I don't know about most of you but I need to learn how to make a little extra money at home. I am a teacher in Oklahoma and don't make a large amount of money. I have been teaching for almost 15 years and have a Master's degree, yet I barely make $40,000 a year.  My wealth lies with the students I work with.  Watching a 6 year olds eyes light up when they finally learn how to sound out words, or solve a math problem is priceless.  If I could bank those experiences I would be a financially rich person, but  unfortunately the light in my student's eyes don't pay the bills.  I always run short during the month with bills taking most of my check.  There always seems to be unexpected expense popping up as well. Just last month my daughter's dog went into cardiac arrest and had to be rushed to the vet-that little trip was over $500.  Three months earlier my dog wasn't able to give birth to a puppy-another huge vet bill.  In the past 6 months I have had to replace all the tires on my car, and in August I had to take an unplanned trip to Ohio to see my father who was in the hospital.  I also spend alot of  money on things that I use everyday in the classroom that the school doesn't supply.  

Being the mom of a teenage son doesn't help matters-he always needs something-new shoes, rugby equipment, lunch money, gas. So I began to search the internet for a home business, a way to make a little extra cash, something that I could do while I am on my computer at night anyway. Several years ago I had a successful business on Ebay selling costume jewelry and pet carriers, but the bottom drop out of both of those markets. I still occasionally use Ebay to sell things, but I haven't been able to duplicate the success that I had years earlier so I kept looking for an online opportunity that would be a "fit" for me. Up until now I hadn't found anything that I could actually do. Sure, I found lots of sites that promised to show me "easy" ways to make tons of money and the more I researched the more I discovered that the majority of the sites usually worked this way: The sites had very vague descriptions and never actually told me how to earn any income. There were extraordinary tales of people making BIG money using their "system", but never told me what their system was. There were testimonials from people just like me who changed their lives overnight by using the website's tried and true ways of generating income but never said what those ways were. The sites had lots of bold print and plenty of !!!! designed to get me excited about their company and the products they were trying to sell me. They offered to reveal their secrets to me if I ordered their ebook and best of all they were willing to slash their prices just for me-if I ordered in the next 20 minutes. Well-needless to say I've never made any money this way. I don't think anyone has, that is except for the person who created the website.

After lots of searching I believe that I have stumbled upon something that may actually work for me. I discovered the wonderful world of blogging and along with that I found that I can earn a little extra income by adding Google's Adsense to my page. Adsense appealed to me because it's really not hard to do, you just need a gmail account, a free blogging site (bloggers.com is a good one), and a Google Adsense account. Everything is really simple to set up, the sites are easy to navigate and best of all you don't need to buy any fancy eguides. You just need the time to set up the accounts and ideas to start blogging about. That's it. I have already set my husband and my son up with their own accounts and am encouraging them to try it. My husband hasn't started yet because he doesn't know what to write about but he is a wealth of information on subjects like firefighting, motorcycles, and motocross. Who knows better about what teenagers want and what they do than my 18 year old son? Hopefully I can get them over their writers block and they will start soon.

I've just started today and have already earned 4 bucks! Woo Hoo! I know it's not much money, but the fact that it works make me excited. I may never become an internet millionaire, but that's ok with me. If I can earn enough to keep my son in shoes and gas, I'm happy!!

Update: It's been over a week and I am up to  twelve dollars. I've confirmed all of the information google needs me to (but I lost the postcard I received from Google with my magic pin number on it-oh well I will order another one in December).  I plan to work on and publish my next hub this weekend, so come back and look it over for me and tell me what you think!