Make Money with Your Creativity and Zazzle

You see t-shirts with cute images and funny sayings on them every day. Have you ever thought to yourself 'I can do that'? Sign up for a free account with Zazzle and you can stop saying it and actually start doing it. Zazzle allows members to upload their own images and text products such as t-shirts, mugs, calendars, mousepads, and even items like shoes and skateboards.

You decide how much of a royalty percentage above the base price to go, and you earn that percentage. For example, a basic white t-shirt on Zazzle is $15.95. If you set your royalty percentage at 15%, the price will be $16.90. This will make the amount you receive from a purchase of one basic white t-shirt with your design on it about $2.54. Other products have different base prices, so you have the choice of setting a percentage for each product you create or setting the same percentage for every product.

Zazzle makes and ships the products when they're purchased, so all you have to is create your designs, upload them to Zazzle, and set your percentage. You also have the option of being paid by check or through Paypal.

Share your creativity with the world and earn some money too. Sounds nice.

Get Paid While You Blog - Blogsvertise

If you're going to be blogging anyway, you might as well make some money at it, right? A growing number of sites are taking advantage of the popularity of blogs, and one in particular, Blogsvertise, caught my eye due to the fact that your blog only has to be 60 days old. Other pay to blog sites require the blog to be live at least 90 days.

The website is easy to navigate, the Rules and FAQs are straightforward and informative, and the response time is fast. Blogsvertise pays for your entry after 30 days from approval via Paypal. Newer sites are placed on a probationary status, meaning they will earn less money until they are approved as full-fledged members.

One important note, though, is that Blogsvertise does not accept Wordpress blogs. As Wordpress does not allow blogs with paid content on them, take the time to set up a blog on another site before submitting.

Focus! The Most Important Tip for Work at Home Success

It's vital, and it can be overlooked. To be successful in making money at home, you have to be disciplined enough to stay focused. At a regular job, you have supervisors, managers, and co-workers to help keep your mind on your work. Even if you are generally unsupervised, the environment alone is usually enough. In your own home you are responsible for staying motivated.

You can see the evidence here on this blog. I had a family issue come up, and haven't posted since 7/11/07. I couldn't focus. But that excuse wouldn't be acceptable at a regular job, and it shouldn't be acceptable when working at home either. You have to work, even when you don't feel like it. And no one's going to be looking over your shoulder to remind you of that.

So before you leave the rat race behind for the joys of being your own boss, keep in mind that making money from home usually involves more time and work than a regular job. Ask yourself if you have the discipline to keep going, or if you want to create a supplemental income.

DIY Budget Web Design

I mention being a former web designer in my profile. That's not entirely true. I've been a freelancer off and on for years, I'm just not actively seeking web design jobs right now. But designing websites is one of those types of businesses that can be started from home fairly inexpensively and easily, and can produce a decent income for creative types.

The main program you'll need is a good HTML editor, although you should also have a graphics program, and a flash authoring program too. The following is the software I've been satisfied with for features, ease of use, and price.

I've used TopStyle for creating web pages for years. You can edit XHTML and CSS, update old HTML, and validate your code with W3C. The preview pane lets you see how things look while you're coding, and the harmonious color picker helps choose workable palettes quickly. For creating standards-compliant, cross-browser compatible sites this program is great, and pretty cheap at about $80.

Another choice is CoffeeCup HTML Editor. It includes several wizards which can be helpful for new users or when you're in a hurry, and also has a built-in FTP. It's also cheaper than TopStyle, at about $50.

CoffeeCup offers a whole range of products for web design in addition to the HTML Editor; including various Flash programs, Stylesheet Maker, and add-ins. All them have a free trial version so you can see if you like them before committing to buy.

For graphics I use Paint Shop Pro. Aside from costing less than Adobe Photoshop, I prefer the interface. And as far as features go, they really are comparable. They're even compatible, to an extent, as you can open Photoshop (.psd) files in PSP and save images in .psd format. You can find versions 9 and X on eBay and Amazon for as low as about $30.

On a side note, I've also written a number of tutorials for Paint Shop Pro - a link list can be found here.

Though not essential, if you really want to get people interested in hiring you to build a website for them, knowing some Flash is very useful. I found Swish Max to be easy to use for full sites and animations, and reasonably priced too at $99.

As for the other aspects of a home business, PowerHomeBiz.com has links to several resources, including state-by-state information for starting a business and business calculators.

Doing web design is a good business to start in your spare time. With a little artistic flair and some patience, it can end up generating a nice income from home.

Fancy yourself a writer?

One way I've found to make money at home is through a site called Associated Content. If you have a talent for writing I highly recommend it. They offer pay both by article and by page views on your published articles, so you can build a nice little residual income without having to bother friends and family to sign up for something under your referral.

The FAQ section is clear and detailed, and there are several helpful articles and videos both for writing and increasing page views from experienced Content Producers on the site.

And of course, I will shamelessly plug my own page while I'm blogging.

And just how are you going to do that?

An excellent, and legitimate, question. One for which I'm still working on an answer. Like moving into a new place, there's alway that period of time during which you're unpacking, shifting things around, deciding what works where, etc.

Starting with why I even created this blog in the first place seems like a good place to begin. I chose to stay at home early this year. At the time, it was the best solution to family scheduling conflicts. But life goes on. And beyond just paying bills and surviving, it's hard to give up those extra things that cost money. Music, movies, and family entertainment come to mind. And I've become interested in environmental causes over time. It's hard to donate money you don't have.

So I thought that I'd look at ways to still have a life within a limited budget in addition to throwing in my two cents on ways to make money at home. We'll see how it works.

Why read this?

There are so many sites tackling the whole "work at home" thing, do we really need another one? Probably not. But then, did we really need a Fantastic Four sequel? Probably not.

So, I'm going to try to give this a unique spin, and hopefully not follow the same well-worn path of so many sites before me.

And just maybe, one or two people might be interested.