I get asked that question all the time! There are oodles and oodles of people out there that want to learn how to work at home on their computers. I know when I started out, I really, really wanted to find a way to make this work! I chased (and paid for! eeps!) a lot of scams, participated in a lot of programs that stole tons of time from me, with little to no return. I’ve learned the hard way on a lot of these things and when I look back at some of the waste - wasted time, wasted money - I just shake my head!

Who Should I Listen To, Lisa?

One big mistake that people just starting out online make is following and attempting to learn from, too many people. I definitely made this one. I’ve got my ‘chosen mentors’ narrowed down to just a few now and things are working a lot better. One of these awesome people is Lynn Terry, of Clicknewz and Self Starters Weekly Tips. Lynn has been working as an entrepreneur, most of those years online, for about 12 years now. And the really super cool thing about her is that she’s really nice and really approachable. The ‘OMG, Lisa - what’s wrong with you?’ part is that I’ve known her, followed her, since at least 2003. That is how long I’ve been a member of her forum, anyway. I have been listening to eighty-seventy-thousand other people, too, though! Now she is one of my few - and my head is not spinning quite as much as it used to!

Back to the question people ask me all the time - other stay at home moms that want to continue to stay home with their kids are usually who ask me how this all works. How do you get paid to blog? How does affiliate marketing work? How do you get listed in the search engines? I try to answer them, but, I think my answers come out disjointed. I try to start from the beginning, but, I always wind up zig-zagging and then I have to say, “Wait, back up a minute, before you do this you have to do that and it winds up being a dizzyingly circular talk! Ha!

How Do I Get My Own Site Up?

I did a few how-to posts in an effort to get started explaining things from the beginning - Lisa, how do you make money at home blogging? and Make Money Blogging - Part II. The first post will really help you just get started with your blogging. The second post offered some helpful resources for more research. Again, though, I don’t feel that I’ve explained things well.

But Really, Lisa, How Do I Get Started?

That is one thing that Lynn is really good at - explaining how, step-by-step, to do all the different things that we do. And she has a new post up, called, Starting A Free Online Business - that offers so much help to someone just wanting to get started! She just has a great way of explaining things! I’m pretty good at teaching little kids stuff, but, for some reason, I’ve really found it difficult to teach people what I do online. Lynn is awesome at that - the important thing is, you really need to follow the links within her post. She has written tutorials on just about anything and everything to do with internet marketing and she links out to them. Follow those links! Dig through her site! You will learn a lot from her!

Look at the categories of her blog on the right sidebar, also - you can dig through those to specific topics of interest to you. And if you can’t find something, use the search at the top right of her page. If it has to do with online marketing, I’ll just bet Lynn has blogged about it!

Seriously, when getting online, you need to be careful. There are some smooth characters in this arena that will win you over with their charm. All the while you think you’re learning the very best stuff from them, they’re draining your bank account or your paypal. Lynn is a REAL PERSON, not out to drain anyone’s anything. She is very smart in marketing, the online world, and entrepreneurship - you can’t lose stickin’ with her!

I’m so excited, ya’ll! One of the other things that I’ve been doing online to make money at home is working for ChaCha.com, a human-powered search engine. It’s really fun.

One of my biggest complaints, making me nervous to even work for them recently - has been that the application is a Java-based app that runs in Internet Explorer! Ugh!

I couldn’t wrap my brains around why Scott Jones - a brilliant, millionaire businessman - would be running his latest company on a browser notorious for security breaches. I mean, this guy is awesome - he’s done so much! Check this out:

Scott Jones, CEO & Co-Founder

All this guy does is come up with amazing ideas and create successful companies around them. Ever heard of voice mail? Well, when Scott was only 25, his company Boston Technology invented the system used by nearly all the telephone companies around the globe. He started Escient, later transformed into Gracenote, which led the development of music recognition technology. He also founded IndyRobotics, which built one of the world’s premier self-driving vehicles. And now he’s created ChaCha. What’s next for Scott? We can only imagine.

Amazing - the guy is truly amazing! I love reading about go-getters like this, with brains that never turn off!

And now - I have no worries when I log into help people search on ChaCha.com, because, I’m no longer compromising my machine with potential access by low-life types. And that thrills me to no end, because, I actually really enjoy this job! I meet a lot of interesting people and I learn a lot of new things!

The other super-cool news on the ChaCha front is that they just received $10 million in funding!! Wow! That’s totally awesome! You can read all about that here: ChaCha Receives $10 million in funding

So I’ve been back to searching the last day or two and I’m having so much fun!

Go ChaCha!

A lot of people have been asking me lately how I do what I do. That is, how I make money from home online. Most of the money that I make comes from blog monetization. That includes paid reviews, paid links, things like Google adsense, and WidgetBucks. There really is an almost endless list of ways to monetize a blog, but, prior to monetizing a blog, you need to have a blog! And most importantly, in my opinion, you need to have a self-hosted blog - that you own and maintain yourself.

The people that have been asking me about my work fall into several categories: some have free blogs that are next to impossible to monetize (such as MySpace blogs), some have free blogs like Blogger blogs that can be difficult to monetize, and some don’t have blogs yet at all.

So at this vantage point, I think a great place to start would be tutorials about setting up your own self-hosted blog. And the funniest - and coolest! - thing happened as I was pondering where to begin. My friend, Amy, did the ‘beginning’ for me. Awesome! It was so weird, because, she and I hadn’t been talking about this at all. We both just had our minds on it. Which works out perfectly for me, because, she did all of the work. And work she did! She does such a great job of explaining all of this, step by step, and I am not sure mine would have been as detailed or as thorough.

So let’s get to it, shall we? Ok, Amy did a whole series on this, so to get the full meat of it, you will need to go over all four posts.

1. Getting Your Own Domain for Blogging - Part One
2. Getting Your Own Domain for Blogging - Part Two
3. Getting Your Own Domain for Blogging - Part Three
4. Getting Your Own Domain for Blogging - Part Four

This is a great place for anyone who is thinking of breaking into this field to get started.

Thank you, Amy - for doing such a great job!! I know my readers and I definitely appreciate it!

If you want to make money online, let me tell you about a couple of go-to gals.  Kelly McCausey - she’s great!  I’ve learned so much from her.  She runs WAHM Talk Radio - the show airs every Monday, but, you can listen in at any time.  And this Monday, in fact, they were talking about making money with your blog.

Kelly also has this great seminar she runs online every summer.  It’s called the Hot Summer Seminar Series.  Now, I’m telling you about this a bit late - we’ve got 45 minutes till showtime, but, go quick and you’ll hear from another great go-to gal on the show tonight!  Kelly is having Lynn Terry on tonight and we are free to ask any and all questions about making money online and developing residual income.  Lynn runs the great site, Self Starters Weekly Tips and she authors the very informative blog,  Clicknewz.  She will have a ton of good information for us tonight while she answers questions.

So make sure and tune into the Hot Summer Seminar Series.  Hurry!  Go get signed up!