10 Ways to be a Money Makin’

Momma (or Grandma)!

Be the Mom you want to be, take

control, and start a micro-Mom-business.

This is a free report written by Lauren Rothlisberger at www.getmegeeky.com. Please share it with anyone you please under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Copyright 2012 Lauren Rothlisberger

Dear Moms,

Your number one job is truly one of the most thankless jobs of all time, so let me say THANK YOU! It is exhausting, the rewards are fleeting, and often take years to fruition. This job is so demanding it is easy to lose ourselves in the process. Unfortunately, when this starts to happen our unhappiness leaks into the rest of the family. Many of us struggle, trying to figure out how we can have the fulfillment of work and the freedom to be with our children as much as we want.

Here is the good news, we are the fortunate ones. Now, more than ever before, it is easy to stake out a little place in the world that is yours to create, sell, distribute and profit from at almost no start up cost. I call these a micro-mom-business, meaning a very small business, with a Mom at the heart of it all.

This micro-Mom-business is in your control, the only choice you have to make is the choice to work hard.

This short handout is intended to get your juices flowing. The concept behind a micro-Mom-business is to uncover your passion and overlay that with a income producing business model. We are going to start with a review all the ways you can make money. As you read through each one of the sections, ask yourself, what is your favorite example of this type of product and why. Then take your passion and see what product type fits. Don’t be discouraged if all your ideas seems to big for one Mom to handle. Take a minute to consider how you might scale down. You don’t need to open a yoga studio, but instead offer yoga classes to small groups in your basement. You are a Mom trying to balance two worlds. This doesn’t mean your potential to make money has to scale, just keep it at a level you can manage and then learn to leverage.

I hope you find the information useful and inspiring. Please visit me online if you have any questions.www.getmegeeky.comwww.facebook.com/getmegeekywww.twitter.com/getmegeeky

Lauren Rothlisberger

Over the next pages I will go through 10 different ways to make an income. While many of these may seem obvious to you, challenge yourself to take your interest/passion/skill and see how you could match it with the method of making money on that page.

For example, if your passion is music and teaching piano lessons, your product could be a lesson book, your service, teaching lessons, a shared resource a location where students could come practice at their leisure and so on. Ways to Make Money:ProductServiceShared ResourceSubscriptionResaleLeaseCommissionAudience AggregationDividendInsurance

Next Steps:You Don’t Need to be an Expert.What do you Already Know?A Quick and Dirty Plan

Product Create a digital or physical product, then sell and deliver it for more than it cost.

The best products are the ones that solve a problem of your own. There have been countless Moms who have de-veloped a new product based off a need of theirs or their children. There are a couple ways to develop a product. Some ideas may be easy to put together at home. Others may require you to have a product produced somewhere else (check online under the search “product prototype”). Either way, create a few of your product concept and give them away to friends see if the idea starts to catch on.

What rocks about this method?It is exciting to put together a tangible object that you can package and sell.

What makes it tough?You must deal with development, inventory, packaging and shipping.

How could you scale this?Not every product has to come from a large factory. See how small and simple you can start and work from there.

Example: http://www.rufflebutts.com/about-us

Service Provide a useful service, then charge a for it.

Going into a service business is probably one of the most flexible and feasible micro-Mom-business ideas. Find a skill you have that others are willing to pay for. Many people’s response is, “I don’t have a skill.” Take a closer look, what did you do before you had kids? Is there a hobby your into that you could teach others? Your greatest overhead with a service business is often childcare. Be creative with this, ask another Mom for help or find a way to integrate children into your business. Other Moms will love you for that.

What rocks about this method? You can set your own hours and grow as little or as much as you want.

What makes it tough? You are required for this to happen, at least when you are starting out. If you can not serve someone you don’t make any money.

How could you scale this? Once you have built the model for this service plan you can always train others to do the same in a different area and take a monetary cut for using your name and business model.

Examples: Personal Trainer, Landscaping, Cooking Class

Shared ResourceCreate a shared resource that can be used by many people, then charge for access.

What exactly is a shared resource? Well this can be a physical location (think Gymboree or Kindermusik) or a digital community with loads of resources and content worth paying for. Don’t be discouraged with the thought of a physical shared resource needing a lot of start up money. Be creative with the types of locations you can use for free or super cheap. Churches and community centers are good places to start looking. Also you don’t need to buy into a francise, start something similar for yourself, for example, “Music Moms”. For a digital shared resource finding a place is the easiest part. It is the content that will be your greatest challenge.

What rocks about this method? Bringing together a community of people is inspiring and rewarding.

What makes it tough? Putting together the content that attract a community worth of people can be a lot of start up work.

How could you scale this? Digitally this is easy to scale, simply allow more members. If you have developed a physical community you could spread to a new location.

Example: www.etsy.com, mom entrepreneur pages

SubscriptionOffer ongoing access to information, then charge a recurring fee.

We most commonly think about subscriptions in connection with newspapers and magazines. While those examples may be outdated, there is a new type of subscription taking over. Instead of charging to have a magazine sent out once a month, how about charging a monthly fee to access information. There is a lot of overlap between a digital subscription and a shared resource. A digital subscription implies you are receiving something over a certain period of time for a set fee. Where is shared resource is more of a particular product or information area you access.

What rocks about this method? Once your system is in place your are just responsible for providing new content and gaining customers. Time spent on this varies due to content. Another thing that rocks about this method is recurring subscription payments make your income a little more predictable.

What makes it tough? People tend to be a little wary of online subscriptions, so providing unique and valuable content and a killer sales page to gain customers is necessary.

How could you scale this? You can add different levels of memberships with a additional value. The great part of an online subscription is there is no ad-ditional overhead cost with the increase in members.

Example: Paleo Plan, (anything else like this more Mom based)

ResaleProfit through resale is as old as time. Basically acquire an asset, then sell the asset to another buyer at a higher price. There are many, many different ways of doing this. You can open up your own shop (this may not be feasible for you), you can open up your own online shop, or your can sell something out of your home. If you are interested in retail learn about the process of buying something a wholesale prices. Another opportunity for resale is your own crafts. You can often be successful at a local farmers market or craft fair but also through online vendors such as Etsy.

What rocks about this method? It is always a thrill to know what you acquired an item for and what you sold it for, (well a thrill if you sold it for more). What makes it tough? It often times requires a managing inventory or merchandise depending on what you decide to sell.

How could you scale this? Sell more stuff, while not taking up more of your time! This usually requires that you take the time to learn ways to leverage technology and become more efficient with your selling process.

Examples: ebay shop, etsy shop, booth at a local fair

LeaseAcquire an asset, then allow another person to use that asset for a certain amount of time in exchange for a fee.

We most commonly think of leasing in terms of leasing a place to physically live. And there are plenty of options for making an income off of owning a piece of property then leasing it. However, a lot of these options may be past the scope of a micro-Mom-business. But there is more real estate to own and lease in the cyber world. It is just that the process is a little different. Buying online “real estate” is cheap ($20/month) but it is your job to appreciate the value of this new real estate with quality content. As your real estate gains value (lots of visitors) the space on your page does too. You can “lease” this space out to others on you online real estate now. This may be something as simple as advertisement space, but could also be a job board or an entire section of your site you allow someone else to write on.

What rocks about this method?Once your space has value you can offer it for a price. After landing the sale there is not a ton of extra work.

What makes it tough?Getting your site to a point where it is valuable enough to sell space is very hard work. You must have lots of cus-tomers/readers to make your site worth paying to advertise on. That being said people do accomplish this, so give it a shot! How could you scale this?Create more space on your site that is available for purchase.

Example: Muscokee Moms

CommissionSell an asset you don’t own on behalf of a third-party, then collect a percentage of the sale price as a fee.

At first this form of making income does not seem like it fits into full ownership of your micro-Mom-business, but commission is a very important tactic. Many micro-Mom-businesses are built online and fortunately there is a great opportunity to make commission in the online world. It is called affiliate marketing. This method allows you to sell other people’s products and take a cut from them when they make the sale. You can become an affiliate for businesses of all sizes and products of all types. Similar to leasing you need to build a strong audience for your website in order to convert a decent number of people into paying customers. It is also important to only market products or businesses you truely believe in. Customers will quickly see through any attempt to shove links at them to make the sale.

What rocks about this method?If you are able to succeed with this method it can lead to some serious passive income. It is pretty exciting to have money roll in even when you are not working.

What makes it tough?Again similar to the “leasing” method you must really spend some time building up your audience and traffic.

How could you scale this?Success in the web like this tends to build on itself. If you build one site with decent traffic building the next site with great traffic will be even that much easier. That traffic equals more sales.

Example: www.smartpassiveincome.com

Other Examples(less used, but worth mentioning)

Audience AggregationCreate and distribute information that appeals to a specific set of people, then sell access to that audience (advertising, direct mail, etc.) to an interested third-party.

This is method is has started to get a bad name, and partially for good reason. People don’t like their personal information being sold. However, with permission it is possible to use this method as long as the information that audience receives is relevant.

DividendPurchase an ownership stake in a business, then collect a corresponding portion of that business’ profit over time as a dividend.

This isn’t a great example of a business model to follow for your micro-Mom-business. But it is important to remember once you start making money that there are other opportunities out there to add to your income. Perhaps you want to help out a friend that needs a little money to get started in her business.

InsuranceWrite an insurance policy against some specific bad thing happening, collect premium payments up-front, then pay out claims only when the bad thing happens.

While this may seem way out of the realm of a micro-Mom-business. This method can be used to complement other services of yours. For example, many people pay retainer fees to their web developer. These small monthly fees cover the cost when something goes wrong and you need a developer to jump in and fix it.

What next?

You don’t need to be an expert.I hope exploring the many ways to make money sparked an interesting idea for you. If not, don’t worry this is a process. On the next page I will walk you through a couple of steps to help you brainstorm a couple of ideas.

Before we do that I want to touch on a topic. A lot of people say to me, “But I don’t really have a skill, passion or interest I am THAT good at”. Chances are that is not true. The hang up for most people is the “that I am that good at” part of it.

Let’s go back to our music teacher example. You don’t have to be the best pianist with pages of past concerts to be good enough to teach young kids. What you really need is the basics and the right tactic with children.

You don’t need to be an expert, although you can strive for it over time, you just need to be good enough to know more than the people who want to learn from you.

What do you already know?Let’s take a few minutes to work through some of your options for a micro-Mom-business. Make a list of all the interests, skills, hobbies or ideas you have. Then circle the ones you like the most. Next star the ones that you think other people would have the most interest in. Do any have both a circle and star? Can you think of a plan using the different models from above? What service can you offer? What products can you develop?

Do research online. Is there anyone else in your field with a great model that is functioning in another location successfully? Can you develop something similar or put a twist on it?

A quick and dirty plan.You to not need to get caught up with developing a full blown “business plan”. But it is a good idea to still have a plan of some sort. It will give you focus and direction when you find yourself thinking, “what next”?

Here are a few questions to answer to give you focus:

What am I selling?Who am I selling to?What are my costs?What are my revenue streams? (Try to come up with three. Bonus points for one being passive income.)Is there a different business that has my customers already? Could that business be a key partnership?What can I do to develop the best customer relationship possible?

That last one is so important. If you are not consistently building your business around that question you are going to fail.

I think I have a great idea, now what?Sit down and make a list of actions items. These items should be things that you MUST get done to start your business. Make sure you really limit the list to the MUST DOs to and not all the things you would like to do. The goal is to start making money ASAP so your list should focus on the items necessary to get to that point.Take a look at your list and star the three most important items. Start working on those. Be careful not to get to tunnel visioned on one portion of your list. And remember the 95% solution is almost always as good as the 100% solution. The last 5% will kill you and your idea.

I hope this quick guide will help you find the direction and guidance to get started. Be sure to take a look around my site www.get-megeeky.com for lots of helpful tips and how to guides.