getting home and staying home

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getting home and staying home

by angela
(canada, ontario)

We are familiar with hobby farming and being frugal and so on as I was home and homeschooling for 7 yrs. I, for some stupid reason, decided I needed to be an independent business woman and opened a retail store.

Well here we are 3 yrs latter and for the last 1.5 yrs I have dreamed of being back at home. Two weeks ago I had an accident and was trampled by one of my horses. It was bad. It really made me realize life is too short and I am determined I am coming home.

I have the know-how as far as chickens, goats, cows, gardening, jamming, canning and soap-making. But I need to figure out how to create an income of approximately 1200 a month year round. I have recorded your list of ways and will work on those immediately.

Do you know how we can get off grid with out it costing thousands of dollars? We have 4 children and still want running water, toilet power and so on.

Any other thoughts on how to just do it and take the plunge would be appreciated.

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getting home and staying home

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How to stay home
by: Sue Merriam

You?re right; going off the grid can be extremely expensive. Your best bet is to cut back on your bills at first, saving your money, and then gradually going off grid.

One of the ways I have found to stay at home and make money is through an online business. Since you have experience in retail, an online business could be right up your alley. Depending on what you sell, you can start a website focusing on your product.

The thing about having a successful online business is you must provide a lot of useful information. With a mortar and concrete store, the key to success is location, location, location. But on the internet, the key to success is information, information, information. Provide a website that has a lot of great content, and you will have an edge over many others wanting to open an online retail business.

Plus, you have the added benefit of knowing how to work with wholesalers and pricing. That?s valuable experience you could turn into a profitable home business.

To give you an example, my mom has a small sewing business making vestments for priests. It never paid much, but she did make a small income off of it. When the economy took a downturn a little over a year ago, she was unable to sell anything, so I suggested we open a joint website to try to sell her vestments online.

We used a program called Site Build It ? the same program I used to build this website. The nice thing about Site Build It, or SBI, is that in addition to providing web hosting, they also give you tools to help you find topics that will draw in traffic, analyze pages to make sure the search engines will like them and provide you with step by step instructions on how to build a site that gets traffic.

I started my mom?s website about ten months ago It?s a small niche, and we are still only getting about 50 unique visitors a day, but the traffic is enough to make a nice, part-time business for each of us. If we weren?t splitting the profits, Mom?s website would soon now be making about half of what you?re hoping to earn. As our traffic grows, our income should grow as well.

Although it is an investment of time (at least six months to build up sufficient traffic), a website is a great way to build an online business. Once you get the ball rolling, your traffic will continue to grow, and as it grows, your business will grow as well.

Just remember that a website takes time and patience. Expect to invest some time in the evenings and weekends building content before you get enough traffic to start making money. But that investment of time will pay in the long run, especially if you use a program like Site Build It.

Hope this helps, and happy homesteading!

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