25 Feb 2008 06:34:34 | Michael Law
Being a mother is tough enough without the added stress of
juggling day care schedules and babysitters, but you really need
that second income. More and more often, working mothers are
making the decision to quit their day jobs, and work from home.
Working at home offers a flexible schedule, lets you be
available when your children need you, and gives you the
potential to decide your own income based on the work that you
do. If you're considering making the move from 9-to-5 to a work
from a home business of your own, here are three of the most
popular options. Is one of them right for you?
Reseller Web Hosting
One of the newest wrinkles in the Internet marketing world,
reseller web hosting, can be a work from home business that
offers excellent earning potential with a minimal financial
investment from you. All you need is a stable internet
connection, a reseller hosting account, and some internet and
marketing savvy. You pay for a reseller hosting account that
entitles you to X MB's of space on the web company's servers.
You then place your own logo and name on their templates (or
design your own), and sell that space out to others for a
profit. Think of it as subletting virtual space.
Startup Costs: Reseller hosting accounts average $29.99 monthly
to $199 monthly, depending on space, bandwidth and services.
Skills: Enough web hosting knowledge to provide answers to
customer's usual questions, and marketing skills to fight in a
fiercely competitive field.
Strategy: Find a niche market. The Internet is a huge sea, and
little fish tend to get lost. Pick a niche to target with your
marketing, and build in inducements to that niche.
Internet Storefront
There are so many different ways to sell products on the
internet that it's almost scary. Whether you sell products that
you create yourself, use a storefront to do drop shipping, or
create a portal where others can sell their own products,
internet storefronts can be a very profitable way to work from
home. Like web hosting, though, the market is fiercely
competitive, and you'll need a good strategy to get noticed.
Startup Costs: Free to $100s depending on hosting company and
licenses.
Skills: Organization and marketing skills are the two major
skills you'll need here. There are low-cost ways to find
professional site designs, and many companies that will drop
ship. People order from you, you order from the company and the
company does the rest. You don't need to maintain an inventory,
and in some cases, the company will even do all the billing and
collection, and send you your profit.
Strategy: Pick a market and target it through search engine
optimization, link exchanges, targeted email newsletters and
other promotions.
Affiliate Marketing
According to Fortune magazine, targeted online advertising is
the hottest growth industry in the high tech world, with annual
revenues approaching $5 billion dollars, growing at 40%
annually. Why shouldn't some of that end up in your pocket? You
can work from home to create a steady income stream from
affiliate ads and marketing as long as you have a good internet
connection, and a web site that attracts attention.
Startup Costs: Under $20 monthly for web hosting and internet
access. Add on search engine submissions, and search engine
optimization services later if you need to.
Skills: The ability to create a good, focused community or
personal web site, and the marketing savvy to pick the right
products to promote.
Strategy: Create a focused web site around a niche subject, and
optimize it for search engines. Community web sites work
especially well, since forum posts and blogs create new content
frequently and invite search engines back to visit often. Join
an affiliate ad program which will place targeted ads on your
web site based on the content, or choose one that will allow you
to pick the ads you want to appear on your site.
About Author :
Michael Law is editor at 1steliteworkfromhome.com (
http://1steliteworkfromhome.com ), a Work From Home Directory
Resource.
