The theory is great – teach your kids the basics of business, along with integrity in the marketplace, Christian principles and make some money in the process by starting a home business. You solve the time issue by making it a part of their school. Great. So what business should they start?

Stereotype jobs for teens like lawn care and babysitting are time-honored options. However, I frequently receive emails from rural families that don’t live very close to enough potential clients to make a business profitable. It’s difficult when transportation is required to effectively run the ‘home’ business and drivers and vehicles are in short supply.

One of the factors we **use in our curriculum** to decide on the best home business for your personal situation is what you have to work with. Be it money, equipment, transportation, skills, or time, you have to decide what will work for your family. Here are a few ideas to consider:

Fat Brain Coffee

Fat Brain Coffee is a business and a curriculum in one. For $68 you receive a 3-ring notebook with the basics of what you need to know to run your coffee & tea business. You also receive a supply of (Starbuck’s quality) coffee that you can put your own label on or use Fat Brain’s label. It’s designed for ages 8 and up. Scripts of exactly what to say are even included, and all the forms you will need. This is one of the simplest ‘business in a box’ setups that I’ve seen. I does require an element of transportation, but marketing can be done at homeschool and church events, or by email.

Find out more at: Fat Brain Coffee

Grow Something

On a farm or in a rural area with a little extra land, there are a number of things that kids could grow. Fresh herbs, bedding plants, worms, chicks, you name it. Farmer’s Markets are always a great place to sell such items, and you don’t have to limit yourself to only one. Find all the farmer’s markets in your area at http://www.localharvest.org/. You can also see how entrepreneurial growers have turned their home-grown products into different items like jams, birdhouses and more. Listing your item on the Local Harvest website is always an option, too!

Bake Something

Once again, we’re in that gray area of needing transportation, but if you set one day a week as your baking day and make it the day before a weekly outing you normally take, you can make it work. If your homeschool group or church group meets once a week you can deliver the fresh baked goods that day. Be sure to attach a price list/order form and your phone number on each delivery. Offer a free item to your customer if they refer a friend to you and they purchase something.

Blogging

This isn’t always a fast way to earn money, but some have done very well with blogging. Those that don’t see how you can make an income from blogging haven’t heard of Google Adsense. Google Adsense are those little ads that are found on websites and blogs. When you get distracted and click on one that looks interesting, the owner of the account makes some money. Now, you do have to be 18 to start an Adsense account, so parents of minors are required to obtain the account. You will also want to be sure that their friends understand that they can’t click their friend into riches because Google is quick to expel abusers (even if the owner isn’t aware) and there is no coming back.

Depending on the subject you choose to blog about, there are other ways to make money also. That’s another ebook. Blogging can be an extremely educational project, giving practice in writing, grammar, graphic design, marketing and more. One of the few ways anyone can start a business with $0 and end up a millionaire, it’s easy to learn, but complicated to master. So, why not start today? Free blogs can be set up immediately at Wordpress.com, Blogger.com and HomeschoolBlogger.com.

Of course, there are dozens of other ways a kid can earn money and learn the way of an entrepreneur. What are some ways you (or your kids) have earned money?

**Our curriculum is Entrepreneurship 101 also known as The 9 Week Homeschool Entrepreneur. See details at http://homeschool-entrepreneur.com/entrepreneur_course.html

Comment link is currently at the TOP of this blog (sorry, hopefully will change that soon!)

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Check it out:

http://momtent.com/for-bloggers/

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Lynette’s energetic style is truly a reflection of her name, and you will want to bookmark this one or sign up for the updates like I did to keep posted on all she has to offer. She offers a premium service, which I have not checked out yet so I can’t speak for it, but she offers enough for free I haven’t found the need for it. . .(sorry, Lynette).

Some of the free items you can pick up on Blog Energizer are:

-Downloads: The 12 Topics You Need To Blog About Now, A Blogging Planner, A Blog Calendar & Traffic Generating Ideas (All separate downloads, free-well, at least for the sacrifice of your email address!)

-A free recipe book you can offer your readers

-25 quick and easy crafts for the holidays

-Free Ebooks from Barnes & Noble

-2010 Cartoon Calendar to offer your readers

-Learning with Lego magazines to giveaway (or keep!)

You’ll also find occasional ads for guest blog posts. There’s much more, but I think that’s enough to motivate you check out Blog Energizer to get some ideas to spice up your blog.

Happy November!

More From HomeschoolEntrepreneur

• How to make money blogging-Intro
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• How to make money blogging-Part 3

photo credit: Ninjanna

Here’s a way to combine a great homeschool learning experience with volunteer service and make a business out of it! I got the idea when I stumbled on the site LibraVox, which is a non-profit site that is attempting to put all public domain books on audio for the public. They are looking for volunteers to read books aloud onto their provided software (free, of course!) and release it onto their public domain site for anyone to listen to.

What if…..you volunteered to read, chose books of a particular subject that enhance your current homeschool studies, and also posted them on your site? You don’t want to charge for these audio, because they were created on software you received free for the purpose of creating public domain material. However, a website that has free audio downloads of a focused subject, you could put adsense on that site, and put the books you are reading aloud for sale through an Amazon affiliate link. This site won’t make you rich, but as you read different subjects, you could start different subject sites. Keeping your sites focused on one subject will give you an edge in the search engines.

As you learn your subjects that you’re reading aloud for LibraVox, you could also start Squidoo lenses on the subjects and earn additional revenue from that….and increase your traffic to your new sites.

Steps to start your online audio download biz:

1. Apply for Adsense with Google. This can take a week or two to get approved.

2. Start your volunteer service with LibraVox and start reading!

3. Sign up as an associate with Amazon. Follow our link or find the link at the bottom of any Amazon page, it says “Join Associates”.

4. Decide how you want to start a web page. The easiest option, which is also free, would be to start a blog with Blogger. More and more beginning website builders are starting out with a free blog as their website. Since Blogger is owned by Google, it makes it that much easier to put adsense (also owned by Google..) on it. If you want to get started right from the beginning with your own webhost, etc, BlueHost is the most recommended host, and has great tech support and comes with a free domain. They also have a good set up if you want to start a blog on Wordpress, and they will (patiently) walk you through set up. The advantage to having your own site versus Blogger is the ever-present danger of shut down. If you are making a profit on your site, yet hosted on a free service of any kind, there is that fine line that only the free service knows between allowed advertising and too much. Wordpress.com will usually at least give you a warning and tell you to remove all the links, but Blogger has been known to just remove your site. That can be devastating if you have put months or years of work into something that is now making a nice income and one day you wake up and it’s completely GONE. Google works hard at protecting their good reputation and the people they represent, but are very powerful and have little tolerance or patience for any infractions. What some people will do is get started free while doing all the footwork towards their own site and switch it all later. You can learn more about this process at our main site, Homeschool-Entrepreneur.com

What will they learn from this …looks harder than it is…project? LOTS!

1. The books they are reading will take on new meaning!

2. The writing skills putting a website and maybe a Squidoo site together.

3. Business skills for their new business.

4. Accounting skills running their business finances

5. Website, SEO, and online marketing skills

6. The value of doing something good by contributing to public domain works.

Have fun! Be sure to email us and let us know how it worked for you.

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Only 2 years ago, Wendy was working on starting a different online business, and decided to blog about all the research she was doing to help others do the same. She discovered that her new blog was more profitable than her other business, so she quit that business and put all her efforts into her blog.  The rest is blogging history.

You can watch a video interview here…

And get her FREE “Better Blogging” Course here.

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For those of you that haven’t followed us from the beginning, we started this blog with Wordpress that was hosted on another webhost. That webhost had Wordpress available in their Fantastico, and being somewhat new with Wordpress, thought I had arrived!

What I didn’t realize, was that different webhosts put Wordpress on their server differently. I found I couldn’t add any plugins or html of any kind, which may seem outrageous, but that is what their tech support confirmed for me, so I wasn’t sure where to go from there. Having had more experience with Wordpress, I question that, but at the time, what tech support says is all I knew.

So I ventured over to Wordpress.com, and found it incredibly easy to set up. Once again, I thought I had arrived (whatever THAT means!) . That is, until I got a friendly email from the Wordpress staff that I had too many ads on my site. I emailed them back and asked them if they were sure (I really didn’t have that many, surely not as many as SOME WP blogs…) and asked them “isn’t making money the main reason most people blog??”

Their response was kindly, and told me, yes indeed, most people did want to make money blogging, which is why they offer their program free to anyone who wants to host their own site. I guess if they are paying for the blog, they don’t want to pay for it. Makes sense, I just wish I had figured this out to begin with! I had read enormous amounts on blogging for profit before I started, but didn’t really read much written on who, how or what to blog ON.

This is the purpose of this post …..to let you know that it DOES matter where you set up your blog. There are way too many choices, but that’s free enterprise for you. So people like me waste hours and hours of time to look at every option only to arrive at what over 75% of bloggers decide-self-hosted Wordpress!

I love ProBlogger…purely platonic, I promise….but he has a chart posted with all the options you can look at, and tons of other tips and helps. Yaro Starek in his Entrepreneur’s Journey also has videos that are lifesavers that I have mentioned before. But Wordpress gets the prize for selfless offerings in blogging software. It’s completely free, and there’s a directory of all the plugins you can add and a bottomless pit of online support. If you are somewhat new at all this like I was, plan on spending a little time learning it all, but it feels sooooo good when you finally get it right!

I definitely can’t say I have ‘arrived’ yet, but I can share what NOT to do if you are trying to make a living blogging. It’s definitely one of the best homeschool projects there is!

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These tutorials at Become a Blogger.com are a little annoying because they cover every little detail, right down to how to type in an url and fill out a form. I can deal with it though, because I know there are people that are very new to everything online, and, well, been there, done that! Ideal for the ground zero newbie, there was also good material on how to put an RSS feed on your blog, which I had been anquishing over the last 3 days. Every place I went to assumed I knew MUCH more than I did, or was teaching you how to place someone else’s feed on your site. This alone has endeared these tutorials to my heart. Thank you, Yaro!

Starting with reasons to use WordPress hosted on your own domain, moving on to getting your own domain name to signing up with a web host, I have a big money saver to add to his suggestions: use wordpress.com (it’s free) with your own domain name. You can get domains for $6.99 at One & One, and it’s very easy to navigate their site to make the changes, and if you can’t figure it out, they have fairly quick tech support.

If you do want to sign up for a web host because you are in this for the big bucks, then be sure to get the coupon codes on this site to save substantial moola. I try to keep them current, and if you can’t find them, just do a search in the search box (at top of page) for “Host Gator”. You can always email me, if you still can’t find it, it’ll be worth your time, I promise! Host Gator is being recommended more and more by the online ‘gurus’, and for good reason. They are feature-rich, reliable and no gimmicks! And their support is in-house! Anyway, this post isn’t about Host Gator…sorry.

So, other than disagreeing with Yaro’s domain and hosting recommendations, these videos are perfect for anyone just getting started. I think I’m going to do a separate post on how to figure out the RSS post via these videos, just so others don’t have to go through what I did trying to find info on it.

Find the videos at: Become a Blogger

or on Yaro’s blog: Entrepreneurs-Journey

Have a great weekend!

More From HomeschoolEntrepreneur

• How to make money blogging-Intro
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There are two books that I have bought and will try to pass along the essentials to you. One of the books is a Startup Guide by Entrepreneur Press called Start Your Own Blogging Business (Startup). It’s a 96 page paperback that is very basic, and is seems to be more theory than actual how-to’s. It’s also a good primer if you have never had a business before.

My favorite part of the entire book is a little story they tell at the very beginning that I think you find encouragement in also. It’s a story about Caroline, who publishes a blog on everything about iPods, her favorite thing in the world. Currently, her blog receives an average of 15,000 visitors per day-reportedly a modest amount of traffic for her chosen topic, receiving the “typical” amount of ad revenue of $.80-$1 per click from her readers. If only 1% of her daily traffic of 15,000 (150) click on her ads, she will earn between $120-$150/day in ad revenue. That’s $4500/month, or $54,000/year with very little business expense, which isn’t bad at all considering she is doing something she loves!

This gets better… NOW…if Caroline increases her traffic, let’s say to 150,000/per day with the same daily percentage of 1% clicking the same ads at $1/click …that’s $1500/day or just over a half million dollars per year.

Seem a little outrageous? Not really. 1% is a low percentage as well as $1/click is a low estimate, too. As your traffic increases, your advertisers pay you more to advertise for them. Granted, 150,000/day visitor traffic will take a bit of work (duh), but it is not an unrealistic goal if your subject matter is a popular one.

If you’re thinking that you could never acheive 150,000/day traffic to your blog, there are a variety of opinions on this. In the reviews of ProBlogger’s new book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, the point was made that it is more likely that your average blogger will make that 6-figure income with many blogs, not just one gigantic one. However, considering there are an estimated 1.6 billion internet users world-wide, 150,000 seems like a small number. Suggestion? Open a file on your computer or in your favorites and start recording your blog ideas and as you come across information for those ideas, copy the link and keep it with your idea file(s).

What is the final lesson here? It’s two-fold: choose your topic carefully, and really work at building your traffic. Go to the website Problogger.net for lots of tips and information on building traffic, or check out their new book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. Another good site is Dailyblogtips.com, a clean, well organized blog that you can learn alot from.

More From HomeschoolEntrepreneur

• How to make money blogging-Intro
• How to make money blogging-Part 3
• How to make money blogging-Part 1

Write Your Anchor Content

Now that you have your blog up and running, the first thing you will want to do is write as many posts as you can possible manage. Look around at other blogs like yours and see what the most popular posts are. To find these , there is often a widget on the side that will say “Popular Posts”. Now, please DO NOT copy their ideas or titles, but get an idea of what your market wants to read about. Then you will want to write a minimum of 2-3 anchor articles. These will be your most popular articles (hopefully). Put some effort into these articles and give away some of your most valuable information. These will be the articles that draw people to your blog.

Adsense

Some people don’t like Adsense for one reason or another, so they choose to monetize in other ways. However, there is a great deal of revenue to be made if you do it right.  If you already have an Adsense account, you can simply log in and get your code and insert it into your blog. If you don’t have an account, it’s easy to apply. Simply go to https://www.google.com/adsense and follow the yellow brick road. It takes about a week to get approved. Be sure to read their terms and conditions, and know up front that Google will ban you from their program if you or your friends click your ads even a little too much. NEVER, ever, ( click your own ads, and if they notice the same people (friends, well meaning relatives) are consistently clicking your ads, you will be sliced irreparably from the program. No mercy. So beware.

There is an art to placing these ads on your site. Websites like Homeschool.com make over $30,000 per month on just Adsense. (reliable heresay) If you want to learn more about it, I would recommend finding an ebook on Clickbank or there are several good books on Amazon, too. The reason I recommend an ebook is because it’s difficult to find a published book on Amazon that isn’t outdated by the time it makes it to press. Google changes it’s terms rapidly, so the newer the information the better. I recommend Clickbank because there are so many scammers out there and Clickbank is reliable to weed out the garbage and will give you a full refund troublefree is you find it’s not what you thought it was. Information is power.

Affiliate Programs

The other main way you will make money on your blog is to sign up for some affiliate programs. Linkshare and Commission Junction are two of the top networks you will want to apply to. There are many others and you can read more about this in our post: The Top 10 Affiliate Networks.

Clickbank

If the internet is the information super highway, then Clickbank is the #1 truckstop. Like I mentioned above, Clickbank has a level of integrity to maintain so they are meticulous about not accepting junk. It’s also a tremendous source of useful information about almost any subject you could imagine. It’s easy to use and navigate. You can sign up for free to sell any product. If you want to sell your own product, it costs a one time $50 registration fee. But I don’t think you are quite there yet. Once you have your Clickbank ID, you will find creating links for any of their products very easy.

There are other ways to make money on your blog, but you will want to get a little more established first. Also, you don’t want to put too many ads on your site, or many potential readers will click away in a nano-second.

So now you are up and running, keep posting quality content 2-5 times per week and you will find that within 6 months you are doing better than you ever thought you could. There are a number of ways to tweak your blog, and of course, generating traffic will be your next hurdle.

Marketing Your Blog

We are only going to briefly touch on this because it’s an entire series of posts all by itself. We used to have a category called “Marketing” but decided it deviated too far from our intended focus. There are many ways to market your blog, but here are our top seven:

1. Comment on other blogs (like ours) similar to yours and leave a back link
2. Guest post on popular blogs (like ours! just email us with your post)
3. Start a Facebook Fan page
4. Start a Twitter profile and add others like yourself
5. Register and use Delicious, Stumble on, Digg,  Reddit,  Technorati, and others like it. Download Alexa’s toolbar. You’ll know at a glance the best sites.
6. Start a newsletter-sign up with AWeber or Constant Contact.(60 day free trial)
7. Post really interesting stuff, top 10 lists are HOT

Well, that is it for our series, but we have much more free tools and tips on this blog to help you succeed.  What kind of advice can you offer our readers that will help them get started? Thanks!

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Please note: this was written in June, 2008! Updated, June, 2010

First off, I really want to make it clear that I am NOT an expert at blogging, actually, I am just really getting started. (6/2008) If you’re wondering what am I doing writing a blog about blogging when I’m a new blogger (say that 5 times really fast) , so am I. What I am is a teacher, and a researcher. To clarify my purpose here, it’s to give you a concise outline to get started and point you to all the resources you need to make …GOOD…money blogging. I am happy to walk along side and compare notes as we go along, too!

OK, now that we have that out of the way…..Step 2. You should have your topic now, your next assignment is also one of the most important foundational steps you will take and that is deciding on your blogging platform. Here is where I have freedom to tell you my experiences with various platforms because no one is paying me to say what they want me to! In case you aren’t sure what I mean by ‘blogging platform’, then you are at the right place. This means you aren’t up on the latest CSS or HTML, or other alphabet software and you need a basic recommendation.

Choosing Your Platform

Ok, what’s a ‘platform’? It’s basically what you use to write and publish your blog. Also know as a ‘Content Management System’ or CMS, it’s one of the most important decisions you will make in your blogging journey. There are a number to choose from, and if you’d like to see a full list, Problogger has one posted here.

Wordpress

We are only going to deal with the most popular  free programs. I discovered Wordpress later in the game and absolutely LOVE it, and it’s 100%free. You have two options with Wordpress, Wordpress.org and Wordpress.com. Many people confuse these two, but there is a  BIG difference. WP.com is the online version that is ideal if you have $0 money to start with. They will give you a domain name (actually, it will be a subdomain of WP like like ThisIsMe.wordpress.com) and walk you through step by step. You can purchase your own domain name and plug it in if you want.

Your other option is to obtain your own hosting and domain name and put it on your server yourself. This is called a ’self-hosted blog’. Many hosting companies already have it installed on their system, and it’s a one or two click start up. Why would you go to all that trouble and expense if Wordpress is willing to host it for you? Money. On Wordpress.com you are limited not only to what you can do with design and the like, but if you get too commercialized (ie: advertising) they will shut you down. So if your object is to make money, it’s wise to start out with a self hosted blog. It’s not as difficult as it sounds, and some hosting companies are more than helpful in walking you through it. Blue Host has the best customer service IMHO, and was very patient with me in the early days. Believe me, I would not have been as patient with me. I had no idea what I was doing. They spent hours at a time helping me out.  iPowerWeb.com also has award winning customer service and is probably the most affordable option, including a free domain name.

Blogger

Blogger is Google’s baby,  and is easily set up with Google Adsense. However, being somewhat of a remnant child of the sixties, I have struggled with how big Google is getting, and thus a little too powerful. So I enjoy promoting the free spirited Wordpress. That’s all I will say, in case Google is listening….. It’s also more difficult in my opinion to use on a day to day basis than Wordpress, but they do make it easier to install some of the extras (like their Adsense).

Homeschool Blogger

Homeschool Blogger is a free blogging platform that is made for homeschoolers. They have recently done a MAJOR remodel, so be patient with them. It’s a great way to get to know other homeschool families.

The platform I started with came with my hosting package and was an installed Wordpress application hosted on my Blue Host. I felt limited in what I could do at the time. I have blogs on all the platforms, I tried them all just so I could report back to you what works and what doesn’t.They all work, but I like Wordpress the best, and Blogger the least.

Now (6-2010) I have several ’self-hosted’ blogs and love all the options and the ease with updating and trying new things. I enjoy trying on different themes like some women enjoy trying on new clothes! (not recommended)

Would love to hear your experiences, please leave us a comment with your opinion. Thanks!

Read next: How to make money blogging – Part 3

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