Work From Home Mums Blog – Resources, Return To Work Advice, Online Business Ideas

There’s a new brand of ‘mum’ out there and she is a tiger to deal with. Mums have long been the target of advertisers. Smart companies know that when it comes to shopping and buying decisions in households, ‘Mum’ is leading the way.

For decades, companies have focused on getting mothers to look at their products. For example, Jif® peanut butter has long used the slogan ‘Choosy Moms Choose Jif.’ Some companies, like Tylenol® focus on reassuring parents that their brand is the #1 brand recommended by pediatricians. We can all think of many ways that companies target mums and work to build trust if we stop and focus on it.

However, there is a change in the wind when it comes to purchasing products, buying services, and exploring other possibilities. These days the Internet has opened up a world of options for mums. One of the biggest and most promising choices available to a mum in this day and time is the ability for her to work from home and bring in extra income. With today’s current economic conditions, it is becoming even more critical that she bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan too.

With all that being said, owners and companies of legitimate businesses and opportunities now have to ‘face the tigress’ complete with all her skepticism. When a person has been burned, lied to or even scammed, it is very hard to gain that person’s trust even though you are presenting her with a legitimate and credible way to earn income.

It’s a great time for mums to explore working  for themselves. Seek a company with credentials you can trust. It is true that there are legitimate, ethical and reliable ways to work from home. It is true that there are hundreds of scams out there. Look for a company that provides you with the following information:

· -Company’s information on their products and services
· -Company’s free training and ongoing mentoring
· -Company Credentials (should be easily verified)
· -Company Growth Chart, Length of time in Business
· -Annual Income Statistics
· -Company ‘re-order’ or ‘return shopper’ potential.

There are some basic questions that everyone should ask when looking into a reliable way to work for yourself. The answers are pretty basic too and should be a standard for all companies. You’ll know how do-able the business will be for you with the right questions and the right answers.

These days we all receive lots of emails and sometime unwanted. We join a group or buy a product and then we are getting emails from these known businesses, possibly that we didn’t want.

Then there are those emails that come in offering pharmacy products, or worse, that come from a source that is totally unknown to you. These are not only annoying but often offensive.

So you decide that you don’t want to receive these unwanted messages anymore. What do you do?

Well in the case of email from a known source, that is a business that you deal with or dealt with at some time, you should politely unsubscribe from the mailing list by clicking on the unsubscribe link found at the bottom of the email. The business will not take offense and if anything they will save money by only sending their messages to people that are happy to receive them.

And in the case of unknown sources, those offensive emails that some how get past your spam filter, add them to your junk mail otherwise known as ‘manually marking your mail as spam’.

BUT PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, do not manually mark unwanted mail from a known source as spam or junk mail. Use the unsubscribe link. You can cause serious damage to a genuine and reputable business by marking their mail as spam.

Most reputable businesses these days pay to use a proper mailing service, by marking their mail as spam can get them banned from the mail provider and in some cases reported to their hosting company as well, and banned by the hosting company too, forcing them to close down their online business.

You thought their business was good enough to use or try in the first place, so give them the respect of managing their mail in a fair and considerate way.

Something I have come to realise on my journey into the world of internet marketing is there are many people who have an idea and fly into setting up a business without any idea about SEO and Keyword research. I am all for giving ‘it’ a go, with and without research! Yes, I know – how can she say that? – learning happens from mistakes.

But the best advice I could share is that SEO actually means doing less with little, you can drive traffic to your site by using the right keywords, but this is where I find it amazing that people don’t try to qualify their keyword choices. They simply think hmm! if I was searching on Google what keywords would I search on. In some cases you will think of the logical choices, but it is the HOT keywords, the ones that are heavily used or niche terms that really bring home the traffic.

There are many products in the marketplace that help to work out the keywords you should be using. Google have their own tool, another and favourite of my own is Market Samurai, I have been using Market Samurai for a year now and wouldn’t start a new niche or website without consulting my own personal samurai first. Let me give you an example I own a site called www.womenscyclingshoes.org and I researched Market Samurai to find my keyword phrase which I did buy the domainname with it included.

I was aiming to get onti page 1 of Google in about position #7. Well at the time of writing the site is infact on page 1 of Google in positions #5 & #6 … So how do I know that, Market Samurai keeps a track of my ranks for all of my keywords and domains, and let’s me know where  am placed in Google, Yahoo and Bing for each. That is happy free traffic. Market Samurai offer a free 12 day trial of their software, but it is so good you will want to but it, and that is the joke part … it is only $149.00 anyway.

Another I wanted to tell you about today is Keywordspy. I couldn’t believe there is this cool tool freely available for you to use to search; keywords, affiliate product, competitor information and your own keyword stats. Just type in your own URL and see what pops up.

I highly recommend the fully functioning Keywordspy and Market Samurai products because let’s face it you get what you pay for. But if you are just at the beginning of your internet marketing journey then a free trial or free version is a must . Just to check whether the keywords you thought were good or whether they aren’t. Well not ‘just’ for those reasons, because you need to know what words are going to help you build your online business into a thriving success.

Technorati Tags: keyword tool, keywordspy, market samurai, work from home mum

I received an email from a friend today about how the technology that we have so easily become accustomed to can actually lead to our own detriment.

Here is the content of that email;

This gives us something to think about with all our new electronic
technology.

GPS
Someone had their car broken into while they were at a football game. Their
car was parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and
specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included a
garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently
mounted on the dashboard.

When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked
and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.

The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the
garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house.
The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time
the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to
clean out the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty
the house of its contents.

MOBILE PHONE
I never thought of this…….
This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on her mobile
phone after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag, which contained her cell
phone, credit card, wallet… Etc…was stolen.

20 minutes later when she called her hubby, from a pa y phone telling him
what had happened, hubby says ‘I received your text asking about our Pin
number and I’ve replied a little while ago.’

When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money
was already withdrawn. The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to
text ‘hubby’ in the contact list and got hold of the pin number. Within 20
minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.

Moral of the lesson:
Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact
list.
Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad, Mom, etc…
And very importantly, when sensitive info is being asked through texts,
CONFIRM by calling back.
Also, when you’re being text by friends or family to meet them somewhere, be
sure to call back to confirm that the message came from them. If you don’t
reach them, be very careful about going places to meet ‘family and friends’
who text you.

So what do you think, are we complacent and do we rely on our technology too much. I know it gave me something to think about.