Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach

What can you actually do to earn money online? There are literally hundreds of different ways to achieve this. In this article, we'll go over a handful of popular options. You can take any of these methods and make a career out of them; or you can use these as inspiration to come up with your own job description.

1.                   Graphic or Web Design.  As a graphic or web designer, you're responsible for creating brochures, pamphlets, banner ads, websites, logos and anything else that's graphic or web related for your clients.

Your projects could range from $20 for a banner design to $5,000 or more for a website, depending on your level of experience and contacts.  Clients can come from offline contacts and referrals or online advertising.

2.       Translation.  Do you speak or write more than one language? Fluent translators are often in high demand. English to Chinese or English to Spanish and vice versa are two extremely lucrative skills.

You can opt to be either a "live" translator or an "after the fact" translator.  A live translator is actually on the phone with both parties, doing a translation live for them. This can be done from home, although you have to be by the phone at certain times.   An "after the fact" translator does their written or spoken translations after the actual conversations have occurred.

3.       Transcribing.  Do you have a fast typing speed? Transcribing can be a very lucrative way of earning a great living.

The two most common types of transcription are medical and legal transcription. You're essentially taking conversations or dictations and turning them into written word.

4.       Online Writing.  If you're good at research and great at writing, being an online writer could be the perfect work-at-home job for you.

An online writer receives assignments from clients in the form of topics or keywords. It's your job to find out everything you need to know about that topic, then write the article.

Some online writers specialize in certain topics. For example, you could write articles only on health or only about online business.

5.       Voice Acting.  A lot of business owners want to add voice to their websites or videos, but don't want to use their own voices. In that case, they hire voice actors.

A good voice actor needs to be able to modulate pitch and tone to the client's needs. They need to be able to portray whatever emotion needs to be portrayed and to take on whatever "style" their client needs.

One client might want an excited, fast-talking sales pitch, while the next might want a detached commentator. Whatever the case, a great voice actor needs to be able to adapt.

These are just a handful of possible jobs that you can do from home. Any one of these work-at-home jobs can earn you a very decent living once you figure out your optimal way of landing clients.

So are you thinking about starting a home based business?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach

I am asked this question all the time.  I would love to work from home but don’t know what I could do that will actually make money.  In uncertain economic times, many people are looking for ways to supplement their income. Working from home has become a popular financial avenue. In what creative ways can you begin to work from home?

They say that the best time to start a new business is during an economic downturn. Why is that the case? People have needs. The change in the financial climate brings about new problems that need solving by someone with the necessary skills and creative innovation.

People are looking for ways to save money. Your enterprise can be a resource when other companies are charging too much for their services. Start-up businesses can get better interest rates on their loans. A new line of credit may not cost you as much as it would have in better economic times.

Home businesses provide another source of income to sustain you and your family. While you are making money, you are also serving a need in the community that has arisen. It can be a win-win situation for those involved.

Creative Enterprises You Can Begin at Home

So what type of business can you get started from home? There are options, but it does take some thought to see where you fit into the equation. If you have no passion for the product or service, the business won’t last long. Here are some tips to help you get going.

1.       Stick with your passion – What are you good at? Playing to your strengths will make it easier to convince others like bankers and potential clients of your expertise in a certain field. Are you good with outdoor landscaping? Begin a business that offers low-cost solutions for outdoor residential areas.

2.       Sell your products – Do you like to craft? Sell homemade jewelry, toys, holiday items, gift baskets and the like online to your target market. Set up a store on eBay. Create your own website with storefront if you have the expertise. Do you like to garden? Sell your home-grown fruits and vegetables at the local farmer’s market for extra cash.

3.       Sell your knowledge – Are you an expert in any particular field? Gaining knowledge in corporate America can lead to business coaching as a second profession. Advise individuals as well as companies on strategies to streamline their processes and maximize profits.

4.       Fill a need – As financial situations change, people’s needs change. Find out what they are looking for and seek to provide them with it. For instance, drop-in childcare centers popped up in response to lack of care for parents who wanted to spend a few hours together but had no sitter or more expensive childcare options.

5.       Educate others – Are you good at a particular school subject? Sign on with companies to become a paid tutor. Use your knowledge to teach kids who are struggling and need a bit of help.

When it comes to making money from home, use your noggin to come up with new and innovative ways to make a profit as you serve the world around you.

So are you thinking about starting a home based business?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated! 

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach

One of the types of content that you need to create in your content marketing endeavors is social media content. Social media content is any content that you will use for purposes of promoting on social media. It might be a blurb that goes with a link to a video or blog post, or it might be an infographic or meme to help you get a point or two across. Creating content for social media is an important part of every business’s marketing strategy.

1.       Plan Ahead – Most people seem to totally forget to plan ahead regarding social media content. This is a mistake. If you create a blog post, for example, then you should create a tweet, a Facebook post, and other blurbs for whatever social media network that you plan to share the information on.

2.       Add the Content to Your Calendar – Include social media content on your editorial calendar. If you know that in August you’re going to promote a great new product or service, then you should also be planning for social media content to use in that promotion - both leading up to the launch and during the launch.

3.       Create Images for Social Media – Remember that images are a form of content, and that you need to create images for social media sharing. Images are more likely to be shared than text and are an important part of your marketing actions on social media. Using a variety of images as content, like infographics and memes, will increase shares and engagement.

4.       Outsource It – You can use your content calendar to get help creating social media content with experts. These experts can help you create infographics, memes and a with a copywriting expert they can also help you craft just the right words to use for a blurb supporting your other promotions, products and services.

5.       Share More Than Once – It’s important that you promote the content that you create and that you do it more than once. People do not check their entire social media stream, so sharing the same content with new blurbs and a new spin on the information several times will increase the view rate exponentially.

6.       Conduct A/B Testing – Also called split testing, you want to see what times, headlines, and topics get more attention than others. As you collect this data, you’ll soon know exactly what time is best to share any updates with your social media followers.

7.       Target Each Audience – Each social media network has its own personality, and the portion of your audience that follows you and engages with you on each network is usually slightly different. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that the content you create for each network is exclusive to that network.

8.       Create Content Often – With social media you need to have content for every day of the week, and share it more than once per day. This can seem like a lot of content to create, but it all stems from the basic message you want to get across to your audience based on your promotions.

Creating content for social media will be a large part of your content creation program. It will help ensure that the products, services and information that you need to communicate to your audience gets the attention it needs.

So how do you create content for social media?  I would love to hear your comments on this post.  You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com  Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach

You can generate thousands of dollars of business every month just from message boards. In this article, we'll cover a few of the most popular internet message boards for finding clients for work-at-home projects.

ð  WarriorForum

The Warrior Forum is one of the largest internet marketing forums online. The audience tends to be between beginners to the moderately successful, with just a handful of truly successful posters.

The Warrior Forum has two sections to pay attention to: The Warrior Special Offers forum and the Warriors for Hire section. Both of these sections are great places to advertise for freelance services.

Writing, copywriting, graphic design and web design all tend to do well at the Warrior Forum.

ð  WickedFire

WickedFire is a tricky place to market on. WickedFire is another internet marketing forum, specifically for affiliate marketers. Unlike the Warrior Forum, WickedFire consists mainly of marketers who make a lot of money. A large percentage of the forum makes well over $10,000 a month.

The downside is that it has a very specific culture you need to get acclimated to before you can do business there. They're not very friendly towards outsiders or "newbies."  That said, if you can find a service that attracts this crowd, there is a lot of money to be made.

Services that tend to do well include link building, backlink wheels and multi-tier linking systems. Content does so-so in this forum.

ð  Digital Point

Digital point is yet another popular internet marketing board. The audience tends to be much more entry level and the bids for projects much lower.

Unless you're really desperate to get your first few paying clients, you may want to avoid Digital Point.

ð  Craigslist

Craigslist is an often underutilized site for finding clients. On one hand, there's a lot of spam on the site and getting noticed can be tricky. On the other hand, craigslist's sheer traffic makes it attractive to just about anyone looking for work.

You can post an advertisement in the Services section for free, advertising your services. Alternatively, you can look in the Gigs section for people looking for your services.

Experiment with several different headlines and ads. Consider hiring someone for $1 a post or so to repost your ad whenever possible, instead of having to do it on your own.

ð  Elance.com, Guru.com

There are plenty of other boards and job listing sites to post on. Elance and Guru are two of the more well-known ones.

The main benefit of using freelance sites is that they get a lot of targeted traffic. You have hundreds of thousands of people coming through every month, looking for your services.

The downside is the competition. You're often competing against people from India or the Philippines who can drastically undercut you because they have a lower cost of living. Therefore, their bids are often lower as well.

Freelance sites are a great place to get low to moderate bids, but they're difficult to scale up to high-end projects on.

These are some of the most popular message boards online for finding clients. Choose the one(s) that appeal the most to you and start fine-tuning your sales message.

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach

When you want to be effective with your content marketing efforts for your home based business, it’s important to develop a content calendar. A content calendar will help you plan out the content you will need to create. It will help you publish your content at the right time, in order to promote the events, products, services and information that your audience needs.

The point of creating a content calendar is to ensure that you, as well as those with whom you work, can all be on the same page in regards to content creation for your business. This may include content for your blogs, social media accounts and more. Plus, all of the content needs to go together to get the marketing results that you want.

1.       Identify the Topics You Need to Cover – Before you get started creating a calendar, you need to know what type of topics you need to cover. It’s important to identify a specific niche and then work from there.

2.       Know Who Your Audience Is – Understanding your audience is one of the most important things you can do. This will help you with content creation, because you will know what your audience needs to know about your niche in order to decide to make a purchase from you.

3.       Determine What You Already Have in Terms of Content – Check the inventory you already have regarding content. Update anything that needs updating, and practice good internal linking to bring attention to other content to your audience.

4.       Make a List of the Products and Services You Want to Promote – What are the products and services you want to promote right now? From that list you should be able to create at least five to ten pieces of content for each product or service.

5.       Know the Objective of Every Piece of Content – When you create any piece of content, you need to know what the ultimate point is. Is it to get newsletter subscribers? Is it to make a sale? Is it to educate before pitching the product or service?

6.       Note Launch Dates for New Products, Events or Services – Within the calendar, note the launch dates of any new products or services that you plan to promote. This will enable you to work backwards into the calendar to push out content at the right time.

7.       Make a Spreadsheet with Logical Headings – You’re going to want your spreadsheet to make sense and include logical headings like article title, assigned to, draft due date, objective, promotion, keywords, CTA and so forth. Leave a space for anything you want to track, including social media networks and so on.

8.       Track Everything - Within your spreadsheet, leave a space for tracking the results of your content marketing efforts. What you track will be what is successful.

There are some awesome tools that you can use such as Google Drive’s Google Docs to set up the spreadsheet that everyone works from. If you want to take that a step further, you can use something like Kapost.com if you have a high volume of content needs. 

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach

Becoming a speaker is a wonderful way to spread awareness about your topic, niche or home based business. Also, in many cases speakers are well-paid to deliver their information to certain audiences. But, first of all - to become a sought-out speaker you need to find your audience, and deliver the information that audience desires in a way that is pleasant and memorable.

1.       Identify Your Audience – Everything starts with your audience, of course. Know who they are, what they need, what their desires are and also what they can afford to reasonable do about their situations. If you can figure all that out, you can craft wonderful speeches with just the right information.

2.       Choose Your Message – As you get to know your audience, you can choose the message you want to impart. Sometimes speakers have more than one speech in their repertoire, so that venues and groups can pick between them. Narrow your message down to two or three major solutions for your audience.

3.       Develop Your Speech – Choose one of the three and start developing the speech. Write down notes, and form an outline for the speech. Decide on how long it will be. Sometimes you’ll need versions of your speech in different time lengths for various audiences. But start with a reasonable time of about 20 to 40 minutes.

4.       Write and Publish a Book – Using the information that you are gathering for speeches to write a book will not only help you identify information that you want to give in a speech, but it will also give you something to promote at your talks. Plus, you will be introduced as an author.

5.       Keep Studying – Never stop studying up on your audience and niche. Things change over time and you want to keep your information as current as possible. If your message becomes dated and old, you will not be asked to speak at events as much.

6.       Practice – Always practice every single speech you want to give, because you’ll need to change it up a bit to fit in with the particular audience that you give the speech to. While you make it for one audience, you’ll need to narrow it down further when you find out exactly who you’ll be talking to.

7.       Create a “One Sheet” – A one sheet is one regular piece of paper that explains what you talk about in your different speeches. It’s also all the information about you on one piece of paper: your background, your expertise, and what you can speak about, plus your contact information.

8.       Promote Yourself – It’s imperative that once you’ve decided to become a speaker, you promote yourself. You may have to give free talks for a little while, but chalk it up as practice to help you build up your reputation. When something is free, ask if you can record it for use later, as this will help you get better.

Becoming a speaker can take your career or business to a whole new level. You’ll be seen far and wide as an expert in your field. You’ll be able to craft more speeches and more talks, in more venues, as you develop your program according to what you want to promote. Normally speaking goes hand-in-hand with promotion of other products after the speech, even when you’re being paid to do so.