Call me a homemaker. Call me a domestic engineer. At the core of it all, I'm a stay-at-home mom. Some say that stay-at-home moms have the hardest job in the world. This may or may not be true, but one thing is: the job doesn't pay (at least in a financial sense). That's why I decided that, once all of my kids were old enough to go to school, I would go from a homemaker to a home worker.

Once I made the decision to become a home based worker, it was time to find the right home based business opportunity. It wasn't as though someone was standing on a street corner with a sign that said, "Money for Moms." And I wasn't going to go around with a sign that said, "Mom Need Money." Instead, I booted up my computer and went online in search of the right home based business.

I was surprised by what I found in the way of business opportunities for a home worker. There seemed to be something for everyone, but I had a hard time figuring out which were legitimate and which were scams. Luckily, I found a website that had done much of the groundwork for me and provided a number of pre-screened opportunities for the home worker. With those resources, I was able to get started.

At first, I started small. I wanted to make my own hours and be there for my kids when they got home from school. So, I decided to start taking online surveys from home. I signed up with a company and began to make between five and seventy-five dollars per survey. Each survey took between five minutes and a half hour to complete, and the money would show up in my PayPal account between two and six weeks after I completed a survey.

Once I dangled my toes in the water, I wanted to add to my income, so I decided to learn how to write Google AdWords ads. Google AdWords are those little text ads that you see on the right side of search results pages and on some websites. I discovered that I had a knack for it, and started to make decent money.

Before long, it dawned on me that in order to ensure I had a steady income stream, I had to diversify my sources of revenue. So, while I continued to take surveys and write AdWords ads, I also launched my own websites so I could do affiliate marketing and sell products. I know this sounds hard - especially for the home worker who doesn't know the first thing about building a website - but it was actually quite easy. I found that, if you hook up with the right companies, they will actually build and host your websites for you. They will even train you and give you marketing tips in order to drive traffic to your websites.

Today, I feel like I have the best of both worlds. As a home worker, I can choose my own hours and be there for my kids, but I can also earn a good income to help support my family.