of her own.  Her website promotes other businesses and websites and helps them create incoming traffic, improve search engine ranking, and to gain overall exposure through social media marketing.  Scarlet recognized a need in the online and business realms and created a work from home business that met those needs. 

Carla:  Tell us a little about yourself.

Scarlet:  I am a stay at home mother of two under 6.

Carla:  What is your MomsWearYourTees business all about?
Scarlet:  I do social media marketing for other websites.  It is all about helping businesses get their links out there to increase traffic to their site, create product buzz, and help improve search engine rank.
  
Carla:  What or who was the inspiration for MomsWearYourTees.com?  
Scarlet:  The inspriration was my need to find a way to make an income from home.

Carla:  How long have you been a work from home mom?

Scarlet:  About 5 years.  I started as an independent distributor for Young Living and I still do that but added Moms Wear Your Tees into the mix about 5 months ago.

Carla:  What did you do before you were a work from home mom?

Scarlet:  I was a store manager for companies such as Ann Taylor LOFT and EXPRESS.

Carla:  What influenced your decision to become a stay at home mompreneur?
Scarlet:  I always knew I wanted to stay at home with my children.  I knew that it was right for me and for them.  I love spending that time with them and I feel very fortunate to be able to do so.

Carla:  How long did it take to begin earning money from MomsWearYourTees?

Scarlet:  I did the first month for free.  I just promoted sites to get my name out there and my links out there and then I started charging in January.

Carla:  What has been your biggest obstacle with your business and how did you overcome it?
Scarlet:  My biggest obstacle is time.  I just make sure I don't waste any time and that I stay focused on PRODUCTIVE tasks.

Carla:  Were there any work from home ventures that you started that didn't work out? 
Scarlet:  No.

Carla:  What has been your biggest success or proudest achievement associated with your business?
Scarlet:  I am proud everyday!  I am proud when I get a new client and I am proud when I complete their promos.  I guess climbling rankings also makes me proud!   I do have down days occassionally where I might not have a booking and I feel like I should be doing more!  Then I just remind myself it takes one step at a time!

Carla:  Where and how do you promote your work from home business/website?
Scarlet:  I promote my site every place I can find.  The more links you get out the better!

Carla:  What resources do you recommend for women who want to start their own business or website?

Scarlet:  WAHM Designs does great website hosting and design very affordably.  Then use a search engine to find free directories and use social media to get more links back to your site.

Carla:  Is there anything that you would have done differently if given the chance?

Scarlet:  Yes, I changed hosting on my website and I didn't consider how that would affect my ranks.  Now I have to work my way back up!  

  
Carla:  What role has networking played with your website / business?
Scarlet:  Huge, if not for networking, I would not have traffic!

Carla:  Are you open to networking with other work from home moms or aspiring work from home moms?  If so, how can they contact you?
Scarlet:  I have a entrepreneur linky on my blog they are welcome to use.  I also have a contact for on my website.  http://momswearyourtees.blogspot.com/2010/04/entrepreneur-small-business-wahm.html

Carla:  What words of advice or tips would you give to women who wants to start their own business or website?
Scarlet:  Go for it.  Make it work.  If you really work at it, you can accomplish it.

Carla:  What are your goals for the future of your website / business?
Scarlet:  My goal for my website is to have a client booked every day.  My goal for my blog is to keep increasing my readership. Along the way, I want to enjoy making new friends, and  trying and sharing new products with others.

Thank you so much, Scarlet, for allowing us to grill you a little on your website's success!

Rodan + Fields Product Giveaway

Just got an update from Melissa from the Rodan + Fields work from home business review that I did several weeks back.  She is offering a giveaway of a full size Rodan + Fields skin care product. You'll need to enter by April 30th and here's all you have to do:

• Visit http://merickson.myrandf.com 
• Click on the "customize your routine" link to see what product the dermatologists that created Proactiv recommend for their skin.
• Post a comment on her facebook wall listing the product that was recommended to you from the above link.  Or send Melissa an email with the product name that was recommended to you.

*No purchase is necessary.  All entries must be received by midnight MST on April 30th.