• Home Business for Mums

    When I started my first home business, my daughter was 1 year old in daycare and my son was 10 years old and at school. Now they are 11 and 20, and I have loved being home for them for ten years. Working from home has presented challenges though, particularly during school vacations. My daughter can be quite a distraction, wanting mum to come and play, or take her to a movie, or just chat to her. The teenage years with my son gave rise to a lot of yelling over loud music and noisy boys who seemed blissfully unaware that the phone was ringing – and I was working.

    That first business has had its share of ups and downs, with the last two years being particularly ‘down’. Luckily, I had already started what I consider the ideal home business for mums. Affiliate marketing was something I had heard of, but didn’t know much about. I loved two things about the idea though. The first is that this was something I could do without spending a lot of money, which I did not have at the time. The second was that it was something I could put work into at any time of the day or night. My original business is run during ‘normal’ business hours, although it is deadline driven and there are times when my husband and I work into the night. Affiliate marketing, however, can be done whenever I get time on the computer. I can set up a website at 11pm or 11am, write articles at 2 am, and no-one is any the wiser. Once my youngest is in bed, I can hit the keyboard and get back to work. It also means that I can take an afternoon off to go and watch her play sport, and still catch up later – something I can’t do with my ‘day job’.

    Another great feature of affiliate marketing is that it keeps working for you, 24 hours a day. The doors don’t shut at 5pm, only to re-open at 9am the next day. My affiliate sites are working for me 24 hours a day, around the world! I love that idea – I run a global business from my office next to my kitchen at home!

    I work on my affiliate marketing businesses when it suits me – which happens to be at night because I’m a bit of an owl. My husband is the opposite, so he heads off to bed and I get more work done between the hours of 10 and 12 at night than I do all afternoon. He gets up earlier than me, and catches up on his side by the time I get back from the school run. It works for us – and yes, we occasionally do get to go bed at the same time!

    Our affiliate business is no longer a fledgling business, and is earning us a nice little additional income that is growing steadily. Our main business is still going, but a not-so-good month is no longer the disaster it used to be. My son is taking an interest in that business too, so on the days he’s not at college, he helps out there. He’s also working on a business plan for an internet marketing business of his own, which he sees as a way to start earning extra income without taking too much time away from his studies. Even my daughter, at 10, is interested in starting her own affiliate marketing site – she’s obviously tired of hearing the litany ‘we’re just waiting for some money to come in, then you can have it’!

    I digress! I believe that affiliate marketing is the ideal home business for mums because it gives you far more flexibility than any other home business I can think of – and I’ve tried a few. Because so much of it is done online, you are not tied to the hours of an offline business. Much of what you do can be automated, so your customers are attended to without you having to be there in person to do so. Although you do need to focus and concentrate and yes – work hard, you can handle interruptions and help your kids out – and pay attention and spend time with them – knowing that you can go back to your computer and carry on when it suits the whole family. The amount of work you put in is up to you, and initially, while you are learning, you will need to put in the hours. Once your affiliate marketing home business is up and running though, you will find it a wonderfully flexible business to run from home.

    If you are considering starting an affiliate marketing home business, I would recommend that you join Wealthy Affiliate. Until I joined up and went through their training, I was really lost. Their tools and resources alone are worth their weight in gold, as is their fabulous community of helpful, genuine people who are going through or have been through the same struggles you are. Many of the members are parents too – so they understand your frustrations and concerns.  I love being a work from home mum – and I’d recommend it to any parent looking for more flexibility, independence and time with their kids!


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