How to earn a side income as a stay at home mom
Looking for info on how you can make an income as a stay at home mom? Good, you’re in the right place!
Being a stay at home mom has been a dream of mine since I can remember. My mother stayed home while my sister and I were young, and I loved the time we spent together. My memories of us hanging out every evening still feel cozy in mind. My mother was always busy doing something.
Cooking, folding laundry, sewing or some other various crafts. We’d all sit together watching old movies while she worked next to us. It was warm and safe. In those moments, I longed to reshare those same feelings with my own children.
Then I became a nurse. I had a very good job, great co-workers. When I was pregnant, I knew I’d go back to work even after my first baby was born.
That all changed when I actually met my baby. This adorable little person, who needed ME. I dreaded going back to work, but there were little other options.
I was pregnant again before my first had turned a year old. With this second baby, the idea of returning to work seemed that much worse. I was missing out on the most precious years of my babies lives.
Before my maternity leave was up, I had made up my mind that I was going to be at home with my children. So I went back to work for a month and put in my notice. I knew surviving off my husband’s income alone was going to be difficult. So I needed to come up with a way to start supplementing our income.
I have been finding ways to make a side income, which has made it possible for me to stay home with our kids, without going into loads of debt.
Table of Contents
Make a side income as a stay at home mom
Watch extra kids
You can watch a friends kid or a friend of friend, for a bit of side cash. There is always someone in need of child care. This is a great option because daycare is expensive and its hard to know if your kiddo is being well taken care of.
If your schedule is flexable you can charge a bit more by offering back up services. I see moms on facebook looking for back up care all the time. Usually hey have a wierd shift to over, or their regular caregiver is on holiday. These moms are usually more than glad to offer more money for last minute services.
If you’re really ambitious you could start your own at home daycare. The laws are different in each state. Some require you to register and others do not.Depending on your area you could make anywhere from 400 to 600 dollars per child you watch. Of course, a lot of this depends on your hours, services you provide, etc.
A great way to get started is by searching local facebook groups and seeing if any of the local mom groups have caregiver needs. You can find lots of great information on starting your own daycare here.
Start a Blog
I love this one because it’s the main route I’ve chosen. (My first blog income report is here.) I drank the cool-aid and started a blog. It’s been awesome! This is a route I highly recommend. There’s a reason there are so many mom blogs out there. Lots of moms want to stay at home with their little ones, and this makes it possible for many moms.
When I first started I used this awesome (and free) blogging plan from startamomblog.com. It’s a great resource for setting up what you should be doing from month to month. It made it a lot more manageable for me to figure out where I was heading, and what I should be focused on.
I was making over 300 bucks by the 3rd month my blog went live. It’s definitely not just side work. I had to sacrifice all my personal time in just creating content and figuring out how to make a blog work, but it’s been totally worth it. It’s satisfying to have created something on my own, and make money while doing it. Plus I’ve made some awesome online mom blogger friends.
I got started by using this Ebook which is a great place to start when you have no idea what you’re doing. She walks you step by step on creating and setting up your blog. She specifically talks about how to start a blog as a mom of little ones, since our time is limited and at most, we have an hour or two to work on anything. She gives you a timeline on how to set your blog up, and what you should be doing to create your own success.
(You can find my recent income report here, & How I made nearly $500 only 4 months of going live!)
Become a Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant (VA for short) is just what it sounds like. You are someone’s assistant, virtually. This is a really great side income job for stay at home moms because you can set your own hours and choose what services you will offer. You can usually start and stop your work as need be to attend to whatever it is that needs tending to. You can decide to work just a couple hours at night while the kiddos are sleeping, or you can choose to work a full-time schedule. The beauty of being a VA is that YOU get to decide what works best for you and your family.
Most online businesses need help with tasks that are eating up their time, time that could be spent doing things to grow their business. Things like checking and responding to customer emails (a lot of business owners feel as though they are drowning in emails), creating content for them, creating graphics for their website (you can easily learn to do this yourself with youtube) or managing social media accounts.
There’s a great article on everything you need to know about becoming a virtual assistant here.
Read: How You Can Become a Stay at Home Mom By Becoming A Virtual Assistant
Freelance writing
Freelance writing is perfect if you enjoy writing and researching, but aren’t quite ready to start your own blog yet. A freelance writer basically finds people who need content on their website. You offer your services by creating content that they get to publish on their site to bring in traffic.
You can find LOTS of information on freelancing all over the internet. The problem is that there are lots of people looking for ways to make money on the internet and they end up getting sucked into sites where they are spending a lot of time writing content and only making a couple of dollars per article. They turn to cheapo job boards that offer very low pay for so much work.
There are lots of upsides to freelance writing though. It takes a bit of effort, but once you find a “niche” that you enjoy writing about, it kinda sparks a little flame. You can then find sites within that niche and start creating seriously great content that legit sites will pay you for. Read more about becoming a freelance writer here.
Sell products on Etsy
Who doesn’t love Etsy? If you’ve got a special skill or good at making something, you should probably be selling on Etsy. Good at sewing? Crafting beautiful handmade cards or jewelry? Creating awesome graphics? I could list 100 different things on what you could do to be selling on Etsy. If the idea of creating actual physical products to sell sounds like to much, you can totally go the digital route! You could create awesome printables for nurseries like these ones or create useful planners like these.
Swagbucks
Ok. I tried so hard to make the survey thing work. It just doesn’t for me. It’s so frustrating. I do use Swagbucks though. I just don’t really use the survey option. You can earn points called SB by using their search function, watching videos and shopping through their site. You can earn 500 sb points for watching videos. I open up their pop up and put it to the side of my browsers and let the videos run while I surf the web. Now the site says you can earn 500 sb points (which is equivalent to $5) but it takes a really long time. I earn a few here and there.
I’ll be honest, I had heard of Swagbucks a while ago, but I thought it as another angering survey site. When I finally sat down to actually use it, I wish I had started a bit sooner. Mostly, you can find lots ways to get cash back. For instance, if you book hotels through hotels.com you can get 8 points for every dollar you spend. So if you book a room for $100 then you get 8 dollars back. Pretty nice in my opinion. I also looked into booking a Lyft and you can earn a lot of money back on that too.
To get the most out of Swagbucks you simply install the chrome extension and it alerts you to all the sites you can get points back on. Takes almost no time. The extension allows you to quick click the videos in a separate tab too. Letting them run while you surf the web.
You should totally check out Swagbucks. Won’t make you rich by any means, but will help you earn a few bucks on the side.
Sell things you no longer need
This helps accomplish two big things. You can get a bit of side cash, and declutter your home! More expensive items you can turn around and sell on eBay. You can sell your old books on Amazon. For everything else, I’d sell on facebook garage sale groups. These groups are great for selling kids items such as clothes and other baby stuff, but other things do well on these sites too.
Or you could always have a good old fashioned garage sale. Heres some great tips on have a successful garage sale.
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