How to make money as a stay at home parent, is a big question for many single parents. Being a parent isn’t easy by itself, but when you are a single mom or dad raising one or more children. Trying to manage a job that fits you taking care of your kids, is an almost near impossible task.
Stay At Home Job Dilemma
Parents who live together or at least co-parent, still find scheduling their lives along with work a massive task. For single parents raising kids on their own. Staying at
home tends to makes things easier as far as managing the kids and the house. However, bills have to be paid, so is there a way to make money as a stay at home parent? It’s not just parents, everyday people are searching for a way to work from home or an extra income. There are many ways to make money outside of reporting to a location every day. Although, finding these type jobs or incomes isn’t an easy task.
Online incomes are becoming popular these days. Most everyone has a computer, and more and more opportunities are becoming available on the internet all the time. Blogging has become one of the more common ways people make extra money if not replace their work income. There are options that I do not personally find beneficial. The main goal about working from home is. You are trying to create an income, and at the same time free up your time. There are surveys, contest, watch videos, writing, website reviews, trading, selling and more. However, with all these options, you need to understand the ones that could suck up more time than it’s worth.
What’s A Job?
A job is basically you trading your time for money. Although, it seems as time has been progressing, we are running short of it. We all seem to wake up to a “To Do List.” Sadly, that list always extends into the next day, and then on into the next. There is your home that requires your time in keeping it up. There are kids to take care of, yourself to take care of. But then, the biggest chunk of your day goes into a job. At the end of the day, how much personal management or enjoyment time did you get?
A Traditional Income “vs” A Work From Income
There are those that have a good life and a great a job. They go to work every day, with set hours and a steady income. Steady is great and many people have done a lot with this method of income. Knowing how to budget with what you have, can make all the difference.
Even though a steady life sounds safe and secure, it really isn’t. You never know when you are going to get that pink slip. That notice you have been terminated due to downsizing, closing the company or what have you. You are also stuck by rules that are dictated by someone else. You have to plan your personal time and your family time around what someone else wants.
Having a traditional job is most common of all careers. There are those that have the education and degrees that have placed them in a very comfortable lifestyle. Even the freedom and income they want. But unfortunately, there are more jobs that don’t have that then does. A make money at home position can expand to many opportunities. Owning your own online business can take the boss out of the picture and give you a freedom most careers don’t.
Keep in mind, a person’s success can only be measured by what that individual really wants out of life. A low-income person living in a one-bedroom apartment may be as happy and feels just as successful as a millionaire. No one should ever judge someone else based on what they have or their income.
Upside Of Working From Home
Traditional jobs come with many stresses. Those unexpected events, like you being sick, or your kids being sick. You have to ask for time off and even possibly take a chance at losing your job over life matters. There are some good employers that know and understand this, but there are many that don’t care and don’t understand. This is where trying to raise a child on your own can become very difficult.
With a work at home job or your own business, there will be stresses and risk. Things that a traditional job usually doesn’t entail. However, the rewards of having a work at home income, especially when raising kids, far exceed traditional jobs. Learn more about having an Online Income…
Making money as a stay at home parent, can give you far more freedom for those necessary things you have to do. You can spend more time with your kids and family. Start living your life and enjoying it rather than waking up dreading it.
As a single full-time parent, I have come to realize something. The older my child has become, the more I have to be at home or be free. There are always things at school I need to be free for. Always running her over to friend’s houses or be at home for her to have friends over. Then there are those trips to the malls, book stores and so on. If I were tied up at a traditional job, I don’t know what I would do. As a parent, you do everything you can to be there for your kids.
This Sounds Scary, How Can You Make Money At Home?
Most of us are creatures of habit. We all grow up going to school so that we can keep getting more education. We get jobs to buy things we want. Then we start paying bills to keep a home and a family. This all leads into falling into the grind, the habit. It is also known as the safe and secure way. The term for this habit or pattern is “comfort zone.”
Starting your own business or a work from home job isn’t so much in the norm. Many find this venture scary and risky, as they should. However, success and attempting to achieve your real goals, getting what you really want in life, will come with risk. No doubt, moves you completely out of your comfort zone.
Many people think that making money online is a get rich quick scheme and usually illegal or unethical. Truthfully, there are those that have set bad examples, but the internet isn’t bad. Only people can make it bad. There are just as many good opportunities out there if not more. Like Amazon, eBay and many other stores you are buying online from. The real issue with making money online is are you willing to work. Too many, feel that is should be easy and all automatic and those are the ones that fail.
Now you have some options at making money as a stay at home parent. You should think carefully about which one feels like something you would want to do. What you would be happy with. I am going to go over a few of the top ones listed below.
Websites that pay you for task:
There are companies, businesses and website owners that will pay
for certain task to be done. These task vary from taking surveys, testing products, shopping reviews to reviewing web pages on websites. It would be difficult for task like these to replace your income, but it can make you extra cash. Here are a few places that you can check out to get an idea of things you can do.
Fiverr
Fiverr is a global online marketplace offering tasks and services. Beginning at a cost of $5 per job/task performed. These jobs and task are called “GIGS.” Basically, you offer your services of anything really, starting off at $5. If you like to write, people are looking for someone to write articles for website post. So, you can offer so many words for $5 but that isn’t the limit. More words, more money, to offering a full-time service. If you cook really well, someone may want cooking advice. Do you know accounting? You can offer services in that area. This is one of those incomes that depends on what you can offer and how much effort you put in. Something like this can be extra cash to replacing your income.
InboxDollars
InboxDollars is a program is where you take surveys, perform shopping task or watch TV and things of this nature. With sites like these, you better your chances making better money by joining more than one. There are other similar sites you can sign up with like Survey Club and GlobalTestMarket. As I have mentioned, these type of incomes take time for little money. However, it requires no real skills and is easy to do, so it may be worth looking into.
User Testing
User Testing, try at your own risk. I actually tried this one for a while and found it more frustrating than it was worth. Although, there are many reviews how people are making decent money from this site. You will get paid straight to your PayPal account $10 for 10 to 20 minutes’ worth of work. Your task is to view websites of any kind. They provide you with a tool to record you talking as you browse the site. You are provided with instructions, but you basically review and criticize an assigned website as you browse it.
The frustrating part I found; you have to wait for an email with an assignment. You have monitoring your emails because you are not the only one getting it. This is a first come first serve method. However, once you complete several assignments, they will assign you more direct task. Not a way to get rich but you can fairly easy make $100 to $200 a week if not more.
Project Payday
Project Payday is a site you have to be careful with, but you can also make bigger bucks with. This program requires you to sign up for free trials. This means, if you do not keep a good calendar, you will end up buying stuff you probably don’t want. However, if you’re keeping good records and calendar, this is a way to make more money than survey sites. Companies pay you for a free trial in hopes that you will forget to cancel. They also hope you will like the products and keep them. This is a little risky. Although, if you are looking for a bigger income than what survey sites pay, this may be your better option.
Become a Freelance Writer
Freelance writing is one of the more popular and most common 
ways to make money online. Providing who you work for, what kind of content you write and how much time you have to invest. This type of work can be extra cash to a full-blown income. When you first start out as a freelance writer, your earnings will not be that great. You have to prove you can do the job and build a brand from your work. In time you could be making from 50 cents up to a dollar per word. This can actually become an online business for you. Many people need someone to write articles for their blogs, resumes or articles for publishers for their publications.
Usually to get started in something like writing, you have to provide examples. Either samples of stuff you have written or sometimes fill in a sample form on their site. Having a resume that has links to samples of your writing skills or a decent LinkedIn profile will help. Not to worry, there are some companies that don’t care so much about your writing skills as much as what you write about. Often, they look for your experiences or knowledge of something. Below is a list of companies you can get started with. At least look into seeing if it might be a fit for you.
Telecommute Jobs – Companies That Hire You To Work From Home:
It is becoming more common for companies to hire people to work from home. This is actually a cost savings to many companies. They don’t have to pay for you to work in a physical building. Many people do not realize the cost to a company to hire an employee. There is the whole intake process with many expenses. Drug screening, background checks and all the paperwork processing an HR department has to accomplish per employee.
An Employee intake process can cost up to $7000 per person. Then you have to cover an employee being in a physical building with a liability insurance. Not to mention the water they use and toilet paper/hand towels, coffee if provided and the list goes on. Then there is the expense of a physical building with all the rent, insurances and utilities.
So hiring someone to work from home, can be a big cost savings to a company. Now granted, you will not find a manual labor type job online. However, there are a lot of administration, technical, management and sales jobs you can work remotely. You can find many work from home job listings on Craigslist. Look for telecommute jobs in any state or city. Check out the list below to get an idea of just some of the companies that hire remote employees.
Opportunities To Stay Away From
There are many opportunities to make money online. You will find MLM (Multi-Level-Marketing) programs out there. Most people think of MLM opportunities as a scam and usually they are. I am sure you have heard of the pyramid schemes and such. These are usually Ponzi scams all about you getting followers under you. Those followers get followers below them, and you make more money. I find this usually unethical so I am not going to venture into it too much.
My best advice for all MLM programs is to stay away from them. Many promote products that are helpful to others and even work with some charities. The issue is, no one can get the helpful products unless they sign someone up as sellers. So, you are never really selling the helpful product to people that might need it. MLM’s are best to stay away from, especially of you want to be respected and trusted. These pyramid schemes always fall on their face at some point.
Choices For Making Money For As A Stay At Home Parent
The options listed above are great to make some extra cash or a light income. However, if you’re looking to make real money, real passive income that can replace and exceed a traditional job. Look into building an online business.
There are many e-commerce type businesses you can work from home. eBay, Shopify, Amazon and many more you can get involved with to make a living. One issue to be considered with e-commerce, you are dealing with physical products. You have to set yourself up with drop shipping methods and with that, higher risk of returns to deal with. There are shipping cost, state taxes and the list goes on that need to be studied before jumping in.
My Preference
My preferred method is Affiliate Marketing, selling mostly digital goods. Digital goods require no shipping cost, delivery is an instant download. The world is in need of information, all the “How To’s” that people want to know. “How to have a successful relationship”, “How to build a storage shed”, “How to lose weight” and endless more. You may have purchased things like this already. Software is also a digital download these days.
To have a successful business, you really need a website. This is where most people run the other way. For many, it becomes overwhelming to the thought of having to build a website. Perhaps scary thinking of paying to have that done. There are free website builders and most people can use them. However, free websites can’t be found easily, so it really won’t do your business any good.
Getting Started
Blogging is a big money maker and is considered a real business. People write about topics, write reviews and things along this nature. They create a name for themselves which this becomes a brand. People that follow your brand, learn to trust the brand. So when that brand recommends a product or service, people tend to buy. Amazon, eBay and companies like that are a Brand. With a website, you can sell physical products as well, digital. Selling physical products as an affiliate such as Amazon is not too hard. Most people don’t realize, Amazon only offers 4% to 8% commissions. So unless you are selling high price merchandise, you won’t be making big money.
Most physical good commissions are lower than digital anywhere. The best practice of getting started is to decide what niche you are interested in. What kind of products you would want to promote, if any? Would you want to just offer services like writing? You could make YouTube videos and make a killing. These are things you need to figure out before starting anything. Make a business plan first.
Avoid The Scams
Getting started in having an online business can sound scary, and overwhelming. There are so many scams out there. They just want your money to get you started in programs that do nothing and give you nothing in return. When I first started in affiliate marketing, building a website wasn’t no big deal for me. I have years’ experience in the IT field but marketing I had no clue. So, I found a company that gave me an already built DFY website for $450. This was supposed to get me underway to making hundreds of dollars a week. All I got, was a website that I could not access. I could people where this site was and if anyone bought something from it, I got a commission.
This was a complete rip-off, without control over a website, you can’t make money. This company had some nice training videos but none of it helped me make a dime. So I was out $450, but it was a lesson learned. I took what they did give me, and started researching how to make each step they half way taught, work.
Finding The Right Training
In my efforts of trying to learn all of this, I ran across a genuine helpful organization. It has that brand I mentioned. They actually help others become successful. You can join them for free and get plenty of training or go premium. The premium plan gets you far more training and many more features. What I like about it, you can follow the free training and start making money to pay for the paid training.
With this group, you get support from a community of people just like yourself. Some are just figuring it out and there are some that are already making a killing online. The biggest issue I have seen trying to figure out how to make an online business work. Most information out there is overpriced and they hand feed you information that isn’t complete. This training is complete and has awesome support.
So how to make to make money as a stay at home parent? Get with others that share your interest and dreams. Surround yourself with optimistic and positive people that understand what you are 
wanting to do. The place you need to check out is Wealthy Affiliate. Try it out for free, it will sell itself. It is affordable, especially for all the support, training and tools you get. Even as a free member, you get two free websites to learn on how to build. You get a free keyword tool to help get yourself ranked in search engines.
Stay Focused On What You Want
Don’t let others tell you it can’t be done. Too many are making a good source of income from blogging and promoting affiliate products online. The number one thing you have to do is just believe in yourself, and never give up.
As a single full-time dad, with all the time constraints a traditional job put on me. Turning to an online business was really my only option and I am so glad I did. I would recommend trying this avenue before wasting time with surveys and such. If your time is being sucked up for little money, that isn’t success. Check out Wealthy Affiliate and see for yourself what you will get out of it.
