Deciding which work at home products and home business opportunities to trust is a tough decision. There are so many out there, and too many are scams. Picking out the good ones is not easy. It’s important to be able to figure out which ones are possibly right for you.

Finding Product Reviews

If you’ve been trying to find work at home for a while, you are probably already on a number of mailing lists and hear regularly about the latest product. All too often they’re being recommended without having been tried out. Many of the big product launches provide affiliates and joint venture partners with basic emails that they can send out as is or just customize a little.

It doesn’t make for a clear understanding of whether or not the product is any good.

It’s hard to figure out if a new product is any good. You can tell some by the reputation of who created it. If the creator of the product has a reputation for quality, you have a good chance of buying something that will be worth it.

If you’re not sure, give it some time. There are many ways to earn money from home. You don’t have to jump on the latest, hottest one to have a chance. You have options.

What About the “Is Product X a Scam?” Reviews?

When researching a product or opportunity that’s been out for long, a common research tactic is to search on whether or not it’s a scam. That’s a good idea, but not as effective as it once was.

A popular way to recommend a product now is to write an article asking if it’s a scam, then noting that it’s not. Pretty much no matter what the actual quality of the product is or whether or not it really is a scam. Some people don’t care so long as they get their sales commission.

If you want to know if a particular opportunity is a scam, Scam.com can be a good place to start. Or my forums, of course. It’s amazing how well a fresh perspective can spot a scam.

How Do You Recognize a Quality Recommendation?

The best reviews come from people who have already and continue to use the product or are still in the business opportunity they’re recommending. If they’re really doing well with it they probably know what they’re talking about.

Trouble is, you can’t always tell if that’s the truth or not. It’s the internet. It’s easy to say anything.

It’s a good idea to look at multiple reviews when you can. If they’re all saying the same thing, the reviewers probably all got it from the same basic source. Don’t trust those.

A good review will also note any problems with the product. Real issues, not just something scraped up like “the only trouble was deciding how to spend all the money!”

A good review will also have more information than you could find yourself by going to the product or opportunity website. If it’s all rehashed from the sales letter page, you really haven’t learned anything new.

Screenshots are nice, but very easily faked. Take them with a rather large grain of salt.

An ongoing review can also be nice. I don’t find these very often, but it can be nice to see someone start reviewing a product from the time they purchased it through the early parts of working on it, to making money, and how it goes from there. It’s a hard kind of review to write, especially without revealing more than one should about product details.

Consider also who is recommending the product. If you’ve read a lot of recommendations from that person, and they’re all rave reviews, there’s probably a problem. If they are more balance there’s a better chance that the review is honest. If they don’t review a product but have a generally good reputation they would want to maintain, they’re probably also going to be honest in their product reviews and recommendations.

What About Paid/Commissioned Reviews?

You’ll note that I’m not paying too much attention to whether or not a review was paid for outright or earns the reviewer a commission on sales. That’s because an honest reviewer will give the same advice either way. The money’s nice, but a good reviewer won’t let that impact what they say.

The FTC has much to say about paid endorsements these days. There’s a good bit of debate still on what must be said, but you should see some sort of disclosure on the page.

Disclosure still doesn’t tell you if the reviewer is being 100% honest about their experience with the product unfortunately. You hope they are but as always there’s no real way to know.

Know That You Won’t Always Get It Right

Even when you try hard to avoid the scams, it’s entirely possible that you will get scammed. No one can spot every scam perfectly. All you can do is try your best.

Pay attention to refund policies. If a product goes through Clickbank, it’s pretty easy to get a refund if you feel the product really isn’t for you. Other vendors will have other policies, and it may or may not be easy to get your money back.

Know That Not Every Opportunity Works for Everyone

This is incredibly important to understand. Just because a particular opportunity doesn’t work out for you don’t mean it was a scam. It might, but it could also mean that it just wasn’t a match. Be honest with yourself about where the failure is when something doesn’t work out. Remember that most businesses fail and even the “gurus” have ideas that just don’t work out and have failed in business.

Building a card tower is challenging, but it can also be a good way for kids to work with their fine motor skills and just plain have fun. One deck of cards is plenty for most purposes, but if you really get into it all you need is more decks!

Building a card tower takes a lot of patience, especially if a family pet or sibling comes and accidentally knocks the whole thing down just as you’re getting things going or are almost done. You want to pick the place you start working very carefully.

If you’ve never built a card tower, there are plenty of tips online. Just do a search and you’ll soon have a pretty good idea for how to get started.

One of the hard parts about being a stay at home mom is that you aren’t making money on your own. You rely on what your husband brings home. Sure, you say the money belongs to both of you, but there’s often that feeling on both sides that it isn’t quite true.

How do you cope?

1. Talk over your feelings.

Communication is important in any marriage. If you’re feeling as though you’re less important because the things you do raising your family at home doesn’t bring in money it can build resentment.

It can be a help to realize that you do make a financial contribution. You’re saving money on child care by being home with your kids. You’re probably shopping for bargains more. You’re probably cooking more meals at home and thereby saving on your family’s food bill.

It’s important that the partnership that is a good marriage recognizes both earning money and helping to keep the family’s spending under control are both important contributions. It can be hard to do that if your husband acts in any way as though you’re using “his” money, and if that’s the case his feelings need to be discussed also.

2. Decide if you want to earn money from home.

Some stay at home moms decide that they need a work at home job or home business so that they can bring in more money for their family. Sometimes it’s also necessary to the family’s overall budget.

Stay at home moms today are lucky in that they have so many ways to earn money from home, some of which are extremely flexible. It’s not just the traditional jobs such as running a daycare or joining a direct sales opportunity. There are customer service work at home jobs, online home businesses and much more.

There are a lot of risks to getting started working from home, and generally laws to be aware of. Make sure you learn about the common scams and don’t fall for hype when you’re picking an opportunity. Too good to be true usually is.

3. Be yourself and enjoy what you have.

Just because you’re suddenly such-and-so’s mom and you’re home all day doesn’t mean you lose your identity. Make time to be yourself.

Keep up your hobbies. You might even be able to get one or more of your kids interested in it. But don’t drop the hobby just because you don’t think you have the time or shouldn’t spend the money. Unless it’s really expensive or your budget is that tight you can probably find a way to enjoy your hobby while being with your kids.

Also read the kinds of books you enjoy. The Cat in the Hat is a great book, but reading any children’s book over and over will get to you eventually. Read something you enjoy. Let your kids see it. It’s a part of encouraging them to love reading too.

And remember that even when staying at home with the kids makes for a tight budget you’re lucky to have what you do. Many parents would love to do what you’re doing but just can’t afford to. It’s one of those jobs that even on a bad day, it’s pretty good when you think about it.

Finally, remember that being married, especially with children, does a lot to your finances no matter whether you work outside the home or stay at home. You most likely won’t have the freedom you once did no matter what you do. The needs of your family come first in most cases.

Writing is one of the most popular online jobs. There’s a good reason for it – it’s relatively easy and many people can do an adequate job of it. Some even do a great job of it.

Writing online content doesn’t necessarily pay well in many cases, but it’s relatively easy to get something for your efforts. It’s not going to pay what you would get if you had an article published in a major magazine, but then most magazine articles are much harder to write and get accepted. The standards are different.

That said, if you aren’t interested in a career as a freelance writer for magazines, newspapers and so forth, but just want to write simple articles in quantity it’s not a bad way to go. The pay’s not great but the flexibility is there. You’ll generally be able to write completely on your own schedule.

The trick comes in how you get paid. I strongly recommend getting paid by the article in most cases. It’s nice to know what you’re going to get. You can get $5 per article or even less at some sites. I really don’t recommend accepting under $5 per article even if you really need the work, or under $10 if you’ve been doing the work a while. You should be reasonably compensated for your work, after all.

Sites that pay per article accepted include Associated Content, Bright Hub and Demand Studios. You may also want to consider trying for a Guide position with About.com, as they pay a set rate monthly with expectations of how much you will write for them, for the first two years, and then base it on the ad income that comes in.

Some sites would rather pay based on impressions, then pay out when you reach a certain level. The trouble with this is that there’s no guarantee you’ll get anything if you don’t reach the payout level. Many articles just don’t get that much traffic. And if you do get paid, it’s not too uncommon for things to stick at that under $5 level even over a period of time. It’s just not worth it on average.

Get an above average response to an article that pays on views and you might do better, but that’s a huge if.

Other sites pay on ad income. This can be good or bad also. Overall you aren’t likely to get much on most articles. This can be sites such as Squidoo where you can even include ads in your content on your own, or blogs that accept articles and handle ad placement on their own.

Anything where you’re getting paid on view or on ad income, the site will encourage you to also drive traffic to your articles so that you earn more. In essence, they expect you to write for them and promote for them. It’s a lot of extra work, potentially.

There are also sites where you can get paid to blog, either on your own site or on someone else’s. Same kind of deal as writing content for other types of sites. You’ll want to decide if you’re paid by the post or by the ad income or page views.

This isn’t work that will make you rich, as a general rule, but it can bring in that bit of money you need to help your income when you’re at home.

Talking about money, even with your spouse can be difficult. Unless you have plenty of extra it’s not exactly a fun talk. But sometimes it’s certainly necessary.

My husband and I aren’t as good about this as we should be. Because of my business I do keep separate accounts, but he needs to know how mine are going, and I need to know how our personal financial situation is doing. That doesn’t always get discussed when it should.

Things have been tight for a while, which is why we need to discuss it more. We scraped by when he was laid off, kept scraping by when he got a barely adequate job, and keep trying to do better now.

Some of the coincidences have been interesting. My income went up rather suddenly when he was laid off, then plummeted the week before he started the new job. Utterly frustrating, as we would have been in a good position financially if my income had kept up, and I was still doing things the same as before. Just a most frustrating coincidence that instead the combined income was about what I had been making alone while he was laid off.

That one was pretty easy to talk about just because it was so frustrating and odd.

Plan How You Spend Your Money

Fortunately, neither of us is a really big spender as a rule. Anything out of the ordinary gets discussed.

I understand that’s a pretty common rule, actually. There’s the money spent on necessities and regular expenses, and then there’s what you can spend on your own without asking, and what you can only spend after clearing it with your spouse.

It’s not a bad system if you follow it carefully. Failing to discuss things can lead to quite a bit of frustration for both of you.

Don’t Worry About Who’s the Breadwinner

While just now my husband out earns me, he knows my stated goal for my business in part is to heavily out earn him. He likes that goal, even though the last time I managed it, it also made him feel a bit insecure.

It’s hard for a man to not be the breadwinner in some ways. Despite the common expectation that both spouses will work, there’s still the idea that the man more often earns more.

Add in that my income comes from working at home, and I can see where it’s both a point of pride for him when I earn well and just a touch awkward. It’s the conflict between knowing it doesn’t matter, and how you were taught to view the world growing up.

The trick can be getting to where it genuinely doesn’t matter who the breadwinner is. The money belongs to the both of you, not just to whoever earns it.

That can be hard on the one who earns more, as there can be the feeling of “I earned it, I can spend it as I like.” But if you’re really a team, in my opinion, that’s not the way it should be.

It’s always important to know where your family stands financially. It’s stressful when you know you’re behind, but better than not knowing and being caught by surprise. And if times are good, so much the better.

Take some time and make sure you know how your family is doing financially.

While cooking isn’t strictly a free activity, odds are it’s money you would have spent otherwise, so this one at least doesn’t cost anything extra.

Pick out a new recipe that is age appropriate for you to make with your children. You can get a kids’ cookbook from the library if you want, or buy one if this is something you’ll do regularly enough. And of course there are plenty of kid friendly recipes to make online.

Make it fun or make it part of  a regular meal, whatever you want.

Cooking is a great way to teach kids about fractions and other bits of math, in a way that isn’t so intimidating. It can also teach them about responsibility, especially if your child is old enough to start cooking on the stove with you.

To really build up your online business you need to find some good niches to work with. That’s not always easy. Getting ideas in many ways is the easy part. Making them profitable is a lot more work.

The simplest place to discover niches is within your own interests. What do you spend money on? Hobbies? Necessities? Are there any you could see building a website on and earning an income with?

Sometimes that gets you a brilliant niche, one you can work with. Other times you need more help. A lot of it.

Where else can you get ideas?

Yahoo! Buzz

Yahoo Buzz is a sort of social site where people buzz up articles they think are interesting. They count votes, comments, emails and searches when they determine which stories hit the top.

This is good if you’re into news topics, but not so hot if you really want shopping topics.

eBay Pulse

Now this is good if you want shopping topics! What are people buying now on eBay? You can see the most popular searches and the most popular stores. Very good if you want to set up a product based site.

Amazon

Check out book titles. They can be inspiring. You can take a broad niche and narrow it down to something specific enough for a small website.

Also check out the magazines on your topic. If there’s a magazine, there’s people looking for information on that topic.

Each of these is a fair indicator that people spend money on that topic. That’s great news, especially if there’s a lot written on the topic you’re interested in. Just make sure you narrow things down enough for the size of site you want to make.

Now What?

Do people spend enough? That’s the next thing you need to discover for the niche you’re considering.

There are ways to figure this out. You can look at whether or not there are a lot of people spending money on pay per click ads in the niche you’re considering. That’s not a perfect test, and we all would love to find that perfect, undiscovered niche just waiting for us. That’s a rare find, but why be in the business if you don’t dream?

Just use the Google keywords tool and you can get a feel for the search volume for the keywords you want for your niche. It will also give you an idea as to how much advertiser competition there is, but the external keyword tool that you can use even without an AdWords account doesn’t give bids.

Related forums can help. Take a look at the questions people are asking and if they talk about products they’ve bought or want to buy. You can get some fair hints as to whether or not people are buying.

No matter how good the indicators, of course, in the end it’s down to whether or not you can successfully monetize the niche. There’s no way to guarantee success. But choosing your niche wisely can increase your odds.

There’s something about working at home that makes many people get a little crazy. Maybe it’s the many sites promising instant, easy money with practically no effort. I deal with people all the time who think that there’s an easy answer for how to earn money from home.

Okay, so maybe there is.

Ready?

It’s called hard work, people!

Only trouble is that it’s not always enough. But it’s the best chance you have.

I’ve been working at home for about 8 years now. I would say I’m moderately successful. Not where I want to be, but not where it would make sense to quit trying either. And some months much better than that. If I could get my income more consistently where I want it I’d be happier about it. I’ll get there.

Not all of it has been running websites. If you’ve read here for a while you may already know that I got my start in medical transcription. Both harder and easier work, really. Easier in that I knew what I was getting for what I produced. Harder in having to deal with a schedule and with the dictation some doctors would give.

Also not nearly as much fun as running my own sites, even comparing a bad day running my sites with a good day of transcription. At least for me. Others do really enjoy the work.

If you want to succeed with an online business there are no shortcuts. Sure, you can read and follow every step in the Super Affiliate Handbook or some other ebook about online business. It’s not going to guarantee that you succeed. The advice in there is good, it will put you on the right path, but making it work is another matter entirely. There are the little details that are up to you, your talents, and your willingness to work hard.

Which brings me to the next secret.

Knowing when to quit and when not to quit.

They’re both important. If you know when to drop a business that just isn’t going to thrive you can save yourself a lot of time and possibly money. Dropping it gives you more time to work on something that will succeed.

If you know when to keep plugging away at a business because you know you can make it succeed and the time and money spent are worth it to you, you also have a better chance to succeed.

Telling the two apart isn’t always easy. They can be very similar and you can delude yourself that a business is one when it’s the other.

As you progress with your business you really need to keep an honest eye on how things are going. Is there real progress? Is there real income potential? Is this really what you want to keep working on? Are you looking for an excuse to hop to the next hot launch or is it really and truly just not working out?

Expect that not everything you try will work out. If everything in your business works out just the way you want it to, I’d love to know your secret. Then I’ll want to know how honest you are being with yourself. There aren’t many people that lucky.

A touch of failure is a good thing. It’s a part of learning. It means you’re taking chances. Just don’t let it overwhelm you. Failing once, twice, a dozen times doesn’t mean that running a business isn’t for you. It means you haven’t found the right one.

Do what it takes.

The path to home business success isn’t a simple one. Sometimes it even involves stopping and getting a job outside the home while working on your business at night.

You wouldn’t believe how often I get people asking how they can start working at home to support their family. Even with work at home jobs that’s a tough one, folks! The jobs are rarely available quickly enough.

Say you want to have a business and I’ll say you need to give yourself some time to build it up.

If you need to earn money from home or your children won’t eat, guess what?

It’s time to find a way to work outside the home. Your family comes before your dream of work at home success. Don’t sacrifice their needs to your dreams.

That doesn’t mean give up. I said it before. It means working on your business at night, on weekends or whenever you have time available. If this is really what you want you had better be prepared to lose some sleep in the process. Sometimes a lot of sleep.

There’s a reason why businesses get compared to babies. They’re both quite demanding and neither cares how much rest you get.

The one thing you should give up on with a home business is the idea that it’s going to be easy. It probably won’t be. Expect to work, expect to work hard and then work harder than that and you’ve just improved your chances of succeeding.

Don’t forget to have fun!

Despite being home pretty much all day, the one thing a stay at home mom needs from a home business opportunity is flexibility. Being home doesn’t mean lounging about watching soap operas and eating bonbons, after all. It more likely means chasing after kids, taking them places and keeping house. It can get pretty hectic.

Starting a home business is a good idea for stay at home moms. It helps to keep skills up. It can bring money in if the efforts are successful. It’s often fun. It’s a good example for the children.

So how do you find something that can cope with all the demands of a stay at home mom’s daily routine? Especially if that routine changes every few months, as it does for so many moms?

Here are some online business ideas and what makes them flexible:

Network Marketing/Direct Sales

Pretty much the classic! Stay at home moms have been getting into network marketing for a long time now, and it shows no signs of disappearing.

There are a lot of things you can do now in network marketing that you couldn’t do in the past, however. The internet has really increased your options. It’s not all about begging your family and friends to join your opportunity anymore.

Check out the 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing to learn more about how network marketing has changed with the internet. And check my direct sales/network marketing opportunity directory to see if any appeal to you.

Blogging

You can’t get much more flexible, although it can be quite demanding if you want to earn a living from blogging.

You can write at whatever time of the day or night, and most blogging software will let you schedule the posts you’ve written as far out as you’d like. You can start for free to see if you’d like it, but I strongly recommend getting your own hosting and installing Wordpress if you’re going to treat it as a serious business in the long run.

You’ll still need to learn how to promote your blog, which can include tactics such as commenting on other people’s blogs, guest posting, article marketing, pay per click and much more.

Virtual Assistant

If you have a lot of office skills, being a virtual assistant can be a pretty good business. You decide which of your skills you want to offer, such as writing, customer service, data entry and so on.

There can be some time specific demands, however, especially if you promise to handle customer issues within a certain time frame or if you need to speak to people on the telephone.

Selling Products Online

This is a huge category. You can sell products you made yourself on Etsy, for example. You can sell products on eBay. You can do drop shipping.

Each of these has its own challenges, but what’s right for one person may not be right for the next.

Selling your own products means you’ll have to get to the post office or otherwise ship products out promptly. You’ll of course have much of the day to handle that, but it’s not something that can wait until the kids go to bed for the night.

Affiliate Marketing

Why sell your own products and deal with customers when you can sell someone else’s? That’s pretty much the idea for many affiliates.

Affiliate marketing can be a lot of fun as well as a lot of work. You can use blogging to sell products, or pay per click advertising, or article marketing, or create a product comparison website, or….

There are a lot of options out there.

The challenge is in finding the profitable niches. They’re out there but it’s not always easy to pick the right one, and it can take time to figure out what works. But you can work any time day or night, and that’s a pretty nice advantage.

Of course, you can succeed or fail in any home business, and there are other flexible options out there. Just because it’s flexible enough to fit your schedule and you enjoy it doesn’t mean you’ll make a living doing it. But it’s better to try than to say it can’t be done.

This is so different for us here in southern California that I just had to share. It started snowing at about 5:30 this morning and continued more on than off until about 10. We live high enough up that we knew there was a fair chance of  a little snow this winter.

Talk about free fun on a Friday!

We woke the kids up, as they had told us that if it ever did start snowing, they wanted to hear about it right away. Wouldn’t have made much of a difference with how long it kept snowing, but we really thought it would quit much sooner than it did.

That’s first thing in the morning, as fast as the kids could get dressed. Snow, and ice beneath it. My husband wasn’t able to get to work on time because his little 3 door Saturn slid too much for him to feel safe about driving. He was able to call in, and finally left sometime a little before 10.

We only saw people driving heavy trucks until after about 8 a.m. this morning. The roads really were slick for a long time.

Selene found it pretty interesting. Obviously we didn’t give her much time in the snow. Too young.

Enough snow that someone down the street made a pretty nice snowman. My kids haven’t figured out how to do a good one yet, but then this was only their second time ever in the snow.

I did get Gage trying to throw some snowballs, though.

Selene had to be the cutest, though. Utterly fascinated. Too bad she’s too little to remember this later. She could tell it was something unusual and she was just plastered to a window every chance she got.