If you are a parent, chances are, you pay close attention to your children’s progress in school. Sometimes we get too overwhelmed with the education system that we can focus too much on the academics and not the well being of the child. Ask a parent which is important: Academic Performance or Life skills acquisition and they tend to answer the former.

I too am guilty of that at times. Being a work at home mom, I can have more time to develop good values and character traits in my child by taking time to teach and guide. But sometimes, I am too busy in my home office that I can end up choosing the easy way out of letting the television be the babysitter.

I recalled one occasion when my little boy started to take a crayon and doodled on my new glass tile and I got really mad at him. Little did I know (at that time) that I should have taken that time to educate instead of reprimanding my child. We parents make mistakes too, don’t we.

As women working from home, we need to be prepared for interruptions when our children come home from school. One way is keep them busy while you sit in front of your PC is to engage them in some activities. Recently, I printed out some activities from Playhouse Disney channel for my son and he was happy. There are many free activities in the web for children of all ages. I do allow computer games time but only educational ones.

For me, this is one way to work on my online business while keeping an eye on him. It’s better than letting the television be his companion. I’m not a perfect work at home mom in many ways but I desire to do my best to educate, guide and help him be a better person each day. Few days ago, my work at home hubby got him to fix his IKEA work table together… it was his time to imitate Bob the Builder. They had fun.

There are many limiting beliefs in each one of us. Perhaps you are wondering if you need to be a computer expert to run an online business. The answer is a resounding ‘no’ but you do need to learn how to set up a website, or have the resources to pay someone else to do it for you if you haven’t had the time to learn.

Here are a couple of ways to earn money from home online, even if you don’t have your own product:

1) Set up Affiliate Stores or Join Affiliate programs
To be called an affiliate simply means you are selling other people’s products. You will get a percentage of the sale or make a small fee for each person who purchase the product and ask for more information, depending on the terms. More and more retailers are offering affiliate programs for all kinds of products and sercice. To get started, you need to find a niche that serves a targeted group of people.

For example, rather than selling gifts to everyone, you might start a baby gift site that sells baby products and gifts to parents or moms to be. You can also find smaller retailers who may offer more specialized products, from pressure washers to fitness equipment as you identify the commission scale as well. Different products will cater to a different group of buyers.

A good place to start is Commission Junction (http://www.CJ.com) or Shareasale , and you’ll get an idea of the list of products you can be affiliated to. While finding your niche, try to find something that interest you, or has a passion for, or have a little knowledge on. Many women working from home market from baby to health products.

2) Adsense from Google
Many of you who are already earning money from home knows that adsense is an advertising program from the largest search engine, Google. By placing google ads on your site, you earn money for each person who clicks on the ad. All you have to do is place the code on your web page, and Google does the rest. Be careful not to click on your own ads or you will be penalized.

There are other programs that allow you to sell individual ads where you can determine your own rates for your sites. But using a program like Google is straight forward, and if your set gets a lot of traffic to your site, you can make decent money.

No matter what ways you choose to earn money online from home , the best way to succeed is to find a niche, create a website around that niche, drive traffic to the site and watch your income grow as you work from home.

About a year ago, I sought a coach to assist me in the learning curve in internet marketing and sadly, the learning experience was not up to expectation. I only realized that months later that I was not even taught the basics of SEO and those valuable stuff that I had learned in this earn money from home journey was gathered amongst the useful content of few internet marketing gurus. And it cost me nothing.

Just a while ago, I visited the site of a work at home mom who had an online coaching website. Her coaching program starts at USD$20 per month. Not alot of money if she’s teaching valuable and real stuff. But with some weak SEO evidence, I don’t think it is worth that value.

So if you are searching for internet business coaching - offline or online to help you earn money from home, be wise. You need to check out the credibility of the coach. Don’t merely part your money just because he or she shows a few ’so called’ success diagrams in SEO achievements. For instance, to rank on Google page one for a keyword with only few thousand searches isn’t impressive at all. In the first place, it isn’t hard to rank one Google for a non competitive keyword.

Don’t simply part with your money unless you are pretty sure that there is sufficient proven tracked records of the internet marketing coach. Most of these coaching programs will come with a money back guarantee with a said period so that you have the chance to test the effectiveness of the program and coaching relationship.

The current financial crisis and recession sure didn’t make things easy for many families and this is especially so for those who have lost their jobs. I must say that the internet has open up alot of opportunities for those who want to work from home though it is easy to get overwhelmed with too many internet marketing talk and promises by some gurus out there. Thankfully, many of these internet businesses require little start up cost and you need to factor a small capital as part of your learning. Just like paying fees to a master or teacher to learn a skill, education doesn’t come free. So if you need to invest in a new domain, get your own hosting or subscribe to a membership, do so.

There are alot of internet marketing sites and blogs that can provide valuable information, teaching people how to earn money from home via affiliate stores, adsense, affiliate marketing…etc. Take your time to read, review, learn, ask questions and research. Be careful of those expensive coaching courses which promise you a big income in a month or two as these promises are often misleading in nature. One of the ways to determine the credibility of a coach, course or product is to read reviews of those who have been there and done that.

For me, it’s another busy one with school holidays and somehow, there seems to be many birthdays coming up for this month too. I will be busy shopping for Father’s day gift for the man in the house and this is such a big task for me every year! Perhaps I should search for online greeting cards for a change since it’s convenient and cheaper. It will also add a nice surprise to hubby’s mailbox too.

On my home office front, I’m hoping to start a few more niche projects in the next couple of weeks. It can be challenging earning money from home when this active son of mine is demanding for more attention and time from me. I am glad to say that after many months of hard work, I am seeing some fruits for my niche sites as far as serps is concerned. SEO is so important if you are planning to earn money from home. By now, it’s important to know that backlinking is the backbone of SEO and it is worth the effort and time to focus on that.

Since it’s Sunday, I’m taking my mind off working from home and treasuring my family time before the new week begins. Have a good Sunday.