Healthy Work at Home Tips For Homeschooling Families

Ahhh…the trials and tribulations of the internet. One year ago I began with just this blog. It was simple and I spent a lot of time posting here. Over that year, my internet empire has developed into 4 blogs, 4 websites and one stand-along lead capture page with about 6 more waiting in my mind to be born. I post on a few different forums related to working at home and network marketing, plus I offer free mentoring and coaching services using the Mentoring For Free program.

This blog began as a conversation about balance and has morphed somewhat into a lot of specific information regarding our home business industry. I feel a strong desire to get back to the balance issue. As the supposed “expert” I have let myself get way out of balance due to the time I devote to working. The funny thing is that I LOVE what I’m doing,  so it doesn’t feel out of balance until I step back realize what I’m not doing.

So here’s my list:

1. I’ve only read 2 non-business related books in a year

2. I think about exercise way more than I actually do it

3. My daughter is watching too much TV (mom is on the phone)

4. I forget about breakfast and lunch because I get involved in something and then eat an energy bar and a glass of water

5. I stay up until midnight with my eyes glazing over from too much computer time

6. I find it hard to sleep because so many new and exciting ideas are generating in my brain

7. Exercise…forget…wrote it again because it is so important.

So now that I’ve confessed to you I will let you know how I do in the coming weeks, getting  back in balance. A part of business is now coaching others and it would be hypocritical of me to be talking to my mentorees about balance, organization, etc… and not be taking my own advice. If you’d like to take a look at the Free Ebook I’m using to help people find success, click here–put in your info–and then download the 10 Steps to Success Book. The link is highlighted in green.

Beyond that—look at your own work/life/homeschool balance. Let me know how you’re doing!!

Hi Everyone,

In all my years working at home, I have never seen something like this. I think you will agree. No matter what type of home business you have I believe you can benefit from what just landed in my lap. For myself, I do a lot of my shopping online because I live in a very rural area. We often purchase bulk “green” toilet paper and large quantities of breakfast cereal at a discount through online stores. This company that I’m about to tell you about gives you a rebate for all your online purchases. They have over 1000 stores, many of which you probably shop at regularly. A portion of their profits goes to helping a child in need.

This appears to be a truly Win-Win scenario. There is no charge to join. You purchase only things that you normally would purchase, only you do it through your Powermall web page. You receive money back and you help a needy child. After spending over an hour scrutinizing their website, I can honestly say that I could not find a single reason not to join.

If you are investigating different home business options, the magazine entitled Success From Home, may be of interest to you. Every month this independent publication showcases a work at home company.  Most of the issue that month is devoted to product information and business information.  They usually include interviews with people just like you who are experiencing success and enjoyment with that company. You can purchase Success From Home Magazine at Barnes & Noble Bookstores and at Borders Bookstores.  I have written about the upcoming June issue in one of my other blogs. You can read it by clicking here.

People generally think of network marketing as people selling products to other people. There is also a component related to recruiting other people into your network or team. The focus in usually on making money and creating residual income in order to improve your lifestyle, have more time and freedom and also to acquire and enjoy luxuries that are often out of reach for most people. I see the potential of network marketing as being bigger than all that. I see it as having the potential to be a POWERFUL force, not only in the world of commerce, but in the world giving and altruism.

You first need to understand the basic concept behind network marketing before you can understand the amount of POWER that I am talking about. The theory (and reality) of network marketing is that a very large number of people each do a small thing. If the goal is to sell a product, then you create a NETWORK of of people who all use the product and like it enough to tell other people. Those people also then use and purchase the product and tell even more people. If the goal is to recruit people to sell a product or an idea, it works the same way. You recruit a few people who also recruit a few people, who then also recruit just a few people. If you know anything about math you see how this group can grow exponentially. Even if every single person only recruited two people, based an Metcalf’s law, at the end of 6 months there would be over 500 people in that network.

The beauty in this and the POWER is that no one person needs to be superman or superwoman and sell large quantities of products or recruit large numbers of people for it to grow. Instead, people need to do a little bit, consistently and model this for those they sell to or recruit. They need to train their downline to duplicate what they have done (ie: sell to 5 people, or recruit 3 people). Their downline, in turn needs to train all their people to do the same. This is how successful network marketing teams and business operate.

So, you may be asking, how does this apply to helping the planet? The answer is that the methods used for building a commercial network marketing business can be partnered with a charitable or environmental cause and both goals can be addressed simultaneously. As a selling/marketing network grows, the amount of focus, time and money dedicated to the charitable cause grows as well. People can be recruited into the network with a clear focus that they can committ a portion of the money they earn to the “cause” that they group has taken on, and in doing so they increase their own wealth along with the wellbeing of others, or the environment, etc…

The details of how this actually looks and operates are more complex than room allows in this article. There are corporations that are already doing this. It is called “Cause Related Marketing”. In a network marketing scenerio, it would be individuals, each joining a network marketing company with a committment that a percentage of their PERSONAL profits would go to the Team’s charity,(or a charity of their choice). The vision is that people would join a specific network marketing Team because they liked the product AND they wanted to be a part of growing support for that specific Team’s charity. That Team would focus their marketing efforts on recruiting people who wanted to sell their product AND promote the cause.

My partner and I are presently structuring our network marketing business to operate in this way. We are involved in two network marketing companies at the moment and have 2-3 causes that we of focusing on. We are interested in hearing from anyone who would like to join with us and grow this idea. Together we can create positive change on the planet. You can contact me directly by emailing deborah@homeschooling-moms-healthy-home-business.com . Our two product websites are: http://thegreatproduct.com/colorado and http://goamalaki.com/healthyfreedom .

I would love to hear from anyone who finds this interesting. Please feel free to share copy and paste this post into an email and share it with anyone else you know who might be interested, as well.

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If you’re reading this blog and your under 30, you’re probably going to laugh. But for those of you who are almost two decades older than that, this is big news. Social Media, social networking and social bookmarking on the internet is where you need to be if you really want to see increased success in the 21st century. I’m new to this just like you. I thought Face Book and My Space was just for kids. Here are some statistics I came across.

Social media giant Facebook is currently ADDING a million 25+ (non-student) adults per week to their rosters - that’s 52 million new users a year…

YouTube.com gets over 50 million unique visitors per month… over half a billion a year…

MySpace.com sees over 49 million unique visitors each month - over 1.6 million a day…

62% of MySpace visitors are older than 25 (40% are 35+), and 83% are making over $30,000 a year… and 19% are making $100,000 and up…

Facebook.com, is a little younger since it started with college students - but that’s changing in a hurry - 46% are over 25 and 34% are 35+… but they’ve got deep pockets - 88% make more than $30,000… and 23% make $100,000 or more.

…And those are just the big ones. There is Digg.com and Technorati.com, along with at least 50 other social networking/media sites. Some are specific to a certain industry or topic and others are more broad. What’s important to know though is that you can create a presence online by utilizing these sites and thus expand your sales market.

For the more mature among us, adapting to Web 2.0 is not easy. It’s a new language and a new paradigm for thinking about sales and marketing. If you have high school age kids they can probably help you get started. At least they understand the basics of what people are doing on these sites. Once you understand that it comes down to creating your online presence and learning how to form relationships in cyberspace.

Squidoo is a good place for business people to begin. It’s a social networking site geared more towards people with businesses. My partner just created a Squidoo Lense last week. It’s still a bit rough, but she said it only took her about 1/2 hour to create what you’ll see if you click here

Squidoo is a way for you to design and promote a web page of sorts that you can then share with whomever you like. Also, people searching for a particular topic on Squidoo will find you..and Google likes to crawl around Squidoo pages to find what people are deeming important. All good news for you marketing efforts.

Another thing you need to do is to create public bookmarks on different social sites. According to the experts, this is how to quickly drive a large amount of traffic back to your web page or blog. I wrote a short how-too for neophytes on my business blog. You can see it here.

Of course you need learn about and understand all this while you’re running your business the old fashioned way and homeschooling your kids. But do not fear. This is the future, so you have time. Learn a bit each day. See what other people are doing. Put search words like “tag and ping” into Google and read what comes up. Even when it all seems like so foreign that you don’t thnk it will ever make sense, keep going. It took my partner and about 3 months to all of sudden “get it”. Now we feel like we found the keys to the vault…the system. With it, you can sell or market anything from car products to ebooks to network marketing opportunities!!

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After three posts covering different types of organization you should now be totally organized and feeling sane. Too bad the holidays are just around the corner, creating more craziness.

In truth it takes time to get organized. Make a plan and move forward as you can. Try an accomplish one small task per day, or even 2-3 per week. Even if a task is a simple as creating a receipt folder or setting up the family calendar. For more help setting up your home business whether new or one that you’ve been working on for awhile, there is a free newsletter that offers some tips. The newsletter is geared towards people in the network marketing industry, but many if not most of the information will be helpful to anyone working at home. Since it’s free there is no harm in gathering the information offered and using what you find helpful to your situation. Click here to link to the subscription page, where you will find details about the newsletter and the topics for each issue.