Named by Forbes as one of Top 75 Websites for Your Career, The Work at Home Woman is an advocate for telecommuting and home-based businesses that empower women to balance life on their own terms.

Find out how to work from home…

• 99 Work at Home Career Ideas for Women
• Best Products to Sell from Home
• 9 Fun and Unusual Ways to Make Money from Home
• Work at Home Job Listings

Get tips for running your home-based business…

• The Top 5 No-No’s for Mompreneurs
• 5 Ways to Find More Customers
• How to Develop an Email Marketing Strategy
• How to Benefit from a Work at Home Moms Mastermind Group

Free subscription to The Work at Home Woman’s weekly e-letter, delivered directly to your inbox – grab it here!

By Mariana Park

Before you dive in and offer a new service or product, it’s essential to validate that you’ll have paying customers. I’ll be sharing three low-cost ways that you can use to assess the potential of your new idea.

Ask Around:

A very low-tech approach to determine the viability of an idea is to interview potential customers. Without trying to sell anything, you can ask questions and assess whether they have a problem or a desire that your product/service could satisfy. For example, you might say, “Other moms like yourself have expressed that X is a problem, but I’m not sure if that would be the case for you?”. Once you have enough conversations you should be able to gauge whether there is a market for your offering. Read the rest of this entry »

By Dresden Engle

Picture this — leading businesswomen appearing on websites and with newspaper articles in black-and-white dated headshots or blurry iPhone “selfies.”

“Astounding,” we say! Well, unfortunately it’s reality more often than not.

Do you as a professional working woman have a color headshot that has been taken professionally in the last two or three years — for which you hold the rights and have high-resolution files? If you are selected to speak at an event or receive an award, would you have an image you could provide to the organization or the media?

A recent eye-opening experience.

I recently volunteered to get news about a prestigious women’s award to the local press. Being a PR professional and also an actress, I am fortunate to have recent color headshots on hand. These women, however, did not.

One of the honorees runs a hospital, another runs a radio station, and the three others are business leaders. When I made the request for images, only one woman had a shot high-enough resolution for newspaper print, but it was several years old and in black-and-white. We live in a colorful and digital world and the day of the black-and-white headshot went away in the 1990s.   Read the rest of this entry »

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your entrepreneurial journey.

RD: I always had a knack for running my own business, something I attribute to my mother and grandmother, who were always launching new ventures when I was a child. At age 9 I started Rebecca’s Gift Box, a delivery service for boxes of fruit and other goodies, primarily targeting the parents of students at the university where I lived.

Then at age 14 I began Bec N Call, an errand service for busy professionals. After stints in college and jobs afterwards, I felt stuck, as if I were confined to the structure that others created. It took a while to realize that I could do something on my own. Initially, I thought the businesses I had with my family when I was young were just fun, but not something that could sustain me in “real life.”

When I finally saw a business I knew I could run better (a nanny agency), I shed my fear, took the leap and bought the business. Nowadays, I’m a bit obsessive about evaluating other businesses and dreaming about how I could make them thrive, or popping up with new ideas for them. My kids often tell me to stop coming up with ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

By Gavin Redelman

Have you ever worked for your uncle’s company over the summer, been referred by a friend to work at the same company they do, gone for an informational interview with a member of your school’s alumni association or received a business contact from a friend of your parent’s? If you’ve ever benefited from these types of things, you’ve seen the first-hand effects of Networking.

Networking is often underestimated in the job searching process but if done correctly, it can actually be the best thing you ever do for your career. It’s usually free, and simply involves meeting new people in your field and forming professional relationships, relating to the industry you’re in. Networking involves forming a long-term, professional relationship with others for mutual gain. It involves a reciprocal exchange of ideas, services and contacts.

Having a vast network of contacts can help open doors for you whether it be summer internships, new collaborations to benefit your company, or getting hired for a new position. Networking is what gets you opportunities you may not have otherwise had. Read the rest of this entry »

By Kimberly Rae

I have lived in several different countries, traveled the world, attempted with varying degrees of success to learn a few languages, and loved my big life plans for doing significant things.

But I was sick, and over the years, the sickness got worse until finally I had to admit that I could not keep up with my own goals. I got diagnosed with Addison’s disease, along with a few other health conditions including asthma and hypoglycemia. We came back to the US where I could get the medicine that keeps me alive and keeps me going, though at a much slower rate than I ever expected to live. Read the rest of this entry »