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by Jessica Franks
There are a wide variety of options available to stay at home moms. Many baby magazines and web sites list many options for work at home moms. Some of them are blatant traps (what company stuffs envelopes manually anymore?) to the downright useless (pay me for a list of companies who might hire you!) I will attempt to break down some of the better options and give you some ideas to go on.
One idea is to buy or find goods and then sell them for more money online using Ebay. Free software, such as Gimp and Openoffice, make the initial cost of entry literally nothing. You might want to check the prices of things which are currently being sold before you start to give you an idea of where to price your items and how much potential profit you can earn. By picking a niche, it's possible to make a substantial income. Consider selling specialized car parts, or craft items such a gem stones.
A handful of agencies, such as Medicare and Medicaid, run programs to make clerical work available to stay-at-home moms. Check your local workforce centers and state web sites to get more information. Beware of using an outside company, as it might not be legitimate.
Another option is to convert your kitchen into a make-shift call center. It's popular to have individuals freelancing as operators for small companies. Consider, also, telemarketing if you have the fortitude. If you don't mind random calls at odd hours and you have an open availability, the pay is typically quite decent for these positions.
Are you handy? Do you enjoy crafts? There's money to be made selling your talent! Web sites such as 1and1.com and doteasy.com allow you to set up virtual stores which allow you to sell and profit from your crafts. These turn-key solutions will have your shop set up with just a point and a click. Ebay is a great barometer of how profitable crafts can be. Remember, you'll need to reserve space in your home as a workshop!
For moms who are more technically inclined, consider being a freelance coder or graphic designer! Free sign-up at places such as webdesign123.com and php-freelancers.com open the doors to a wide variety of available projects which you'll be able to start working on instantly. If you've never worked with any graphic design or programming systems, you can start learning for free at places webmonkey.com or weberdev.com just to get your feet wet. This is a quite a rewarding option.
Many companies list a work at home service and sound great up front but want to CHARGE YOU to work. Don't pay for employment leads as you can find most of this stuff for FREE. Also ALWAYS ALWAYS GOOGLE the name of the at home service or company and see what others have said about it. That's the number 1 way to avoid a scam.
I have only written about a few things at home moms can do but these allow for the best use of your time that I have seen. Many of these things allow you to start and stop projects as often as you need to during the day allowing for the most freedom of your schedule. Working at home can allow a wide range of freedoms but can also add some stresses if you don't define limits on it.
If you are looking to make extra money from home, then make sure you check out Jessica's free movie about jobs for stay at home moms, and work for stay home moms.
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