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Ever Considered Sponsored Blog Posts?

Sponsor is looking for work at home bloggers to publish posts for cash. By sharing personal experience stories, opinions and advice about home security, and including a link to the sponsor's site and products, bloggers can earn money online. Freelance writing and blogging are excellent work at home careers and crafting sponsored blog posts can lead to very good income streams.

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Guest Post: Try Etsy For Work At Home Jobs For Moms by Lisa Shoreland

Why search for work at home jobs for moms when you can create your own? Today’s guest post, brought to us by Lisa Shoreland, is one that you don’t want to miss if you’re into crafting or if you know someone who is.

Work at Home with Etsy

When it comes to working, the enlightened advice always seems to be, “Do what you love.”  Unfortunately, people believe that they don’t have the luxury to do so (many of them are right), and opportunities for moms to work at home seem lacking.  If you love to craft, however, Etsy may be able to help turn you from a crafty mom to a work-at-home mom.

For those of you who have yet to discover Etsy, my advice is to go there now and see the wonder for yourself.  It’s a charming website that gives anyone who tries an equal opportunity to work from home and sell their wares to people across the world.  Your wares—be they clothing, candles, accessories, or even baked goods—sell based on who wants them.  This means you’ll have to do your part in advertising to improve your chances of sales, too.

Do you knit or crochet?  Do you make jewelry?  Do you sew?  Can you make soap or lotion?  Are you well-versed in web or graphic design?  Are you a photographer?  Do you want to work from home?  Consider selling your products or services on Etsy.

If you’re met with a positive response, you might even go through your neighborhood and inquire local boutiques if they’d like to sell your wares.  Having a successful Etsy store may give you increased credibility.

Preparing For Business

Becoming a work-at-home mom via Etsy isn’t just about crafting, though.  You’ll need the following materials to successfully advertise, present, and send off your wares to buyers.

  • A computer to access Etsy and communicate with buyers
  • A camera to take well-lit, clear, and high-quality photographs of your wares, which you will upload via computer onto your Etsy store
  • An inventory of products already made to present to potential buyers
  • A business plan to keep you on track with your goals.  How much money do you hope to make?  What is your spending budget?  Who are you selling to?  How will you advertise your business?
  • Enough funds for the monthly membership fee for owning a store on Etsy (generally under $20 a month).  The site has a built-in shopping cart system and payment/fulfillment structure.
  • Access to transportation to the post office, as you will be shipping your products out to people across the country yourself.

Marketing Your Business

  • Evaluate other Etsy stores.  Which ones are popular and what do they sell?  What are other stores selling similar items to yours?  What’s working and what’s not?
  • Choose a niche.  As with blogs, it’s easier to market your business if you do or sell something specific, like painting or photography (but likely not both).
  • Make a memorable logo and store name.  If you’re having trouble with these, you can browse Etsy for people who will do this for you.  Some will even design and print your business cards.  Luckily, most reputable Etsy storeowners are prompt on shipping (something for you to heavily consider when opening your business).
  • Advertise on other forms of social media, like your Facebook page or Twitter feed.  If you have a blog, be sure to add a link to your Etsy store.  Hand out your business card to friends and family like candy on Halloween.
  • Don’t expect to make it big at once.  As with any work-at-home opportunity, success will likely be slow and gradual.  The harder you work and the more avenues you push, however, the sooner and bigger success will arrive.

Bio: Lisa Shoreland is currently a resident blogger at Go College, where recently she’s been researching physicians assistant scholarships as well as occupational therapy scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing, practicing martial arts, and taking weekend trips.

 

Be sure to also check out our growing directory of companies that offer work at home jobs for moms. ~Work at Home Mom Center

The 411 on the InfoBarrel Income Opportunity ~ A Guest Post by Chris Hinton

The Problem

Over the decade I’ve worked with dozens of friends and family in an attempt to help them build a passive income stream using the Internet.  Throughout these attempts I’ve noticed two common problems.

Problem #1

People are very optimistic with the idea of making money online, however when they don’t see instant gratification and coupled with the monetary and time investments required in maintaining and promoting a web site, most people tend to quit before they ever start seeing any income.

Problem #2

Because it is human nature to get instant gratification, people tend to spend less time on the things they don’t know much about and wind up producing something that provides no end value to their users.  The web site winds up being covered in ads essentially dragging down the overall quality of the Internet instead of making it better.

By not creating value for end users, regardless of how much time you spend marketing, it will be nearly impossible to create return visitors and even harder to get people talking about your web site or business.

The Solution

Create a space where users would not have to be burdened with the financial costs of owning, maintaining and marketing a website and could simply focus on producing quality content to share with the world while still earning a substantial passive income.  By removing these problems we hope to increase the quality of content found on the internet and making it once again a safe place to find information.

In July 2008, with these ideals in mind InfoBarrel was born.

How it Works

InfoBarrel is a shared revenue crowd sourced community.  Essentially what that means, is the content of the site is entirely created by the users who frequent the site.  To compensate writers, we provide them with a minimum of 75% of the advertising impressions from Google Adsense, Chitika and Amazon.  We also have an escalating revenue share percentage that allows writers to earn up to 90% revenue share if they hit certain criteria.

There is no cost to the writer, and the site has had extensive marketing time invested into it resulting in great organic search engine results.  To date we have many writers making over $100 a month and a few making over $1000.  InfoBarrel has become one of the top destinations to earn money writing on the Internet.  Because of our passionate users and extensive marketing plan InfoBarrel has grown from a small site consisting of a few users to a thriving community with 31,000+ members that is growing on a daily basis.  We are also very dedicated to supporting our writer community by allowing them to personally email us with any issues that they may have encountered while at the site.  With one of our goals being to improve the quality of material found on the internet InfoBarrel also manually approves all new article submissions checking them for article quality and duplicate content among many other factors. The site been touted as the next best revenue sharing site by popular web entrepreneur Pat Flynn.

Why it’s Great for Work at Home Moms

Because of the opportunity to generate money while working from home, we have had an enormous surge of WAHMs publishing on InfoBarrel.  Since InfoBarrel requires much less of a commitment than running your own website, mothers are able to sit down and write an article when they have a free moment before returning to their busy lives.  We have a number of successful WAHMs most notably MommyMommyMommy.

Community

One of the things that I am most proud of in terms on InfoBarrel is how supportive our community has become.  The InfoBarrel Writers’ Community is one of the most tight knit, friendly groups of people online.  If you need advice on how to do something, even extremely simple, the community is there to help and there is never a stupid question.

Success Stories

InfoBarrel has been around for just over two years now and has already garnered several success stories, with at least two members making over $1000 a month, and a number of users making over $100.

The following are  just a few success stories of members:

JCMayer ($1000+ /moth now)

Travis_Aitch ($1000+ /month now)

ChezFat ($500+ /month now)

A forum post talking about earnings

Need a Little Mad Money? We Can Help!

When I was a little girl, my grandma always told me to be sure I had a little mad money in my purse. To be certain I wasn’t without, she’d give me a few pennies to hold onto and she’d always include a dime just in case of emergency (yes, payphones really did exist once upon a time AND calls could be made for a thin dime!). As I grew into my teen years, Grandma’s mad money donations increased to $5 bills just in case I needed emergency cab fare or in case I wanted to “buy a pop”.

Later, I learned that the concept of mad money wasn’t just grandma’s excuse for  doling out cash, but it was her way of teaching me that a girl should always have a little spending money in her pocket.

Wiktionary.org sums it up pretty nicely:

A sum of money, often relatively small in amount, kept in reserve to use for impulsive, frivolous purposes; A sum of money kept in reserve or to insulate oneself financially in the event of the sudden breakdown of a relationship in which one is economically dependent.

Work at home jobs for moms can surely net you a comfortable salary, but if you find that your earnings are spread pretty thinly between bills, every day essentials and savings (you are saving, right?), then check out these ways of earning a little mad money on the side:

Fiverr, Zeerk and Fora20.com ~ All 3 sites are built around the same concept: trade favors for cash. You can post a task that you’ll perform or pick up a request for a task someone requests. Similar sites are popping up all over the web as people find them to be convenient ways of making mad money and getting things done! (Also, try Clickworker)

Sell an item on Craigslist ~ Craigslist is a good place for job leads, especially for work at home jobs for moms, but don’t forget that it’s also a mad money treasure trove. There, you can not only sell your own stuff for fast cash, but you can also pick up free stuff to resell there. Just look in the For Sale section of your local Craigslist site and you’ll notice a special sub-section marked Free. You have to move quickly when free items come up, because others are hawking that section too, but you can pick up some really cool items to relist for profit if you’re fast enough to be first in line for a good freebie.

Bidding Sites ~ We don’t advertise them in our job leads section, primarily because we prefer to bring you actual jobs, BUT this doesn’t mean that there isn’t real money (including mad money) to be made on these sites. If you’re between work at home jobs for moms, searching for a side-gig or even if you just want to earn a extra mad money, check out a few bidding sites like oDesk and Freelancer.com.

Do you make sure you keep a little mad money in your pocket at all times? What are some of the ways in which you separate it from your other income and do you have any favorite ways of earning mad money? If so, we’d love to hear your ideas in the comment section below.