Working At Home and Involving Your Kids!

This lens is about working at home and involving your kids or helping them with their own home based business. I believe that we are learning all the time and that we learn best from doing, not just reading about it or studying. I have nothing against reading or studying because you choose to though! Hey, I sell books!

My kids are learning about running a business by helping me out at times and just seeing and talking about the things I do with my business. I will include in this lens links for business ideas and information that you can possibly do with your children.

As with any learning experience for kids, they learn best by doing, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can or should do it on their own. Whatever their age, if they are really interested in starting a business, they will take the initiate or ask lots of questions if you make suggestions to them. It won't do any good to decide for them that they would learn by starting a business online. You will be the only one learning and they will be in torture! But, if they are interested there are lots of opportunities for them to earn money on their own, with your assistance and guidance or help you with your home based business.

They can help you by:

searching for items to buy for resale, helping to unpack and inventory items received, organizing and placing items in storage until sold, retrieving inventory for orders placed, packaging orders and assisting with taking orders to the post office.

What they can do will depend on their age, maturity, ability and interest. For those that are interested in running a business themselves there are lots of very simple software programs for keeping track of finances.

It doesn't really matter how involved the kids get in the business either. You will be amazed at what they pick up just from hearing you talk about your business. They learn about making financial decisions about purchasing items for resale, the importance of honesty in your business and that customer service is the number one priority. They can be involved in as little or as much of the business as they are interested in. As they mature or grow older, they may become more and more interested. If they don't, well, you've made some money, they've gained valuable experience that no curriculum could ever teach them and that they could use for their own personal information if they choose to go a different route in their life path. This is a win-win situation!

Don't know how to start a business at home? There are loads and loads of books on the subject, for you, not necessarily them, unless that's how they learn it best. There are websites with free information. I searched Squidoo and came up with these and a whole bunch more!

http://www.squidoo.com/homebusiness/

http://www.squidoo.com/home_business_ideas/

Another great place to get a FREE, yes, I said FREE business education for yourself and/or your teen is at Bastiat Free University. You can take the classes for free if you are not interested in a degree OR you can work for a degree. Check it out!

http://silentpc.org/university/degree.php 

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Another site with business ideas for women:

http://www.biz-ewomen.com/buzz.htm#cooliris 

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Here are some really inspiring teens that have started their own businesses!

http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/teenstartups/article71038.html

http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/teenstartups/article159548.html

http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/teenstartups/article66244.html

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For a way to make money, one click at a time! You'd be surprised how it all adds up!

http://www.marketingpond.com/ref.cgi/23204/
 

See this link for info about how to create a website and making money from it:

http://mywebsiteincome.com/.

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On this website, even kids 13 years old and up can make money just by filling out surveys.

http://www.cashcrate.com/254399

This is not a scam, no credit card or checking account required. Simply join CashCrate for free and begin choosing which surveys you wish to fill out. There is a user forum for asking questions and you can read it before you join to see how it works. I've started doing this to see if my 14 year old would be interested in doing it. They send you a check on a monthly basis and you can also get paid by points for some of the surveys which you can accumulate to earn things like gift cards all the way up to iPod video for the very ambitious. It's FREE and EASY!

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Here's a website about general business ideas for teens.

http://www.catalogs.com/info/education/fun-ways-for-teens-to-make-money.html

 http://www.groovejob.com/resources/creative-ideas-for-teen-jobs/

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If you and/or your kids have a creative side you Create your own designs or slogans for t-shirts and open a shop for free to sell on Cafe Press!

Email me if you have a link you would like me to include in this lens pertaining to this subject. And check out a very interesting youTube video at the bottom as well as my links!