So What's This Blog All About And Who Is This "Carla" Person?

Today I realized that I have been focusing so enthusiastically on putting this blog together that I have failed to get a little bit more personal with my blog friends.  I'd like to take a moment today to explain where it is that I'm coming from, who I am, what my vision is for this blog and what will be coming up. 

First of all, let me just say that I consider every single reader of this blog a personal friend of mine.  I do not care whether there are 100 readers or 10,000 readers sometime in the future, I consider each one of you a personal friend of mine and I vow to do my very best to provide a reputable tool that you can use to find legitimate work from home opportunities or even to build your own business from home.  This blog will be one of 100% integrity and I guarantee that.  Scams or opportunities that I feel are not 100% on the "up and up" have no place on this blog.  It is my mission to provide quality information and to provide help to those moms who are out there wanting to find a way to make money from home.

On that note, let me tell you a little bit about myself and how this blog came to be.   I'm thirty-nine, a mother of 3 boys, ages 10, 6 and 16 months.  My oldest son has special needs and I adopted him as a single mom before I married my husband.  Before I became a mom, I had a career working for hotels like Embassy Suites, Radisson, and Holiday Inn.  It was my goal to one day become a general manager of a large hotel.  I was well on my way when suddenly everything changed.  I thought I would be a working mom, as my mom had been.  I was very focused on my career but my son required quite a bit of time and needed physical, occupational and speech therapies.  I decided that my job had to be helping my son and suddenly my career no longer fit into the equation.  I still needed to bring in money but had absolutely no idea about what to do or how to do it.  Like many of you, I searched and searched only to be disheartened by all of the scams.  It became very difficult to distinguish legitimate opportunities from all of the scams.  I began to think that working from home was just going to be impossible.

I decided to take a chance and go it alone.  I began by selling personalized stepping stools and banks on the internet.  I sold the products on eBay and on a Yahoo storefront.  I was surprised at how well I did and was encouraged to keep moving forward.  The money I brought in was enough so that I could cut my work hours back to part time and I could be at home to help my son more and more.

Over the years, I created my own work from home opportunities, getting paid to do market research, buying and reselling items on the internet, writing articles for webmasters, and eventually I taught myself how to build websites and built about 100 websites.  I placed various affiliate ads on the websites and ended up making around $42,000/year just from those websites.  The exciting part was that after my initial learning curve (which was very steep) on building the websites, it only took me about three weeks to build the sites.  I built five websites a day for three weeks straight.  The websites made money on their own whether I worked on them or not 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It didn't matter whether or not my kids were sick or I had mad laundry to do, I was making money even while I slept.

I still dabble in website creation and in blog writing.  I have slowed down quite a bit for the moment and am focusing on my youngest son.  I knew that this would be a great opportunity to create a blog to help other women find a way to earn money from home.  Whether they want that to be their sole income or if they need to earn extra income to compliment whatever they are earning in their job.  I know that right now there are a lot of people unemployed and there are a lot of people who fear what may be coming in the future.  That's why I'm here.

As you may have already noticed, I am providing tips for women who are looking for work from home opportunities and I'm providing reviews of various work from home opportunities with the essential information that you might need to decide whether or not that opportunity is right for you.  I receive absolutely no monetary compensation of any kind from any of the businesses that I review.  It is highly important to me that my reviews are 100% impartial, honest reviews.  I am so passionate about this blog and in helping other women who are in the place that I was in almost ten years ago.  As the saying goes, I've been there and done that and now I'm here to help you.

One of the ways that I want to help my friends is to invite you to email me.  If there is a topic that you'd like to have covered in the blog or a question that you have, I'd like to hear from you.  I will try to help answer your questions as best that I can and if I find that I am not able to, I will try to find the answer for you or locate someone who can help.  Feel free to email me at any time at MomsHaveDreamsToo@yahoo.com. 

I'm planning to continue working on work from home opportunity reviews as well as more tips for becoming a stay at home mompreneur.  I'll also be covering more of my experiences in making money and how you can do it too.  We'll have some guest blog posts that I'm sure you'll find extremely helpful and I'd love to get some interviews on here from other women who are successful work from home mompreneurs.

Thanks so much for following and/or reading this blog.  If you like what you read, please grab the html code for my button on the right hand side of this blog and post it on your MySpace, Facebook, blog, or website.
I look forward to hearing from you!

Work From Home Opportunity: La Bella Baskets

If you're looking to start your own business, have very little money to start up, and enjoy making people happy, La Bella Baskets might be just what you are looking for.  La Bella Baskets offers gift baskets delivered directly to your gift recipients' doors.  They have gift baskets for just about any occasion, anniversaries, weddings, birthdays, holidays, baby and children's gifts, corporate gifts, get well baskets and the list goes on and on.  As a gift basket consultant, you would never have to carry any inventory.  You would be responsible for concentrating on sales and recruiting (if you wish).  Even though La Bella pays you  a $15.00 referral fee for every referral, they are not a multi-level marketing company or MLM. 

Here's what I like about the program:

• La Bella is not MLM
• No parties necessary, everything can be done online if you wish
• Nice looking, high quality gift baskets
• Potential for repeat customers
• Wide range of potential customers from corporate to individuals
• Nice looking website/storefront
• Very inexpensive to get started
• La Bella offers gift baskets for diabetics (sugar free) and kosher items as well
• 7 day trial is only $1.97
• Pay structure is simple and fair
• 20% commission on new and repeat customers' orders
• La Bella actually makes the baskets and ships them to the gift recipients for you.  This is not a drop shipping company.

Here's what I'm not crazy about:

As I've said other times in other reviews, I'm just not a big fan of monthly fees for websites.  You do have to pay $19.95/month for the website and ongoing training with La Bella.  It's not a totally unreasonable fee, to be fair, but it is still a fee.  On a more positive note, you can cancel anytime that you wish.  There are no contracts at all.

Products:

• Anniversary & Wedding Gifts
• Baby & Children's Gifts
• Birthday Gifts
• Cookie Bouquets
• Diaper Cakes
• Corporate & Employee Gifts
• Flowers
• Get Well & Cheer Up Gifts
• Gifts for Her
• Gifts for Him
• Holiday Gift Baskets

Minimum Investment to Get Started:  $1.97 for a 7 day trial, after that $19.95/month

What's included:

• Your own La Bella website
• Website includes marketing tools like fliers, email templates, banners, button ads, text ads, brochures and more
• Unlimited training & support

Compensation/commission structure:

• 20% commission on sales from new and repeat customers
• $15.00 one-time referral fee on any new recruits (unlimited recruit potential)
• 20% discount on all of your own purchases from the company
• Bi-weekly pay through PayPal or by mailed check

If you are interested in learning more about a work from home opportunity with La Bella Baskets, feel free to contact Gabrielle at her website:  http://www.mylabellabaskets.com/gabrielled.html

Step 3 To Becoming A Mompreneur: Network, Network, Network

Hopefully you've completed steps 1 and 2 and are raring to go with the third step in becoming not only a mompreneur, but a successful mompreneur.  The third step is this:  Network, Network, Network.  Get yourself out there in the internet world and in the real world.  Introduce yourself to as many other work from home moms as you possibly can.  Let them know that you are interested in becoming a work from home mom and ask them about what they do and how they do it.  This is something you'll want to continue doing even after you're bringing in six figures from home.  No matter how good you are, there's somebody out there doing it better.

So you need to join blogs (like this one, hint, hint), websites, forums, chats, or any other place where other moms that work from home frequent.  Be sure to budget your time wisely though.  Spend 30 minutes a day talking to other moms about their businesses.  Even with all of my years of making money online and researching work from home job opportunities, I still learn something new almost every day.  Networking is key to keeping up with what works and what doesn't work.  This is even more true if your marketing plan includes online marketing.  What worked five years ago, isn't as effective in today's world.  Networking will help you keep up with those trends.



If you're looking for a direct selling opportunity or if you are looking for another way of working from home, networking can help you find something that will fit what you are looking for.  Find out what other women are doing.  How are they able to stay home?  How much do they bring in?  What do they do exactly?  How do they like it?  How much time does it take per day...per week?  How long did it take them to build their business?  What was the start up cost? What do they do to get business?  This blog is a great way to find out bare bones information about the numerous direct selling opportunities that are out there.  If you haven't checked out some of the reviews, I encourage you to do so.  I'd like to remind everyone that I do the reviews strictly from an impartial perspective.  I am in no way affiliated with any of the direct sales opportunities and receive no monetary compensation from any of the companies that I review.  If direct selling is an option for you, be sure to follow this blog so you don't miss future reviews.
 
If you are looking to start up your own business from home, networking can give you a feel for what needs are out there that are not being met.  You can then build a business to fit those needs.  Forums or message boards are a great place to do research for work from home business opportunities of any kind.



Networking may make you realize that working from home is not for you.  I still am amazed at the number of women who come to me asking for help in finding work they can do from home.  I constantly get the feeling that they think working from home means sitting by their pool in a lounge chair with a laptop in front of them. I don't think women realize the amount of time and effort that is actually involved in working a business from your home.  Even after eight years of working from home, I still quite often work 7 days a week and sometimes ten or fifteen hours a day.  I work harder at home than I ever did in my 9-5 career.

Homework assignment:

Ahh yes, the homework assignment.  First of all, be sure that you completed the homework assignments from steps 1 and 2 of becoming a mompreneur, then you can find five women who work from home either online or in "real life".  Introduce yourself and let them know of your desire to work from home.  Then ask them these questions:

• What do they do?
• How do they like it?
• How long did it take them to build their business?
• How much time do they spend per week on their business?

Be sure to keep your "contacts" in a place where you can refer to them later.  Take notes if you have to.  You may want to even consider filling out an index card for each contact with their contact information on the front and some notes about the person on the back.  Keep the index cards in an inexpensive recipe box or keep track of everything on your computer in a file.  The main thing is that you start getting yourself out there and start building a contact list.  Happy networking!

Working From Home Writing Articles

As some of you know, I have been a stay at home mom for over 8 years and still counting.  I did many different things to earn money from home over the years, some of which I have already shared on this blog and still others will be revealed in the future.  One of the most profitable things that I did was to build highly search engine optimized websites and became a publisher for Google Adsense.  I have personally built somewhere in the neighborhood of 100+ websites.  The websites were centered around highly profitable keywords which just means that I found out what subjects had a high number of searches on Google per month and payed well by advertisers on Google Adwords.  Let me see if I can simplify that a little bit more.  Owners of websites might want to advertise their sites to get more visitors to their websites.  One of the ways they would advertise is to buy advertisement through Google's Adwords program.  If you look in the upper right hand corner of this blog, you'll probably see two Google Ads.  Those are the ads that I'm speaking of, you've probably seen them a million times on the internet.  Every time someone clicks on those ads, the publisher (the website displaying the ads) gets paid.  Now, the amount per click varies depending on the demand for the advertising space and the number of publishers available to publish the ads.  It might be as little as one cent or maybe even as much as five or ten dollars, or perhaps more.

Now there's a lot more involved in making money from Google Adsense and I'll have to introduce that in many more blog posts.  The main reason that I'm bringing this up is to prove to you that I do have some experience in what I'm about to say.  Even if you don't know a thing about building websites or search engine optimization or keywords or Google Adsense, etc, you can make money by writing articles for the owners of websites who are trying to make money from Google, by selling products, or by other affiliate methods.

I can personally attest to the fact that there is a very high demand for writers of good quality articles or articles that are keyword rich (meaning written around a particular subject with the subject keyword sprinkled throughout the article).  Many webmasters (website owners), want to build sites but simply don't have the time or the desire to use their time to write articles.  They are willing to pay to have those articles written for them so that they can spend their time on other things.



The rate of pay per article will vary depending on the quality of the article, the number of words, and the webmaster himself.  Some, quite honestly are looking for quick, cheap articles, while others want higher quality, more in-depth articles.  On average, you might get paid somewhere between $5 and $25 per 500 word article.  How much you make depends on how fast and well you can write and how aggressive you are in finding webmasters to write for.  There is a high degree of flexibility, although you'll need to meet the webmaster's time requirements.  Start up costs are basically $0 and anyone with a moderate understanding of writing, typing, computers and the english language are more than qualified to do this kind of work.  Don't think that you must be a highly skilled author, that's not the case at all.  Writing articles online for a living does require some degree of self-discipline and I will be quite honest and say that this is not for everyone.  I only say this because writing article after article can become very mundane after a few days.  Honestly that's the most difficult part of writing articles, at least it was for me.  But, if you pace yourself and set daily writing goals, this is very doable for just about anyone.  The opportunity is out there, all you have to do is do something with it.

There are several different places you can go to find webmasters who want to pay to have articles written.  Some of the more reputable places are:

• iFreelance.com
• Elance.com
• Craigslist (not as secure as other methods)
• AssociatedContent.com

Many writers find the content for their articles simply by entering the keyword or phrase into a search engine, like Google, and locating articles on places like EzineArticles.com and rewriting them in their own words.  The more often that you write, the faster, and better you will become and thus, the more you will get paid.  You will need to make sure that your articles are not copied or plagiarized because many webmasters will check them against online content to make sure that you're not pulling a fast one on them.  If you do good work, you will make a good name for yourself and likely will get even more offers from other webmasters.  



Take a look at the videos of real people who have either supplemented or replaced their income by writing articles from home. 

Work From Home Opportunity: Meltology

Here's a very unique work from home opportunity that is creating quite a stir. The company is called Meltology which stands for Mineral, Energy, Luxury and Technology. They have two very unique product lines, self heating spa treatments and a terrific skin care line like no other on the market. The word is that Estee Lauder offered the owner of Meltology millions of dollars to buy the skin care product line before the company launched and the offer was declined. Meltology's super serum has the exact same active enzyme that is found in one of Estee Lauder's $1,300 per ounce products while Meltology delivers even more of that enzyme in a product that sells for only $179.

The spa products are single use, sanitary and very unique. The heating is caused by oxidation of minerals that is activated with tap water, believe it or not. The heat is quick, long lasting and constant and it allows the pores of the skin to open up so that the moisturizers can go deeply into the skin, making fine lines disappear right before your eyes. These products have been talked about on shows like The Dr's and Rachel Ray.

Here's what I like about the program:

• Only $14.98 to start and start up is immediate and can be done online
• No purchasing products, no inventory
• Three ways to earn income: direct sales, website sales, down line (but no requirement to build a downline)
• Flexibility
• Commissions paid directly to a debit card
• No inventory
• Website includes training materials, back office support, customer service support and more.
• Ability to sell to businesses like salons, spas, or chiropractors
• The company is green, packaging and single use products are biodegradable or recyclable and
• are coated with a special enzyme that allows the products to begin to decompose in the landfill in 3 weeks.  Products are backed by a 100% money back guarantee.
• Unique product line

Here's what I'm not crazy about:

• Website for $9.98/month (Website is good but I'm not a fan of a monthly fee)
• Can only do sales in the United States at this time

Products:

• Self-heating single use at-home spa treatments for face, hands, feet and body (hot stone treatment)
• Self-heating waxing kits for body and face
• Skin care line

Minimum Investment to get started: $14.98

What's Included?

• First month of website
• Set up fee for direct deposit onto a debit card

Compensations/Commission Structure:

• 50% commission on direct sales
• 35% commission on website sales
• 7% from downline (No requirement for downline) Downline is 6 deep and infinitely wide
• A distributor with a downline that would like to receive commissions from their downline must purchase $99 worth of products per month, either for their own use or for selling purposes.  This is not a requirement to do direct sales or to be a distributor.

If you're interested in hearing more about the work from home opportunity with Meltology, please contact Angie at www.getmeltologyhere.com. She would love to meet with anyone in the San Diego area too! You can contact her via email at: jelkus@aol.com or by phone at 619-890-8906.

Work From Home Opportunity: Wildtree

Looking for a direct selling company that is young and fresh? I mean literally fresh. Wildtree might be just what you are looking for. Offering all-natural, preservative free, delicious food choices for people who want to eat healthy without compromising taste. The only thing they'll be giving up is their high grocery bill and all that time spent slaving in the kitchen. This company is still in it's infancy and is a great opportunity for any stay at home mom looking to build a serious business or just to bring in a little extra cash each month.

Here's what I like about this program:

Only $99 gets you started and includes $270 worth of products
Offers products that are all-natural and preservative free
People with food sensitivities can enjoy the products
Offers convenience, great tasting foods at a good price
Ongoing support
Flexibility
Opportunity for repeat customers (i.e. consumable product)

Here's what I'm not crazy about:

I won't go so far as to say that I don't like anything particular about the program, however, I question how easy it may be to sell the products unless you do a tasting. I'd love for someone who has experience in selling Wildtree to comment about the ease of selling the products online. I can see, however, that once you would get the potential customers to a tasting, how easily it would be to sell. I just wonder about website/online sales for new customers.

I'm not crazy about the fact that you have to pay $8.95/month for a personal website.  

Products:

All-natural, preservative free foods



Minimum Investment to get started: $99

What's Included?

$270 worth of products:
Assortment of best-selling full-sized products
Assortment of host samples for tastings
Personal website for $8.95/month additional
Ongoing support
Corporate Newsletter
Catalogs
Brochures
Sales Receipts
Miscellaneous Business Materials

Compensations/Commission Structure:

20-40% commission on sales (based on activity level)
Additional commissions for coaching others



If you're interested in finding out more about the Wildtree business opportunity, you can contact Amy at www.amysolomon.mywildtree.com. You may also email her at asolomon55@comcast.net or give her a call at 720-280-5881.

Work From Home Opportunity: Rodan + Fields

If you're looking for a truly "ground floor" direct selling opportunity, Rodan + Fields might be just what you're looking for.  From the creators of the Proactiv products, Dr. Katie Rodan and Dr. Kathy Fields have created products to reverse skin damage caused by exposure to the sun.  I don't know about you, but my generation spent a lot of time sunbathing and in the tanning bed without any sunscreen at all.  Like me, a lot of people are now experiencing the consequences of that unprotected sun exposure. 

Here's what I like about this program:

• Rodan + Fields has a proven track record with the success of Proactiv products
• Ground floor opportunity
• Products will sell even in hard economic times
• Opportunity for immediate and residual income
• Website with sales tools included
• Ever-expanding customer base

Here's what I'm not crazy about:

A bit pricey to start at $395, however this is a good AND a bad thing depending on how you look at it.  Not everyone in the world will be willing to fork over that kind of cash to start, meaning only those who are ready to take this business seriously will get involved. 

Products:  Skin care developed by well known dermatologists Rodan & Fields.  All products are backed by a satisfaction guarantee.
            

• Reverse regimen
• Anti-Age regimen
• Un-blemish regimen
• Soothe regimen

Minimum Investment to get started:  $395

What's Included?

• Ongoing support
• Website complete with sales tools

Compensation/Commission Structure:

4 ways to earn with Rodan + Fields

• Retail profit
• Sales commissions
• Team Development Commissions
• Performance bonuses

If you're interested in finding out more information about joining the Rodan + Fields team and beginning your own work from home business, you can contact Melissa  either by visiting http://merickson.myrandf.biz  or by emailing her at stebbinsmelissa@yahoo.com.

Work From Home Opportunity Without Selling A Thing

If I had a nickel for every time a mom asked me how they can earn money from home without selling products, I'd be laying on a beach right now, sipping some tropical frozen beverage with lots of those cute little umbrellas in it.  My main mission in creating this blog is to help to answer that question for lots and lots of moms.  I know the desperation of the mom who realizes that her maternity leave is just about to end and she is suddenly faced with the reality of having to hand over her precious baby to someone else to care for.  I know, because I've been there.  I made a decision to stay home and to never look back.  I decided that I would do whatever it took to make that happen and if there was indeed any possible way for me to make money from home, I was going to find it.  The number of scams out there made it a lot more difficult to find those legitimate opportunities.  Out of frustration I began to look inward rather than to others for help making my work from home plan a reality.

You see, I realized that I have skills and experience that are marketable and I bet a lot of you out there are the same way.  I had worked for 15 years in the hospitality industry in sales, accounting, customer service, reservations and management.  In my search for finding work from home opportunities, I ran across a website that lots of aspiring stay at home moms still do not know about.  The website I'm speaking of is Elance.com. 
It's a wonderful tool you can use today to earn money from home with lots and lots of individuals and companies that need help now.  Here's how it works in a nutshell:  A company or an individual needs help with a project or even for a long term position and they sign up and create an account with Elance.  They post whatever jobs or positions that they have available on the site.  Individuals who have certain skill sets sign up with Elance and bid on those jobs and then they can be chosen by the original poster to complete the job that they posted. 

There are jobs out there for typists, appointment makers, virtual assistants, customer service representatives, writers, data entry, accountants, bookkeepers, and the list goes on and on and on.  All you have to do in order to be considered for these jobs is to create a profile and list your skills and experience.  You can then take skills tests to prove your abilities and thus making you even more an even more desirable candidate.  The more jobs that you complete successfully, the more desirable you are as well.

Sometimes companies will even invite you to bid on a project that they post based on your profile, so it's important to build as complete a profile as possible.  To get you started, you should check out this brief tutorial.