Homeschooling Entrepreneur Idea of the Week!

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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