WAHM Biz Tips

So last Wednesday I was ultra excited to speak with Kelli Claypool of Diva Talk Radio…we talked all about ebooks, my client/friend Carlin Comm talked about his Desert Storm Diaries book I edited, I talked about some ebook tips…you know, the good stuff!! Did you miss it? No worries - you can listen to it now:

Next Wednesday, May 27th I will have the pleasure of talking to Kelli Claypool and Regina Smola at Diva Talk Radio!!

We’re going to talk about writing, business stuff…and of course everything ebooks!!!

Have any particular questions you want answered about ebooks? Then leave a comment here and I’ll make sure we talk about it!

Today, May 19th is the last day of 10 Day May Madness!!

What does this mean for you? It means you need to click on the link pronto and take a look at the cool products you can buy for $5!!!

Yes - $5 each!!!

These aren’t my products. These aren’t affiliate products of mine. These are just cool products offered up by fellow WAHMs for $5 - an insane deal!!!

I’ve been going crazy over there picking up some research materials, some help from a VA and more. There’s a lot to choose from!!!

And today is the last day!

It’s been awhile since I’ve done the Saturday WAHM link love post. The last few months have been an a doozy!! But it’s high time to send some link love to some fellow work-at-home peeps, or pass along links that may be of interest to all you WAH people. So here it is….

Over at Mommy Revenue there’s a cool post on how you can use those digital photo frames for your direct sales business. I gotta agree - seems like a great way to show your inventory. If you do trade shows or workshops and don’t want (or can’t) bring everything along with you, this visual tool is bound to create interest and really help you sell!!

The Mom Trap had a couple of posts this week that caught my eye. One was on a free digital scrapbooking kit. Weird to me because I hadn’t heard of digital scrapbooking…but, hey, should I really be surprised in this day of technology? Then, there’s a slow cooker recipe…and I’m a sucker for anything tasty in a crock pot. I love me my crock pot!!

Something tells me my munchkin wouldn’t be caught dead in one of these. But he’d still look pretty darn cute! If I had a girl, I’d probably have the sales page bookmarked!

I was talking to my friend Deanna the other day. She lives out in the boonies and she already knows that she will be homeschooling her little munchkin in a couple of years when he becomes school-age. We were talking about how there are so many resources out there now to help moms who want to homeschool. Among the many are: The Homeschool Lounge, The Homeschool Mom, Homeschooling Resource, Home Education Magazine, Homeschooling Adventures, and more! What’s your favorite homeschooling site?

Buffy Close is a new WAHM. In fact, she just started working at home this month and already has three orders for her super-duper looking diaper bags. Heck, I’m hoping I’ll have need of one in the coming year…or that she branches out with other bag designs!!

What made you want to be a WAHM?
Mornings. When I was working full time I would have to be up before 5 am in order to get myself and my kids ready to go. I was at work from 6am-6pm and I was exhausted. There was never enough sleep and if my kids had a bad night, it meant going to work on sometimes as little as 2 hours of sleep. I loved the idea of being to set my own hours. In my area the cost of childcare is high. With three kids it would cost more than what I was making to work full time. Financially it just didn’t make sense.

What do you do?

I design and sew diaper bags. I don’t have online ordering yet, but my information can be found on my blog - www.buffybopeep.blogspot.com. I also have a Facebook group under Buffy Bo Peep.

While my focus right now is on diaper bags, I have several other designs in the works for purses, backpacks and other baby gear.

What struggles have you encountered  make other plans for childcare.as a WAHM?

At the moment I do not use childcare. That may change in the summer, depending on how business goes. My kids are four, two and 10 months. The oldest two are pretty good at playing while I work and the baby is content to play in her bouncer or on the floor. I generally only work for an hour or two at a shot. My workspace is in our dining room, which has a sliding door out to the back yard. I can send the oldest kids outside to play and keep an eye on them while I work. During nap times I do my research and networking. Some days it just doesn’t work and I have to set work aside. That’s what I love about my job. I can be totally flexible and I don’t feel like I have to put my family aside in order to do my work. If I fall behind and have a deadline coming up, I just wait until the kids are in bed to finish my work. There are some late nights, but I knew that would be part of the package.

Do you have a support network in place?

My husband has been very supportive! He has never complained about housework falling behind and he understand my frequent fabric store trips. I have a part time job at a coffee shop in the evenings and he is home then to take care of the kids and put them to bed. My friends are the ones who convinced me to do this and they have been wonderful, giving me lots of word-of- mouth advertising! My parents are an hour away, but occasionally my mom comes in to give us a date night. We also have family members living a few blocks away that will look after the kids for a couple hours if I need a break.

What has been your best experience as a WAHM so far?

At this point it would be having the chance to use my creative side in a business setting. I need to be creative. When I stop being creative I get restless and cranky.

Why / How did you pick your particular niche?

I didn’t start sewing seriously until about a year ago but I’ve known how since the eighth grade.

When I was expecting my third child, I had a hard time finding diaper bags that suited my needs. I can’t breastfeed, so I needed something that would carry diapers and supplies for three kids, plus bottles and sippy cups. Everything I found was designed for one baby. Often the puoches that were meant to hold bottles would be too big and I ended up with formula leaking all over the contents of my bag. I finally decided to make my own bag, customizing it to my needs. When a friend complained to me one day that she couldn’t find a diaper bag that would hold everything for her three kids, I offered to make her one as well. That was where it all started. I recieved a few more requests, and decided at that point to try my own business.

Describe your ideal customer:

I have two ideals. First, the customer who knows exactly what they want, and doesn’t ask me to change my design halfway through the process. When I have to do that, it costs me time and money. Second, the customer who chooses their fabrics, but let’s me go crazy with the design. I think it is a great compliment!

How do you choose your fabrics?

I go to the fabric store a couple times a week to look at new prints and get ideas. I also spend a lot of time researching current and future fabric trends. I study fashion and pay attention to what my customer base likes. I prefer to use 100% cotton, for ease of care. I’m very big on making my bags as “easy” as possible. Nothing complicated. The fact that I can throw my bag in the wash with everything else is great! Raising kids is hard enough - why make it harder with gear that is complicated?

How long does it take to complete a bag?

Right now about 2 days. I use one day to wash, iron and cut fabric. The second day I sew it together. I have no idea how many actual hours it takes, since I work around kids, meals and naps.

What are your goals for your business in the near?

My goal for the month of May was to sell 5-6 bags. In the first week I recieved three requests, so I think I’m doing pretty good. In the next few months I want to expand my designs and offer other baby goods. The hard part with that is my own goal of being original. If I have an idea, I spend a lot of time searching for it on the web to make sure no one else had that idea already. I’m not expecting this to be a big money maker right now, but I would love to be able to quit my part time job and do this full time instead. I’m working on setting up online ordering with Etsy.com. I’m also thinking about approaching a few boutiques here. We’ll see - depends on how much I can sew! There are only so many hours in the day. My “big dream” is to have a full time nanny while I work from home. That way I can focus on my business but have the flexability to be with my kids when I want to as well.

If I had to give another WAHM advice, I would say “It’ll get there.” A fully functioning home business does not happen overnight and there is a lot of work involved. I often feel like all I do right now is work, but I love my work. I also love my kids, and being able to combine the two is wonderful.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away?

Most of us who work from home work solo. Whether we are writers, graphic designers, jewelry makers…most of us are solo entrepreneurs and while that is an exciting, liberating thing, it also means that when reality hits, we are going it alone. And if for some reason, a disaster hits, we may not be prepared.

The last few months have been tough. I had a rough pregnancy with horrible morning sickness. Nothing like 24/7 nausea to reduce you to a motivation-less wimp. I was able to muddle through. Working on current writing projects for clients and not missing a single deadline! But I didn’t seek out any additional work. And I dropped my marketing efforts like a hot potato. I had no energy for it, or for any work that may come as a result of said efforts.

In my worst case scenario…I know a couple of writers who I could turn to ask scream, “HELP!” and hope that their own plates were not full. But thankfully, it never got to that point.

But if you are a solo work-at-home mom, you need to think about the possibility of a time when you are too sick to handle projects. Too sick to make that deadline. Too ill to get those shipments out the door. Do you have back-up? Do you have someone who can pick up slack? Do you have a trusted ally to send out word to clients and colleagues that you are incapacitated?

If you don’t have a plan, you need one. Seriously. Because things can go from manageable to really, really bad in a matter of a day. I know that all too well.

My pregnancy hit a bumpy road and the complications put me on strict bedrest at 14 weeks. Great for a writer, right? Lay around in bed all day and work on my laptop..no problem. And yes, on the surface, that’s true. I was ready to work from bed for the next 20 weeks (yes, 20 weeks) and crank out some juicy writing goodness. But things took a further turn for the worse two weeks in.

I lost my baby. And within hours of finding out, it got worse. Due to my particular pregnancy complication, when they were removing my baby, I started hemorraging…badly. The next thing I know, I was being ambulanced to the hospital. And then I was told that if the bleeding couldn’t be stopped, they would remove my uterus.

I was in the hospital for two days. But it could have been much, much worse. Thanks to a neato procedure and a blood transfusion, I was able to go home…YAY for home!!

I can’t say I was thinking too much about business when I was in the hospital. I was in shock. I was numb. I was grieving for yet another lost baby. But I also didn’t have any deadlines looming over my head. I didn’t have any loose ends that were waiting for me to tie up. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been really on top of things, knowing that something could happen to land me in the hospital at any point. But I usually don’t think that way. I usually flirt with deadlines right to the end…always beating them, but not by much.

You may be healthy as a horse. Heck, it may not even be you who falls ill or needs help…but you could end up being a loved one’s caretaker. So it’s time to put a plan in place. Ask yourself:

- Who can I ask to help me out in case of emergency?

- Do I have all my contact information for clients and colleagues in one easy to access location?

- Who can help finish products/services that are incomplete?

- Who can help send out/ship products to clients on my behalf?

- What is my policy regarding incomplete projects when I am unable to make a deadline or ship out when incapacitated? (discount, refund, etc.?)

You gotta ask yourself the questions and determine the answers BEFORE something happens and completely blindsides you. You don’t want to be picking up the pieces of your business and trying to make amends with clients AFTER the fact.

As you can see from the buttons on the right - there’s a WAHM-Articles Featured Author one that you can click on to get to my page of articles. I’m proud to have contributed, and plan on contributing more!

It’s no newsflash when I say that being a work at home mom is tough. Taking more time, energy and money (yes, money) than expected. Denise over at WAHM-Articles knows this and has created a social networking community to help moms like you and me learn more about more effective and time-efficient marketing for our home businesses through article marketing.

What is article marketing? It’s a strategy of writing articles to promote your products and services…and getting others to publish those articles with your byline and links to your websites. Yep, FREE marketing. All it takes is some time and energy to whip those lil’ articles up! (For those of you who just can’t stand the idea of writing, or don’t have the time, there are plenty of ghostwriters out there you can find - at a reasonable rate - to crank those articles out for you. Sure, it nixes the “free” prospect, but it’s still sound, effective marketing!)

So, a little more about the WAHM-Articles forum….you can learn to:

- write articles to generate traffic to your site/blog

- how to use articles to get more subscribers to your email/newsletters

- how to get those people reading your articles to come visit your site

- how to convert those site visitors into buyers!

Get this - joining the forum is FREE!!! And who doesn’t like free? You can also opt for the Platinum membership that provides you access to training, reviews, discounts and other valuable resources. I’m a member and I really get a lot out of posting and reading in the forum. And I’d love to see you there!!! Just come on by and check it out!

Visit the WAHM-Articles Forum today!

Benefits of an Open Door Policy in Your Home

Do you have an open door policy? Meaning, can your daughter and her friends hang out at your house whenever they want? I just recently watched an episode of Wife Swap. Both ladies on the show had swapped places with each other and both families had teenage girls. One of the moms allowed her daughter(s) to have company anytime including male friends without supervision, while the other never allowed her daughters to have friends over.
The show was a bit sad, with both of the situations being a bit extreme. One set of girls was completely out of control while  the other set was so sheltered and honestly quite pitiful as they were treated so negatively by their parents. Neither set really had a healthy situation in my opinion, which made me think there had to be a happy medium.
It is important that we allow our daughters to have some freedom, especially our teens. But we also have to give restrictions too. There has to be a sense of trust established in order for proper restrictions and balance to be maintained.  A good practice is an open door policy that includes allowing friends to visit when there is adult supervision. You will be surprised how much you can learn from and about your daughter as you witness her interacting with her friends.
Not only will this help you in your relationship with your daughter, your knowledge of her friends and the way that she interacts with them, but it will also help her in her ability to face temptation and say no to it.  She will realize the support that she has in you, as you faithfully back her up and encourage her, not to mention are open to her ideas, and the friendships that she seeks to maintain become a part of your whole family, not just her life but all of your lives.
The friends that she has come over will begin to see the love that you have for your daughter and will begin to respect you, your rules, and your morals and viewpoints.  They will then be more likely to refrain from pressuring your daughter with temptations that they know you would be against.  They would have a greater sense of responsibility to you as they too have a relationship with you.
Then, there is much to be said about how much better you?ll know her friends and how much they will respect you for having them around, opening up your doors, your home and your life to them. It can really do wonders for not only your relationship with your daughter(s) but also your relationship with her friends and her relationship with them as well.

Alyssa Avant is a Christian, speaker, blogger and podcaster.  She creates guides to help moms encourage their daughters and help to “turn the hearts of girls towards God”.  Help your daughter to “say no” with her Seven Easy Tips Encouraging Your Daughter to Say No Guide.

The following is a guest post from Alyssa Avant. Alyssa Avant is a Christian speaker, writer and blogger.  She works from home while raising her three children.  Find out more about Alyssa and all that she does at http://alyssaavant.com

As a work at home mom, it is very easy to get overwhelmed. You look around and try to decide do I fix lunch, fold clothes or tackle email. There is just so much a person can do right?

Running a business from home can be a challenging task to say the least. Unless you have a part of your home that is totally dedicated to your business you most likely share space with some other area of your home whether it be your kitchen, bedroom, family room or kid’s playroom it is most likely serving double duty to be your “work space” as well.

So, how do you maintain control when your area and your place of work is not a private space just for you and your business? One of the ways I have found to get my business under control is to have a business binder. This binder, though just a simple $1 item from the local department store I have transformed into my control center for my office and business.

The binder holds the tools I need to help me maintain my business with some sense of sanity. It contains lists of my goals for the month and week as well as a task list of things I need to accomplish both weekly, monthly and yearly in my business. It also contains a print out of my policies and procedures. So, if an issue arises with my business I can easily flip to this page and remind myself what my policy is on that particular issue.

This binder helps me to feel secure that I will be able to remember everything that I need to do and keep my business on the right track. Though it did take some time to develop and some time to get used to once I did, I now do not know how I ever ran a business without it.

Plus, if you’re like me and tend to float around your home at times with your laptop trying to find a quiet and comfortable place to work, then you’ll enjoy the flexibility and ease of picking up your binder and taking it with you.

Incorporating this easy to create yet useful tool into your business can give you a little more sanity and security, so why not create yours today?

I’ve got a couple 125×125 spaces on the right available for April and you can have one - FREE!!!

Tweet me or leave a comment here. And two peeps with work-at-home related sites and 125×125 buttons (still or animated) will get their buttons posted for the month of April!