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Most areas have some sort of historic areas that you can take your family to for free. It may be a memorial, an Old Town section, old homes, etc.
Take advantage of these and teach your kids a bit about the history of the area they live in. It’s a bit more immediate than what they learn most of the time in school, and that makes it more interesting. And have fun doing it!
Society gives us really mixed reviews for being stay at home moms. There’s the side that says we’re the best kind of moms. Then there’s the side that calls us lazy.
Good thing there’s a large middle ground that just calls us moms. But that doesn’t keep stay at home moms from talking down about what they do a little.
There’s that little tendency to describe oneself as “just” a stay at home mom, as though it’s nothing special. Even when you respect moms who work outside the home, you have to admit there’s a lot special about moms who stay home with their kids.
Don’t belittle the work you do every day. Sure, moms who work outside the home have to deal with cooking, housework and all the stuff their kids need too, but you have to deal with it all day. That means more cooking, more housework and more of the kids’ needs. Quite likely it all comes on a tighter budget too.
Even if many of the people in your life don’t always understand why you choose to be a stay at home mom, do your best to celebrate what you have. There are plenty of mothers and fathers who would gladly trade places with you.
You probably know how very little free time you have. It varies quite a bit with how old the kids are, but it’s easy to end up rushing all over the place trying to get everything done. Free time can be spending a few minutes at the computer before one of the kids needs you urgently again. It can be watching a favorite show and hoping the toddler takes a longer nap this time. It can be crashing on the couch to enjoy a little quality time with your husband after getting the kids in bed.
But even the busy times of a stay at home mom should be enjoyed as much as possible. I don’t mean try to be a perfect mom. That’s not going to happen. But even the chaos can be fun if you relax as best you can about it.
Don’t lose yourself to your identity as a stay at home mom. No matter how much time you spend caring for your family, there’s more to you than motherhood. You have other interests. Keep them up.
It can be hard to compare what you do as a stay at home mom to the career accomplishments of friends and family who work outside the home. But don’t say you’re “just” a stay at home mom. Say you’re privileged to be a stay at home mom. Delighted to be a stay at home mom. Something positive about being a stay at home mom.
It won’t change how everyone thinks of your decision to be a stay at home mom, but it can help you to remember how positive a decision it is for you.
Running a home business is a lot of work. There’s a lot to learn and do in order to keep things growing. Have you considered ways to keep your business more simple?
There’s going to be some complexity no matter what you do. Something you didn’t think of is bound to come up. But that doesn’t mean you have to keep trying to do it all the hard way.
Starting your home business out with what you know is a great way to keep things simple. If everything you’re doing is unfamiliar it’s going to be a lot harder to get things going.
This is one of the places where passion comes in. People talk about having passion for what you do in your business. It’s one of the ways to keep things simple. You love what you do, so you know more about it already and you enjoy working on it. Simple.
You can’t be all things to everyone, even in the broad category you work in. You can try to take in all kinds of work, try to compete with Amazon in sheer variety, but odds are it isn’t going to work. Most people can’t pull that off, especially without a lot of money behind you.
Serving a well defined niche market is far simpler than serving a broad one in many ways. It takes research to find a good niche, but once you have that information you have greatly simplified everything else you need to do.
Knowing your niche helps you take the right tone in your writing. It helps you decide which kinds of marketing to try. It helps you to decide what to offer.
If you don’t know who you’re talking to when you make your website or select products, you’re going to be all over the place. You won’t as easily be able to make appealing offers.
You’re going to be picking up new skills for your home business all the time. Life will be much simpler if you stick with learning and mastering one at a time.
I’ve had people ask which is the hottest way to market their online business. Truth is, anything can be simple if it’s one that works with your style.
For some, social media marketing is simple. For others, it’s difficult.
For some, article marketing is simple. For others, it’s difficult.
For some, video marketing is simple. For others, it’s difficult.
For some, pay per click advertising is simple. For others, it’s catastrophically expensive difficult.
Odds are you can succeed at any of these. But if you try to pick even two or three of them up at once you’re going to have an incredibly hard time really mastering them. Pick the skills up one at a time and not only can you keep track of what’s working more easily, you’ll probably master each one more quickly and thoroughly.
Running your own business will never be a completely simple activity. Expect challenges.
But if you keep the things you have more control over more simple you’ll make things much easier for yourself. This doesn’t mean don’t challenge yourself (do!), but it does mean pick your challenges and don’t pile it all on at once.
Knowing who you are selling to is one of the challenges of any business. It’s a huge part of how you pick offers to make to potential customers and clients. You can guess about it, but if you don’t know who’s coming to your site you may be missing out on a lot of sales.
It’s hard to figure out the exact demographics coming to a website. It’s not like you can look at your visitors and take a guess about what you like by how they appear. You have to use the information that’s available to you.
Seeing how people arrive at your website through the search engines is one way to learn about them. The kinds of queries they put in can tell you a lot about what they’re looking for.
If you’re selling a product or service for example, you want to see that people are searching on terms that are more likely to lead to a sale. “Laptop computer” isn’t going to make nearly as many as “Sony VAIO VF111FX/B”.
You shouldn’t just be relying on search queries. Even before you make friends with the search engines and start getting traffic you need to have some idea who you want to sell to.
And the answer is never “everyone.”
You could be selling chocolate and the answer still wouldn’t be “everyone.” Not everyone likes the same kind of chocolates. Some like milk chocolate, some prefer dark. Some will buy whatever’s on sale at the grocery store, some love their gourmet chocolates from far away.
Who is your customer? Age, gender, occupation, hobbies… how can you define your customers?
Now match that to what you’re offering. This will effect the tone you take on your site. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog post or a sales page. Your tone should be appropriate to whoever you want to be reading it. You want them to stick around, to buy what you have to offer.
You’re going to encounter people who want something related to what you’re offering but aren’t quite there. Are they worth your time?
You can sell to anyone, but some customers and clients will want more time than they’re worth. That’s what you have to think about. If what they want isn’t what you can provide, you aren’t doing them or yourself a favor by changing what you offer to suit them.
Sometimes you’re better off referring a sale elsewhere because someone else’s site is exactly what they want.
Other times it’s all near enough that you can help them. Be sensible. If it’s going to take an excess of effort to help someone because you don’t really carry what they’re after or don’t really understand their needs, you’re better off referring them elsewhere or just saying you can’t do what they want.
Saying no is tough but it’s a great skill.
Keep your focus on the people you mean to be helping. If you get too distracted by others, you will struggle to keep up with the things you really know how to do. That’s not a great way to run a home business.
A work at home job is a job you perform from your home office. You may be telecommuting from a job that you previously did from an office. You may work 100% from home or have to drive to an office occasionally or to client sites at times.
You may work as a contract employee or a regular employee.
A home business is a business you run from your home office. You pay all the expenses associated with your home business. Sometimes your home business involves working as an independent contractor for another business but you may also have a network marketing business, website design business, affiliate marketing business, etc.
Never is awfully close to the truth, but it can depend on how you’re defining paying for a job. It is acceptable to pay for a service such as Home Job Stop that helps you to find out about new work at home jobs, but you have to be careful that you pick a legitimate service. There are similar companies out there that do not provide current information.
A very few legitimate employers, such as Arise, have expenses associated with getting a job with them. Some expect you to pay for your own background check.
Never, ever pay to prove that you’re serious or anything like that. If a work at home job is suggesting that you pay anything, check them out extremely carefully before sending in any money, even just a few dollars.
Work at home scams can be easy to spot, but the can also be quite devious. I go into many of the more typical work at home scams on this site sometimes.
Some basic rules of thumb:
Don’t pay for a job, see above.
If it seems too good to be true it probably is.
No one is going to pay you $3000-5000 per month for part time, easy work. You earn that kind of money part time, it’s probably a home business and you’re risking some of your own money. And if they promise you that kind of money even for a home business they may not be trustworthy.
Understand what you’re getting paid to do.
Do not give out your bank account information until you know for certain you have a trustworthy employer.
Do not agree to cash cashier’s checks or reship products.
When in doubt, ask someone else, whether it be a spouse or the people on a work at home forum.
Many work at home jobs can be either part time or full time. However, it can be hard to get work for all of the hours you sign up for in some jobs. It can take more than one job to get all of the hours you would like to work.
Customer service jobs, for example, typically pay on talk time, not scheduled time. That’s a big difference if it’s a quiet day on the job.
Many pay on production rather than hours worked anyhow. Be more productive and you earn more in less time.
This depends on the job. When I worked in medical transcription I had to set a schedule for myself. If I couldn’t work it I needed to let them know. But I could change it around quite easily.
Just about any job that can be done on a computer that does not require face to face interaction can be done online. Data entry (real data entry, not the scams), customer service, computer programming, general, legal or medical transcription, administrative work, writing, accounting and more are all possibilities.
Depends on what you mean by train you. Will they take someone with no job experience and train them to a highly difficult job? No.
Will they teach you what you need to know for the particular job you’ve been accepted for when you already have the background and experience? Yes.
This varies. In many cases you are expected to provide your own computer, phone and internet connection. Some employers will provide equipment to you or have it available for rent.
That depends on what you’re doing, the age of your kids, when you want to work and other factors. Consider my recent post on using daycare when you work at home.
Some jobs require absolutely silent backgrounds. Customer service jobs, for example. If your kids are too noisy you can lose you job. Think carefully on the childcare issue.
Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate
Disclosure: I often review or mention products for which I may receive compensation in the form of affiliate commissions. All opinions are my own.
