kids-in-biz.com

Can a bad hair day lead to a successful business? Sure! It happened for my 13-year-old.
My daughter, a soccer player, was having problems keeping her hair up. “I’m really bad at doing my own hair and it was always falling in my eyes!” she said; until a friend gave her pre-wrap.
Pre-wrap is a velvety soft foam that comes in rolls like tape. It’s really an athletic pre-taping product used to wrap over an injury before tape is applied, but many female athletes have found it makes the perfect headband! It’s clingy and doesn’t slip off your head like regular headbands. (Check her site out at Pre-wrap.com. ) She loved it so she went hunting for it at the mall. Unable to find it, we had to buy it in bulk on the Internet. She took the extra to share with her teammates – that’s when her business started. “Everyone loved it and wanted it! I had to order more right away.”
Kids have great ideas – they know what other kids want. Listen to them. Make suggestions. I always knew I wanted to teach my kids about business and the opportunity just dropped in my lap. The key? I was ready and waiting! Are you ready?

That’s the fun part of internet marketing and having a blog. You can talk about anything you want and share products and services you love with your readers. Affiliate marketing is all about “pre-selling” a product. This year, our family added three new games to our favorites. Our family favorite is “Kids Against the Grown-ups.” In this game, the kids get questions targeted at the older generation (like questions about the Beatles) while the adults get questions about Disney characters or Spongebob. It’s a tug-of war board and lots of fun to play with your family.

Quiddler is a card game where you make words using the letters in your hand. You might say it’s a twist on Scrabble, but I personally think it’s more fun to play as a family. Players score points by totaling the value of each card, earning bonus points for the longest and most words in each round. This addictive word game contains instructions for playing a solitaire version, so you can enjoy it even when no one else is around. It’s an excellent game for grandparents to play with grandchildren. It’s easy to learn and fun for anyone old enough to spell!

We bought The Original Food Lover’s Trivia Game this year and enjoyed this game without a board! We rarely use the trivia boards anyway, so this was a nice change. If you are a food lover who likes trivia games or a trivia game lover who likes food then you’ll like this game. It features 1,800 questions in the categories of Beverages, Geography and Culture, Ingredients, Recipes, Food People and Food Arts & Science. If you are playing with kids, definitely try Eat It! This one is all about snacks and candy will make your sweet tooth tingle just playing this game!

Let’s face it. Kids love to spend money! What better way to start on the road to financial success than to start earning money at a young age. Gone are the days when babysitting and raking leaves are the only way to make a buck! (Don’t count these out, though. There’s still great money to be made that way.)

Many parents and kids alike are looking for some extra cash. While a successful internet business is a cool thing, kids don’t have mortgages to pay and usually don’t have to feed a family. If you are involved in extra-curricular activities, committing to a part-time job is often impossible. Most of these options allow you to work as little or as much as you please.

There are really only three basic ways you can make money on your own. You can offer a service. You can sell a product. You can provide information.
Offering a service is probably the most common way that kids make money. Babysitting, lawn mowing, and snow shoveling are classic examples. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Remember, people are willing to pay others to do what they (1) don’t want to do themselves (2) can’t do themselves (3) don’t know how to do themselves.
Selling a product is also fairly easy to grasp, but more complicated to start up.  You can create your own product to sell, such as jewelry or other hand-crafted items. You can buy items in bulk and resell them. It can be as simple as buying a cooler full of water and Gatorade and sitting at a soccer field on a hot day. You can also be involved in Direct Sales, where you sell products for someone else, don’t have to keep inventory, and get paid a commission. Think of Avon and Tupperware where you have a catalog and take orders. Most direct sales companies will need you to be 18 or older, but this can be a great way to earn some money as a family.
If you plan to start an online business, there are two really important concepts to learn up front – Affiliate Marketing
and Pay-per-click advertising. We’ll be talking about these soon, so be sure to check back!

Be sure to poke around http://www.internetbasedkids.com for some inspiration.