Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
If it’s one thing moms can do it is stick together. Making life run smoothly with kids, home and career can be a tall order. Communicating with other moms helps to ease the stress. If you are looking for a business venture, why not make money helping moms just like yourself?
What will you offer to these moms? Well, your product is as close as your memory. Your expertise is the product you can market to moms everywhere. There are situations that you have encountered and overcome as a mom that other mothers are facing too. They could benefit from what you know to make their life a bit easier.
Packaging your Product – EBooks
Put your advice down on paper. You probably have a lot of good advice to offer but it won’t sound like much unless you can get it out of your brain and into a legible format. If you have a talent for writing this will be less of a challenge for you. Take a writing course to bone up on the finer points of writing outlines and organizing your thoughts on paper.
Your format for these organized thoughts is an eBook. Everyone has heard of them but might not know exactly what they are. An eBook is essentially a book in digital form. You can create and publish them yourself. For the work that you put into the project, you are greatly rewarded with pure profit.
The first consideration is the length of your eBook. A typical eBook can have as few as 70 pages or as many as 150. People will pay more for longer eBooks.
EBooks are popular media because they can be downloaded or printed in an instant. As soon as the payment is processed, the customer gains access to the eBook. No storage space other than what is on your computer or flash drive is needed to house the eBooks you buy.
Selling your EBooks
Consider your market – other moms. Let’s say that the subject of your eBook is getting a toddler through the terrible twos and threes. Fill your eBooks with information that moms want to know:
• Tips for bedtime
• Disciplinary tips
• Going out in public
• Dealing with mom stress
• Testimonials
• True life examples
All of these ideas can be used to flesh out your eBook. These same bullet points can be selling points for your eBook. When creating the eBook website page, use snippets from stories in the book, testimonials from others who have read the book and a partial list of chapters in the eBook as advertising on the page.
Condense chapters into enticing articles that you submit to article directories. Don’t give away too much because you want moms to buy your eBooks. Supply a link to your website in the resource box.
As a mom you can join online forums to share your helpful advice with other moms. Use a link to your eBook page in your signature line for easy access. As you develop a following on these forums, other members will visit your site and see your eBooks.
EBooks can be used to share information that you have learned as a mom with other moms. They are easy to create and with a marketing strategy, can bring large profit to your business.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
The goal of any business is to make money. To that end, many businesses should be focusing on a multi-billion dollar market: moms. Marketing to moms is the wave of the future…and the wave of now!
Why are moms so important?
Moms are enterprising. According to BSM Media, Inc., the amount of money spent by moms is already over the trillion dollar mark. That’s more than the budget of some third world countries!
Also according to BSM Media, Inc., almost ninety percent of moms consider themselves the financial head of the home. The husband may be the one in many cases that brings home most or all of the money, but moms are usually the ones that make the ‘how-to-spend-the-money’ decisions. Moms shop for everything that is related to the household: clothes for the kids, appliances, electronics, outdoor furniture, accessories and home improvement items.
The majority of husbands who shop for these items will consult their wives before buying them. Why do they do this? It is because the wives tend to do most of the research into the products to find the best one on the market for them. Moms influence as much as eighty-five percent of the purchases for their homes. That’s a huge number of moms! Over seventy million!
Take a moment and think about all of the tasks that moms handle in a day. The tasks can include housework, driving kids to and from school and activities, cooking meals and managing finances. They need to keep all of these things straight…and to that they usually employ a wide variety of technology. It is quite common these days to see a mom sitting at a park, watching her kids playing while browsing/working on an iPad, iPhone, or other such mobile device.
Moms are typically quite savvy on the internet. For many years, the trend has been for moms, and women about to become moms, to come out of the ‘9-5’ workplace and come home to start their own business so they can be home with their children. To that end, moms have developed a network of blogs, websites and forums designed to teach moms everthing from designing websites, starting businesses online, marketing to other moms, all while managing their homes. With all of this additional knowledge, moms’ buying power has increased exponentially.
Marketing Mistake?
Traditionally, the only products marketed towards women were household and cooking products. This goes back to the old thought that a woman’s place was in the home. Many companies are now seeing what a huge detriment that approach has been to them.
Women and moms have made a huge imprint in what was traditionally a man’s world. Women are not limited to office jobs. They are CEOs and CFOs. Women don’t just ‘surf the internet’, they are becoming entrepreneurs with increasing influence over internet marketing. These days, having moms shun your product because you are not marketing to them means that they are spreading the word via the internet and in their own communities.
The Future
Moms are influenced by other moms. Several generations of moms are coming together to influence spending habits of major corporations. In the future, you can expect this trend to continue. As moms become more ‘connected’ in the world, their influence over spending will increase [as their circles of influce do].
Gain the support of savvy moms with your products/services and your business will reap the benefits.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish
Getting started working from home may involve a lot of preparation or very little, depending on what you already have and how far you’ve already gone with your work at home plans. The following is a basic checklist to help you get started.
Computer
Of course, you’ll need a computer. But, you knew that, right? Nonetheless, it’s not necessarily enough just to have any old computer. For working from home, you will need a computer that can be your daily work horse – it needs to be up to date, have plenty of memory, and functional USB ports. If you know others who work from home, ask them what computer they use, and why. Also, ask them if they would choose a different computer if they had to do it over again.
Laptop or Desktop?
While you are considering what computer will best serve your purposes, you will probably need to decide between a laptop and a desktop. Most sources recommend both – using your desktop for daily tasks (desktops usually have more memory) and your laptop for certain projects and for back-up.
The ideal situation is a desktop and router, and a laptop with a wireless card. The wireless card plugs into your laptop’s USB port, picking up a signal from the router and allowing you to connect to the internet using your laptop. Then, you can do the bulk of your work on the desktop and grab the laptop when you need to finish something up or work on a project somewhere else in the house.
Broadband Internet Connection
It’s pretty much impossible to work from home effectively without a broadband or high-speed internet connection. Dial-up takes far too long and will greatly inhibit your business capabilities. So sign up with the internet service provider (ISP) of your choice and get set up for high speed internet.
Family and Childcare
Many people choose to work from home in order to be near their children. However, childcare is necessary during your work hours. This can be a dilemma – making enough money to pay for childcare right off the bat is challenging. Try relatives first – grandparents, aunts and so forth may be willing to watch your children for a few hours a week each, and for free.
Then you can check into mother’s helpers; these are childcare providers who come into your home and take care of your children while you are there. Mother’s helpers are much less expensive than conventional babysitters, because you are on the premises and the helper is using your home.
Babysitters who will watch your child in their home are more expensive. If your children are in school, you can arrange your work hours around their school hours.
Workspace
While this goes on your checklist, it’s highly individualized. Some people are happy with a workspace in the corner of their kitchen; others prefer an entire room dedicated to being the home office. The important thing is to have some kind of area set aside for you to work in. This helps you get in ‘work mode’ more quickly since you will associate your surroundings with working, and it also sends a signal to other family members that you are working when you are in that area.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
10 Steps to Becoming a Self-Employed Parent (Or What to Expect When You Are Expecting to Work from Home)
Start slow. Offer your services for free to family and friends- just in the beginning. This will help you build up a client base, as well as give you a chance to get the hang of things without the added pressure of being perfect. Send out an email to friends and family telling them of the service that you are offering, and tell them that you are willing to waive your fees just so you can gain a bit of necessary experience. In exchange, you may ask for them to support you in another way such as contributing to an email campaign, or watching your kids for a few hours a month. If you have never done anything like this before, give yourself room to grow, and don’t be so hard on yourself if you mess up. You will learn from the mistakes that you make, and this will make you a better entrepreneur.
Self-employed Parent Enthusiast Ally Loprete is the Founder of OurMilkMoney.com, a nationwide online business directory of self-employed parents, and the host of This Little Parent Stayed Home, a live weekly radio show which is a part of the Her Insight Group on Toginet.com. Ally is on a mission to help others deal with the sometimes overwhelming prospect of leaving a full time job to start a new business, while running a full time household and raising kids. She is resolute about creating a haven in which parents across the nation will continue to thrive and obtain the support they need in their personal journeys.
10 Steps to Becoming a Self-Employed Parent (Or What to Expect When You Are Expecting to Work from Home)
This is a great way to minimize those start-up costs that you were worried about. It’s also a great way to network, and get testimonials, not to mention gain experience in your chosen field.
Make up the Difference with Barter
Yep, the old age method of bartering is making a comeback…and its hot! For families that are looking for an alternative lifestyle to what they have now, leaving a corporate salary behind may seem like an impossible thing to recover, but its not. After you have taken a look at your monthly expenses, made all the obvious cuts in over spending and subtracted your lost salary as well as the cost of daycare, if you can aim for a $200-$500 deficit, its a great spot to be in.
Making up the difference in that financial gap is completely attainable through swap and trade. Bartering, or the exchange of goods and services without money, has become a more common solution as family budgets tighten. In an economic turn down, more people are open to the idea and even more are becoming advanced in the art of bartering. Swap piano lessons for a gym membership, Babysitting for help moving, tutoring for hemming. You don’t have to run your own business to have something valuable to offer, and because we are all capable of something, there is no limit to how much of ourselves we can offer, making us worth more than what we have in our bank accounts, with no limit.
Self -employed Parent Enthusiast Ally Loprete is the Founder of OurMilkMoney.com, a nationwide online business directory of self-employed parents, and the host of This Little Parent Stayed Home, a live weekly radio show, which is part of the Her Insight Group on Toginet.com. Ally is on a mission to help other’s deal with the sometimes overwhelming prospect of leaving a full time job to start a new business, while running a full time household and raising kids. She is resolute about creating a haven in which parents across the nation will continue to thrive and obtain the support they need in their personal journeys.
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