Work at Home Mom - How to Get Organized To Start Your Own Home Based Business

In order to be successful in a home based business, you need to be organized. If you are a young mom whose children are under 5 and not in school or preschool and who still wants to work at home, you are going to have to draw up a specific plan so your home based business can succeed.

You need to assess your energy level. If you are a stay at home mom and you get up early, chances are that you will be going to bed earlier at night because you will be tired. If you have young children then you have so many other duties and chores to do so the minute they take a nap (if they do), you are playing catch up on your work.

If you don't think you have enough energy left at the end of the day then do a mom sharing program where you watch another mom's kids one day a week and that mom watches yours. You can also organize this with several moms and maybe do one or two hours a day so you can have some free time during the day to start your home based business.

You can also find a local daycare where you can take your children for a few hours. Initially you will need more time to plan and start your business, but once you get it up and running, you can keep it going on an hour or two a day or less depending on how full time you want to be.

There are several ways you can still start a home based business though and still be organized. Ebay is a great way and a very easy way to start for a stay at home mom or for a mom who works outside of the home but would like some extra income.

I'll get more into more detail on how to start an Ebay business in a different hub in the future. But timewise, it's a great type of business to do from home and it's something mostly anyone can fit into their schedules.

For the stay at home mom with younger children or babies, plan an hour a day to start, either using my suggestions above or right after you put them to bed. To start your home based business follow these steps:

1. Research the types of businesses online that are available to you and decide what you like to do. Google stay at home mom jobs or work from home. When you find something, google the title of what you find and add the word scam to the end. Let's say you find "work at home stuffing envelopes". Type in "work at home stuffing envelopes scam" and see what others have to say about that type of business. Surveys are a big thing now and most of them will not yield you any money at all. Type in "work at home taking surveys scam" and see what comes up. I think you get the idea. This step alone will save you hundreds of dollars and protect you from losing faith that you can ever work from home.

2. Pick a specific niche. Pick a hobby that you have that would be a good niche market (a niche market is a focused market like traveling to Cozumel Mexico 5 Star Resorts - that's a specific niche market, or Sponge Bob toys, or Farberware Cookware for example.)

For the shortest learning curve, don't pick something that you know nothing about unless you want to put in a lot of reading time to learn more about something you think would be lucrative or interesting. Remember, you want to make money.

3. Check out the competition on Google. Also, check out the kinds of competition you might have with your niche market. My very first venture cost me $13,000. I was told to build a website about job search and write an ebook (http://www.jobsearchtop10.com) Nice idea because that is what my whole career was focused on. What the mentors didn't tell me was to research my topic, my interests, my expertise first to see what kinds of competition I had.

Two years later I was still struggling to get my website seen on anything but page 400 of Google. My niche was so highly competitive that I didn't stand a chance of getting any traffic to my websites or products. I had to learn to narrow my niche. For example, I chose culinary arts jobs as a smaller niche within my larger niche, something I know quite a bit about. I am now on page two or three of google with the website I built around that. It was much more focused.

The way you check out the competition is to go to google, type in your search term, ie suppose you choose farberware pots and pans. Type in that phrase and see how many results you get. Then look at the paid Google ads that are displayed. If you see returns of 3 million or 30 million for example, then you probably have too much competition. Narrow your focus to farberware skillets and see what happens. The count should go down. Your competition will be less and you have a better chance of getting your product seen.

4. Now that you've decided on a market niche, decide what you want to do with it. Do you want to build a small website where you can earn money with Google Adsense (another hub article to come), or perhaps you want to try to find the distributor for farberware skillets and sell those on Ebay or Google or Yahoo marketplace or from your own website. Maybe you want to sell them to family or friends as well through house parties. There are lots of options available to you. 

In June, 2009 I discovered what I believe to be the very best information on starting a website from scratch.  I have read thousands of pages on building websites.  I now have 6 that earn me regular money with adsense.  I struggled to put all of the information I needed together and wish I had this two years ago.  This is new on the market within the past month and I wanted to add it to this article because I think it is one of the most valuable tools you will run across when just starting out.  You actually get the pdf file that walks you through the entire process of building a simple, one page website that earns you money, for free. 

In addition, since I am a visual learner, I prefer the videos.  You have to option to add the videos for a small cost.  They show you the same material, but what's great is you can go back over and over again and visually see how to implement each step and use the pdf as a supplement.  Either way, if you are serious about building a website and you want a great teacher, you really do have to check out this site that will take any newbie or even child and teach you how to build your very first website within under a day.  http://proadvice.farrell09.hop.clickbank.net/

5. Make sure you start slowly. Don't do too many things at once. Focus. Don't choose an adsense website and Ebay and home parties. You won't be successful. Choose one and stick with it. Make it successful and then branch out. Personally, if I had young children I would still choose Ebay. It's a great foundation to get started, doesn't cost much at all (nothing to sign up as a buyer or a seller because as a seller you only pay commission when you list something or sell something and you can put that cost into your shipping and handling charges.) You will want to eventually open up your own Ebay store so you can get more sales and that cost varies but isn't much per month.

There is so much more to this and I could go on for a long time. There are numerous resources available to help get you started. There are two resources that I think are head over heals above all of the ones I have used on Ebay. They both cost money, but if you think you are going to start a business with nothing, then to be frank with you, don't start a business. On the other hand, it is so much less expensive to start a business on the internet then it is to start a brick and mortar one in your own town. Think of how much money you would have to spend to buy a McDonalds, or any of the other fast food chains. . . let's start with about $500,000 to a million dollars and take it from there.

If you visit my blog: http://topebaysecrets.blogspot.com/ you will find what I believe are the two top Ebay resources for people just staring out in an Ebay business. Both are excellent resources for moms or dads who need step by step direction in starting an ebay business. You will find both the first and second suggestions on my blog right at the top of the page. One of the best resources I have found yet for selling on Ebay is from a very successful powerseller and now Ebay millionaire. You can find out more by visiting his site. It's well worth the small amount of money you will pay. He will get you started out the right way.

The second one is written by an Ebay mom who will show you step by step how she did it quite successfully. I think you will appreciate what both have to say. Starting out though, start with the Ebay mom because that material will give you all of the very basics. The next one will take you to the next level.

The two little ones you see here are my granddaughters. My daughter who is 23 is trying to start an ebay business at night. She works full time during the day. The only way she can spend any time on her business is after they are tucked away in bed. She is exhausted but even an hour a day can start to build a business on the side.

I have another friend who has four children now ranging in age from twins age 6 to the oldest age 9. She homeschools her kids and they are all involved in activities. Her life is exceptionally busy. She makes about $700 per month on ebay selling her kids used clothing. 99% of the clothing she sells is brand name only. She is also a super shopper. She manages to find brand new items on sale and between clearances and coupons she oftentimes will pay under $1 for a brand new item that gets her between $5 and $20 on Ebay.

She will take one or two nights a month, grab several coffees and stay up most of the night to take pictures and list. She uses auctiva which means that she can save her listings and just add to them as she can and then schedule them for uploading at her convenience.

So daily distractions are a problem especially with children. You do need to be highly organized, but while your children are young, they need you more than your business. If your kids are school age then you need to plan the days you will do your laundry, etc. and sit down and actually plan a work schedule. Then you need to follow the plan or the distractions will not allow you to be successful.

I still do laundry and pick up during the day. I take my granddaughter to school everyday, grab a coffee and come home and start my working day. Now that my children are older, life is much easier when it comes to working at home. I even have my 6 yr old granddaughter help me with my ebay business and she loves doing it.

Regardless of the type of business you choose to do, make sure you do your research up front. Don't fall for every scam email you get. You will not get rich quick unless you already have a list of thousands of people who want your product. Once you build that list over a period of months or years, your income will grow.

Start out slowly and start out the right way. If you choose Ebay then get the book I am recommending and follow the proven Millionaire's way. You can do it. It does take work but it can be very rewarding and both Adsense and Ebay can earn you several hundreds of dollars a month on the side pretty easily.