Many communities regularly have events that are free to attend. In my area, this includes concerts in the park (in the summer, not now, of course), holiday celebrations and carnivals.

Some of these can add up if you do spend money at them, especially the carnivals. Rides are generally not free, after all! But many of the events in my area offer free crafts for the kids to do as well as free music to listen to.

Sometimes money issues get in the way of being a strict stay at home mom. You have to find ways to bring in more money. Sometimes that means taking on a job outside the home while your husband is home with the kids in the evenings.

Does that make you any less of a stay at home mom?

It can make you feel that way, even if you’re there for all the time the kids are up. After all, you have less energy for them during the day, not to mention less time for your marriage. It’s a rough way to live.

To me, a lot of being a stay at home mom is in your intent, as well as what you do. If you’re there when your kids are at home and awake, you’re enough of a stay at home mom for what your family needs.

You do, of course, have to think through the consequences of what you’re doing. Even part time work at the times your kids don’t need you can add to the strain of your day, even if it also gives you a needed break outside the home or the money you need to keep your family going.

With websites being one of the most popular ways to start a home business, you can feel overwhelmed when the technology isn’t even remotely familiar to you. Should you pay someone? What about free options? What’s this hosting stuff? Domain names?

Good thing it really isn’t as complicated as it sounds in many ways.

Can You Start for Free?

Yes you can.

Should you? Probably not.

There are some great free solutions out there for websites. Perhaps the most popular right now is Google’s Blogger site. if you’re looking to start a business, it’s better than the free WordPress.com websites because they don’t mind if you’re earning money, so long as the site is legitimate.

It is wonderfully simple, however, and not a bad way to start feeling your way around. You can start a blog there on something that maybe you aren’t so serious on, just to see how things go. Or you can start serious, and just understand that later you’re going to have to learn how to move all that to a new site.

Because if you’re serious, you will eventually want the security of paying for your site.

The reason is quite simple. Blogger and other free sites have the right to delete your site at any time. You can lose everything you’ve worked for all too easily.

Besides, websites are cheap to run, especially in the early days when you don’t have much traffic.

Paid Hosting and Domain Names

If you’re paying for your site, there are a few costs you’ll definitely have to deal with. Those are domain names and hosting.

Most domain names are somewhere around $10 a year, give or take a little. The prices have gone up recently, but how many things can you buy that will help your business for so little a year?

Hosting costs a bit more, as it’s typically a monthly expense, but still quite affordable. My current favorite host is HostGator. I’ve gone through a number, and the one thing I can say about hosting is that sometimes even the best companies give you troubles. My previous favorite went from just about flawless service for 2-3 years, then several DAYS of downtime.

There are a lot of good hosting companies out there and a lot of really crappy ones. Don’t trust most review sites, as they rate hosts based on the commissions they get paid, not on actual service in all too many cases. While I do get commissions for suggesting HostGator if you go through my link, I am also really hosted on them. Believe me, that’s trusting a company. Downtime is painful, almost physically so, when you have a site that’s doing well.

Another option to get both your domain name and hosting is SiteBuildIt. They’ve been around a long time, and many people love them. My father uses them.

They cost a bit more upfront (really not that bad when you split it out month my month). But they offer excellent site building tools and step by step instructions on how to go about it. Their forums are excellent resources too, although you have to be a member to access them. They really emphasize the need to build quality websites, not just throwing up junk and seeing what sticks.

So I Have Hosting and a Domain Name. Now What?

That’s right, you still don’t have a website… although if you’re going with the SiteBuildIt option you will soon enough. Just work at it.

You don’t have to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript and so forth just to get started if you don’t want to. You also don’t have to pay a designer a fortune to create a site, plus pay for every little update you want to make. You have options.

Blogging is one popular option, and WordPress the most popular software. You don’t have to know anything about installing software on a host to get WordPress to work on most hosts, including HostGator. There’s a program in your cPanel (you’ll see it when you log into your hosting account) where you can install programs automatically using Fantastico.

Remember earlier when I said don’t use WordPress.com? That’s because they delete business sites off their servers.

But when you are using self hosted WordPress blogs, there is no such limitation. Just don’t worry about it. All your work is yours… and I suggest you back it up regularly. Once again, easy to do, you just need to learn how to install plugins, then get the WordPress Database Backup plugin for free. It can be set to email backups of your database to you as often as hourly, or as rarely as once a week.

There’s something of a learning curve with WordPress, but it’s really not that bad. Better yet, if you started out on Blogger, you can import your Blogger blog into WordPress if you don’t want to start from scratch.

If blogging isn’t what you want to get into, XSitePro is a fairly popular solution as well. It’s not free, but it has a very enthusiastic following of people who have found it to be a great tool for building good websites. It’s simpler than programs like Dreamweaver to learn.

That Can’t Be All There Is To It!

You’re right, it’s not. Running an online home business is more than just building a site. You’ll still have to figure out what it is you’re doing with your site, how to market it, how to make money with it and so forth. It’s not easy.

But if you love your topic, it’s fun!

I’m not going to say one of these is the right solution for everyone. You need to put some thought into it and decide for yourself what will work best for you.

I will say that I always recommend the control you get from paying for your site rather than using free hosting.

But for some the guidance offered from SiteBuildIt will be the right way to go. Others will enjoy blogging and coping with the learning curve on their own.

Just give it some thought and consider what will get you really working on your site. That’s the way you want to go.

Affiliate marketing is my favorite way of working at home. It’s not as easy as some would say, but it can pay off quite nicely once you get it to work.

Or it can be a lot of frustration with little payback. Hey, I said it’s not necessarily easy. That’s just life.

There are a few different ways you can do affiliate marketing. Which works depends on which you put your focus on and matches with your skills.

1. Review sites.

Your basic review site does just what it sounds like. You find products that are associated with an affiliate program and review them.

The best way to go about this is to theme your sites and be very, very honest in your reviews. Constant glowing reviews take away your credibility. If there’s a problem, say so. Even sometimes mention products that you don’t get a commission on. Be the resource that people trust.

2. Pay per click marketing.

This one can add up fast, both in profits and in losses. The worst of it is the learning curve with each product you promote. There just isn’t one ad you can write that will bring in enough sales to make the ad profitable. Too many variables.

3. Linking on your site or blog.

Not necessarily through reviews. Just if you happen to mention a product, you link to it. You can do this very naturally or be deliberate about the things you mention.

Your site of course needs to be generally attractive to people for reasons other than what you’re linking to.

You can also use banner links or sidebar links to promote products, but be aware that these generally do not get a lot of clicks. Especially if you overdo it. Despite the number of ads people tolerate in magazines and newspapers, online they become ad blind very easily. They also are quick to leave sites that overdo it.

4. Ezine and newsletter advertising.

This generally goes with having your own site, but of course you can also promote products directly. Many ezines and newsletters sell ad space, and some of them get pretty decent clickthroughs. It’s something you have to test to be sure of.

5. Classified ad sites.

You have to be very careful with these, as many discourage or ban affiliate links, and many affiliate programs don’t want to be promoted on them. But some sites are very busy.

6. Forum marketing.

I really recommend this most for marketing your own site, but people do put straight affiliate links in their signatures. You look for a forum on a topic related to what you’re trying to sell, see if they allow signature links, and start participating. Not spamming. Just being a part of the group. If people like what you have to say, they may check out your signature links then.

So how do you learn?

How you learn depends on a few factors. You can learn slowly by going to forums such as the Warrior Forum, ABestWeb or Digital Point, or buy an ebook on what you need to learn.

My own recommendation is to combine the two tactics. An ebook to get things started fast, and a forum or two so you have a place to ask questions.

There are a number of really good ebooks on affiliate marketing out there. The Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner is one of the more popular choices. I’ve read it before, and I’m reading it again. Have to do something for those times when I’m too tired with this pregnancy to do actual work. A good reminder of things I may have forgotten is not a bad way to go.

If pay per click is more your speed, Perry Marshall’s AdWords Guide is a great way to go. You’ll probably spend some pretty good money learning all the tricks he has to teach you for successfully marketing on AdWords. He even has a free 5 day ecourse so you can decide if it’s for you.

Those are my two favorite ebooks to recommend. There are many other products out there, and more appearing all the time, but these have not only stood the test of time, but been updated as things change. The affiliate marketing industry has gone through some pretty serious changes in the time I’ve been at it, so that’s important.

When it comes down to it, of course, the best way to learn affiliate marketing is to simply get started. You aren’t going to learn anything completely until you’re applying what you’ve learned. Read up on some basics, then get moving!

Hey, they can’t all be my ideas. Have each of the kids and the parents take turns picking a free or cheap activity to do as a family. Set up some rules, and encourage some creativity. You never know what people will come up with.

One of the things I’ve tried to avoid this pregnancy is focusing on it to the exclusion of my other two kids. It’s quite the impact on their lives, after all. They’re both old enough to know that a baby means I will shortly be very busy with baby’s needs, and to wonder how I will cope with theirs.

This makes it very important to keep doing fun things with them.

For example, yesterday I made chocolate cakes in mugs with them. They were quite delighted. Not the best of flavors for a chocolate cake in my experience, but you know kids. They’ll enjoy foods that adults find merely tolerable.

Then today and Friday (unless I go into labor first), I want to make some special time for each of them. Those are my husband’s days off, so I can take each child individually. Pretty much my last chance to do that until baby is old enough for a bottle.

That doesn’t mean I won’t make special fun for each after baby is born. There will just be more limitations on where we can go, as the baby will probably have to come along or the trip will be short.

Good thing little stuff like making popcorn and watching a movie at home counts as special to children.

Here I am, 38 weeks pregnant and really, really ready to go whenever this baby girl of mine decides to make her move. So what am I doing online?

Getting things ready to run smoothly while I’m busy, of course!

My husband jokes that I nest online. It’s true enough.

It amazes me that I’ve managed to get so much writing done in these past few weeks. If I’m lucky, I’ll have things pretty well done through February, and be able to just work lightly when I feel rested enough after baby comes. It’s a really nice feeling. But I’m not that far ahead yet.

Of course, I’m leaving room for those times that I want to make a more time sensitive post. Most of what I’ve written lately I could post any time of the year and it would work just fine.

I like that because it means that if I want to blog more for some reason, I can just move things around. Or not. Nothing wrong with multiple posts on a particular day, even if that’s something I rarely do.

This is also a lesson in just how much can be achieved in more normal times. If I were this productive normally, I’d probably be earning more. That’s quite a thought.

I’ve had some delays in my work, of course. Lots of heavy duty Braxton Hicks contractions one night meant I was just plain too tired the next day to get much done. That’s how it is when you’re pregnant. Sometimes your body makes it clear that a day off is the smarter choice.

But I’m thinking right now that it’s probably a good thing I don’t have a laptop, much as I want one. It would be fun to have in the hospital, but could I really trust myself to not overdo it? I don’t know. Free Wi-Fi….

Nah. I know how tired I get after childbirth. I don’t really think I’d be that tempted to work. But I’d sure hate to find out that I was wrong. Do you think the nurses would get mad if they came in for their middle of the night blood pressure check and caught me working?

My daughter is developing quite the interest in business. We got into talking about logos when she saw the new Pepsi logo and absolutely hated it.

This time Walmart got it. She hates the “Save money. Live better. Walmart” slogan. She announced that she wants to write a letter just to explain that she doesn’t like the slogan.

The cutest part was explaining to her what a slogan is. She kept going on about it, but switching the word to “slogo” which works pretty well too.

We told her that if she’s going to write a letter, she needs to have constructive advice as well as criticism. Her letter idea was along the lines of:

Dear Walmart Guys,

I really hate your slogo. Please change it.

That’s 6 year olds for you. Very direct, to the point, and a minimum of useful information.

Considering how interested she is getting in business related matters, I think it’s probably a good time to start her thinking more on what I do. She already has a website, but she hasn’t touched it in a long time. I’m thinking she might enjoy sharing her opinions on toys and such. I’d still be keeping her rather anonymous; we’re talking about a young child, after all.

But it might be a good experiment, especially if I can finally get her interested in writing, currently her least favorite subject in school.

There are many skills that go into working successfully at home. Some are obvious, such as knowing how to do the work you’re doing. Others are a little less obvious.

And one of the most important is motivation.

If you aren’t motivated, you probably aren’t going to do that well working at home. You have to push yourself to work at home successfully. It just isn’t going to go any other way.

Motivation comes in many forms. Children are a great motivation. They’re one of the first reasons many people think of when they consider why they’re working at home in the first place.

Money, while commonly listed, is often not so strong a motivator.  Sure, earning a good living is nice, but there are so many other ways to earn it that it’s often not enough. Add in the tendency many people have of wanting to earn too much to be realistic, and of course money can be as much a frustration as a motivation.

Motivation is related to passion. There’s a reason why passion for your business is so often mentioned. You aren’t likely to stay all that motivated if you hate what you do.

What skills do you find to be the most important?

No, not just fun this time. It’s practical and a great lesson for the kids.

Before Christmas is my usual favorite time, but cleaning out the closets, toy boxes and so forth to find things you should give to charity can be done at any time of the year. The decluttering feels great, and even younger children can be encouraged to understand what a good thing they’re doing to encourage their enthusiasm.

This can be hard, as many younger children really hate to give up anything, even clothes that don’t fit and toys they ignore. But it’s such a wonderful lesson for them too!

Talk to the kids about why you want to send these things to whichever charity you support. Point out how much easier it will be to find the things they really do enjoy. Find that button that you can push to really get your child interested.