With the rise of the internet and ever-present WIFI, working from home is easier than ever. Moms who want to both spend time with their children and earn an income can now become mompreneurs by starting their own business and working from home. If this just sounds too good to be true, here are 12 realistic ideas on how you can work from home and achieve mompreneur status in a year or less.
If you have a background or interest in early childhood education, you could start a preschool or child care in your home. In-home preschools and child cares, formally known as family child care homes, offer children an opportunity to learn and grow in a small group environment in a comfortable home setting.
As a provider in a family child care, you’ll find you can actually keep startup costs and overhead costs low. There are incredible benefits, like making more money than you would doing the same job at a child care center. Family child care directors in the Wonderschool network report earning $50k a year or more in their work-from-home positions.
You can achieve both goals of being with your child AND having a career in this mompreneur role. You get the security of consistent work but the empowerment of starting your own small business.
To get started opening a family child care, you’ll want to research your state’s laws regarding family child cares. For example, in California, you can get licensed as either a large or small family child care and each has different regulations and capacities. Here at Wonderschool, we partner with moms to help them start their in-home preschools.
If you love being with kids, you can also offer more informal child care as a nanny. You can organize a shared care situation where you care for multiple families’ children at one of their homes.
Depending on your state’s laws, you might need a family child care license to operate a business like this. For example, in California, you need a license if you care for children from more than one family who are not related to you if you’re accepting payment for your services.
Depending on your skillset, you could become a freelance writer, graphic designer, web designer, or social media marketer. This means you would help other businesses succeed by offering a specialized service.
You don’t necessarily need experience to start freelancing, but you do need to have the skills to do the job. It can be tough to find clients starting out, but higher paying gigs with better quality clients will come with time and effort.
There are many other freelancers out there who write amazing tips to help people get started. For example, Elna Cain is a mom blogger and successful freelance writer who does most of her writing when her twins are napping. She shares tips on how to become a freelance writer on her blog.
Blogging is one of the more passive ways to earn as a mompreneur because you can make money over and over from content you posted just once. Blogging is not a get-rich-fast endeavor; it takes a lot of time and effort to build an audience, but it is possible. Some bloggers even make five figures per month!
To get started blogging, you’ll need to choose a narrow niche. You’ll want to “go deep rather than wide”. For example, Wendy from Wendolonia blogs about packing bento boxes. Being specific has helped her grow her audience and her paid opportunities.
Bloggers make money through a variety of income streams at once, so you’ll need to set up your blog for that once you decide on a niche and domain name. For example, there’s affiliate marketing, sponsored content, selling your own product or info-product, ads, and more.
Similar to blogging, this is a strategy that will take lots of time and effort before it starts earning you money. Instagram and YouTube stars document their lives and help others reach their goals by sharing tips. For example, if you’re passionate about nutrition, you could make videos showing how to cook your favorite recipes. If you love fitness, could make fitness training videos.
This is a great path if you enjoy visual design or are quite technical and can edit video content. One of the highest grossing YouTube channels (estimated to earn $4 million in 2014) features videos of unboxing children’s toys, so there is definitely mompreneur potential here!
Like in work-from-home freelancing, virtual assistants help other business by offering their services from afar. This could mean creating and scheduling social media content, doing administrative tasks like research and handling emails, editing photos, and more.
There are VA’s in other countries who may charge a lot less than you will, but businesses are looking for someone reliable, trustworthy, and who speaks native English. Your goal to show that your services are the best quality and that’s what they’re paying for.
You can either start your own VA business or join up with a VA service and offer your services through their platform.
This one’s for crafty moms. If you have a crafting hobby anyways, why not try selling your goods online through Etsy? You can make jewelry, knitted garments, watercolor greeting cards – the sky’s the limit.
Transcriptionists transcribe audio files into text for companies. Bilingual transcriptionists are in especially high demand.
Proofreaders have a keen eye and proofread documents for companies. These aren’t the most glamorous mompreneur jobs, but you can earn a consistent income once you gain experience. And if you’re super detail-oriented and have a keen eye for words, these positions will suit you well. If you’re ready to get started, check out tips from Proofread Anywhere.
If you have a knack for thrifting, you can pick up items at yard sales, estate sales, and thrift stores and resell them for more money. You can even “flip” products if you have the skills and vision to increase their value.
“Girl Boss” Sophia Amoruso, the founder of Nasty Gal, which grew to a multi-million dollar company at its prime, got her start flipping clothing and reselling it on Ebay. Learn how to get started from Rob and Melissa of Flea Market Flipper. They document the details on their “flips” and share tips on how you can do the same through their Flipper University.
Moms who like to work with their hands can turn that into a paid skill. Get certified and set up a room in your house for massage and you can start your own massage business. Lucky you, you won’t have to sit in front of a computer all day like in other mompreneur jobs.
There are definitely some safety precautions when inviting strangers into your home, so be sure you find a way to vet clients and feel comfortable before doing this type of work.
This one is more of a side hustle than full-time income but it’s easy to get started so why not earn a few extra bucks?
Speaking of bucks, one of the main ways to make money completing surveys is through Swagbucks. You can make money by taking surveys, participating in polls, and using their search engine. You earn points which you can then redeem for gift cards, like Paypal or Amazon gift cards.
There’s also InboxDollars and National Consumer Panel , where you use their app to scan your groceries and answer surveys about your shopping habits for money.
Lastly, if starting something from scratch is too much and you’re looking for more job security, you can always get a remote, work from home job with a company. Companies commonly hire remote customer service representatives, for example.
To start looking, try search “remote” on Indeed, or check out flexjobs.com, which only lists remote positions.
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