Make money working from home around your family
We’ve all read articles about how to make easy money working at home. You possibly think everyone’s able to do it but you… Think again! If you’re a stay at home mom – look around you, there’s plenty you can make money from!
4x kids, 4x the activities
I had 4 children in 4 ½ years – Louise, my oldest, hadn’t even started school when Luke, my youngest, was born. I always seemed to be in poop – only the depth varied!! Living on the single wage my husband brought in became more difficult the more kids we had, so I had to be creative and find ways to make easy money while still being able to put my children first. As they started going to school I had a never ending calendar of book days, open classrooms, helping with development skills, teacher interviews, sports days, and then there were the after school activities like dancing and football. It was constant.
I decided to look at ways of scaling what I was already doing to make money.
In the coming articles I will go into details about how to make easy money working at home but my first piece of advice is…. Get organised!
Tap into your talent
Often people think working at home will be easy. They generally picture all the things they would like to do, such as shopping, lunches, movies, exercising and confuse it with actually working… At home. Before having children, women usually commute to work, start at around 9am, have half an hour for lunch and then finish their work day around 5pm. Once a new baby arrives, the word schedule is only found in the “S” section of the dictionary. The phrase, “It will get better as they get older” seems like a perpetuating lie told by other mothers. However, once the fog of overwhelm and lack of sleep has lifted and you are again starting to form a routine with your day, start setting aside an hour or so to do something you really enjoy. Be it knitting, needlework, cooking, scrap-booking, writing poetry – whatever you have a talent for. This talent is what is going to be making you easy money at home.
Build your work from home business around your family
Making a million dollars online, working from home, is definitely possible but it takes time and effort and may stop you from being the fulltime mother you want to be. My ideas are for mothers with younger children who want to work with and around their children, bringing in cashflow. My family worked to a routine so certain things, like homework, dinner and bed time, had to be done at specific times. Learning how to organise your day at home now and working around your children, will be a solid grounding for when they don’t consume your time as much (it is true!) and you will be able to spend more of your day working on a business model.
During my children’s primary school years, I was consistently earning around $800-$1000 per week, working around their school hours and activities, doing all the jobs I will be explaining to you. These jobs fitted with my family’s lifestyle. There are many more things that could be done by you – the only thing limiting you will be your imagination. Nothing I did required any special tools or equipment – I used everything I already had and worked out how to scale it to make easy money with very little extra effort.
Let people know what you do
There is only one more piece of advise I will give you once you are organised…. Start telling people what you do. People love people who provide a useful service for them. It’s one less thing they have to do. Make yourself invaluable to other people and the word will spread. Use social media to promote yourself if needed. If dog walking is going to be your thing – leave a poster at the local dog park or dog grooming salon. Think about how best to promote you and make sure you can scale what you are doing without infringing on your family life.
Good luck. Get organised. Be creative. Do something you enjoy and you will be able to make easy money working at home.
Yvette is a stay at home mum who is able to earn an income whilst working around her children by being creative. She is co-founder of Strathfield Web Design, designing, creating and managing the online presence of local businesses.
