Being a stay-at-home gives you the chance to be present as your kids grow, to spend more time with them and to help through some steps of their life in a way that would be otherwise impossible. You will be blessed with lots of heart warming experiences a form a strong bond with your kids. But unfortunately, this will not put money on your wallet.
This post shares with you several ways to make money for stay-at-home moms that can be used to find the right balance between staying at home and getting an income. These will require some discipline and sacrifice from you since they will be on top of what you do daily but can be very rewarding in terms of income. Check the list below, consider your personal characteristics, time you have to spare into these activities and your professional skills and choose the one that suits you the most.
My favourite 5 options are:
· Create a blog
· Virtual assistant
· Baby sitting / Day Care Centre
· Life coaching / Douala
· Open an online store
Let’s get started…
Affiliate Marketing
Ever wanted to setup your own business but struggled with finding a product you could sell and could not get over the fear of the initial investment needed to start a business? Well Affiliate Marketing offers a solution to both those problems.
How does it work? To put it simply, every time someone buys the product you recommended using the link provided you will receive a fee for that sale. Everything else, like product dispatch, client support and stock management will be handled by the owner of the product, simplifying a lot your life.
What do you need? A way to deliver your link to potential buyers. This can be done by posts on social mediums or blogs. The easiest way to make this work is by finding people that are interested in buying these products, or have a problem this offer solves and simply make the bridge.
Where to find the products to promote? There are dozens of Affiliate Marketing Networks you can join to promote their products. Some of the most popular ones are:
· Amazon
· Rakuten
Among these 5 networks you should have enough services and products for every occasion. Focus on specific products or services that are easy for you to implement to start and expand as you get experience. Do not be discouraged if you do not see immediate results as there is a learning curve in this process but it is undoubtfully one of the safest options since it requires virtually no financial investment.
Start with products that are easy to sell, like free trials or cheap products that give you a high percentage of the sale, this way it is easy to sell but you still get a considerable part of the sale. With time move into products or services with recurrent fees. For as long as the customer you have referred keeps subscribing a product or service you will get a fee. You will not achieve financial freedom with one offer, but once you have several offers running in parallel and communication strategies set up it becomes very easy and efficient to make this business grow.
Airbnb
If you are going to be away from your home for a couple days why not make a buck with it.
How does it work? Register yourself in Airbnb and create a profile with your property. Make sure to get good pictures and describe everything that is included in the rental. Interested costumers will rent the house for the dates you make available making use of the platform. You will get the money and Airbnb keeps a fee.
What do you need? Besides the property to rent, you should research similar properties in your surroundings to get a good understanding of the prices you can charge, Additionally, checking your “competitors” can be a great way to improve your property profile. Don’t forget to check the local applicable laws for short rentals.
Airbnb success depends a lot on ratings, so keep this in mind, and make sure the house is as good as it gets to receive your guests, provide them a pleasant experience so that their review make your house more attractive in the future, justifying higher prices.
This option requires little starting investment but you should consider the possible costs and reflect them in your price. Will you do the cleaning yourself or will you outsource this service?
Prices vary a lot from region to region but average price is around $100 to $200 per night.
Babysit or create a Day Care Centre
Who else to trust your kid to, than a mother with their own kids? You have the real experience and the interaction with other kids will offer them a richer socialization experience. Alternatively, you can take this to another level and open your home Day Care Centre.
How does it work? There is a considerable demand for child support regarding babysitting. Make use of this need and use your experience as a mom to take care of some extra kids for some hours and make some extra money. In order to establish a home Day Care Centre, make sure to check the applicable laws and get the necessary licenses and insurances.
What do you need? Make yourself visible by offering your services in your neighbourhood. Mouth to mouth and a couple flyers can ensure you will get clients. Start this way and see if this would be something you would want to further develop. If yes, check the requirements to have an home Day Care Centre, calculate investment and make a rough business plan on how many clients you would need to make this work.
Moving from part-time babysitting to a Day Care Centre will be a considerable revolution for you and your family but it can turn into a huge source of income.
Depending on the region, babysitting prices per hour can vary from $10 to $25. Even if you consider the lower price per hour it would take 100 working hours per month to make $1000. This assuming you only have one kid at a time… Babysit 2 kids 4 hours a day and you will get $1600 per month. It is one of the easiest ways to make an income at home and can build into a nice value.
Be a “Looker”
What if I told you that some companies are desperate to have someone go and take pictures of a property or product? It is impossible for big companies to have a taskforce so big that they can travel the country just to validate the info they received from the client regarding a property.
How does it work? You subscribe to WeGoLook and after being accepted and trained as a Looker, you will be offered tasks to perform, where you will take pictures or make videos according to the task received, submit them to the platform and get paid.
What do you need? For you to become a Looker you will need to pass a criminal background check and receive Onboarding training and Ongoing Quality Control. Once you are a Looker, you will receive tasks in you region, starting with low complexity and increasing as you become more experienced and trusted.
Sounds easy? Know that only 36% of the applicants become Lookers as the company settles high standards but once you become a Looker the income will vary from $25 to $200 per task.
Be a Field Agent
Similar to previous option, as a Field Agent you would have to perform several tasks for your clients.
How does it work? You need to apply on Field Agent and once you are accepted as an Agent you will receive tasks to be performed in your region for specific clients.
What do you need? You can do most of the work with your mobile since most of the tasks will revolve around taking pictures of product, displays, barcodes or conducting surveys.
Prices vary a lot according to task and location but overall the prices seem to be lower than the ones practices by WeGoLook.
Blogging
It might sound like a hobby but it is one of the most popular ways to make an income online. Don’t be fooled, this will require work but it will allow you to work on topics you are passionate about and create a long term source of income.
How does it work? You choose a topic you are interested in, and start creating content in a blog. With time you will gain followers that have similar interests to you and that are eager to hear from you. Once you have a decent number of visits per month to your blog you can think about monetizing your blog. The monetization can be done via AdSense or via Affiliate Marketing offers.
What you need? Believe it or not, the biggest hurdle you are going to face to start is to select the topic of your blog. Once you have decided on the topic, you will need to choose if you want to do everything for free or if you prefer to own and build a blog.
If you decide to minimize costs, you can set up your blog on Google sites. You only need a Gmail account and it will get you started. Keep in mind, that you cannot add AdSense to these sites, so your monetization alternative will be Affiliate Marketing.
On the other hand, if you decide to own the blog, you will need to acquire a domain (name of the site) and a hosting service. You can find several offers with different prices but you should be able to get the a domain for $10 to $20 per year and a hosting service for $3 per month.
Creating content has never been easier since there are now so many AI tools that help you generate content. Many people feel they are not creative enough to generate interesting content but most of the work behind creating content is doing research and building content in a way you find is helping your readers.
If you are not a techy person, do not worry, actually it is extremely easy to set up a basic website where you can run your blog. I had no experience whatsoever on this field and with a couple of hours researching YouTube videos and some articles was able to put up 4 different blogs in no time.
Blogging usually has a slow start, so be prepared for this and do not lose moral. This will be a long term project but it has one of the highest potential to help you reach financial freedom. Once you are able to monetize your blog you will be able to grow much faster specially if you connect your blog with the an online shop or affiliate marketing. There are thousands of bloggers making thousands of dollars per month and turning what started as a hobby into a life changing source of income.
Life Coaching
Life coaching has become a more common activity highly seek by people needing guidance and support to plan their life goals, setting objectives and achieving them. In case you have doubts on what you could offer to other people, remember, you have experience in several stages of life, distance from the problems the tutor will be facing so you will be in a better position to give advice. In case you do not feel comfortable with giving advice about life goals to someone else, focus on what you can offer them, giving advice regarding motherhood and related topics.
How does it work? In order to become a Life coach I would advice to do some training to becoming a certified Life coach. Alternatively you can consider becoming a Doula, an non healthcare person helping mothers to be preparing for and during the birth. This help does not include medical procedures or treatment help, but it provides support on all the other “small things” that make a huge difference in the end.
What do you need? For both options you will need training and certification. The investment needed to obtain the certifications will vary a lot but these are booming markets so it may be a worthwhile investment. In case you prefer not to invest upfront you can also try an alternative where you are paid to be someone’s friend, hearing them out and giving advice when asked. Sounds strange? Go to Rent a Friend and check it for yourself. This is not a romantic or dating website, instead it is a site where you pay someone to help you integrate in a new place by showing you around or introducing you to new people. It can also be used to teach someone how to cook or other activities.
You publish your price and the kind of activities you will provide and wait for interested “new friends”.
The price per hour for a Life coach can vary a lot but you can easily get into the $100 per hour, and most likely you should not consider doing cheap or for free services. Those who are not willing to pay for the service are very unlikely to really make an effort to change/improve their lives, decreasing the chances of success dramatically. The RentaFriend prices also vary from $10 to $50 per hour. Not a bad way to get some extra income without upfront investment.
Open an Online Shop
Are you good at crafting or a creative person? You should seriously look into this option!
How does it work? Get a product already? Open an online shop where the platform will take care of the majority of the work for you and all you need to do is provide the product. Platforms like Etsy and Shopify allow you to sell products while they provide you the vast majority of the services you would need to implement to have your own independent shop.
What do you need? You will need 2 things. A product(s) and a way to spread the news about your shop! If you craft anything you can sell it in these platforms. But what if you don’t or if you are not crafty? Well you can create you own designs and sell products where this designs will be printed. You can create your own designs in an online tool called Canva for free!
Sounding too complicated? In reality it is not, Etsy already has an integrated interface with several print on demand companies. This means that when someone goes to your Etsy shop and buys a product, Etsy will inform the printing company to print the product and where to ship it to.
Promoting your shop is something you can do on your social networks or locally to your friends and family. Of course the best way to market any product is to show it and make everyone else want it too. Do you need t-shirts for your kids, why not use your own designs and let them be your ambassadors?
The return you can expect from setting your online shop will depend mainly from your success to bring people to the shop, so platforms that are mainly visual, such as Pinterest and Instagram, can lead a lot of clients in your direction. There are thousands of people that have been able to leave their 9 to 5 jobs and live from these online shop option.
Virtual Assistant
Are you organized and good at organizing other people work? This is without a doubt one of the best home based works you can find for a stay-at-home mom!
How does it work? You basically use some of your free time, when the kids are out to school or when they are sleeping, to help someone with their business. There is a variety of tasks that can fall under this umbrella of Virtual Assistant and this is a highly growing market with lots of offers.
What do I need? A PC, mobile phone, internet connection and some common software/apps should be sufficient to get you going for the majority of the virtual assistant offers out there. The type of services you can be asked to perform as Virtual Assistant include but are not limited to:
· Social media management
· Social media content creation
· Coordination of outsourced activities
· Event planning
· Managing comments and replies in blogs and social media
· Research for specific topics
· Organizing and planning agenda
· E-mail account management
You can do this without any major training but in order to facilitate getting clients and specially better paying clients it might be worth investing on some training. There are some platforms that provide you tools that will make your life much easier and at the same time connect you to job offers, maximizing your efficiency and the number of potential jobs available to you.
Prices per hour should be between $15 and $20.