How to Make Money as a Stay Home Mom [REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCE]

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If you want to learn how to make money as a stay home mom, you’re in the right place. I started making money as a stay home mom in 2015 and I’d love to share with you methods that have worked for me, so in the post, let’s talk about it!

As a stay home mom, your main priority is your family.  Often times, you may sacrifice a comfortable paycheck to nurture and comfort your family if you don’t know how to make money as a stay home mom.  Nowadays, with the internet, there are more and more opportunities to make money doing very cool things as a stay home mom, and that is what this article will be about.

Stay home moms who make money from home are becoming the rule rather than the exception.  Women are realizing that they can stay home with their kids, involve themselves in the workforce, give more freedom to their families, and help their communities.

My Story as a Stay Home Mom Who Makes Money from Home

When I met my husband, I was a working mom.  I spent 7 years in the Air Force when my son started having challenges in school.

I had mommy guilt about my lack of time to help him understand his school subjects, so after 9 years of service,  I decided to separate from the Air Force and work from home.  Now, it’s been almost 3 years, and it’s been one of the most liberating choices I’ve made.

I like writing articles of this sort to empower other mothers who are contemplating whether or not they can make money as a stay home mom to tell you, “Yes you can!”.  There are so many ways you can make money from home, and I’ve given quite a few options on my article 25+ Best Home Based Businesses For Stay Home Moms.

In this article, I wanted to go further into the practical parts like how do you make time to make money as a stay home mom, how do you acquire the skills to work from home, and how do you entertain your kids while working from home.  Can we talk about those things here?

How To Make A Schedule To Work From Home

When I started working from home, I quickly saw the schedule challenges.  I had jumped into a lot of busyness, then realized it after the fact.  I was homeschooling, doing my Master’s program, freelancing, and I had just had a baby!

SAVE ME FROM me! LOLOLOL

I’m an ambitious person, but I had not figured out how to juggle all of my ambitions and make them work.  With time, I figured it out, and I’ll share with you my keys…

Key #1: PLAN PLAN PLAN

I learned to plan first.  I know that may sound like common sense, but sometimes, we plan off of different levels of productivity than our current state.

For example, I was planning what I could do as if I was single with no kids while I was a homeschooling mom of a 10-year-old with a new baby!  The schedule approximations will be much different for us as moms than before we were moms, and we have to plan for that.

I learned that while dinner time may have been 20 minutes for me as a single person, dinner is 1 hour or 1.5 hours as a mom with a family.  From that, I learned to sit down and write down the tasks that I want to be done, then take advantage of the times when my kids were occupied to capitalize on the tasks on my to-do list.

I love bullet journals or planners to jot down my lists.  You can check some of those out here:

Key#2: Calculate an Average Amount of Time Your Kids Nap or Play Independently

I use the times where my kids play independently, their nap times, and when they sleep at night to work.  On average, I can get 30 hours of work time if I work 1 hour in the morning before they wake up, one hour during naps, and 2-3 hours while they sleep at night.

It’s stringent, and you can choose to work on a part-time schedule or a less stringent schedule than I do.  My family has some aggressive goals, so I pour my energy into my work for the long-term payoff.

Key#3: Outsource Tasks that Can Enable You To Be Productive Working

I’ve outsourced cleaning before.  I’ve had nannies come over from time to time.  I’ve taken my kids to recreation activities that use a lot of energy.  I’ve been very creative with balancing work and life.  The last thing you want is to have your house falling apart because you are off balance with how much you invest in your work.

How To Entertain Your Kids While You Work From Home

Even with using the 3 keys, you may wonder, various creative things you can do to entertain your kids so you can get regimented work times.  For me, I can say that planning activities have been hit or miss.

Sometimes, I plan activities, we have fun, and they are KNOCKED OUT at the perfect time as I planned.  Sometimes, my planning doesn’t work out as I’d like.  Either way, I do my best to plan activities that would engage them, get them to learn and have fun, and keep our schedule fairly regular.  Some activities we like are:

• Going to museums
• Playing at neighborhood parks
• Swimming
• Going to the library
• Signing up for classes at the YMCA
• Going to meetups with other families
• Playin with board games or puzzles
• Doing arts and crafts

The list can go on and on, but you get the idea.  I plan activities during their peak activity times, then when they have worn themselves out, I put on my “mommy work hat”, and begin to get my work done.

How To Acquire Skills To Work From Home

Learning is ongoing. Before you go off spinning your wheels trying to develop a skill, find an area in the market where you would like to help.  Maybe you’re passionate about helping kids pass their classes in school.

Maybe you’re passionate about helping small businesses market to their audiences.  Find your interest, then culminate that interest in a way that you are low supply but high demand.  When your interest is honed in a low supply and high demand category, you can charge favorable rates.

For me, I really love marketing and helping startup entrepreneurs, but then I’m also passionate about living a healthy life and growing money.  My greatest talent is in writing and visual art.  I combined my greatest interests and talents and decided to pursue blogging.  Here, I write about Personal Finance, but I also have a blog on health, entrepreneurship, and my personal life.  Of course, you’ll be able to see where I spend most of my time when you check the other blogs out, but you get it…

Once you decide what skills you want to acquire, I’d recommend you look into Udemy or Skillshare to see if they have classes to help you develop those skills.  I have taken hundreds of courses from there and watched the rates I can charge for freelance work go up and up as I made myself more valuable to the businesses I work with.

If you’re interested in blogging or running an online business as I do, I’d recommend Wealthy Affiliate.  I get a whole lot of community support and training from the community there, and it’s helped me become a much better online entrepreneur than when I first started.  You can check it out here.

Should You Choose a Home Based Business or a Work From Home Job?

I’ve seen both, work from home jobs and home based businesses that work well for women working from home.  Work from home jobs usually are much more predictable than home-based businesses in the startup phase.

When you find a work from home job, they tell you how to apply, you complete the application, they tell you how you will be contacted if you get the job, and so on.

Then when you’re hired, much like a normal job, they tell you what schedule they want you to work or for flexible schedule opportunities, they will tell you the level of productivity they expect, and you perform the work.

I’ve done one work from home job as a 1099 contractor that I enjoyed for awhile.  It was a flexible schedule opportunity.  I had to take my baby to daycare because the workload was too much for me to complete with normal creative planning.  I enjoyed the work from home job until my kids got sick and I didn’t have a fallback plan.

My husband was still very busy with his work and he could not come home to enable me to work.  Due to the complications of my kids’ sickness, I was not working consistently for 8 weeks and I lost the job!

After losing the job, I decided to pursue multiple streams of income: pursuing service based work and commission based work.  I decided to get more training on blogging and affiliate marketing, so I could augment (or even replace) the income I receive from performing services for others.

Home Based Business Pros and Cons

Having a home-based business or a home based job can seem very similar.  Some key differences are:

• When you have a business, you start to build credibility in the business whereas, with a job, you’re building your personal credibility.
• With a business, you choose how you will package your services: as a product or thru direct care for your clients.  With a job, they tell you how they need you to perform and you apply for their openings
• Home based business owners choose their hours: when they are open or closed.  Jobs tell you when they want you to work, and you mold your schedule around that
• Business owners also usually have the freedom to outsource, but still can leave a profit margin for themselves since the employees operate under the liability protection of the business.

Cons of Home Based Businesses

Starting a home-based business can be very liberating for your family, but I’d be wrong to leave out the things you may consider as cons such as:

• The income can vary.  Unlike a job, you are looking for more than one person to pay for your products or services.  Depending on your business model, whether you choose a recurring payment model or a single payment model, your sales volumes can depend heavily on your acquisition processes.
• When you have a business, there is more recordkeeping you will need to do to follow legal and tax guidelines
• Typically businesses are held to a higher standard than employees
• Until you have the clientele built comfortably, it can take a lot of thought and creativity to figure out how to balance the finances and time output.

Pros of Home Based Business

• After you have your acquisition processes and retention processes in place, a home-based business can be an additional pillar of security in your home.
• They can provide additional income–often times much more than you could get from a job.
• The ongoing expenses of a home based business are typically lower than other business types,
• and, you get lots of great tax write-offs!

Work From Home Job Pros

Unlike the normal home based business, with work from home jobs, you have the security at the beginning of knowing how much you will get paid and how much you will have to work. You can still be present in the home even if you’re attention has to be focused on your work.

Work from Home Cons

• The unfortunate thing with work from home jobs is they’re becoming higher in demand, and more competitive.
• Often times, they don’t offer many advancement options like raises and so on because of the convenience.
• There is often a lot of questioning and extra parameters to “prove” you were doing the amount of time or work that you are supposed to.
• The additional “proof” can be belittling or uncomfortable.
• It’s harder to establish camaraderie with a team because communication is typically strained by working in different locations

Success Stories of Moms who Make Money as a Stay Home Mom

It’s successful work from home moms that inspired me to pursue working from home.  I love stories like these because they built my hope and courage that it was possible for me:

• Kristina Kuzmic – A Comedian

This video will show you that while we do our best as moms, sometimes, it just goes like this…Enjoy!

• HeatherGrace – Mommy Blogger

HeatherGrace is the mom of three who makes a nice income blogging from home 10 hours/week.

Final Words on How To Make Money as a Stay Home Mom

If you’re considering working from home, I’m your number one cheerleader over here saying, “You can do it!”.  I know you can.  I love to encourage you in any way I can.  If you have questions that I didn’t answer above, please feel free to leave your comments below, and I’ll help you out!

If you’d like to get training on how to start an online business, I’d love to walk with you thru the training at Wealthy Affiliate.  You can create an account there totally free, and I’ll be able to coordinate with you (similar to a social media platform).  Check it out now!

Now, it’s Your Turn…

Have you worked at home as a stay home mom?  Do you know women who are making money as stay home moms?  What do they do?  What advice would you give women who are questioning whether they can make money as stay home moms?  Leave your advice, comments, question, or encouragement below.