Of all choices for the stay-at-home mom who still wants to work, affiliate marketing is one of the best.  It’s relatively hassle-free, easy-to-learn, and costs very little money to start up – a big plus point.

Low hassle. As business owner, you have to take care of customer support, bookkeeping, and various other headaches.  As an affiliate marketer, however, all you have to do is promote products and collect commissions.

Easy to learn. There are plenty of products out there today that can teach you the secrets of affiliate marketing for a (sometimes not-so-) tiny share of your bank account.  Some of these products are even worth it!

But there’s also an awful lot of good, free information out there as well.  Smart marketers know that giving away information is a good way to gain trust and earn loyalty.  And you can take advantage of this by utilizing the free info, until you’ve made enough money to buy those spiffy information products.

Low start-up cost. The “Bum Method” is infamous among online entrepreneurs for its simplicity and low cost.  It generally involves writing articles and submitting them to directories, which then send traffic to your affiliate site. The more articles you write the more traffic you’re likely to receive. And with enough traffic sales and commissions should start to grow.

Later on, if you want, you can spend a little money on things like pay per click (PPC marketing) and other paid advertising methods, to find good customers.  But the new work at home mom can get a cheap start by “bumming” it.

Not only is affiliate marketing low-hassle, low-cost, and easy to learn; it also allows you to set your own hours.  Having no clock to punch or office desk to report to means you can work as much (or as little) as you want, whenever you want, making it the perfect choice for the stay at home mom!

I’ll be expanding on the area of affiliate marketing later with a free report that teaches the basics.

Plenty of people have written about how to avoid work at home scams.  But there’s not much out there about how to actually find the legitimate work at home opportunities.  I’d like to give you some tips.

Look for the boring claims. Sure, you’d love to make $1,000 a day, every day–wouldn’t we all!  But the legitimate work at home programs are more along the range of  “make $400-$600 a week, maybe more if you work a little harder”.  It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again–if a thousand bucks a day for thirty minutes of work was really doing it, we’d all be doing it.

Check out review sites. There are plenty of sites that review work at home opportunities.  Checking these sites out will help you separate the good from the bad.  They’ll also help you find the home based business that’s right for you.

One thing to be careful about, though, is that not every review site is on the level.  Most of them make a commission off of products they recommend.  A few are less than scrupulous, and will recommend just about anything.  Some won’t though, which is why you’ll need to check several sites.  You’ll also want to…

Google it! Do a Google search on all the job opportunities that sound like something you’d want to do.  Pay special attention to the pages that don’t have a vested interest in telling you something is good–personal blogs are great for this.  Doing a Google news and groups search are two other highly recommended way to check out potential work at home opportunities.

There’s plenty of information out there on how to avoid work at home scams.  Now you know how to find the good stuff as well!

There are plenty of legitimate ways to work at home, online, and make good money doing it. But there are also scams run by unscrupulous people who just want to take your money. Here are 5 simple tips on how to find the good ones and avoid the lemons.

Don’t trust your email. Legitimate work-at-home companies don’t hire by way of spam emails. They hire by way of advertising and word of mouth.

If you’re on somebody’s email list, and they recommend a work-at-home program, then it might be worth checking out. But if you get an email from someone you’ve never even heard of, save yourself some trouble by hitting “delete”.

Know the company’s refund policy. If the company requires you to buy software or equipment from them–which is already a bad sign–find out what their returns policy is. If they make absolutely no refunds under any circumstances, chances are they’re just out to sell something, and not actually help you make money from it.

Stay away from “email processing”. All you’ll be buying is instructions on sending spam. This won’t make you any money–and it’s prosecutable, as well. A prison spell doesn’t do much for your family life!

Don’t call the 1-900 number for more information. Just don’t. It’ll make your worst long-distance bill look like a dream. 1-900 is just another way of spelling “S-C-A-M”.

Skip the work at-home-companies completely. While some of these companies really are on the level, a vast majority are not. Instead of signing up with a company that will supposedly get work for you, why not go into business for yourself? It’s still working at home.

Selling goods and services online is a tried and true method for anyone with enough determination to make their living online. With all the information–free and paid–out there, all it takes is a little research and a little more elbow-grease to find out how.