Like myself, many single parents tend to work solely from home so we can take care of our kids, perhaps home school them, and try to fill as many roles as possible in our children’s lives.
Though there are a hundred scams for every one legitimate WAH business, there are some solid ways to help make ends meet. Freelance writing is one, as well as Internet marketing.
These days, most families have access to the internet, which gives you a virtual money-making machine right at your fingertips. All it takes is some time and perseverance, and a healthy dose of reality. Even if you’ve read that a work at home mother recently made over 100k last year, it’s best to keep your feet firmly on the ground. Over time your pennies will turn to dollars and then some.
If you choose to be an Internet marketer, you would first create a website with a good niche. Here are a few subjects that do very well no matter what the economy is like: anti-aging, weight loss, making money, starting your own business, and sex.
Your Wesbite
One of the best website hosting companies I’ve found is Webs.com. For just $15 a year you can have an ad-free website with hundreds of great templates to choose from, a paypal shopping cart, and many other perks. Let’s say you decide to start a weight loss site. Simply go onto Webs.com and their wizard will guide you step-by-step through the entire process. It’s foolproof! If your budget is super tight, choose a blog rather than a website. WordPress and Blogger are both very good and rank high with the search engines.
Your Domain
You also want to purchase a good domain name. The easiest I’ve used is through Yahoo Domains. It’s $9.99 for the first year then $35 a year afterward if you decide to keep the domain. It’s very easy to forward your purchased domain name to your website—just a click of a button.
Be sure to choose a domain that is keyword rich. In other words, try to choose a name for your domain and website that people will type into google or yahoo when searching. Using the weight loss example, you can choose something like “www.DropPoundsFast.com” or whatever else comes to mind and is available. It’s best to be informative rather than clever.
Promotion
A free and fabulous way to promote any website is by writing short but interesting articles related to the topic of your website. Try to write an article per day or at least one per week. Post these articles to top directory sites like Ezine Articles, Article Dashboard, Self Growth, Article Alley, and so forth.
Be sure to write a good resource box/bio that will be included at the end of every one of your articles. Avoid talking about yourself and instead focus on why your readers should stop by your website. Maybe you can offer a free report for people who sign up as a site member, a free monthly newsletter, or a monthly contest for a freebie. The key here is to get people to visit your site and sign up as a member.
So How Do You Make Money?
You can become an affiliate for companies and offer their products on your website. A few good affiliate websites are Commission Junction and Click Bank. Simply sign up with them and once you’re accepted you can choose the items you want to promote. Commission on these items and products can be as high as 50% or more.
You can also write and sell your own ebooks or reports, or buy the rights to sell ebooks written by others. A lot of people also make good money by incorporating Google ads on their sites.
Once you get this website going you can create another and then another. I’ve known people who have 100 or more blogs and websites. Even if you make only a few dollars a day, you can see how it can quickly add up over time. Then again, there are people who have only one website, but have built up their web hits and membership so much that they can easily make a comfortable living. You just have to find something you enjoy writing about and build your online presence.
Don’t spread yourself too thin though. Take time to build a quality blog or website and promote it. Once you feel comfortable with that one, start another. Many work at home parents make a good living with niche blogs and websites, there’s no reason why you can’t.