My Story

Lots of people tell me I'm lucky to be home with my children. They say they can't afford to live "without their income." They're so busy with work they only have time to feed and put the kids to bed with just a few hours of play on the weekend.

I do think I'm blessed to be with my kids. But "lucky?" Nope.

I've worked hard to stay home with my kids. But I don't do anything all those people couldn't do - in fact anybody could do it.

Let me share a bit more.

Enduring Interest

When I was a little girl I had a lot of interests. I thought I'd like to be a paleontologist. Or maybe an animator at Walt Disney Studios. I got really into playing drums. In high school my burning passion was for technical theatre.

But as all these things passed by in phases - only one interest lasted - being a mother. I wanted very badly to be a mama. I wanted to have a bunch of children and I wanted to stay home and raise them. I played with baby dolls into high school (though I didn't tell my friends!) I started babysitting as soon as my mom let me. I read every baby magazine I could get my hands on.

This "baby obsession" of mine just grew as I did. One day in a bookstore I picked up a baby magazine that was different than most. I sat down to read and my entire view of parenting was changed. Here was a magazine that talked about breastfeeding. It talked about home birth. It talked about home schooling, eating healthy foods, and raising your babies and children naturally.

This magazine and the research I did after reading it completely changed the way I wanted to parent - and I became even more passionate about wanting to be a stay at home mom.

Fast forward a few years: I ended up marrying my high school sweetheart and we had a baby right away. Then another baby. And then another baby.

Three small children - and I was home with them. But the price was very high. There wasn't a lot of money and there were a lot of disagreements.

I first wanted to begin working online because things were so tough financially. My family was struggling - in so many ways. I didn't have much to go on but I'd found an "ebook" that made a lot of sense to me. I read it and decided I wanted to try that strategy.

The book said you can make money doing what you love - from your passion. That sounded pretty cool. And from home (or anywhere you can get online). That sounded really cool!

The book outlined the perfect tool for me to do this with - SBI! 2.0. SBI 2.0 stands for Site Build It! Version 2.0, and SBI took me from what I knew about building a website - just about nothing - to the website you see today.

My Journey to "WAHM"

I went step-by-step through all the SBI information. I was really impressed and getting really excited.

You don't need to know how to do anything on the web to use SBI 2.0. No programming knowledge, not "graphic creation" knowledge. You don't even need to know HTML. You don't even have to know what any of that means. If you do know this stuff it's easy to integrate into SBI. But you don't need to know it!

SBI helps you pick the best topic for you - something you love and something others are interested in. I picked pregnancy and natural birth. Maybe you're not as interested in that topic as I am ;) (ok I'll admit it's a mild obsession!) SBI will help you choose what's right for you.

You can take a video tour to get an idea of how all this works.

As I started working my site started growing. I was a busy mom so I didn't have quite as much time to work on it as some other SBI users. I worked slowly and steadily and my site grew - and people began visiting. Then the money started to come in.

I found myself a single mom just as my site started creating income. I was still desperate to be a stay-at-home mom and be there for my kids. I worked late at night on my website. I did some paid surveys and designed a few websites for clients.

Those months were really tough. It was so hard to balance everything (I didn't like "working for someone else" at all!). But my SBI site was right there with me. The money I was making came in every month, deposited to my bank account - sometimes while I slept. I never worried about my power being cut off.

Best of all, I worked on my site on my own terms - when I could. It didn't conflict with me taking care of my kids like the other "work."

Success My Way

It took a lot of work to keep to my little family afloat. Then things began to change. A good friend and I began to spend more time together and I started to rebuild my trust in people. Eventually I trusted him enough to say "yes" when he asked me to marry him.

My husband provided a measure of stability for my struggling family. The first thing I did was stop the paid surveys and taking clients for web design. I didn't like working on other people's terms - it stole valuable time from my family. But I loved my website. I loved SBI! My site was there for me, bringing in a steady income when I needed it the most - and it was on my terms.

It still is. And it makes my favorite kind of income - the kind that comes in while I sleep!! It's still allowing me to be home with my children. It's even letting my family get some of those "extras" we've always wanted.

How is it doing this? Much of it is by ads. I make money every time someone clicks on an ad. You can look at the WAHM page to see how others are doing it - some of them sell a product they've developed, or a products for another company. Some people get paid for leads and referrals or earn a commission from referring a sale. These moms have all based their sites on what works for them :D

Many people tell me how great it is that I'm a stay-at-home mom. And how they wish they could stay at home. Well...

What are you waiting for? If I'm making enough to let me stay at home with my kids...

You can do it too!

Give SBI a try.

I love it. So do a lot of other people - many have even made videos about loving SBI!

By the way...would you like to read the ebook I mentioned? I've got a copy for you - just click this link (right click, save as to save it to your computer.)

I've gotten so many questions about SBI! and my experience that I've created a second page to answer your questions - go ahead and take a look!

Or, if you'd prefer to talk to someone personally you can make a toll-free call or send an email and get the answers to whatever question(s) you may have.

Kristen Burgess
Natural Birth and Baby Care.com