There are lots of reasons why you might want to run a business from your own home, particularly if you are a stay-at-home mother or are finding it difficult to get a job in the current economy. In fact, home-based businesses can be a really good way of earning money, and there are a lot of home business ideas that you can find online. However, I want to talk to you about some online business ideas that work particularly well for women and involve very little to no start-up costs.
Idea 1: Internet marketing
Also known as affiliate marketing, internet marketing is basically a way to make profit by recommending products. It is an approach that a lot of people use, and you have probably seen it in passing, but never really paid attention.
In this form of marketing, you are advertising a product that someone else sells. If someone buys that product through your link, then you get a proportion of the sale. This can add up fast, particularly if the product you are advertising is expensive to start off with, or if you are referring a lot of people.
An example of this is the Amazon banners you see on sites, advertising various products. Clicking on one of these takes you to Amazon’s site, where you can browse whatever you like. If you buy anything from Amazon within a set period of time, the person whose site you got the link from gets a proportion of what you spent.
The basic concept of internet marketing is the development of a website where you provide information and promote products. For example, you might set up a site where you talk about books, and recommend one new book each week. Alternatively, you might build your entire site around promoting a single product.
Internet marketing works as a way of making money online, but it does take a while to get set up, and it might seem slow to start off with. Being successful at internet marketing means posting content regularly and making sure this content actually helps the readers of your site in some way.
Idea 2: Advertising
Advertising is another good way to make money online. Like internet marketing, this approach requires you to build and maintain a website, but there are some strong differences.
When you use advertising to make money off a website, you are normally getting paid a small amount when people click on the ad, but in some cases you might be getting money from having the ad up there. Whatever the case, to make money off advertising successfully, you need to have some traffic to your site.
When monetizing your site with advertising, you do not need to run promotions or promote specific products in the content of your site. Advertising can be done in the header or side bar of your site, leaving your to write content any way you see fit.
One approach that is often used is to develop an internet marketing website and then use both forms of advertising on it. This can work well, because it provides two sources of income from the website.
Blogs
Blogging has been developing in popularity, and many people have turned to this as a way of sharing with an audience or simply expressing their perspectives.
Personally, I find blogging very relaxing, and gives me a way to express my thoughts to a wider audience which is very good when I just need to talk for the sake of talking.
Have you ever thought of using this as a way of making money?
Regular bloggers often find that they have considerable traffic, which can then be turned into profit by some advertising. In reality, you can also use the internet marketing approach on blog posts if you feel like it. However, you want to be careful, because if the main focus of your blog becomes making money, you may lose some of your traffic.
Word to the wise: Check the terms and conditions of the site you use for blogging carefully. Many don’t permit advertising and will remove your site if you try it. Thankfully, there are some free websites out there that let you make money off blogs without having to be concerned about this.
Idea 3: Freelancing
When it comes to freelancing, I’ll admit to being a little biased. I make more than 90% of my income from freelancing. Freelancing basically refers to selling your skills, and in my case, I am a freelance writer, which means that I spend around five hours every day writing and another hour or two managing clients.
Freelancing is a bit different than the other two approaches I mentioned, because you have to interact with clients and actually seek out work. This can sometimes be a pain, particularly in quiet months or when you get a customer who is just plain annoying.
What I like about freelancing is that on average it is faster to get up and running.
In my case, I went from earning no money, to earning around $100 a week in less than a month from freelancing. Within a few months I was earning enough to pay for all of my bills through freelancing. After two years of freelancing I have a large enough database of customers that I don’t even advertise all the time, because I get more than enough work as it is.
Realistically, you can probably earn more money from advertising and internet marketing than you can from freelancing, but it certainly takes time to get to that point. In my case, I simply didn’t have the time as I needed some form of income immediately.
Choosing the best home business ideas
There is no single best way to make money at home, and these ideas are just three common ways to make money online. The advantage of these approaches is that the start-up costs are minimal, and they are flexible. This means that you can balance how long you spend on working with what else you need to do in your life.
This also means that you can choose ideas that suit your own interests, such as doing an internet marketing site where you promote the best new fashions or a blog where you document your journey through a cookbook. Whatever your passion, there are ways to make money from it online, it’s just a matter of research and patience.
One of the best things about using the internet to make money from home is that there is so much information available. If you are interested in learning more about the steps involved in making a profitable business online, have a look at the post How to Make a Profitable Business Online for Beginners.
Nathaniell
I want to sign up for “One More Cup of Coffee”, but I don’t want to sign up with Wealthy Affiliate. How can I do that?
You can sign up for my free email course, but I do not have any paid subscriptions or info products to buy. It will give you an overview of how internet marketing works, but it will only get you so far. If you really want to start your business, Wealthy Affiliate is the way to go. It’s how I learned to build my first website, so it’s where I recommend newbies get started.
Was there a specific reason you didn’t want to sign up for WA?