The Work At Home Mom Project

Here goes, first post. Expectations are high. Okay, only my expectations, because I haven’t told anyone that I’m doing this blog yet. I had the idea last night while I was lying in bed, nursing my little 8.5 month old son.

I’ve been on maternity leave for almost 9.5 months now. Typical me, I have started probably half a dozen different projects during that time. All of them include learning something new, because I’m sort of obsessed with reading and learning. Some projects have been abandoned, some are still in progress. But the one project that I really want to have take off is my most recent (outside of this blog, which I guess is really my most recent). My mother and I are going to work together to build a website, based on an idea that she’s had for a long time. The exact nature of the website is still top-secret unfortunately. But my mom’s pretty convinced that it’s got a decent revenue model and can earn a decent income, and she’s done her research in the field.

Of course, I don’t know much about “the field” that the website specializes in. But that’s not my job. My background is a degree in Computer Engineering. I’m not a web designer by an stretch of the imagination, but as already discussed, I’m a keen learner. So I’ve made it my mission to learn enough to help her put together the website, and she’s offered to cut me in on the income, if and when it starts flowing in. The other big benefit for both of us is that she hangs out with my little peanut while I try to figure out what I have to do to get this ball rolling. She gets some good grandma time, and I get some baby-free time; everybody wins.

I see this blog as having three main functions:

1. To record my journey in motherhood, and my attempts to find a way to make enough money on my own that I don’t need to go back to work for someone else. I expect that the posts here will range from “how to make money online” to “which cloth diapers are best for my baby”. Be forwarned, I am a mommy blogger, I’m going to talk about being a mommy from time to time!
2. To act as a bit of a testbed as far as web development goes. I’m learning more and more about wordpress and other web CMS software, I’ll use Google Analytics to see what kind of trafic I get, I’ll probably add some AdSense ads at some point, just so I can learn how they work too.
3. Someday, if I am successful at getting any decent revenue stream from my endeavors, I’ll use this forum to let you know how I’ve done it, and maybe help you to do it too. (That’s expecting a lot, I know. I told you expectations were high!)

So, as my first order of business, I’ve been reading a great book that I found at my public library. There are dozens, no, hundreds of books out there on “how to make money online”, or “how to start your own website”, but none of them really seemed to address what I wanted to know. I didn’t want basic HTML coding guidelines, or some “get rich quick” book, but something that told me how to develop a professional quality website, even though I’m not a pro, and make sure it got traffic and made some money. And then I stumbled upon Million Dollar Website: Simple Steps to Help You Compete with the Big Boys – Even on a Small BusinessBudget, and it was exactly what I was looking for! There are probably some other books like this out there, but this has been the first one that didn’t make me feel slimy just reading it.

Hope to post more soon, filling you in on all my adventures. If you happen upon this post and have a mommy blog or WAHM web business of your own, leave a comment and introduce yourself!