Marketer's Daily

To be successful working at home, you must have schedules. Its easy to get sidetracked with the laundry, the cleaning, and the errand-running. But to have a successful business that brings in the necessary income, staying focused on the job at hand is essential.

How can you do that? Its all about scheduling. Lets say that again schedules are good, schedules are essential, schedules will keep your productive at work and in control at home.

Why do you need schedules?

Especially if you are a more creative thinker, scheduling things can seem rigid and unwelcome. You might not like the idea of having to schedule when you get things done, or the idea of planning meals ahead of time. But doing these things actually provides freedom.

When you work at home, you are shoulder to shoulder with the mess, the laundry, and the children. Its easy to get sidetracked trying to take care of these things. But if everything is on a schedule (even the children, if they are home during the day), you can get more done. Youll be able to focus on work when youre working because you wont get sidetracked thinking about all the other things that you need to get done.

How do you schedule?

Think about the things that you need to get done on a daily or weekly basis. Consider the laundry, the cooking, the general cleaning and the childcare. If you know that you are usually home on Sundays, for example, you can plan to make Sunday laundry day. You dont allow yourself to do laundry on any other day but Sunday and you stick to that schedule. During the week, you wont get sidetracked folding laundry.

Planning menus is essential. If you are the primary cook in your house, you must know what you are gong to cook each day or at the end of your workday, youre going to end up in the car in the fast food lane. Since most women choose to work at home in order to be more available to their family, working at home all day and then providing takeout is hardly a step above.

Instead, plan a weeks worth of menus at a time. Ideally, you will plan a months worth of menus, but you can start with a week. Buy all the groceries you need for the week and even clean and cut veggies, put meat in marinades and measure out rice ahead of time. When you close up your work shop for the day, you can easily get a simple meal on the table because you were organized enough to get some prep done ahead of time.

To be efficient in work, its best if you just work when youre working. That means dont get sidetracked with paying bills or ordering books for your childs book collection. Save those things for evening time, when you are more focused on home endeavors, or for your breaks.

Take breaks

On that note, be structured enough with your time to take breaks. Think of yourself as working in an office. You might head to the break room for a cup of coffee and on the way, have a brief discussion with a coworker about a party you both attended the night before. You might take another break later in the day and make a phone call to your childs teacher.

If you think of your work at home life in a similar fashion, you can quickly see the results of your structured time. Take regular breaks and during that time, you can send a quick email to a friend or send a text to another. You might make that book order or that phone call. A few minutes later, you return to work just as you would if you worked outside the home.

Get started right

Finally, start each day in an organized fashion. Make sure the breakfast dishes are done, that the beds are made and the house is generally straightened. Sit down to a clean workspace. As you start your work for the day, youll have a sense that everything is in order and you can feel at peace focusing on your work needs because there are no other pressing needs you must worry about right now.

Structuring your time as a WAHM might seem like one more thing you must take care of, but doing so will actually free you to focus better at work and at home, even when those worlds intersect.

Working at home can be exhausting for a mom, and breaks might be rare. But you might work from home because you need the extra money and cant afford to take breaks. But you can create breaks within the context of work.

Lets look at this further. What we mean is that you can still work your full-time WAHM job, but add something in to break the monotony, or perhaps bring in extra money for holidays or to fill in a gap when your industry slows down temporarily.

These jobs likely wont net you full-time income, but they are fun and interesting alternatives from the everyday work that you might be burnt from.

Letter writers

At Christmas, many WAHMs make extra money by writing letters from Santa. These can be postmarked from the North Pole or they can be on special paper or they might include special treats from Santa. You can build a quick website and market it to other moms who might be interested in their child or children getting a letter from Santa.

There are also websites that specialize in writing letters for people who cant do it themselves or who want to present a more polished image than their own writing might provide.

Cake bakers

Many at-home moms turn into amateur bakers for weekend gatherings, from birthday parties to weddings. If you can bake well and can learn, or know, the art of cake decorating, you can make extra money at home selling decorated cakes.

This can be a nice break from your regular WAHM job, especially if your regular job is a solitary or sedentary affair. Making and decorating cakes can be creative, offering a nice respite from the demands of a less creative job.

Mystery shopping

If you miss being out and about while working your WAHM job, you might want to pick up a mystery shopping job now and then. These can be quick (taking less than an hour) but can net you a few dollars and sometimes free products. Look online for mystery shopping companies that provide services to the kinds of business you would like to shop you might do mystery shops at restaurants, apartment complexes or cell phone kiosks.

Sell products

While many moms make a full-time living as consultants selling everything from skincare products to food, you can do it on a part-time basis and work when you need some variety or extra cash.

If you decide to sell items as a part-time gig, make sure you read the fine print carefully of the company you sign up with. Some have minimum requirements you must meet on a monthly or quarterly basis. Make sure that even on a part-time basis you can meet that minimum requirement.

Go outside the house

Working at home might be what you have always wanted to do and you are happy with all that it brings to your life. But you might have a desire to get out more. There are always options for very part-time jobs that serve you well in some way. For example, if you are a fitness freak, you might work just a few hours a week at the gym, netting you not only some extra money but likely a break on your gym fees. You might work just during the holidays at a department store.

The key to creating a WAHM arrangement that works for you is to work through any challenges you might face working at home. Picking up a now and then extra job might be the key to keeping yourself happy working at home.

Getting your WAHM business off the ground can be tough. At any given time, you might be competing with thousands of other businesses who are also trying to get attention for their own businesses. How can you make yours stand out? Its all about networking.

Networking is simply talking to people, getting the word out about your business and then doing the same for others. In recent years, the world of networking has changed to reflect the impact that the internet can have. If you play your cards right, you can network almost exclusively online.

If you have a WAHM business, you might want to know how to leverage the power of the internet to drive traffic to your own business. Here are some ideas.

Website

Build a website. No longer do you have to know HTML to build a website; you can buy a software program that will build the site for you or you can pay for someone to design the site for you.

Once you have a website, you need traffic to that website, so write or have written articles that are targeted to your subject matter. If you are working at home selling your homemade coin purses, for example, you might write and post articles that talk about fabric, the craft of sewing and unique gifts, all while extolling the virtues of coin purses.

Links

Once you have a website, you have something you can direct people to. Having a website isnt a build it and they will come kind of proposition. You need to market that website, promote it in some fashion.

Heres how you can do that. Read blogs that are somehow related to your subject area. In the case of your coin purse business, for example, you might read blogs that are about housekeeping, crafting, sewing, and fashion. Make comments on blog posts and provide a link to your site. People will read your comments and if they like what they read, they might click on your link. That drives people to the site and provides you with a method to get information about your website out to hundreds or thousands of people at a time.

Facebook

Many businesses create Facebook pages. You might have a personal Facebook page, but this is different. You create a page just for your business and provide as much information as you can about yourself and your business there. You can also provide a link to your Facebook page on the blog comments you leave, as well as provide a link to your Facebook page from your own website.

This can benefit others as well, because you can invite people to become your friends on Facebook. If they also have businesses they want to promote, they can become your friends and possibly find more friends themselves, which helps their business as well.

Twitter

Yes, everyone these days is Twittering. It can be a time waster as people twitter that they just put dinner in the oven or are waiting for a delayed flight. But many people have also discovered the power of Twitter as a networking tool.

You can post a link to your site in your Twitter profile and you can post comments related to what you do. People will follow you and you can follow them. As you post blog comments, or you update your web page, or even post updates to your own blog, you can make Twitter comments that include links to these things. You can also add a link to your Twitter page on your website.

It might take some time to get all of these things started, but take the time to do it its all nearly free advertising and can turn into big money for you.