10 Work at Home Niches Article

10 Work at Home Niches You Can Use Today is an article that is a kind of rehash of the topics that always sell, but with a work at home twist. The author is giving you ideas of what kind of a business to start, for example:

Number one is Having a collection. This is smart, and a perfect example of a good affiliate niche. You would even be best to start off with something you collect or know a lot about. Say you collect cows. You can bet you are not the only person out there collecting cows, so you use your experience an make this incredible website that has articles on cow collecting, links to hard-to-find collectible cows, and a cow store. You can monetize this site by using affiliate links for a lot or most of your links and maybe contextual advertising like Google adsense.

If you have any questions, leave me a comment! Lisa

WAHMs gaining acceptance

USATODAY.com - Job opening? Work-at-home moms fill bill - fantastic! I've also seen mention of hiring wahms as high-quality, right-priced labor on webmasterworld, I highly-respected webmaster community.

Evils of Stuffing Envelopes, Craft Assembly, and any job requiring you to pay the employer

Well, I never fell for the stuffing envelopes scam or the craft assembly scam, but I did try the one where you send the 5 names ahead of you a dollar each and then send the letter on to 5 more people and you were supposed to get $12,000 or something. No, I didn't send the 5 names ahead of me a dollar. No, I never saw even one dollar. (this was at least 15 years ago - does this one even exist anymore?

I also did a sort of an MLM for internet service providers back in the days when Compuserve was king. All I had to do was give away floppy discs. No, I never made a penny from that either.

I also sold Kirby vacuums between high school and college back in 1990. No, I never sold one and instead spent most of my graduation money just making it through the summer. I just couldn't bring myself to play the game - you know, where the salesperson says "oh, but I really need to make this sale, I have 17 kids in school and no money till next month, let me call my boss and see if I can bring the price down for you." And then she uses your phone and has an earnest conversation with someone and begs this someone using all sorts of sympathy-provoking language to lower the price for you. If someone told me no thanks (everyone did) I just said ok and left, despite the daily meetings where our boss coached us on what to say to seem the most pitiful.

So, does this qualify me to tell you the evil truth about envelope stuffing and craft assembly, even though I've never been duped by it? I think it does.

Any "job" that requires you to send them in a fee for materials or training, or anything at all is a scam. Don't do it. You will never see that money again and you will never make any money off the program. You may stuff some envelopes as per your contacts instructions, but they will be 'unacceptable' and you will not get paid for them. Or, you will have to send them on to other people and these other people will have to send your contact money, of which you may or may not see a dollar of. Same with craft assembly. You will pay your materials fee, assemble your crafts, send them in, and your contact will tell you the quality was not good enough for you to get paid.

Do not send anyoine money for a job. Paying money to own a business is normally ok, however. If you are not sure what is legitimate and what isn't, e-mail me at lisa@busymeals.com or leave a comment here. I will examine the program and let you know what I think.

Why I Hired a Certain Independent Contractor for Data Entry

I just hired an independent contractor for content development on one of my sites. I posted a telecommuting job listing on wahm.com and had an overwhelming response within a few hours. Since so many people are looking for a way to work from home, applying for any job is extremely competitive.

What not to do

Even though the job was posted on a casual website geared towards mothers, I did not expect responses to be casual. I received queries from people with master's degrees in english, so the standard was set very high from the beginning. I requested that a resume not be sent, and instead a 50 word review of any tangible product be sent. One requirement outlined in the job posting was excellent spelling and grammar. These are actual instances that I received that caused me to immediately delete the email application:

• applicant used letters in lieu of words, like "u wash it"


• applicant used an ampersand (&) instead of the word and


• misspellings - about 50% of the applications I received had words misspelled!


• poor grammar - again, about half of the applications used incorrect grammar


• demanding language: one applicant wrote "after you reviewed my resume please call me at ***-**** to discuss my qualifications. Now, I am certain that this applicant read that this line should be included in cover letters when job seeking. I've come across this advice myself in the past, however, the applicant should have paid attention to the job posting that stated "all communication will be via email." She should also have found a less demanding way to make this request, and at the very least, she should have corrected 'after you reviewed' to 'after you have reviewed'.


• capitalization and apostrophes: several applicants wrote i instead of I, and a couple did not use apostrophes in the case of contractions (simple mistakes, but why should I consider a person who does this when I have 20 applicants whose review was flawless?)


• sending a resume - I said no resume, and I did not want to see a resume.


• sending an email just to ask if the position was still open


• colorful e-mail backgrounds or big yellow smiley signatures (unprofessional)


• I didn't delete out of hand for this, but I did not like when a woman sent me an email from an email address that had only her husband's name on it. This implied to me that the woman was not online enough or savvy enough to have her own email.
  

What *to* do

• 
  The woman I ended up hiring went to the homepage of the site the posting was on and looked around. She made a comment in her email about her experience with the subject of the site (this put here right on top of the pile - she was the only one who did this). Her spelling and grammar were perfect. Her email was professional without being formal.


• 
  Two people included small, high-quality pictures with their reviews. These both caught my eye.

Everyone who emailed exactly what I asked for with no mistakes got put in a save file for future consideration. Unfortunately, this was only about 10 applications out of 60 or 70 received in 36 hours.