I am always on the lookout for home business ideas that are fairly quick to train for, but which can be run as actual full or part time businesses. I just got a call from a friend who is a full time para-legal, but who runs a commercial notary public business in the evenings, one week-ends, and on alternate Fridays which his flex hours give him off. Now, I understand that is is common for para-legals, and other types of legal assistants, to act as notaries. But I was still interessted enough to do a little more research.

How Much Do Notaries Make?

You may have taken advantage of free notary services at your bank or place of business. Some companies keep a notary on their staff, and they provide free services to their customers or employees. This is because fees are regulated at a state level. Individual fees are fairly low. But commercial transaction fees are higher, like $100, so some notaries make a business as a signing notary. Some are mobile notaries, and they will travel to different offices, like title companies, to put their seal on contract.  Even though fees are strictly regulated, it may be possible to also charge for travel expenses.

Here is an example of a Houston Mobile Notary website.

Notary Public Training and Certification

Notary Training requirements may vary by state, but even in states where it is not requires, most associations recommend it. We found an online notary course which can be completed in about 3 hours for $25. We also found a reference to a 1 day course which was given in a college setting.

Notary Certification requires also vary by state. In some states you will need to pass a state test, but in other states you just have to apply, be over 18 years, have no felony record, and be a legal resident of your state. You will have to pay a fee for your state application, be bonded, and pay for some supplies.  Notary associations also recommend purchasing an E&O policy to protect yourself against any claims of eerrors.

This may seem like a lot of requirements, but I found information that one association sold a package for Texas residents which only cost $79 for everything. Even if you add in another $25 for an online class, your initial investment is only a little over $100. This can almost be recouped in your first commercial transaction.

More Information

This website has a lot of information on becoming a Texas notary. You can certainly find similar online information for your state.

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The Stay-At-Home Resume Article Starts Here. It was originally published as Tips On Writing A Resume for Stay At Home Moms.

Experts in the field say moms reentering workforce are becoming more recognized as the hidden pool of talent they are, so don’t apologize for the gap.

Begin with a strong cover letter and the decision makers name in the salutation and talk about how you can benefit the company. According to Barbara Corcoron a successful businesswoman (The Corcoran Group a $5 billion business) employers form their initial opinion from the cover letter.

She advises you emphasize how the skills you learned as full-time administrator of you household – time management, budget management and volunteering will translate to workplace skills. If you organized an event you can write about it in terms of skills used – staff management, marketing, budgeting etc.

Don’t go with the chronological resume, use a summary of your skill sets you have acquired as stay at home mom. Barbara strongly advises no silly titles for yourself (ex. domestic godess).

End your resume with a short chronological section outlining your education, places, and dates of employment, and job titles. Also, add a sentence about what you’ve done while you have been out of the workforce. Example – 2001 to present: Full-time homemaker, PTO Treasurer, community volunteer.

Corcoron says by the time your prospective employer is done reading your resume they will be so impressed with your skill set and accomplishments, the employment gap won’t matter.

Want more help with problems that plague working women? Visit us atWomanwork.net. We also have helpful information about employment stay at home jobs for moms

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Home offices can be deducted for:

One – Exclusively and regularly as either: your principal place of business, or as a place to meet or deal with patients, clients or customers in the normal course of your business. Where there is a separate structure not attached to your home, the regular and exclusive use does not need to be your principal place of business as long as the use is in connection with your trade or business.

Two – On a regular basis for certain storage use — such as storing inventory or product samples — as rental property, or as a home daycare facility.

So if you have a room that you use for your business (i.e. a home office) or you have a storage space you use for your business, you should be able to satisfy one of the criteria.

In general, you can dedcuct the percentage of your home expenses that is the equal to the percentage of your home you use. For example, if your home is 2200 square feet, and your home office is 220 feed, you would be able to use 10% as the amount of certain home expenses you can use to deduct.

Advantages of Building a Home Office

This plan has worked out for a couple of types of home business owners I know. Rather than renting office space or using space inside their homes, they built an outside structure on their property. They could take advantage of the home office deductions (read the IRS guidelines for clarification), and use their money to increase the asset value of their home because of the home office building!

Do you have more home office tax tips or comments? Sign up for free to post.

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Where Do Internet Visitors Come From?

Search Engines – For most of us, the bulk of our visitors come from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. These people enter search terms and see a list of topical websites returned to them. But for many swearch terms there are thousands of pages that come back, and it is very important to be on the first page of results. How many times do you bother to go to the send page of results, and do you ever go past that?

Search engine results can either be free or paid (sponsored results). The things that a webmaster does to get natural (free) traffic are called SEO (search engine optimization), which paid traffic usually comes from PPC (pay per click) programs. So research on those topics should be at the top of your to-do list if you want the search engines to send you visitors!

Other Websites – Do not discount the value of visitors who come from other websites either. There are some free ways to get your link listed so it can, hopefully, attract some traffic. Let me list some of the easiest way to spread some link love around the net!

• Forums and Blog Comments. Find internet forums and blogs on topics that are related to your niche. Make helpful posts and comments and figure out how to drop a link back to your own website there. This can be time consuming, but once you find some good places to participate, it should pay off. Always follow the rules, avoid looking like a spammer, and try to build your credibility.
• Social Websites – Both social neworking websites, like Facebook, ad social bookmarking websites (i.e. DIGG) can be great places for you to find visitors.
• Article Directories – I am a big fan of article directories. If accepted, your article will be posted on the directory, plus it will probably also be picked up by other websites who are looking for content. You will be alllowed to have a resource box which can be a plug and a link for your own websites.  A free article directory example is PublishMyself.net. A paid service which I like is Submit Your Article. This service will distribute your article to dozens of other websites, and will even allow you to create unique articles from one “seed” article in a very simple way.  Provide interesting information in your articles, and don’t just write a sales pitch. If you can do that, interested readers will follow your link through to your own website and some will be warmed up to buy!
• Offline Marketing – You can also attract visitors with offline marketing. Include a link on your business card or stationary. If you have a budget, try the radio or local tv spots. I have seen people with signs on their cars. Your ability to advertise offline will only be limited by your creativity.
• Email Signatures – Almost every email system allows you to add a signature to the bottom of your email posts. Add a link and short plug for your website. Why not bring in people who are already communicating with you?

Paid Link Building Services – If your business already generates income, you may do well to pay for some link building. A service I have used is Compbizz Link Building. These people are very good at what they do, have affordable package rates, and have been reliable 100% of the time for me!

This list of ideas is not meant to be all inclusive or detailed. But it should you give you the basics to learn more about generating free internet traffic the way the pros do. Now that you have a starting point, it is up to you to test and research these ideas.

We’d sure like to hear more of your ideas about internet marketing too! Feel free to register and comment here.

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You can get started today, and you can get started for free.

Adsense and Blogger

Adsense- The Google pay per click (PPC) program. You need an adsense account. From this account you can set up your payment information, and you will get paid every month as long as your balance is at least $100. You can also select scripts, which are little pieces of codes that you cut an paste on a website (blogger makes this even eaiser). You can pick a variety of advertising formats and sizes to fit your website.

The Adsense script will detect what your website is about, and will display context sensitive ads on your pages. This is what you want because visitors who are interested in the topic of your page will be most likely to be interested in related ads.
Blogger- This is Google’s free blogging platform. You can register for free, and start a blog in a few minutes by clicking through the easy set up options. Because this platform is also run by Google, Adsense is integrated with it. They make it as easy as possible to start displaying Adsense ads on blogs!

How to Get Started

• Decide what you want your blog to be about. I would always advise a newbie to start with a topic that is already interesting to them. Everybody has some intereests and expertise. Think about your work, hobbies, interests, and experiences. If you would like to discuss current events, cooking, ancient crossbows,  or your favorite local restaurants, you can find plenty of people with similar interests on the world wide web! And if you choose an interest of yours, it will be easier to produce articles for your blog.
• Register your blog with Blogger.com. You just need to go through the steps, and it is really easy. The system also has plenty of help pages and support. Don’t worry if you make a mistake. The great thing about computers is that nothing is set in stone, and almost anything can be fixed later. Besides, if you do not like what you created, you can always create another one. Blogger allows you to run multiple blogs with one account.
• Add a few pages of content to your blog. Introduce yourself and cover some basics with your starter articles. Again, do not agonize over this. You can always go back and edit your articles, delete them, and add new ones.
• After your blog has a few pages, register for an Adsense account. This is also free for you to join. They will want you to list your blog as your first website, and approval may take a few days. Adsense is here: https://www.google.com/adsense/
• Once you have an adsense account, you will return to blogger with your publisher ID and set it up so you can start displaying ads. There should be an option in the layout or template to place your ads.

How Much Money Can You Make with Blogger

You probably will not make a lot of money at first. Adsense pays you per visitor click, and the amount varies by ads. Many ads only pay a few cents, but I have had a few ads that paid several dollars (this is rare) for one click! The key now is to promote your blog so you have visitors who are interested in the content of your blog, and who will be likely to visit your ads.

There are many beginning bloggers who need a few months to get to that first $100 payment, and some who make a few hundred dollars the first month.  It takes visitors to make money, so the beter your strategy for this works, the more money you are likely to make. It takes most of us several weeks to start attracting traffic to a new blog or website.

Some topics just pay better than others too, but I would wait until you are more advanced to worry about that.

And finally, many popular websites, which have been going for awhile make thousands of dollars a month. Most webmasters and bloggers, though, work up to a good income when they have built a network of several blogs and websites, worked hard to make them useful and popular, and they took the time to educate themselves about the internet marketing business. That can take months or years.

Attracting internet traffic (Website Visiors) is beyond the scope of this article, but you can find plenty of advice on that here, and on other webmasters websites and forums. You could start by sticking your blog name in your email signature, putting it on your social neworking sites (facebook, myspace, twitter, etc.), telling your friends. As you get going, you will want to expand your efforts though, and that will take more learnin’.

NEVER CLICK YOUR OWN ADS! You will not get in trouble if this happens once in a blue moon, but you will get in trouble if you do it a lot. Google knows the computer (IP address) location that you registered with, and they will cancel your account if they find a lot of advertising clicking going on from that location.

Can you Really Make Money with Adsense?

Some internet marketers will criticize this article because they do not believe that Google Adsense is the most profitable system. I have a couple of replies to that.

• Adsense may not be the best way to make the most money for an experienced internet marketer, but I have always found that it is the easiest way for a newbie to get started making some money.
• Some very popular websites – like ezinearticles.com – bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars with Adsense. Of course the websites have grown to have lots of content and lots of visitors. That did not happen in a day, but it happens now!

We would certainly love your comments. So go ahead an register and tell us what you think!

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Visit Home Job Group Here

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You Can’t do it All!

As a small business owner, I could do everything myself, but I often hire others because I can get more done that way. As a homeowner, I could mow my own lawn, but I don’t. As a parent, I could sew my kid’s clothes, but I buy them. What I am saying is that sometimes it pays to pay. Your own time may be better used elsewhere. Sometimes it is smart to pay for a professional service.

What Do People Say About Home Job Group?

I could not find any negative postings about this company, and on another website the users had rated it a B on an A – F scale, so I figured that for this industry that was about as good as it gets! Of course, I do provide comments and a forum here, and I would be happy to post my visitor comments too.

What Kinds of Home Jobs Are Listed?

• Administrative and Clerical work – and I found a report of one client who got a simple job entering customer names into a database which paid her $250 a week. This isn’t a 6 figure salary, but it is simple unskilled work, and the user did not specify how many hours she worked a week. She seemed happy with it. Anyway, for many families, an extra $1,000 a month could really help pay some bills.
• Customer Service, Appointment Setting,  Billing, Order Processing, and Transcription jobs were also listed. It looks like the more skills somebody brings to the table (as always), the better chance of finding a better paying opportunity. They promise listings of jobs that pay up to $10 an hour or more.
• Photography, Writing, and Proofreading jobs seem to pay better. I am sure that some of these jobs may require experience or qualifications. But I also know people who have gotten into freelance writing, for instance, with little or no professional experience. There is a big demand for writers because webmasters, like me, always need content on a big variety of topics! So if you did well in high school English, and always wanted to write, you may find a job you’ll love here. In fact, freelance writing is one of the tasks I tend to outsource for my own business.
• Website design and graphic design probably require some training or experience too. But of course when you look at the higher skilled jobs, they tend to pay better, even from home.

I am sure the list above isn’t all inclusive, but this should give you some idea about the types of positions you can find. Along with job postings, the website also offers placement assistance, an ebook on effective resume writing, paid survey listings, and some other goodies that may interest you.

If you are interested, review Home Job Group here for yourself!

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Alpine Access Work At Home Customer Service

One employer that has been noted a lot is Alpine Access Work From Home. Note that we are not affiliated with that company in any way. They do appear to fit the criteria for a legitimate work at home job provider, in that they do post requirements for employees, take job applications, etc. They want to recruit serious people who really want to work at job duties just as if they were in a real office, but just want to be able to do it from a home office.

Posted Job Requirements

Current opportunities require English speaking applicants, and some bilingual positions that include English are in particular demand. They also require some basic computer skills, like being able to use common word processing software. They also require a year of customer support experience, and applicants need to have some equipment like a phone and a computer with a high speed internet connection. Furthermore, this company expects their recruits to have a quiet “office-like” environment to work in. They do not want children crying or dogs barking in the background.

Perks, Pay, and Benefits

These are actuall work at home employee positions, and are not contract work. The company does provide training, which is done online, also from home. They also have full or part-time positions, but mention that most shifts could include some week-end work. Posted benefits include health and retiremen plans, and the opportunity to advance.

If you are serious about finding a work-at-home position, and are also serious about working, this may be a good company to check out.

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