I'd Like to Work From Home, But How???

Lena ended up staying home sick today because she was running a fever this morning. I guess the fresh air yesterday didn't help like I'd tried to justify it would. I climbed up into her bunk this morning to give her more cough medicine and she just laid her head in my lap for a good 15 minutes.

It's days like this that I wish I could be a stay at home mom. Here my daughter is sick and I had no choice but to go to work. I know that legally she's old enough to stay home alone, but that doesn't mean that I wanted her to. I wanted to be home with her today. She's feeling icky and as her mommy, I feel I should be with her. Problem is, if I'd called in today, I wouldn't have been paid for the holiday and we can't really afford for me to not get paid. We need every dime right now.

I have been looking into how I find a job that I can work from home. I'd like to start out part time in the evenings and on weekends. Eventually I'd like to work full time from home, but currently I rather enjoy having that fancy thing called health insurance. 

I'm very comfortable with Microsoft Office and I fancy myself as pretty handy on the computer... Trouble is, it seems almost impossible to find something legitimate out there. I've found plenty of BS sites that basically just end up sending me loads of SPAM that I have to sort through and mark appropriately. In all truth, outside of Google and Craigslist, I haven't the faintest idea where to start. 

I was looking through a lot of "Mommy Blogs" yesterday where they referenced that they work from home... But how? Where do I look? How can I tell if it's real or if they're just trying to snag my email address? Any tips or suggestions would be greatly welcomed. 

I followed a link on Pandora today about creating a website to help launch a business, but again I don't know where to start. I don't have any products to sell. All I have is my geeky obsession with Excel, my newly acquired knack for social media marketing, and the fact that I can train people how to answer inbound sales calls. Does anyone know where I could find a market for that?

Any Ideas??

I have spent a lot of time searching Google today looking for a free social media management tool, but have come up empty handed at this point. The #1 recommended manager out there seems to be HootSuite however, when I created my account and attempted to post a status update it repeatedly kept telling me I needed to link in my FB profile... Which I did... 10 times... Then, I gave up!

I tried a few other solutions, however, none of them offered a mobile application to go with it. One would think that in this day and age a mobile app would be a no brainier. Evidently this is not the case.

If you've read one of my earlier posts, you've learned that I originally started out here as a research activity for work. I'm in charge of managing the social sites we have and was looking to branch out a little bit in order to increase our engagement. FB does not allow businesses to interact with anyone unless they post to your page first (kinda of backwards in my opinion since engaging with people is what it's all about right?).

Either way, I have now jumped in neck deep personally and not just professionally. I've had a FB account for years and while I'm great at posting photos, I'm not so great at status updates. I seem to be far more interactive with the work page than my own (maybe because they pay me for it). However, I'm finding that I am becoming more active now that I've found a community here that holds my attention. Problem is... I'm now running two personal pages... Since I'm terrible at keeping up with one, two is more than I care to be bothered with honestly can manage effectively.

I'm on the go a lot and outside of work I don't spend a whole lot of time in front of an actual computer. I'm mobile. Currently that means in order to post to both pages (because my Blogger page is separate from my regular page) it requires that I log out of one account, then log into the other, and essentially do a double post. I don't technically have ADD, but in this case that's all I can equate it too.

Here's what I'm looking for:

1. Free (this is just for fun and I don't see any reason to pay for a non-business related dashboard).
2. The ability to upload to more than one FB page at the same time (FB is the only application I really need, seeing as how I don't Tweet and I've learned that Google+ is just a waste of time that nobody really looks at).
3. A mobile app for the iPhone. 

It appears that many of you lovely ladies have been at this for some time and have managed to build a wonderful network. I'm certain that many of you, like me, don't have an unlimited amount of time out there to spend on all this. I'm hoping that you have also found the tools to help effectively manage it. I would be grateful for any ideas or suggestions. Thanks!