Some home business ideas are made much simpler if you use software to pull in offerings for your customers. That doesn’t mean you should just slap up dozens of sites with no effort to make your sites unique, but it can be a faster way to build a site that can pull in some affiliate income.

Build a Niche Store (BANS) is a solution that I’ve had some good luck with. It’s a tool to build sites that feature eBay auctions. The program costs $97 and is fairly easy to use. Customizing your template can take some work, as can researching good niches to build a site around.

The biggest challenge with BANS is making a decent quality site. Yes, you can just throw up a site and not add anything of your own to it. I do not recommend that. They don’t last.

The disadvantage to a BANS site is that they can be deindexed by the search engines for poor quality even if you have put some effort into them. I haven’t had that happen, but others have. To me that makes it not necessarily an ideal home business, but not the worst one either. The few BANS sites I run have paid for the software at least 10 times over. That’s not much really, but considering what I do with the sites after I set it up, not too bad either.

Skills Required

Your first step with a BANS site is to research the niche you want to use. You want to find things that sell well through eBay. Tight niches are a good thing. “Jewelry” is too broad. Antique jewelry of a particular era or Middle Eastern jewelry would be better. eBay has a Popular Products section that can make for some interesting reading.

You will also need to know how to customize the templates. The BANS software separates things out and offers you a few extremely basic templates to start things out. If you have the skills to do more than change the header, it’s a good idea to really work with your template. Change the colors, work with the layout, keep the site from looking like an out of the box BANS site.

You should also have some skills at writing copy. Even for the pages BANS generates automatically for the categories you choose you should be adding a good amount of your own copy. This is a big part of how you keep your site from being thrown out of the search engines.

You’ll probably also want to do article writing. The software makes it easy for you to post your articles to your site.

Common Expenses

The BANS software is the big upfront expense, of course. But you will also need a domain name for each site and hosting. Fortunately a good hosting account will let you host quite a number of BANS sites, so that cost should not increase too much with each site built.

Note that it may take you several tries to come up with a niche that will pay well. I have a couple BANS sites that hardly do anything at all. Two make up the bulk of what I have earned. I mentioned that this isn’t a completely easy home business solution, right?

Possible Income Streams

eBay commissions are not your only source of income on a BANS site. You can add in AdSense and other affiliate links. The templates make it very easy to put banner ads in.

Recommended Reading

Read in the BANS forums after purchase. You’ll get a link and be allowed to join once you’ve bought it. Lots of great tips from active users.

We’ve been having a couple of really hot days around here lately. It broke 100 degrees F here yesterday. My daughter was quick to ask after school if she could stay inside rather than be sent out to play. That got me thinking about how I’m going to be coping with the kids this summer.

It helps to plan in advance.

Much as this kind of heat is miserable to deal with, it was a great reminder that I need to get ready to deal with summer. Bored kids, high heat, and probable water regulations to cope with the drought in our area. There are two areas to consider. What are you doing, and what are the kids doing?

What Are You Doing?

When will you work when the kids are off school? Your current schedule may or may not be right for the summer.

Many work at home parents end up needing to cut back when summer hits because they need the family time more. It’s a part of why you’re at home, after all.

However, it’s always good to remember that you are not and should not be your children’s sole source of entertainment. If you need more time to work, encourage them to play on their own.

If you need more work time than comes easily, consider hiring a mother’s helper or trading times with a fellow at home parent. I’ve had a great deal of luck with sending my kids to play with friends, and taking their friends in to play at our house in return.

Make sure you also plan for family outings. They don’t have to be anything fancy, but heading out to a beach, lake or park gives you a nice break from working and is likely to be fun for all concerned.

What Are the Kids Doing?

Summer is a great time for enrolling the kids in classes, but don’t overdo it. Mine will absolutely have swimming lessons, for example, just for their safety at the various pools they sometimes have access to.

I’m no fan of overscheduling kids, no matter the time of year, so I am certainly not recommending you fill their days too full. Kids of all ages need time to be kids and to do their own thing.

Take them to the library too. If there’s assigned reading from school, make sure that gets done, but otherwise let your kids go by their own interests. I truly believe that it doesn’t matter so much what a child reads, so long as he or she reads. Some exceptions for inappropriate material, of course.

If your children are old enough, encourage them to help you with your business or try endeavors of their own. It can be as simple as the traditional lemonade stand or a more challenging project you work on together. Entrepreneurship is a great skill to encourage!

Of course, you have to be prepared for the arguments, especially if you have more than one child. They’ll argue because they’re bored. Because they don’t want to share. Because one doesn’t want to play with another. Because they’re siblings. Because they don’t need any reason at all to argue sometimes.

I like to keep a balance between letting my kids hash it out themselves and helping them get along better. Sometimes parents need to put a stop to things for their own sanity or the ability to get some work done without a pounding headache.

Make sure you get the kids involved with chores around the house. They’re home more, they can help more. If you have a regular schedule, work their assistance into it, even when having the kids help means it takes longer to get things done. Add in the occasional fun chore such as baking or making popsicles or ice cream.

If you’re used to your kids being at school during the day, yes it is much harder to get work done during the summer. The more you plan ahead, however, the better off you will probably be.

Mystery shopping is a work from home job that has been around for a long time. It takes an eye for detail and a willingness to keep a sharp eye out for shops in your area.

Qualifications/Training Needed?

No training as such is required in advance. You will need to learn how to write up the required reports after each shop.

Job Duties

You will follow the instructions provided for each shop. Sometimes you will have to make a purchase within a certain budget, for which you should later be reimbursed. You may be told to go to the shop location within a particular time frame.

You of course do not want to be identified as a mystery shopper. While you will need to create a report on your experience, you should not be taking notes during the shop.

Shops can be done at all kinds of stores, apartment leasing offices and even on cruise ships… although that last is generally reserved for highly experienced mystery shoppers.

Pay can be fairly low for the time involved when you include travel time, especially in the early days. But you can get the better paying shops as you build experience and a reputation with your employer as someone who hands in detailed and accurate reports.

Equipment Needed

Transportation to get to the shops in your area. A computer and the necessary software to send in your reports. Odds are you won’t need to buy anything new for this job.

Where to Search for Jobs

Mystery Shopping Work at Home Jobs at Home with the Kids
Mom! Mom!
Volition

Related Scams

There are two current mystery shopping scams I know of. The more recent one is where a company sends you a check or money order for a few thousand dollars, and instructions on how to do your mystery shop, cashing the check and sending the money to a designated recipient. You get to keep a few hundred.

The check is fraudulent, and you end up paying the charges.

The other scam happens when sites offer lists of companies that are looking for mystery shoppers. All you have to do is buy it.

However, most of the lists are useless. They may not list legitimate opportunities, or may only list stores that might use a mystery shopper. The above resources are probably better ways to find companies to hire you.

In just about any community, you can find free athletic events and games to watch. They might be at the local high school, or you might know which local parks have kids playing regularly.

The school events, of course, are most set up for people to watch in most cases. You also have the best chance of being able to find out what the schedule is and to be able to follow a particular team.

There’s quite a storm of posts out there right now on how the FTC is taking a look at viral marketing as it is performed online. Overall, it’s a good thing too. But it also means you need to be very careful in what you say about products you recommend on your site if you’re getting anything in return for the recommendation.

If you do any paid blogging or affiliate marketing on your site, a disclosure policy is a generally good idea anyhow. I got one when the whole Pay Per Post storm hit and they realized it made sense.

The most basic thing you need to think about this is that you shouldn’t be making claims you can’t prove. You also need to be upfront about if a particular experience is not the usual. That’s just good marketing even if there aren’t legal consequences to consider.

The big areas of concern are probably areas such as make money online and diet claims, as those are quite prone to exaggerated claims or excessive focus on atypical results. But don’t start exaggerating results in other areas. You could get in trouble anywhere.

Some good reading:
FTC To Clamp Down On Social Media Marketing
FTC and Viral Marketers May Square Off