I was recently asked by a stay at home mom, what is a good home based business for woman. What is something that can be done part time, doesn’t require uninterrupted focus, and can be done form home? While I am sure there are dozens of models out there, the one model that I know could work every time is running a blog.
There is a bit more to the business model than simply starting and running a blog, but once someone has their ducks in a row there is very little upkeep and maintenance. Running a blog also leaves the door open to be focused on any subject someone cares to write about. Posts and replies can be made any time day or night, and if you are too busy for a few days the blog still does its job.
How money is made with a blog
The first thing you need to look at is how exactly money will be made. Money is only made when there is a point of sale and finances are exchanged for a product or service. For the blogger the hope is to be the conduit between the potential buyer and the seller. In other words, running ads.
Adsense
The easiest implementation of running ads is with Google adsense. Google adsense is in part what made google what it is today. A visitor visits a site, clicks on the Google ad and is redirected to the advertiser’s page. Google is paid by the advertiser, and the blog owner is paid by Google. While this model is extremely straight forward the yield is not that high, and unless you have a ton of visitors it will be a long time until a check is received. Google’s minimum payment is $100.00 so if you are only getting a click or two a day don’t bank on seeing any quick change.
Amazon Ads
Like Google, Amazon also provides and pays you to have ads on your blog or website. The difference with Amazon is that their ads push people to their site, and you are only paid if a purchase is made. The cool thing with Amazon is that you can get a percentage of a sale that may not be associated with the ad on your site. By this I mean if a visitor clicks on the Amazon ad on your site, decides they don’t want that specific product and searches for something else entirely different, Amazon will still kick you back a percentage if a purchase is made.
Affiliate Offers
The last way to make some change that I will cover in this article is through direct affiliate offers. This basically cuts out the middle man (Amazon/Google) and puts an offer for a product or service directly on your site, or at least one click away. For example if someone is selling candles and you blog about candles, it is possible to get paid a commission for anyone purchasing candles that were channeled through your site.
Just like all avenues of business, the low hanging fruit has long been picked over so don’t think your site will be producing a huge return right away. That said, if you do your homework, write good content, and optimize for quality search terms it is possible to get a site up that will produce a daily return on a continuous basis.
I am hoping to address this process a bit more in its entirety in the future but for now my suggestion would be to focus on a topic, buy a domain specific to that topic, and invest a little time each day researching the market, building content, or learning more about successful blogs.
Tools you will need
Domain name: Godaddy
Hosting: Hostgator
Blog software: WordPress (this is included with a Hostgator account)
There is plenty of information online regarding each of the above. Even if your first few steps are simply getting your blog up and going, don’t fret it, just keep pounding away. If you have a little one around the house we also have info on entrepreneur ideas for kids.
Remember: To get to where few have been you must do what few have done.
