A Mom Going Nuts Trying To Help The Family Make Money

Hi everyone! My name is Katherine, I go by Kaylee on the web. I have two children, 8 and 3 years old. I've been a stay-at-home-mom now for 8 years and ever since I quit my job to stay home with my two kids, I've been searching far and wide for a way to make money without having to go back to a job that requires my kids being put in a daycare. I'm not trying to say that putting your kids in a daycare is a horrible thing to do. I am part of a big famliy where one of my siblings is blessed like myself to have an income generated by her husband that is substantial enough to sustain their life and keep mom at home with the kids. I then have two siblings who have had to go to work outside of the home because the income from one source was not enough. So, I know full well that different people struggle in different ways. I don't believe one way is better than another, it's just our way and how we as individuals cope with what God gives us. This is my personal way of sharing what has worked and has not worked for me in trying to make a little extra money from home. I hope you find it helpful if you are a person searching yourself for a way to stay at home with kids or family that needs you without having to worry about money.

It has shocked me how hard it seems it is to make money in a world that is so technology oriented. And the biggest thing that caused some huge frustration in my life was doing searches on Google and other similar sites trying to find out how everyone else was making money from home. Gosh the amount of crap generated off of a basic search like "How to Make Money at Home" got me into so much trouble. I was suddenly thrusted into all of these websites that promised "Huge Income" from minimal effort and time. Let's get serious right here and now, there is absolutely no way to make any kind of decent money from home without working hard at it and putting in a good amount of time.

I had a huge moment of success in June 2007 when I finally discovered my first truly legitimate way to make money from home. That finding was thanks to a clip I saw online from Good Morning Amercia about a company called "LiveOps". This is a telecommunications company that employs people working as contractors from their home taking calls for an aray of different "As Seen On TV" products. I'm not sure if I've described that exactly right but either way it is a terrific way to get started making good money working from home. The down side for me is that it does require a quiet working enviorment, which as you read before about me having two small children, this was a difficult thing to find for me personally. I worked around it as much as I could. I mostly worked in the evenings after the kids had gone to bed and when my husband was home to handle anything that came up. For instance, in my house, it is not extremely uncommon to have a kid come out from bed asking for a drink of water or complaining about whatever they can think of to complain about. Let's see, anything from "Mom, I'm hot" to "Mom, I was thinking that tomorrow we could go to McDonalds". Yeah, those little ones can sometimes think about anything to keep from going to bed. So, with the possibility in mind that the kids might wake up and disturb me, it was essential to only work when my husband was home so that he could deal with their needs while I worked quietly in our bedroom with the door closed. I still work with LiveOps when I can but that seems to become more and more rare. I do enjoy the work and I enjoy talking to so many different people, it's just difficult to find any sort of completely quiet time to work when you have a house with toddlers in it. It's not impossible but it is difficult. If you can somehow get around that issue though, it is a great way to make money from home and work when you want to, not when someone else says you have to.

My second attempt at a "Make Money From Home" was doing surveys. Oh my gosh, I don't even know where to begin on what a disaster this ended up being for me. I started out doing what I always do at the beginning of a new experience and I googled about the topic. Off I went with my search "Making Money Doing Surveys". This is yet another nightmare topic to google because of course you will be flooded with thousands of websites once again promising big bucks. I knew somebody who knew somebody else (yeah, you know how that goes) who was making a decent income completing surveys online so I figured what the heck, I'll give it a try because I love giving opinions. All I can say about the surveys is that yes, you can make money doing surveys but be SO careful where you are signing up to do them and also be certain that you do not fall for what I did which were all of the sites that promised money if you signed up for some kind of offer which didn't cost money up front but they did want your credit card information to bill you later if you didn't cancel a "trial offer" in the time allowed. My family is definitely on a budget and this is where I got into one of the worst disasters of all because I wasn't careful enough. I signed up for lots of different offers and even canceled within my time period. This is the trick though is that so many of these things are scams and even if you do call the right number and talk to the right people about canceling your membership, you still face unauthorized charges on your account because this is what these sites do...they take your money and there isn't a whole lot you can do about. So, research these things very carefully and don't do anything, not one single thing that requires you to give credit card information or any other type of billing info. I did find a couple of sites that were legitimate but even the two I found rarely send me surveys that fit my profile and a lot of times when they do they're already booked to their maximum number of people before I even get a chance to sign up. The two I found that were legitimate and didn't require me paying a dime were Greenfield.com and AmericanConsumerOpinion.com. I wish I could have found more but I'm not certain that even if I had that it would have been worthwhile for me.

This leads me to where I am currently and that is trying to make a little money off of blogging. This is yet another thing I hear so many people are making good money doing so we'll see if this time will be the charm for me. This is my third job attempt from home and the third one is supposed to be the charm so let's see what happens.

In closing I'd like to say good luck to all who venture out and try to find legitimate work from home. It is a very hard thing to do, however I do believe that if you have good common sense and a strong will then you can definitely be successful at anything you put your mind to. Good luck to us all who try so hard to make an extra income from home. Let's help each other figure it out and be successful!