If you’ve been online for half a second, you’ve probably come across thousands of websites trying to help you start your own stay-at-home business. Most tell you how easy it is to make money online, or how you can make money while you sleep. All you need to do is sign on the dotted line… and pay a few hundred or thousands of dollars to get started.

It can be frustrating for moms looking to start a stay at home business to find the opportunities that are legit! Can you earn money while you sleep? Perhaps, after several years of hard work. But none of this is as easy as it seems. So how do you find the right opportunities for you?

First of all, you should examine the following. How long do you have to commit to your stay at home business? How much money do you have to put up (sorry but starting a business takes money, although you can do it with very little money)? And what are your passions in life?

Let’s take each of these three themes and break them down. First, there is time. As a stay-at-home mom, time can be at a premium, especially if she only has one baby at home or her children are in school. Stay-at-home mom businesses take time. They take a daily time commitment to work on your business, as well as a time frame of several months to a couple of years to get your business off the ground. If she is looking to earn money at home, this should be taken into account.

Next is the matter of money. All businesses require some money to start, but you can realistically start an online business for $50-200 per month. At first, you will work hard and see very little return from that investment, but as time goes by, your income will exceed your expenses and you will start to make a profit.

And finally, there is the issue of passion. To be successful with a stay at home business, you really need to choose to do something that you are passionate about. If you don’t wake up every morning in love with your business, then you will burn out and all your hard work will be for nothing. Find something you love and the money will follow.

The truth of the matter is, if you are willing to work hard, you can achieve a good level of income without spending a ton of money. But you have to work at it, constantly, for quite some time. Some legit stay at home business ideas: direct sales, network marketing, becoming a virtual assistant, starting an in-home daycare, mystery shopping, starting your own content-based website, selling online, or starting your own business based on a passion of yours.