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" alt="" />

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 The Affiliate Code 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" alt="" />. 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.