Moms/Dads with kids at home all day - how do you manage!?

You have to plan your business around your family. If your spouse is supportive, then discuss with him having xxx amount of hours of quiet time through the week to focus on your business building activities.

Find a marketing strategy that fits in with a short amount of time...say writing articles. Get yourself an hour a day to write 1 article...or spend 1 hour a day doing whatever it is you need to be doing. 7 hours a week in a good amount of time to make some things happen.

Over time that 1 hour will definately add up.

Jeff Mitchell

"Father of 2----6 and 2

I have a 4 month old at home, so I know your pain. My suggestion would be to establish a certain amount of hours per day or certain days per week that you can dedicate to your online business with out interuptions.

This way you should be able to get more done in that amount of time. Also, when you start making a bit more money, you should definitely consider outsourcing. There's just not enough hours in the day.

Sid

I don't know how you guys do it either. Sounds like hell to me.

Yep, got to try to set some boundaries.

Having a clear goal and trying to keep laser focused on your tasks is the trick. I used to force myself to drop everything every 15 minutes while I was working and ask myself "is this activity getting me closer to my goal?"

Often the answer was '"no" I was being busy being busy but not being productive. Reading emails, 'researching' products. I should have been building niche blogs or whatever, slapping up a half decent article and then creating links to it....nothing else because that's what was going to pay the bills.

I've got wee kids and another due in early April so I know that it is never simple and stuff happens.

I just try to stick to a schedule and everyone knows what it is and does their best.

Don't try to over do things either, watch how productive you are. Sometimes 45 minutes of solid work is better than 4 hours of broken and tiring hard slog.

The biggest boost for me was learning to outsource everything I could as soon as I could. If I make $20 then that $20 went to someone else to write articles, and when those articles brought in money I used that money to get someone else to submit my articles.....

Make use of tools and services....for me that was the real secret for balancing life and marketing.

Not so easy in the beginning but the last thing you really want to be doing is spending hours doing work that someone else will do for $2.

That way I go to the park with the kids for an hour and play on the swings while someone else does all the grunt work.

I go home and plan the next campaign, the next niche to attack, the next product to create.

Keep your eye on the prize and remember why you are doing this in the first place...for me family come first.

Cheers,

Jonathan

FaJeeb and lowjo have excellent feedback. If you can implement those ideas, you're money ahead.

We have 3 kids, 2 with special needs. My solutions are less savory. One is that I have to stay up late to get certain work done. This is not fun when you have to wake up early to get 3 kids off to school and a couple loads of laundry done before starting work.

Another extremely difficult solution has been to rebalance workloads. My wife isn't big on housework, but running two businesses and waking up early to get the kids has taken a heavy toll on me. I've had to ask her to wake up a couple days a week and help out. This cuts into her web surfing, but there's not a lot else I could so. It helped that my new venture is starting to do quite well--after a year of study and experimentation.

We hired a housekeeping service. Not everyone can afford it, but it's been helpful both tactically and mentally. This one sends in 4 people, so the job is done in 2 hours (we have a big house). That lets me get back to work faster, though I have learned to use that time productively.

I have also been able to use technology to help squeeze more work out of the day. A $300 netbook and cell modem allow me to get articles written while waiting to pick up kids after school, or to spend a couple hours at the local McDonalds while the housekeepers are at home, or get some work done while waiting at the hospital. I use the free Kindle app on my iPhone to get reading done while standing in line or waiting at traffic signals.

The iPhone Kindle thing has been far more helpful than I thought. To use my very limited time better, I have to abandon my compulsive note-taking habits. Instead, I'll read a page or two at a stoplight or while standing in line at Target or whatever, then spend the next few moments reviewing what I read. It has forced me to be a more disciplined learner.

My last frontier has been media consumption. When our children were born we got rid of the TVs in our house. Huge productivity boost for most people; for me, it was pretty much a formality because I always had a second job.

My remaining media vice is talk radio, which makes car trips bearable for me. On days when I'm particularly behind I will even lose the talk radio, and instead use the time to come up with better USPs, taglines, article titles, or structuring info products.

I am also a little ashamed to say that I let me learning disabled son watch more DVDs than I should. He loves it, and it gives me spare time to work. It is a wrenching decision and not one I'm proud of. Since he has no chance of ever being able to support himself, I justify this less-than-ideal strategy by reasoning that when the day comes that I cannot take care of him properly I want something better for him than institutional care.

My best for you in this difficult time.

I work at night mostly I have a 6yr old and 3 yr old. I find it much easier to get things done. I usually work about 4 hours, but then I only get about 6hrs sleep just depends on what I feel like doing.

Working from home has been terrible for me. I'm in the process of turning a backyard storage shed into an office / gym.

I'm working right now while the kids are sleeping. It is Midnight where I am and you have to pick your spots. Lucky I have a very supportive wife. Need to get my website launched already.

My gf and her 2 yr old have been living with me at my house for 6 months.

It was a problem at first but you need to LAY THE SMACK DOWN and get serious. This is your business right?

Explain to everyone that you need to be left alone when you are working. Shut your office door and lock it if you have one. Be stern. Make it clear that this is your working time.

It worked for me. Good luck man.

Hi Snazzy

You've had some great replies here and i shall try to use some of those tips. I understand your problem as I too have 3 and 5 year old daughters. Plus I have to work at my employed job evenings from 8pm -2am to keep the wolves from the door as if I had a day job I'd have to pay too much of my earnings to a child minder.

It means I only get about 4 hours sleep a night and I'm exhausted by the end of the week.

It sounds to me that you don't have that added problem so your best bet may be to allocate say 2 hours uninterrupted time a night after kiddies in bed then spend the rest of the evening giving the other half quality time so he/she doesn't feel too ignored!

I try to fit mine in around the school which is now full time for my older daughter and the time my little one gets at "pre-school" but I do also have to fit in some sleep time during those times to keep my sanity!

I also get my Mum and Dad to have the girls one day a week so I at least have that.

Some people I know whose partners are working all week(so don't see much of their kids) get the partner to have the children for say a whole half day at the weekend taking them out somewhere so they get some "me time" to do their own thing while they're all out.

My overall thoughts that keep me going is that as they get older are both at school then it will get easier especially when I get to the point of being able to give up the night job!!

Oh and when I get one of those problems that come up and I'm spending hours trying to solve it i sometimes just walk away, and say to myself, "I trust that my mind will find a way around this problem if I let it get on with it" I then go away and do something else completely eg play with the girls and more often than not the answer or a suggestion as to something else to try will pop into my head either overnight or while I'm doing something else!

Another thing you may want to try is a free online course called simpleology 101. it's about getting organised and more productive. And I've benn told it's really good but I've not got around to doing it yet!! If you search online you will find it.

Good Luck with everything!! And it's nice to know I'm not the only one struggling with that problem!!

Sandra x

I homeschool my two children, aged 7 and 10, but they're of an age that they can sit and do their work and I can sit between them with my laptop and write. It's working well. There are distractions, but I can sit and work, and still be there for them. I find though, that my most productive time is when they go to bed, and I schedule most of my work for then.

If you've got a partner who supports you in your business, it's so much easier. I wouldn't manage nearly as well without my husband. He's awesome. He'll make dinner and do the ironing if I've got a deadline to meet.

Oh, if I had $1 for every time someone told me "I want to work at home and spend more time with my kids!" - I'd be retired.

There's a reason employers don't let employees bring kids to the office. You'd get nothing done.

I've worked at home 20+ years. When I was expecting my third, I hired a full-time mother's helper who helped with the kids and cleaned house. When she left at 5:00, at least the house was clean and the laundry was done. I then cooked dinner and gave my family my undivided attention until they went to bed - and then sometimes I worked some more, depending on how much there was and how tired I was.

And let me tell you - it doesn't get easier when they get older. They have more activities and more friends and require even more supervision because there's more potential for them to get into trouble.

It's not impossible but nobody should expect to get a lot done while juggling a family of small children and trying to be "super mom."

Plan your day so you have a couple of good hours when they're asleep and you're not tired. Early early morning was my time - I usually went to bed shortly after they did at night, but I could get a LOT done from 4 a.m. until they got up at 6:30 or 7:00 a.m.

When you're generating some more revenue, consider getting someone in to help with the kids, the house or both.

But most of all, remember they're only little once and then these years are gone forever. Enjoy them while you can!

I find that duct tape and zip ties work best =)

In all seriousness, I'm a single dad... As I'm writing this I have my 5 year old screaming DAD! DAD! DAD!! I think they sense the EXACT time you don't want to be interupted and just focus on those.

What I try to do is fit MY schedule around his. He's at kindergarten 3 days a week and that's when I try to tackle my biggest hurdles. Then when he comes home, he know's that he can have a snack and can watch tv in the den, while I'm on the phone/replying to emails till about 4-430. Then we make dinner/hang out etc. until bed time. Then I'll briefly check in with my emails & pp account, and then spend hours perusing the WF LOL.

It's tough... DEFINITELY Tough, but doable. But keep in mind, you are able to work from home and be close to your family. Make the most of it!

FaJeeb has some points but this is the reason many don't have jobs - to me this is just too much like working for someone else.

lowjo in some ways allows the same only with softer corners - kid friendly. lol There are boundaries, yet it doesn't put up a brick wall to those you are working at home for - your family.

Big Mike made me chuckle as I saw a lot of my journey reflected there...lol

For me things didn't get overly difficult till after my accident. Before that I was making good money and had someone in my life that was a buffer against all the madness.

But then as life likes to do when we're making other plans, things changed in a blink.

I still teach at home, there's only a couple left now. Mostly, the older ones help out big time so that things run smoothly. After the accident some big changes had to be made due to the fact I was injured.

Those sacrifices made life manageable, but were very difficult for everyone.

I only started working at home 5yrs ago - it was a learning curve and I wasn't even aware of internet marketing at the time. I was an author and I made web sites as a hobby in the 90's. Our careers allowed us to be mostly comfortable and still keep some savings. But then later it was my disability and savings that kept us going.

I knew that nothing lasts forever, so I wanted to get better control of the financial future so I could make sure that we didn't stumble because of an emergency. I tried to get help from vocational rehabilitation services in my area. It took three times before I found someone that would take the time to help me make some kind of plan.

Since they wouldn't support my being a writer, that left web design. I got help setting things up and began my work at home adventure. The kids often would join me in my "office" that I'd set up - it was just a large spare room. With desks, a computer and the basics I started my web design business.

But over the years, the stress of dealing with clients started to get to me. I love the creative part of making websites. I'm not so crazy dealing with the demands of clients.
"Why can't you put me on the 1st page of Yahoo? Why am I not in the top for my business?"
First off, they had static sites, refused to have any ads or links or anything on their precious sites. Then they didn't want to do any advertising online or even put the website on anything. They complained that they weren't on the top search engine listing for other cities or states. I could explain till I was blue in the face and they still didn't understand a thing about the web.

Between the control freaks that didn't want anyone taking pictures for their site unless they could be there to supervise. To those that just couldn't follow step by step directions to click a link in an email so I could get into their site and fix it.
I've lost patience with them 10 times faster than I ever lost it with my kids. Plus my kids would have figured it out by at least the 3rd time.

But my older ones managing the younger while I work online. I also make a daily plan for what I want to do the next day. I list what I want to look up, what things I need to check out and then who needs a call or email to give them a swift kick in the pants and get me my money or content for their site. But I keep things flexible and I'm there if the kids need to ask me something.

Since things sorta crashed last year, my business went all but bust. I've had a hard time wading through the IM information and for the most part I think I've learned as much as my brain can handle, dissect and hang on to as it's going to without crashing. A lot of this is analyzing, formulas and some mumbo jumbo I can't make heads or tails of. This is my problem - I've just got a more creative twist to my thought processes. That stuff comes across as some seriously boring work. Do reports, market reviews, data relations and all that stuff. Yes, I can do them...it's brain numbing, but given the data I can correlate the results into something readable.

But that is not what I want to do. I want to make money, but I also want to love what it is I'm doing while making that money. If I wanted to be miserable while making money I'd get a job. If I could find one that would hire me and I could get to it.

But that isn't why I work at home - frankly there are more reasons now than there used to be, but that's beside the point.

Right now I'm trying to find that secret - the one so many seem to have. The one that will allow me to set up something and then send traffic to it so that I earn some steady income. That is if I can figure out how to get traffic to actually "go" to my sites.

Right now, I get work now and then, still fight to get paid for work I've done and stress out over the fact that my disability is not enough to cover everything any more. Loss of income from a few sources hasn't helped my on life support bank account.

Even my kids are looking on the net - searching for something that will help us make just a little bit of cash. I'm talking $25-50....maybe a week from one source. Maybe a couple hundred extra a month. A way that it can be duplicated a few times with the same result. So far selling stuff on eBay has kept us from going under. But we're running out of stuff and those fees are murder.

I don't want to be rich or wealthy....I just want to make enough so I can breath.

So if you have something that could maybe fit to my situation...let me know.

No bells, whistles and hype...no huge pile of ebooks, video and what not. I've got tons of that on my external hard drive. Just a simple step by step to do - follow along and copy me, it will work - simple.

Got anything like that, hiding somewhere in this whole forum?