Joining a direct sales opportunity is one of the classic ways to start earning money from home. Lots of people venture into one such opportunity or another when they get started. It sounds so appealing after all, to build a business with great products and a downline to help you earn even when you don’t make the sale yourself.

There are a number of great direct sales companies you can join too. Some have been around almost since the time direct sales was a possibility, while new companies start every year. Companies come and companies go, making it vital that you choose a good one if this is how you want to make money from home. Losing your business because the company you order products from disappeared is hard, to say the least.

This isn’t the path everyone wants to take when they consider earning money from home. The sales aspect certainly doesn’t appeal to everyone, as most such opportunities have a significant aspect of selling in person as you get started, through holding home parties or by recommending products to people you meet. Many allow for an online aspect these days as well, but it’s not the focus for most. But many people wonder if there’s any other way to legitimately earn money from home.

There are many ways, of course. Some have been done pretty much forever, while others came about because of the internet, for example, daycare, writing, website designing, affiliate marketing, making and selling crafts, graphic design, selling photos, mystery shopping, customer service over the phone, telemarketing, data entry, working as a virtual assistant, technical support, computer programming, blogging, transcription, selling on eBay and other auction sites, running errands, bookkeeping, teaching… the list goes on.

The key here is to figure out what it is you want to do and what you can make money doing. From there you can figure out how to make it work.

You won’t always have to start your own business, of course. There are companies that hire people to work from home, and some of the jobs offer pretty good pay. They aren’t always easy, and they do require you to be professional in your work. If you aren’t visible to anyone else, that means being professional when you speak to people and doing quick, accurate work. Most work at home jobs pay on production in one form or another, so the better and more quickly you do your work, the better off you are. Just don’t sacrifice accuracy because there’s always a high demand for quality.

Running a home business whether online or in person means you must be willing to take the risk of never earning anything. Many fail, but if you succeed you may have a lot more flexibility, depending on the type of business you run. A home daycare operator is not going to have the same flexibility as an affiliate marketer, but one may be more suited to the type of work you’d like to do than the other.

Research Is a Key to Success

If you want to earn money from home successfully, research is the key to any chance you have of success with it. You have to know what you need to do. You can guess and throw yourself into the first opportunity that strikes your fancy, but you’re more likely to fall into a scam than wander into success. That goes whether you’re starting a business or searching for a work at home job.

There must be a match with your skills and interests. There must be a demand for whatever you’re going to do. You must know how you’re going to get things going.

Research also helps to keep your expectations realistic. That’s when you find out that no matter the promises made, you aren’t going to be earning six figures within months. It’s when you realize how much work is really involved. It’s also probably when some of your dreams are dashed by reality. If you had wild dreams of easy success, that’s probably a good thing.

The first thing to check in your research is how to get a start in whatever you’re going to do without getting scammed. Scams outnumber legitimate opportunities when it comes to earning money from home. It’s easy to fall for one. Pay attention and learn what you should be looking for to avoid the scams. Some of the basic signs include the promise of easy money, earning from recruiting rather than selling products, an unclear source of income, a fee for to apply for a job (businesses and information on running one usually cost money; applying for a job should not). When in doubt, ask around and see what others say.

You can avoid a lot of the usual scams if you start your own completely independent business. It’s not a scam to start a business writing for others or designing websites. You do, however, need to figure out how to get clients and make sure they pay you. There are a lot of great people running all kinds of businesses from home and you have to learn to deal with your customers and the competition.

Keep Trying

No matter what it is you choose to do to earn money from home, you’re probably going to have to work at it a while to see results. Just because you can, theoretically, work in your pajamas doesn’t mean it’s easy. You have to really put in the effort to get the results.

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.

I posted about the new home party network, Emily Rose @ Home the other day. I think it’s a great opportunity for moms and daughters who love the American Girl style dolls.

They’ve started a contest now to win a free Platinum Starter Pack. If you’re thinking about joining this opportunity, I suggest going over and checking it out.

You have until July 21, 2009 to enter, and there are a few ways to earn entries.

The package includes @Home Business Builder manual, products samples, catalogs, business cards, marketing materials, and even membership in the “Founder’s Circle”.

This is the kind of business you can do to encourage your daughter’s entrepreneurial skills, while having fun yourself. Getting a free start isn’t a bad way to go. Give it a try and go enter!

I haven’t done a sponsored post in a long time, but this is one. I’m doing it because it’s relevant and might just be fun for some of you out there looking for home party opportunities.

The business is called Emily Rose @ Home. It’s a Business Opportunity for Amerian Girls. That is, you’d be selling clothing and furniture for 18 inch dolls, which is the size of the American Girls dolls. A part of the idea is that it’s a business moms and daughters can do together.

My daughter loves those dolls. That’s a part of what caught my eye for this opportunity. She got one for her birthday this year.

The business is set to launch July 14. There’s a video on the site about a contest to win one of their Platinum Starter Packages.

There are of course risks to joining a new opportunity. It’s hard to say who will make it. This one looks to be offering products that are really fun and appealing to other parents of young girls. That’s not a bad way to start, and Emily Rose has been open as a business for two and a half years. They know they’re growing and feel ready to open things up to the party plan business model.

I’ve had a section for people to advertise their direct sales and network marketing opportunities on here for a long time. But I did it all manually, which was tedious and all too easy to forget about.

I’ve upgraded it now to a proper directory.

Just as before, you can get links to your opportunity for free. I have also added a Featured Links option so that if you want your link to be above everyone else’s in your opportunity you have the chance to do so. Only a limited number for each, and it’s a monthly subscription so that if someone loses interest they aren’t tying the spot up forever.

There’s plenty of space available; I used to keep it to just one rep per company, but with this new directory everything is split out by company rather than just category. Write your ad to appeal to those who are looking at the opportunity you represent for the best results. I’m not limiting the number of free links; only the Featured ones.