Six years ago Lynn Dralle was living paycheck to paycheck. She was working 60 hours a week and never got to see her kids. She was paying someone else to spend time with them. Someone else got to watch them lose their first teeth, see them take their first steps and drive them to ballet and baseball.

Today, she lives a very different life and she has something to share with you that has the potential to significantly improve yours.

For the next 48 hours ONLY you will have the opportunity to learn what she knows. For only $15.95, the price of her book, you will receive well over $1235.30 in bonuses that will allow you to start your life down a different path.

Visit her site to learn more.

P.S.  FreelanceMom has a bonus in there - its some really helpful tips on promoting your website!

Feeling left out of the family finances because you don't bring home a paycheck? Here's how to lose the guilt—and regain control of your cash.

I just read an article that I thought a lot of Moms out there must relate with.  It's regarding the feeling of powerlessness a lot of women who are at home with the kids feel in regards to the family finances.

It gives some decent advice and insight into how to discuss finances with your husband. Read about it here.

Hello Moms!

Spring is the perfect time to drum up new business!

If you need more clients consider looking in your local classifieds. Yes, I'm serious -- consider applying for brick and mortar jobs, but with a 'Freelance Twist'!

Consider a small business advertising for a secretary. They may already have at least one full time employee in the office and just need someone part-time. They need the help, but probably are not looking forward to the expenses involved with bringing another employee onto their staff.

Many small businesses haven't given much thought to outsourcing their work. I suggest writing to them and introducing the concept.

Make sure that you have a great brochure and business card that shows the services you can provide. If you have testimonials, that's a big plus. A website to direct to them to would be the icing on the cake.

Then simply write a cover letter to them replying to the ad. Let them know that you recognize they plan on hiring a traditional employee, but that you wanted to introduce your services and let them know how outsourcing their work to your local business would save them money.

Stress that you are an independent contractor and therefore they will not have to pay for the costly benefits associated with employees. Also make sure to mention how efficient you are and that they are only obligated to pay for the amount of work they actually have day-to-day. They do not need to guarantee you a certain amount of hours.

I have actually landed one client this way myself. It didn't happen right away, but about 8 months later I received a call from them inquiring about my services. I still service this client today.

This is an entirely feasible way to drum up some local business without having the major competition of the online community.

Let me know if you try it!

Enjoy!

Lori

P. S. Don't forget to visit our Freelance Jobs page for current work at home positions. If you are looking for home business ideas, visit our home business opportunities section.

ADH will make your life more productive and your business more profitable.

(PRWEB) May 10, 2005 -- More and more women are realizing the potential in having a virtual home business and they are taking their skills to their OWN home office.

What are corporations doing about it? Nothing. They have also realized the advantages of hiring these aspiring entrepreneurs to work from home
as well. It saves the corporation money in health costs, overtime, and benefits.

Toni Henry is one of those smart women who realizes that she has a broad range of excellent administrative skills, techniques and organizational abilities that she can apply to bring valuable positive benefits to "any" company or business. After working as an Administrative Assistant to CEO s, Vice Presidents, Departmental Directors and Project Managers at Motorola, Ameritech, MCIWorldCom and other major corporations, Toni decided it was time to start her own company called ADH Administrative Services.

As a graduate of Virtual Assistance U, Toni felt confident that she could bring valuable positive benefits to a company "virtually" through
the Internet. After bringing ADH Administrative Services online, she realized she could help you grow your business, save your business
money and help you find time to enjoy more pleasurable and creative activities.

Some of the services that ADH provides:
New Hire Administrative support.
Meeting Management.
Calendar Management.
Documentation.
Office Supplies & Equipment Management.
Negotiate Leases & Contracts.
Message Management.
Concierge Services.
Event Organization.
Meeting Travel & Accommodation Coordination.

To see a full line of services and fees involved you can visit ADH Administrative Services online at ADHAdmin.

By ADAM GELLER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ARLINGTON, Texas -- "Hello, is Jennifer there? Jennifer at extension 43?"

Nancy Allor tilts back from the workstation at the foot of her king-size bed, momentarily puzzling the voice on her headset. A soap opera flickers silently on the TV behind her. Inside the otherwise hushed suburban townhouse, Allor's parakeet chirps.

Whoever Jennifer is, she's not here.

"I'm sorry," Allor says, grinning. "I'm in a call center and we can't transfer. But I'd be happy to help you."

Americans dialing for customer service are increasingly being connected to workers such as Allor -- call center agents without call centers. The move to home-based agents, working from bedrooms and kitchen tables across the country, started as a trickle in the late 1990s. But it is picking up speed as a low-cost alternative to traditional call centers.

It's not as cheap as offshoring, the shift of operations to countries with pools of low-paid but well-educated workers. But companies bent on cutting costs also see home agents as a way to avoid some of the consumer complaints common to overseas call centers.

More than 100,000 U.S. workers now field customer service calls from home, according to a recent report by consulting firm IDC. During the next two years, one of every 10 U.S. call centers is likely to shift at least partly to home-based agents, according to another report by consultant Gartner Inc.

Some dub it "homeshoring."

If you called in an order to 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. for Mother's Day, there was a good chance it was handled by a home-based agent. The same is true for consumers calling The Vermont Teddy Bear Co. or to book a room at a Wyndham International Inc. hotel.

Retailer Office Depot Inc. is closing 10 of its 12 U.S. call centers this year, replacing 900 full-time agents with home-based agents. They include Allor, an agent for Plano, Texas-based Working Solutions Inc., one of several virtual call center firms.

Cutting costs is not the only selling point of virtual call centers, but it's a large part of the appeal.

Getting rid of call center buildings saves money on real estate. Most of the home-based agents work part time or as independent contractors, so employers don't pay for health insurance and benefits. Unions, which represent workers at some large call centers, will be hard-pressed to reach workers spread across thousands of homes, analysts say.

In addition, home-based agents for most companies pay for their own equipment. And companies say the workers are better qualified and more content than those at traditional call centers saving on recruitment and training.

"We are actually realizing some pretty good double-digit savings from this," said Julian Carter, the Office Depot executive in charge of the call center switch. The company expects savings of $15 million a year.

It's not just the cost savings, though.

Fielding calls with home agents "gives you the ability to staff with local people who speak the language well, that have the same culture, the same trends, that basically live in the same place," said Esteban Kolsky, a Gartner analyst. "That's very appealing to most customers."

Some of the biggest advocates of virtual call centers are home-based agents, who say the arrangement provides flexibility unavailable in traditional office jobs. Customers of 1-800-Flowers.com, for example, have no way of knowing that when agent Barbara Leeper-Zilk picks up their call at her home in Littleton, Colo., she's often doing a load of laundry between calls.

"I get up at 10 to 6, let the dogs out, grab a bottle of water, go upstairs and turn on the computer and I'm at work," said Leeper-Zilk, one of nearly 4,000 agents working for Alpine Access Inc., a Golden, Colo.-based virtual call center firm.

Leeper-Zilk first signed on for extra spending money. Many other home agents are mothers of young children who work during school hours, and older people who want to work limited hours or pick up supplemental income.

"If I was to have a desk job and was required to sit seven out of eight hours, that would be too much for me," said Pam Brackett, who takes calls from her home in Bellingham, Mass., and whose daily routine is limited by severe rheumatoid arthritis. "If it wasn't for doing this, I wouldn't be doing anything."

The virtual call center concept has been around since the 1990s, but companies were reluctant to give up the managerial control and supervision of a brick-and-mortar call center.

One of the earliest adopters was JetBlue Airways Inc. in 2000. The airline now has a 900-agent network of work-at-home reservation agents, all in the Salt Lake City area.

"We have this pretty much down to a science of where our peak demand is and how many hours we need on the phones," said Steve Mayne, JetBlue's manager of business processes. Agents "can bid for an ideal schedule, but it's awarded on seniority. We tell them they need to be flexible."

Not everybody -- or every home -- is suited to call center work. Companies make that clear, and frequently listen in on calls to ensure that agents follow the rules.

"This is not alternative child care. This is a special work environment -- no kids, no pets, zero tolerance," said Tim Houlne, chief executive of Working Solutions. "We can't afford for the dog to start barking when the FedEx man comes to the door."

Still, Houlne said, compared with a traditional call center, the work-at-home arrangement requires a level of trust that has strong appeal to many people.

"Instead of bringing people in to work, we would bring the work out to them," said Jim Ball, co-founder of Alpine Access. "We basically have an unlimited pool available to us."

Many of the agents work 15 to 20 hours a week. But some have fashioned it into a financial mainstay, jockeying schedules and making the most of incentive rules, sometimes juggling multiple accounts.

Take Allor, the suburban Dallas agent. She switches from taking orders for printer cartridges and legal pads to booking hotel reservations, timed to the make the most of both the morning rush by office workers to place orders, and the midday pickup of people making travel plans.

Late in the morning, Allor's older daughter, Carrie Cerneka, tiptoes upstairs and signs on at another workstation on the other side of the bed. In between calls, mother and daughter joust over who's the most productive home agent.

"Hey, look, I got four -- four reservations!" Allor teased.

"That's what she says to make herself feel better," said Cerneka, 23.

On this account, Allor earns 22 cents per minute on the phone and 75 cents for each reservation. The pay averages better than $14 an hour. Allor usually works 50 to 55 hours a week and says she earned about $27,000 last year, when she worked fewer hours.

The rap on jobs like Allor's, an issue even the virtual call center companies say people should be mindful of, is that it can leave some agents feeling isolated. But agents say it beats trading office gossip around the water cooler, and eliminates office politics. The proof, Allor said, is the constant stream of messages she volleys with co-workers around the country.

"I have friends on here that I truly adore," Allor says of her virtual colleagues.

Author Maria Bailey says they can be divided into a trio of distinct groups -- and marketers better understand their needs
Business Week Online

The power of mom as an influential shopper is undeniable. Not only does she dress the family, she buys food and household goods that range in price from a few cents to thousands of dollars. If mom likes a product, she'll tell her entire neighborhood about it. If a company or a product upsets her, she can hurt its reputation by telling her friends -- word travels fast.

In her latest book, Trillion Dollar Moms (co-authored with Bonnie Ulman), Maria Bailey offers insight into this market. Bailey is CEO of marketing firm BSM Media and advises companies such as Gap (GPS ), Office Depot (ODP ), Disney (DIS ), and Microsoft (MSFT ) on how they should market to moms.

A mother of four, Bailey is also the founder and CEO of BlueSuitMom.com, a Web site that offers information and tools to help moms balance family responsibilities while maintaining a career. She recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Pallavi Gogoi. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation:

Q: Who are these trillion-dollar moms that your book talks about?
A: There's three distinct groups -- the boomer moms, who get the most attention because they're the largest group of moms; the Generation X moms aged 25 to 39, who are in their child-bearing years; and the emerging Y-moms, the smallest group of the three, just entering mommyhood. A fourth, barely a sliver, is made up of grand parents who are parenting their children's children.

Q: What are the characteristics of these segments?
A: Boomer moms did it all. They developed the "it takes a village to raise children" approach. They were the soccer moms who developed a support system, car pooled, and made it work. They're rich, and powerful and are credited with voting Bill Clinton into the White House in 1996.

Gen Xers are the latchkey generation, who came home from school and stayed by themselves, and watched their families fall apart and go through divorce as their moms tried to do it all. For them, happiness and stability of the family outweighs the desire to leave their children to go to work. They utilize technology to work from home or start their own businesses and are better at balancing work and family.

The emerging Y-moms, between the ages of 16 to 25, is a group that's starting to exhibit a return to the traditional. As teenagers, they're philanthropic, they volunteer, and religion impacts their thinking. You can see it in the popularity of gospel hip hop, the fastest-growing music segment. Studies are showing they will likely have more children at a younger age and will be very family-minded. They will likely be the first generation that will be best able to integrate technology into their lives in a way that work and life can be seamless.

Q: Is that kind of like the "mompreneurs"?
A: Yes. The 2000 census report showed that fewer mothers are going back to the workplace after their children are born. But that doesn't mean they aren't working. The women are running some kind of home-based business that integrates work into family life. Our research shows that many of these women aren't working for the money -- rather for the social interaction, personal enrichment, and to keep their brains fresh.

Q: The census bureau has it wrong?
A: It's a gray area. In our research, when we asked women "Are you stay at home or working?" most of them say they're stay-at-home moms even if they ran businesses from their homes. Younger moms are proud of their mommy label and put greater emphasis on their personal identity as a mother rather than their working status.

Q: What kind of businesses do they run?
A: Party-planning companies, direct sales...moms are inventing all sorts of toys, educational or not. The fastest-growing business segments in the economy are fueled by women.

Q: How do you suggest companies tap this trillion-dollar market?
A: You certainly don't do that according to the age of the mom, because a boomer mom could be an empty nester or even the mother of a newborn. We found that moms as shoppers behave more like the other moms whose children are peers.

Q: What do moms spend their money on?
A: Convenience is key. Companies that help them with solutions for everyday challenges are booming, whether it's Rubbermaid's (NWL ) storage solutions that help organize homes or Procter & Gamble's (PG ) many Swiffer variations that made cleaning easier.

Products that enrich the lives of children are hot. Not only educational toys are doing well -- so are toys that make children laugh, that boost their self confidence, and even encourage philanthropy. Some toys come with a starter kit for donating to Unicef.

Q: But how do you market to mom? Don't you reach her if you're already marketing to women in general?
A: It has amazed me for the last 10 years that companies mostly think like that and continually ignore moms as a segment to market to. Moms are purchasing for families, their own businesses, their extended families. And they're loyal.

Q: Your findings are quite different from Judith Warner's Perfect Madness, where moms seemingly have surrendered their sanity in their quest to be the perfect mom.
A: Judith Warner focused on women over 30. If her sample would have included those under 30, I'm sure she would have had a different perspective of women who feel more in control of their lives.

A lot of women in the set she focused on were trailblazers in a way, and yes, they were harried, because they tried to achieve so much. Our research shows that the younger Gen Xers and Gen Yers know how to make life easier while accomplishing the same goals.

Q: Can you give an example of how a marketer would target mom?
A: They can focus on the personal aspects of a woman. A deodorant company can go a level deeper than just a regular message that their product keeps you fresh.

For instance: We know you're sweating when tomorrow's math quiz collides with today's basketball pick-up. It's saying to mother that we get you, we understand that you are a woman and a mom. Moms wear multiple hats -- that of wife, sister, employee, and daughter. But her identity as mom is the strongest heart chord, and if marketers aren't touching that, they're missing the boat.


Edited by Beth Belton