Most of us are pretty smart in our day to day lives. We don’t go plunging into just anything without thinking about it first. Yet too many people do exactly that when they decide to work at home. They plunge into the first opportunity that makes the promises they most want to hear, without really looking at what they’ll really have to do, or if the opportunity is legitimate at all.

It’s the blindness of desperation, I think. We want to do something from home, to contribute to our families as earners as well as mothers (or fathers). That desperation leads to some very hasty, poor decisions.

This is why I consider research the first step to working at home. If you want to work at home successfully, you need to take action. Taking action doesn’t really mean pick something and get started, however. It should first mean figuring out what you want to do.

The Common Questions I Hear

Take the typical person who contacts me saying they want to work at home. That’s all they know, they want to work at home.

Folks, that’s not nearly enough information for me to say much to you. You need to know what it is you want to do.

Then there’s the second group, who says they know they want to earn money from home doing data entry. They’ve heard there’s good money in it, and they want to get started.

We’re slightly better off here, but not much. Most of what people hear of as data entry is either a scam or pay per click affiliate marketing. There are companies that pay people to do their data entry, but not many, and the pay is not what most of these people seem to think they should be getting, because they’ve read too many scams.

Generally speaking, neither of these groups quite knows how to get started. Most are very worried about being scammed, because even if you know nothing else about working at home, you’ve probably heard from every family member you’ve mentioned it to that they’re “all scams.” That’s just how the average person sees it.

What Are You Good At and Interested In?

I always tell people to start looking at what they’re good at and what they’re interested in. These two areas can help you figure out which home businesses or jobs you should be looking at.

When it comes to home business, there’s a reason why people say “follow your passion.” It helps. It really, really does.

Home businesses are hard to get started. You probably won’t be the success story you read about on whichever website, where you started earning 6 figures after just 3 months of effort. Those are the exceptions, not the rule.

You have to have the passion to keep going when it’s costing you more money to run your business than you’re earning from it. The passion to work late nights and/or early mornings just to get things done. The passion to not give up just because you didn’t realize it would be so hard.

You have to have the passion to accept that you need more than just an interest in whatever line of business you’ve decided to go with. You’re going to be learning new skills, such as marketing. You’re going to have to learn to talk about your business and earn people’s interest.

That doesn’t work so well if all you saw was dollar signs. Money is wonderful, and greed a great motivator, but it’s rarely enough.

Enjoying what you do also helps if it’s a work at home job you’re after. It’s bad enough dragging yourself out to a job you hate if that’s the only way you can make a living. You at least have a boss to report to, often face to face during at least some part of your day.

With a work at home job, your boss won’t necessarily notice right off if you’re a bit late (except in some industries), or that you’re working more slowly or with little enthusiasm. There’s a lot of pressure to motivate yourself. You’re pretty easy to replace when you work at home, and so your productivity will be their main measure of you as an employee. Hate what you’re doing and start producing less, and you might not keep that job.

Lack skill in it, and you probably won’t even get the job in the first place. If you do, you’ll be expected to bring those skills up quickly.

Read Up On Your Options

Once you know the kinds of things you’d like to do, start reading up on the various ways you can put your skills to use. If you’re thinking data entry because you have great typing skills, for example, you are not stuck with just a work at home job typing in data from forms people have filled out.

You could consider transcription jobs.

You could look at your other office skills and consider being a virtual assistant, either as your own business or working for a virtual assistant service.

I won’t say you could do pay per click affiliate marketing, because that is NOT data entry. Writing good ads is an entirely different skill. It’s one you may have, but nonetheless it’s not really data entry. If that’s what you want to do, I suggest skipping the entire data entry job hunt and reading Perry Marshall’s AdWords Guide instead. You’ll be better off.

Doing your research may seem like the long way to go at times. You’re probably eager to get started. But if doing some research cuts out the time and money you would have wasted on scams, you’re ahead of the game.

Don’t Overdo

You can keep reading and researching and learning until you suddenly realize it’s been a year, two years, and you haven’t even started anything. You’re too busy learning about the work you’d like to do to take action.

There’s a balance here. Once you have the information you need, you should get started, even though there’s more to learn.

There’s always more to learn. I’m still learning and I’ve been at this since 2003.

You need enough information to make a good choice and to get things started. Not much more than that, at first. Just be sure to include time for learning in your routine, and you’ll pick up the rest as you go along.

Christmas is over and I’m back with this week’s Sunday links. A few from before Christmas too, since I skipped last week. I was too tired to deal with this last week, honestly, and many bloggers blogged quite a bit less anyhow.

Teach Your Way to Referrals - Once you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. Help other people to learn things you know, they will trust you. That’s when they’re likely to buy things on your recommendation.

Outrageous Credit Card Practices - Yes, credit card companies are continuing to be more and more outrageous as the economy gets worse and they face more problems.

The Limits of Frugality: What’s Next When You Can’t Cut Any More? - As more people get laid off, this is one of the things you need to think about. Frugality doesn’t solve everything.
The Affiliate Thermostat - Could you be keeping you from succeeding at the level you think you want? Many people do it and really aren’t aware of it. This applies to more than just affiliate marketing.

10 Surprising Side Effects to Money Management - Managing your money well has benefits for many aspects of your life, not just your finances.

The No-Cry Freelancing Solution - Freelancing is tough. How can you cut the frustration as you build your business?

How Much Money Do Bloggers Make Blogging? - Very interesting. Good to get a realistic idea as to what people really earn from their blogs.

This Year’s Theme Is Consistency - Not into resolutions? A theme for the year may be more your style.

Do you have a debt crisis or an income crisis? - Not a bad way to look at it at all. I generally recommend cutting back and looking for new income when debt’s a problem.

Hand-Me-Down Clothes in the Post Hand-Me-Down Era: Consumer Protectionism Gone Too Far? - I’d say yes. In short, this article points out how the new CPSIA regulation is going to impact resale and thrift shops, not just people who sell new things. Way, way overboard!

Update: New Hope For Handmade Industry in Lead Law Exceptions - On the plus side, a touch of sanity may be headed CPSIA’s way. We need to keep this up, folks!

How’s the weather outside? Have you been taking advantage of winter weather with your family?

Being in southern California, mud pies is all we get to do unless we want to take the time to drive up to the mountains for whatever snow is available. Lucky us (I think?), mud is something that appears in quantity in our back yard with the rain, and one section takes a really long time to dry.

Whether you have snow or mud, odds are the kids will love playing in it. And if it’s right in your yard or neighborhood, it’s very easy to get to.

Happy New Year!

I’ve been thinking on things I can do to help my readers in this new year, and one thing that came to mind is skill building. So many families are dealing with money problems, or facing the possibility of money problems, that now is a great time to really focus on coping.

For some, it’s time to really get serious about a home business. For others, it might be more about building job skills.

For me, it’s researching some of the best and most affordable ways to build these skills, so I can share the solutions I find.

And so I am of course curious as to what skills you would like to build up this year. Just leave a comment below.

I posted a while back about my goals for 2009. I like to think they’re pretty achievable, but of course there’s one big complication:

Planning around baby.

That’s going to be roughest in the early months of the year. You don’t want to know how very tired I get right now. It’s hard to get work done consistently at the moment. I know quite well that I’m unfocused and tired.

This will of course be getting worse as my due date approaches, and then as I get still less sleep after she’s born.

Ideally, of course, I’ll go into natural labor and be home in a couple days. But since I had a C-section last time I do have to face the reality that I may be stuck with one again. That’s a much more difficult recovery, as I remember it, as well as more painful.

This means I have to think about making realistic goals just for the early parts of the year when I’m too tired to accomplish much.

In January, that means getting things ready for when I go into labor, and the early, exhausted days following. While working at home means I don’t need to take 6 weeks of maternity leave, taking things easy for the first few weeks is only smart.

At the same time, stopping all efforts is not what I want to do.

This makes the big January goal to prewrite some blog posts. Topics that I can just have saved, and hit publish when I need them to go out. This kind of thing keeps it looking as though I’m chugging along, while I focus on what’s really important at that point in my life.

And that’s not just posting cute baby pictures!

February, along with any part of January that may get caught up in having the baby (due date is Feb 3, so I do have to consider this), will be whatever work I can stand to do, while being there for all 3 kids. It’s the initial adjustment period, and I know my son in particular will be adjusting.

Besides, he has a February birthday also, although it’s later in the month.

By March, I hope to be getting somewhat back to normal… whatever the new normal happens to be. Won’t be the same, of course. But I would sure like to be getting the fuzz out of my head and my focus back.

We already have the office setup planned so baby can be near me even when I do work, and to protect her from all the little toys the older two leave around. Just a nice play area where only baby toys will be allowed, I or someone else can sit and play with her, and just have her near me. Beyond just when she’s nursing and I’m typing one handed, that is.

It will be interesting to see how things work out. The thought of being the mom of 3 is pretty overwhelming in some ways, especially when I add in trying to keep running my business without going completely insane. But I love what I do and I love my family, so I have no doubts that I will manage it all somehow.