An Easier Way to Make Money at Home!

Cinnamon Rolls are The Ingredient to Making Money

Dough Raising Mom Has Set the New Dates for Classes

I just wanted to let all of you know that I just posted the new dates for the future classes. For any of you who are new, I am talking about my business class that I teach to people who are looking for a part time income. I teach you to work with non profits to help them raise money. You make homemade cinnamon rolls to sell to non profit groups and they sell them for double what you charge them, A typical sale can make it easy for you to earn $250 -$500 in a weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I am not promising you that you won’t have to work hard, but you will have good money in your pocket at the end of the weekend.

I have been doing this for over 25 years, and I know for a fact that it works well. I am locally known as the cinnamon roll lady. People stop and ask me when the next sale will be. What else can you do to earn money where the customers are eagerly awaiting the next opportunity to buy from you. If you want to know all about it, you can go to our class page and get all the details. You don’t have to know how to bake, you can leave that to me. During our time together here at my commercial kitchen, you will learn everything you “knead” to know to go out and start building your business.

I would love to talk to you about it. Simply click the Google voice icon for a free call. I look forward to talking to you. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderfully blessed day. Grace

Now That You Have WordPress-Use It

WordPress Is Great as Long as You Actually Use ItInstalling WordPress is only the beginning. Now it is up to you to add valuable content and to make it look professional. Both of those things take time. Most experts advise that you add at least three posts a week, daily is much better. You can see that time and effort are required. We all know that if it is important to you, the work is well worth it.

If you are a stay at home mom who wants to start working online, WordPress is the way to go.  If you are going to start an online business, presumably you have already decided the niche you are going to target. I would recommend that you create an outline to follow so that actually creating the posts will be easy. Start a notebook or file for yourself that contains articles with interesting information to inspire  your posts. That will help you with content ideas. Be on the lookout for great pictures, funny videos or audios. Better yet, create some of your own original content. That is fun. [Read more…]

Mary Eileen Williams Interviews Dough Raising Mom

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs

Keyword Research Helps Raise Dough (Make Money)
Bake & Serve

I had the pleasure of being interviewed today by Mary Eileen Williams . I had a blast We had a great time talking about women over fifty who want to earn part time income. Hitting fifty opens up a whole new chapter in our lives, and women all over the US are embracing their age and the exciting opportunities that go along with it.

Mary Eileen has a really entertaining blog that I would like to encourage everyone to go and check out. She has great information for anyone over fifty about careers and life after fifty. Here is a small sample of what you will find on her site:

“The Feisty Side of Fifty,™ the site that celebrates a truly remarkable generation of women. We first-wave baby boomers, now fifty plus but nowhere near matronly, are rockin’ on and still flaunting our famously bodacious style and spirit”

Mary Eileen will keep you laughing while she offers great information on careers, fashion, and so much more. She also hosts Feisty Side of Fifty Radio. I would encourage you all to check out her show.

In addition to her radio show, she has drawn on her vast experience in HR and written a book. “10 Surefire Strategies for Jobseekers over 50”. You can find it on her website or Amazon.

Baby boomers have a chance to use all their life experience to craft a business that gives them freedom, as well as the opportunity to follow their passions. To listen to the show, simply click on the link below.


https://www.blogtalkradio.com/feisty-side-of-fifty/2011/02/18/grace-becker-on-feisty-side-of-fifty-radio

In addition to her radio show, she has drawn on her vast experience in HR and written a book. “10 Surefire Strategies for Jobseekers over 50”. You can use my affiliate link, find it on her website or Amazon. It gives great advice if you are in the market for your next meaningful job.

Please be sure to check out her blog. If you enjoyed the show, please feel free to share the link.

Niche-What is That & Why Should You Find It

Keyword research is like using a microscope to get clear focus when zeroing in on a niche.

Get Your Niche in Focus

“Find your Niche” is one of the first pieces of advice anyone who is interested in working online will hear. If you are like me, that was a foreign term. Depending on the expert you are listening to, it even has a different pronunciation! Now I could give you the official definition of the word, but I will just use simple terms instead. A really rudimentary definition would be getting focused.

Basically, it is narrowing down a broad share of the market into a much more specific segment. Lets face it, most of us are not ready to be the next Walmart. We won’t be offering every product & service to everyone on the planet. Look at it this way. If your lawn maintenance guy tells you he can advise you about investing, how much faith would you put in his recommendations.?  If instead he told you what weed and feed product to use, and when to apply it, you would buy with confidence. That is because in your mind, he has established himself as an expert on lawn care, not financial advice.

Finding your niche makes it easier to be the expert.

It is far easier to gain expertise in one topic than in many. In this arena, claiming to be a “jack of all trades” will not be the best choice. For many of us, the word expertise is a stumbling block. We are too modest to claim to be an expert. Well folks, please excuse my bluntness, but get over it.

None of us have lived this long to not learned a thing or two along the way. I totally identify with any of you that feel like you are not an authority on anything. When I first started the process, it was really depressing. I took a class to find out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had owned my catering company for ten years, yet it was hard for me to say out loud that I was a pretty good baker.

I had to work to overcome that lack of confidence. When I did cinnamon roll sales for non profits, I got rave reviews all the time. I even became known as “the cinnamon roll lady”. I had to give myself permission to believe what others said.I developed my class for people who would like to earn money making cinnamon rolls for non profits. I love teaching that class. I know how to teach people who have no experience because I know how it feels to not have a clue.

As you can see, getting the word out about the class is critical, and as a result I had to learn a lot about niches, websites, blogging, SEO, keyword research and so much more.In the beginning I felt so confused. The great news is that as I learned new skills, I found out I love  working with the computer and blogging.I want to share what I have learned in the last two years.

I do claim expertise as a baker. But in the process of building this website and digging into blogging and affiliate marketing,I have learned a lot. I sleep in until 4:00am these days, but then I get out of bed, make my coffee, and fire up my computer. I have a blast learning these things.

You know what, I was really excited when one of my mentors said her all time favorite way to make money online is to learn something really well, and then share your knowledge with others. When you do that, you know what it is like to be in the shoes of your target market, and you are really familiar of what others are needing & wanting out of that niche.If you identify with where I started and are stuck questioning your expert status that is great news. Go find a niche you would love to learn about and get busy.

To find out more information about how start identifying great niches, check out my blog about keyword research.

Work At Home – Is it Legit?

A Work at Home Mom

Is a Home Business Right for You?

If you want to work at home, you are not alone. One million five hundred thousand searches were made last month alone for the keywords “work at home”. In addition to that, an additional eight
hundred thousand searched for the keywords “home business”.

Late night TV infomercials promise their audiences work from home opportunities that will allow them to make millions while they sleep, and there must be a lot of suckers, or there would not be so many of those scammers out there.

The truth of the matter is that almost all businesses  take time to get up and running, and having a plan and lots of persistence are crucial to success. I wish there was some magic formula that could speed up the process and guaranty instant success. One my favorite stories is the one about the turtle and the hare. It gives me hope that slow and steady will win the race. I don’t know about you, but the slow part as far as the learning curve sure describes me.

I think that in some ways, starting a home based business is like dumping out a huge jig saw puzzle on the table and trying to start to put it together. I hate puzzles, but I do know that a good strategy is to start finding the outside pieces. They are easy to find, they all have at least one straight edge. That narrows it down to a more manageable task.

In business some experts suggest you going after the “low hanging fruit”. Start with the easy steps, there is plenty of time to work your way up to the more complicated ones as you grow your business. Last fall, I talked about starting to build a good foundation. It is gathering the straight edged pieces so that you can begin to put the puzzle together.

My goal here is to help you find those pieces so that you can begin to see the bigger picture. For example sake, I will use my cinnamon roll class. If you were someone who took the class, you would leave with all the knowledge you “knead” to make cinnamon rolls, start your business, do the marketing etc.

To actually start your business however, you would have to take some steps outlined in the class. I think the one most people are afraid to take is going after the first sale, no matter what business you are in. Cold calling is  tough, and can be the death of a new business. Hearing “no” repeatedly is likely to cause doubt about your product or service, and in many cases is enough to convince people that there is no market, or that they can’t compete in it.

In the case of my students, I recommend they go after a sale they feel pretty sure they can get. If they have kids, friends, or relatives that are connected to a non profit that needs to raise money, that is a place for them to start. We have all heard the saying “it’s not what you know but WHO you know that counts. ” That really rings true in business.

You need to figure out where that easy sale is for your business. Don’t start by approaching the potential sale of the century. Remember, slow and steady wins the race. Take baby steps, use your connections to get to your first victory. That will start building your confidence for the next sale, and help condition you for the inevitable “no” in the future.

If you are still struggling with trying to find a home business idea, I want to invite you to check out my class to make money baking. It is designed to provide part time work from home, and will be a great fit for some of you. I assure you prior baking experience is not required, I can teach you that.



Keyword Research Tool I Love

Keyword Research Made Fun!

I wrote about some tools that you can use to find keywords for you to use in your blog to help drive traffic to it. Today I want to show you another tool you can use to find even more keywords. This is so fun to use, and it gives me so many ideas I may not have thought of otherwise. It is sort of like a brainstorming session with a friend, in this case, the friends name is Google. Watch this short video to see how easy it is to get started.

Go and have fun, try it out.Please let me know what you think, and lets share our fun stories.

Another Free Tool to Build Your Business

Start Building Your Business For Free

I don’t know about you, but if I can get a good deal on

a good product, I jump on it. As I have taken tons of

classes on business, I have been amazed at what is

available for free. It makes sense though, because if

your read my last post about the power of the bloggers,

good businesses are realizing that happy customers are the

lifeblood of their business. Everyone appreciates it when

someone helps them, and when you offer free help, even better. That

creates good relationships, you don’t hesitate to do business with

someone who has given you stuff, as a matter of fact, you will look

for opportunities to do business with them. I know I do. [Read more…]

Mommy Bloggers Are a Threat to Our Economy!

danger! danger!

Are Bloggers Driving Business Over the Cliff?

Social Media has changed the entire scene of doing business in the world.The silent majority who just went about their daily lives, now have more power than ever before, and they are using it!
Red Alert, the mommy bloggers have entered the building, and they are proving that they have a lot of influence!

So exactly what does that have to do with you and me? The fact of the matter is that each and every one of us makes buying decisions many times every day. In the “old” days, you remember way back in, let’s say, the nineties, if you bought a product from X company and it stunk, you could take it back to the store and you might be able to get a refund. There was no consideration given to your inconvenience, travel and time expense .You considered yourself lucky to get that refund. The X company was only out one sale, no big deal.

That was then. Now you can return the item to the store and maybe get a refund. Regardless, you are at least a little ticked off, and disappointed that the product did not live up to your expectations. As you walk out of the store, you pull out your phone and send out a tweet twitter_icon13 revisitedthat company X has a crummy product. Now the whole world can read about it.

At first glance that might not seem like such a big deal. Well, we have all heard of the Domino’s fiasco. If you haven’t heard of that, in a nutshell, some disgruntled employees posted an unfavorable video on YouTube,  Domino’s were not up to speed with Social Media, it cost them a bunch. Had they been in the loop, they could have jumped right in and responded, and it might have been a very interesting thing to watch.

My point here is that today we all have a voice that can be heard. Even if you are too shy to confront a company personally, now you can at least write a review on your blog. If you are a smart business owner, you will pay attention to that.

We are reverting in a big way back to “word of mouth” advertising. The era of customer ” no service” is quickly coming to an end. If you have a small business, you have a great opportunity. Pay attention to your customers, give them “red carpet” treatment. Listen to what they are saying, good and bad. Respond to each comment that is made.

That sounds like a tall order. The good news is that there are ways to put the proverbial ear to the ground and stay in the loop of what others are saying about you. The better news is that it won’t have to cost you anything. Yes, I do mean free. It is easy, get Google alerts. All you have to do then is follow the directions to set an alert for your name and have it sent to your email. While you are at it, let Google alerts help you keep your finger on the pulse of your market. Simply use the keywords that represent your business. You can sign up for Google Alerts here.

I am going to head over there and set up more alerts for myself and my business. Do you have a favorite tool that you use in your business. I would love to hear about it. Please leave a comment and we can talk about it.

photo credit: mararie
Creative Commons License photo credit: marek.sotak

Affiliate Marketing Is Another Way to Feed Your Family

Feed Your Brain=Earn Income.

“Food For Thought”

Affiliate Marketing 101. I sure wish that had been on the course list when I was in school. I would have paid way more attention than I did in some of my classes. If you have read much of what I have been doing, you probably know that I spend a lot of time learning. I just wish I had learned this much in college. As a matter of fact, I wonder how many credit hours I would have earned by now, hmmm.

I have been really interested in learning about all the buzz surrounding affiliate marketing. If you read my post the other day, I tried to explain how it works. I was reminded about how prevalent it is this morning at church when I bought my “Script” cards for all my grocery shopping for the next couple of weeks.
[Read more…]

Learn to Make Money in 2011

“Show Me the Money”

I know, there are lots of things that are so much more important than money, but that discussion is for another day. Yesterday I promised to help you (and me) squeeze out a little extra time by planning meals. I will have the first weeks menus ready in a couple of days.

So now that we have a little extra time, how can we use it to bring in the cash. I personally have spent a lot of time reading, listening to podcasts, watching webinars and more. One of the things that I keep learning more about is affiliate marketing.

Oh I know, there are a lot of scammers out there that promise millions but just take your money and leave you with empty promises. That was my initial thought too. But then I looked more closely. Over a year ago, my daughter added a link for a book she recommended for her clients on her professional website. It was an affiliate link to Amazon.

Now, if one of her customers clicked on that link and bought the book, she earned a small commission. Pretty cool, she simply made it easy for her client to purchase the book, and she earned a little commission from Amazon. It gets even better though, if that client clicks on her link to look at the book she recommends and then does other shopping while they are there without leaving the website, she earns a commission on the entire sale when they check out! Wow.

My daughter does not consider herself a salesperson, however when she mentioned that she had signed up with Amazon, I used her link to connect to Amazon and do all my Christmas shopping. She was pleasantly surprised when she saw her PayPal account the next month.Needless to say, in 2010, she made a point to share her link with family and friends who would be shopping on Amazon anyway. They did not pay a penny more to shop, Amazon simply shared some of their profit for the referral.

Our school has various fund raising programs (yes, cinnamon roll sales are one).  They sell SCRIPT cards also. Those are cards offered by the local and national retailers that are sold by the school. For example I buy a SCRIPT card for my favorite grocery store for $100. I use it to purchase $100 worth of groceries. I do not pay any extra for those groceries, but that store pays the school a commission for referring a customer to them.

Those examples are both great examples of affiliate marketing. It is what in the good old days was called “word of mouth” advertising. It used to be more localized, but the internet has changed all that. Now, you can recommend a product you really love and believe in  to others through social media,twitter_icon13 revisitedblogs, websites etc, provide a clickable link  with your affiliate id. When they click the link, it takes them to a page with information about a product. They can decide yeah or nay, with no sales pressure.

If they purchase, they will pay no more for the product, the merchant pays the commission. Sometimes those affiliate links can even make the purchase cheaper because sometimes the merchant will provide their affiliates with a special code that gives the customer a discount.

Now I never have had a great love of selling. When I had my catering company I had to learn how to do sales and marketing. It was never my favorite part of the business. I liked the baking the best, but as I got to know my customers, I learned to love interacting with them and learning what they needed that I could help them with.

As I learn more about affiliate marketing, I can see how I can “shop” for good deals on products and services, and when I find something I personally love, I can recommend it to my friends. Even if you hate to sell, once you understand the concept of affiliate marketing, I believe anyone can do it.

I have found some people I have really gained a lot of respect for in the affiliate marketing world. Recently, one of them told me about an online conference they are having to teach affiliate marketing at all levels. I am attending, so I wanted to tell you about it too. You can go and check it out for yourself. If it sounds like something you are interested in, I even have a code to get you a discount. It is: UnderTheWire.

Check it out for yourself. you can get  the information here If you decide that is something you are interested in maybe we can chat there. You have to hurry though because the conference is 1/14-16/11. By the way, that link is my affiliate link and if you choose to use it you will be a blessing to my family, but if this is not a good fit for you, no worries.

I would love to hear your thoughts, so please leave comments and we can chat about it. By  the way, don’t forget to check back for the menu for next week and we will all start the new year out right.

Creative Commons License photo credit: marek.sotak