7 Ways for Stay-at-Home Parents to Boost Their Home Budget
Being a stay at home mum or dad is definitely the hardest and the most rewarding job of all. Although being as hard as some regular jobs, the biggest downside of this role is that it doesn’t come with a regular paycheck.
Currently, families have to try much harder to earn enough money for their household budget, but if you decided to take care of children and household instead of having a 9-to-5 job, don’t despair, because there are lots of ways you can earn money while being at home and watching your angels grow.
- Freelancing
Currently 53 million people or 34% of national workforce in United States alone are doing freelance work. This is one of the most popular way for people to earn some extra cash, and it is suitable for almost all levels of expertise. Some of the most competitive freelance markets are: IT, designing, translation, content writing etc.
Today basically any expert can offer his/her services online and the best places to find your first employers are online freelance markets like Upwork.com or Freelancer.com. Most people start searching on these services, before they manage to find several well secure clients, which leads to more money, benefits and better rating.
- Help People Learn Your Language for Money
There are several websites that connect people who want to learn languages with professional teachers or native-speakers with no teacher education. One of these websites is Italki, and it gives the chance to the teachers to set their own prices, as well as working time, which is great for stay-at-home parents. English is the most popular language on these online communities, but there are also courses in Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French etc. All payments go through the website and scheduling and marketing services are all included in the website’s commission price.
- Test Websites for Money
Websites need to be tested for their usability before they are put into service. There are services like UserTesting that pay $10 to testers for 20 minutes-long sessions. This job can be done without a degree in IT field or any previous testing experience and it is great for people who want to work from home.
- Start E-commerce Business
This has been one of the fastest growing online businesses in last few years. There are two proven ways to make money with e-commerce. Selling goods on big market places like Amazon or eBay is one of them, and it provides nice returns with almost no hassle. Goods can be bought on those exact marketplaces, and sold with a higher price tags, or ordered wholesale on websites like Alibaba.com.
Another more complicated way to start your e-commerce business, is opening your own e-commerce store. This includes opening a website or using online platforms like Shopify to sell goods. When opening an e-commerce store, you also need to think about SEO, marketing, social network’s promotion, shipping costs etc. But if this business succeeds it will guarantee much higher returns.
- Host People With AirBnB
Since its introduction AirBnB is constantly growing and currently it is the number one lodging platforms in the world. Its interface is similar to the old hospitality platforms like Couchsurfing or Hospitality Club, but the difference is that guests need to pay they stay and therefore it can bring nice profits to the home owners.
Like the old hospitality platforms, AirBnB has a functional reference system, that can be used for checking guest’s background. Possible income that can be obtained through this platform mainly depends on the home’s location, size and the level of comfort.
- Start Working as a Virtual Assistant
Outsourcing of administrative work in both big and small companies became very popular lately. Everybody’s trying to cut their staff, and administrative sector is the easiest to outsource. That is why, there is a constant demand for assistants who will do administrative work from their home.
Virtual assistants need to have some administrative experience, or at least to finish some online courses on this subject, knowing the rules of business correspondence can also be useful and by having several steady clients stay-at-home parents will be able to earn even more money than their working spouses.
- Be an Online Trader
Although this seems like a very complicated thing to do, with the introduction of online trading and low commission brokerage firms everybody can become a trader. To become successful at this job you will need a lot of skills and very wide portfolio that includes: penny stocks, forex and binary options. There are plenty of websites that offer great insights in stock trading, like these guides here, as well as online stock exchanges like NASDAQ, where you can search for stocks and compare their profitability.
With so many options for earning an extra cash, being stay-at-home parent seems much more interesting and profitable. Of course if you try some of these businesses it is important be as agile and dedicated as you are working at a regular 9-to-5 job position.