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. 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.

Network marketing has been around a long time. There’s plenty of advice going around about how best to build a downline and a customer base to help you succeed. But not everyone takes advantage of the Internet.

Sometimes it’s due to lack of comfort with it. If you don’t think you can make a good website, you’re probably not even going to try. If you assume that it’s beyond you, it will be…

At least until you give it a try.

Now the first thing you have to do is find out what the company’s rules are regarding marketing on the Internet. Some have very strict rules surrounding what you can do. You may not even be able to mention the company’s name. Others provide you with a website you can sell through.

But even if they provide you with a website you need to build one of your own. Replicated websites don’t attract their own traffic. They also don’t allow you to show your personality, yet your personality should be one of the key factors to recruiting a downline. You want people to want to work with you.

Fortunately there are many ways to create a quality website even if you haven’t tried it before. Blogging is very popular, with Wordpress being the most popular software. Once you have a theme selected, all you have to do is write your posts.

Well, that and market your site.

It may seem that you’re adding to your work by adding a site. Now you have a business opportunity and a website to promote. However, since the one promotes the other it’s not as bad as it may seem.

There are lots of opportunities to promote your website. Twitter is getting very popular with marketers. You have 140 characters to express yourself in. You can’t just market your business and expect people to follow you, but if you’re interesting people will take a look at those times you include links.

You can market on forums, write articles, pay for ads, whatever suits your style, just so long as you know when to sell and when to offer advice.

The beauty of it is that you can interact with people all around the world, rather than being limited by the number of people you interact with each day. You have a much better chance of finding people who might be interested in your opportunity.

Better yet is that some of them will be looking specifically for it.

A big part of network marketing is that you can choose to sell something you are really passionate about. Let that show in your Internet marketing activities and you improve your chances of building a really great business.

There’s a lot more you can learn about what you’re doing right and wrong with your network marketing opportunity. Read The 7  Great Lies of Network Marketing and think about where you can take your business.

Network marketing is a very popular way to start a home business. You get to represent great products that you really enjoy, and build up a nice income. You can even help people you know get started themselves.

But for a lot of people it’s the wrong choice… at least until they’ve really thought about why they want to join the opportunity.

1. You think it’s an easy road to riches.

Just as with any other business, more people fail in network marketing than succeed. Those who succeed work hard on their business and take it seriously.

It also takes time. Those who are really good at it can build up a fair income within a year, but most take longer.

2. You think the only way to build a downline is to pester everyone you know.

That’s the old way to build a downline. There are all kinds of options that don’t involve alienating those you care about.

3. You’re considering options based only on what you think will bring in the most money.

Money’s great, but your enthusiasm for the product is what will help you to make sales. Also, if you choose a product line you feel awkward or uncomfortable selling, you won’t impress potential customers.

There’s a big reason that people talk about passion in the network marketing industry. Passion is what helps to drive you when things are tough. It’s what impresses your customers with the quality of your products.

Some people can cope with just their passion to earn money, but it’s much better to be passionate about the product as well.

4. You don’t want to sell or market.

Some opportunities trumpet the lack of needing to sell their products. But what you still have to do is market them, which is really an aspect of selling. There are many ways you can promote your business, from the standbys of handing out business cards, carrying samples and telling everyone you meet about your business, to online marketing through websites.

The great part about network marketing opportunities today is that you can promote some of them 100% online. If the home party scene really isn’t your thing, you can try an opportunity that lets you develop your own website to get sales and build your downline.

5. You’ve hopped from opportunity to opportunity.

Many people spend so much time hoping for success in network marketing that they don’t give the opportunities they join the time to work out. If they don’t get instant success, off they go to the next opportunity!

If you’re still in that frame of mind that the next opportunity will be the big one, it’s time to slow down and review your expectations. You can’t assume that you will have instant success, or even success in 6 months. Giving up one opportunity and joining another means you keep having to start over. It’s not a way to succeed.

Being in the right frame of mind is one of the key steps to succeeding in direct sales. Expectations that are too high, fear of committing to an opportunity and other problems can make it harder for you to build a solid business.

If you’ve been considering joining a network marketing opportunity, or if you’ve been trying to get yours going, I suggest reading The 7  Great Lies of Network Marketing. It might just give you some insights and ideas for where things could work better with your business.

If  you’re in direct sales or network marketing, you really need to sign up to download your free copy of The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing. I’ve read it as well as The Renegade Network Marketer, which you can buy after reading The 7 Great Lies ebook. The information in each is fabulous for people wanting to build their network marketing businesses successfully.

You are not getting the usual lines about advertising on forums, harrassing your warm market, buying leads and so forth. This information really stands out from everything else I have read about network marketing.

Ann Sieg, the author, is a very successful network marketer, and as you read her books you will come to understand why. She saw past the usual ways people tell you to build your business and found better ways that don’t involve alienating everyone you care about.

I was very fortunate to be selected to get a sneak peek at The Renegade Network Marketer before it was released. Fabulous stuff in it. The Renegade Network Marketer is available now, but I really suggest reading The 7 Great Lies first, just to give yourself an inkling of what you are getting into first. I really believe you will want both, so that you can grow your business more effectively.