Hi, my name is Anita DeFrank and I'm a PROUD Work at home mom to two great kids ages 3 & 7. I'm also happily married to the love of my life and soul mate. I'm owner/webmaster/publisher of Mommy's Helper, WAHM State Directory, Mommy Banners.com, co-publisher of Mommy's Helper ~ Mom's Market Ezine, own DeFrank's Giftshop offline and lastly I am a licensed child care provider with a daycare in my home.
The following is my story about how and why I began working at home including my failures and successes I've achieved along my journey. My story is a little long but, I honestly believe that it's worth your time. I can only hope that my story would be inspiring enough for those who wish to work at home to get up and do it and those who already do to NEVER get discouraged, keep plugging, success WILL follow!
Think Big…Dream Big…Be HUGE!
Previously I was a receptionist at a local Chiropractic office. I worked many hours keeping me away from the people that I loved. I would get up in the morning, drop the kids off at daycare, go to work and by the time I came home both children were already asleep. I was missing out on everything. To make matters worse, my oldest was in kindergarten and was struggling with her reading. She quickly began to fall behind the other students and I realized that something had to be done.
In December of 2001 my husband and I finally decided that I needed to be home but like many other family's we needed the two incomes we were accustomed to. Providing child care in my home seemed to be the best option for us. I registered with my state and became a licensed home daycare provider.
Unfortunately, location of my home limited the amount of children that I was accessible to, therefore, keeping my means of income low. I began searching for another way to earn more money but, still stay home with my children and keep the daycare open.
I decided to dabble a bit into the world of direct sales, hence the opening of DeFrank's Giftshop. My gift shop did fairly well offline as I mainly focused on catalog sales and a few home parties. Eventually, I decided to expand to an online store. Achieving sales online turned out to be much more difficult than offline as I soon learned the internet was over saturated with the merchandise that I carried.
I decided that I needed a newsletter/ezine to keep in better contact with my visitors/customers. I wanted to build a better relationship with them. I started Mommy's Helper ~ Home Business Ezine. Another point that I wanted to focus on was to gain reps to help sell my merchandise also. So, I started placing articles and resources in the ezine about working at home. I did this for quite a few months and quickly learned that I enjoyed researching about working at home. The next thing I knew, I had people contacting me wanting to know how much it would cost to advertise in my ezine??
So, taking the ideas of:
1. I wasn't receiving many sales online.
2. I truly LOVED the "work at home idea" and researching it.
3. I LOVED working with and helping other work at home mommies and mommies that wanted to work at home.
4. The ezine was immensely growing from week to week. I decided to give "Mommy's Helper Ezine it's very own home.
These were all key factors in the birth of Mommy's Helper website.
Shortly before Mommy's Helper website had been completed I met Kara Kelso of Mom's Market. Her and I discussed the benefits of combining our ezines together forming one and co-promoting each other's sites. This has been the best business decision I've made yet!
Mommy's Helper's website and the new "Mommy's Helper ~ Mom's Market Ezine" debuted on November 5th 2003. Since then I've expanded into two other websites known as Wahm State Directory and Mommy Banners.com. Wahm State Directory is a state by state listing for work at home moms. This gives the opportunity for mommies in business to be listed in their state for easy access to customers and easy for customers to find representatives in their local state. Mommy Banners.com is a free banner exchange program to help work at home moms get their business out there. As you can tell the "theme" for all 3 of these sites is to help mommies in business, which is one of my main goals now.
Recently my daughter has been letting it well known that she too would love to work at home and she wants to start now. I can't tell you how proud that makes me feel. I see that she appreciates the time that I am now able to spend with her and she's only 7. So, we had come up with two ideas for her to work at home now. I've started a bigger campaign of offline marketing of my businesses by joining Mom Packs which is a program for work at home mommies to help each other by passing out information on each others businesses. Now my daughter helps me prepare my fillers and such. She gets paid every week for doing this and gets full credit for the work that she does. Neither of us could be any happier.
The second idea that we've come up with is for her to have her own website and business. This business is still in the works but, stay tuned for "Personalized Creations by Melanie" and it's grand opening.
I think that about covers it up until now. I warned you it was long but, hopefully inspiring. Please feel free to contact me at anytime for all of your work at home needs. Brand new to all of this? Well on your way?? I'd love to hear from you at anytime.
