Can a mom make money online?

In my last post I started to talk about information marketing and how it moms can use it to make money online. But before I start getting into details, I would like to tell you a bit more about why I like it.  In 2007 I started GirlMogul.com – an online retailer of girl power t-shirts.  I hired a designer to come up with some (what I thought were) catchy designs like “Future Leader of the Free World.” I used Cafe Press and print on demand company for t-shirts and other things, set up a quick website with Yahoo Site Builder and started and email marketing list using Campaigner, an email marketing company that Yahoo recommends. I  I was in business.  I started modestly and was determined to keep it that way.  As a mom with two young kids and a full time job I wanted this business to get going without  costing a lot of money. I didn’t want to borrow money to start it or liquidate my savings or run up my credit cards to start a business.  spent no more than a few hundred dollars on setting up GirlMogul (the first time around). The point was to find a way to make $1000 a month (profit) from a business I could run from home and required little inventory, shipping or a lot of hand holding.  After all, there were lots of power sellers on Cafe Press and Ebay etc, who seemed to be making money in that way.  With a $1000 in profit a month, I figured I could quit my job and spend more time with my kids – and still help contribute to the household.  A $1000 a month…doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

And so I embarked on my great adventure.  Fast forward a year or so.   I had spent way more than a few hundred dollars, I had racked up credit card debt and liquidated my savings.  Sure I was making sales, but except at the holiday season, no where near enough to wind up with $1000 a profit.  I had expanded from t-shirts (which while they made little profit, didn’t require me to store inventory) into carrying other items – I had to pack and ship thing late at night after the kids were in bed, running to the post office or the UPS store during my lunch hour.

By no means had I achieved my dream of being able to quit my full time job and spend more time with my kids. And worse with the money I had thrown into the business, I was even farther away than if I had simply not started a business and put all the money away in the bank.  So much for my mom’s version of the American dream.

But then I got serious and wrote down what I really wanted.  What was most important to me was to be able to spend more time with my kids.   Running a giant mail order business was not necessarily what I wanted.  I didn’t want to spend all of my time packing boxes, keeping track of orders or updating shipping information.  It was hard to sell tweens t-shirts using Cafe Press.  I wasn’t ready to commit to going into wholesale.  I needed a business that would deliver $1000 in month in profit, that would allow me to run it from a computer in mom hours – while the kids were at school, after they were in bed.   Trust me I had learned a lot – from how to get a website build, start a blog, send out an email newsletter, source graphic designers, etc.

So I kept searching and looking.  I needed to stop spending money on PR and pricey display advertising, so I decided to get serious about blogging. I started GirlMogul Magazine, a blog aimed at tween girls…and the response was overwhelming.  Offers for products to review, people wanting to get on the list, interest from advertisers.  And I started to get really into blogging.  All of sudden I was getting a tons more traffic to my site for free.  I developed an e book (a pdf) and using ad words, started to sell that.  All of a sudden my sales shot up.  I added advertising to my site and I made money in my sleep….My e-book was delivered without my touching it.  Woo hoo. I had finally cracked the code of how to make money as a mom without running around packing boxes, shipping $20 orders, and making less than $5 on them.  But guess what happened – the products part of business really took off – once I found a way to get more traffic to my site through blogging, and build my email list using Google Adwords, all parts of my business took off.  From using my blog to gain advertising revenue, to selling my ebooks, to my product sales, the strategies I used, once I got serious about the using the internet to effectively grow my business, helped me acheive my dream.
So that’s what this blog is about – how moms, any mom, with a computer and a desire, can make money on the internet using time honored principles.  I believe blogging, email marketing and some other principles of internet marketing can allow a mom to start a successful business, whether it’s a blog to earn money, an online store, a direct sales business or a service or free lance business.  So join the The Biz Wise Mom and let your dream take wings.