As more people are starting to learn, there are countless benefits to homeschooling your children. However, as a homeschooling mom (or dad), you’re going to be investing a lot of time in your child’s education, making it tough to find ways to earn income to help out with family expenses.
So, in this article, we’re going to cover seven ways to earn extra cash while being a homeschool mom. They are:
- Become A Home-Based Tutor
- Become a Freelance Transcriptionist
- Start a Babysitting Business
- Sell Homemade Crafts
- Sign Up for “Get Paid To” Sites
- Create an Affiliate Blog
- Start a Pet Sitting Business
Let’s go a little more in detail as to what each of these ways entails and how to get started with them.
1. Become a Home-Based Tutor
Becoming a home-based tutor is perfect for those who love teaching and want to help out some other kids who may be really struggling in certain subjects.
This is now made easy with websites like Chegg where you can become a home based tutor online – and they will connect you with the students!
How to get started
In order to get started with sites like Chegg, you’ll have to go to their website and create an account. You can do this either with your email or Facebook account.
Then you’ll need to provide two forms of ID verification from the following list:
- Photograph of your diploma
- Student identification card
- Scanned copies of your official or unofficial transcripts
- Screenshot of your college’s student portal homepage where your student ID and full name are visible
- National Student Clearinghouse enrollment verification
- Letter of college acceptance or enrollment verification from your university registrar
- Teaching or tutoring certification
- Other documents that confirm that you are currently enrolled or had once been enrolled in a university for four year
Upon signing up, if you use email instead of Facebook, you’re also required to submit a picture of yourself holding your driver’s license or passport. Also in the application, you’ll be asked to choose which subjects you would like to teach.
You may be asked to take a test to evaluate your proficiency in that subject, which makes sense. Once the application process is all done and you get approved, you’re ready to get started tutoring.
This is a cool site too because as long as people are scheduling you to tutor for them, you get work, which means you could have an endless amount of work when your account is set to active.
You have to set your account to active when you log on for the day and turn it off when you are done. Otherwise, if you leave it on, people can schedule you right then and you wouldn’t be there to help them.
That could get you a warning on your account, and you could get deactivated if you get too many warnings.
How much can you make?
With Chegg, you’ll be paid $20 per hour for tutoring, and the minimum lesson length is five minutes. So, if you had only one half-hour lessons per day, you’d earn an extra $50 per week! And you’ll get paid via PayPal every Thursday morning.
2. Become a Freelance Transcriptionist
Freelancing is defined as working for different companies at different times rather than being permanently employed by one company.
This means that freelancing can cover a broad spectrum of niches, but one of the most common is transcription. Let’s use the well-known Rev.com as an example.
Rev.com is one of the largest sites for freelance transcriptionists niche and it’s easy to start working with them.
How to get started
To get started you will have to go to Rev’s website and click on the “Become a freelancer” button.
You will then have to take a short quiz and complete a test transcription file to demonstrate your skill level.
After this, you just have to wait to be approved. It generally takes about two to three weeks to hear back from them.
If you do get approved, then you’re ready to get started working.
There’s no minimum work requirement for Rev; as long as there is work available, you can complete as much as you want, when you want.
Just be aware that, for Rev specifically, they’ve had a few controversial issues you probably want to know about before you get started.
You can read a full review of Rev here.
How much can you make?
With Rev, you’ll be paid through PayPal each week.
As a transcriber for them, you can earn anywhere from $.30 to $1.10 per audio minute. This varies based on the difficulty of the audio file.
On average, you could expect to earn between $6 to $22 an hour, based on your speed of transcribing. Generally, it takes an experienced transcriber 3-4 hours to transcribe one audio hour.
3. Start a Babysitting Business
This is a classic way to earn income on the side that many start off doing as a young teen, but anyone can do it no matter their age!
How to get started
The easiest way to become a babysitter is by essentially running your own business.
The first thing you would need to do is get some clients.
You could start off by asking friends and family if they are looking for a babysitter or know someone else who is, and offer to take care of their kids when needed.
Another way of getting your customers is by going and posting flyers around town with some contact information.
A smart place to put flyers would be outside of schools, where you know parents are likely to see it.
You will also want to make it clear what you are offering with the babysitting when people contact you for hire.
Information to include would be things such as:
- Do you have a limit of how many kids at once?
- Will you provide food for them if it is a long period of time?
- Will you take overnight opportunities?
- Is there a certain age range you won’t watch?
Also make sure that the parent knows you have children of your own, what ages they are, and things like that.
How much can you make?
With regards to making money as a babysitter, how much you make can really vary just depending on what you charge.
You can charge more for things such as overnight sitting or multiple kids, but this is all really up to you and just depends on what you feel comfortable charging.
As of 2016, the average babysitter earned $15.71 per hour.
So, if you babysat one child five days per week for one hour, you’d be bringing in an extra $75 per week!
4. Sell Homemade Crafts
If you have an artistic side and would like to get paid for your creativity, then selling homemade crafts might just be the way to go.
There are a few ways to sell homemade crafts and one of the most common ways is through the website Etsy. There’s a more in-depth article about selling crafts online here.
How to get started
If you would like to get started selling homemade crafts on Etsy, it’s pretty easy to do.
But before you do anything, you’ll want to figure out what products you’re going to be selling.
It all depends on your niche, hobby, and skill level, but some common crafts include:
- Bath bombs
- Candles
- Farmhouse signs/home décor
- Jewelry
Once you’ve decided what you want to make and sell, you need to go on Etsy.com and create a seller’s account.
Then you need to choose the “Open Your Etsy Shop” option. This is where you can set the language of your account and the currency you accept.
You will then need to choose a shop name and start listing products on the page, which should include a picture of your product.
Once this is all done, your Etsy shop is ready to open, and you are ready to get started selling.
How much can you make?
With Etsy, you get to set your own prices, however, they do have quite a bit of fees that get tacked on to you when you make a sale.
You can make your prices be as high or low as you want. You want to price competitively (which requires a bit of research) but you want to properly account for the time it took you create your craft as well as any costs involved.
Also, how much you earn will depend on what you make and who your target market is.
If you’re going after the higher-end market, you could sell your product for more money. But when you account for the costs of high-end materials, you’ll realize that that doesn’t always equate to earning more money.
To give you an idea of Etsy’s fees, let’s take an example:
Say you made a custom picture frame and sold it for $30. Etsy charges you a $0.20 fee just to list the product.
Then, if someone buys it, you’ll get a 5% transaction fee deducted, plus a 3% processing fee and another $0.25 processing fee.
And, if that person found you through Etsy’s new advertising service (where they advertise for you “for free”), then they’ll charge an extra 15% of that sale.
5. Sign Up for “Get Paid To” Sites
Most people know all about “get paid to” sites – the ones that pay you for completing surveys or watching videos and stuff like that.
There are definitely a lot of sites like this out there and we’ve reviewed quite a few of them. For example, sites like OnePoll, QA World, LifePoints and ClickWorker pay you to do surveys and complete simple tasks.
However, one of the bigger and more well-known ones is Inbox Dollars, so I’m going to focus on this as an example. With Inbox Dollars, you can get paid for doing these seven things:
- Complete paid online surveys
- Play games
- Watch videos
- Shop online and get cash back
- Participate in the Refer Friends Program
- Redeem coupons for cash
- Read emails
The variety is nice, because you don’t just have to sit and complete surveys, but you can actually have a variety of options.
How to get started
Getting started with InboxDollars is very easy. You just go visit their website and create an account with your email.
Then, once you have verified your email, you can just answer a few questions to fill out your profile, and you’re ready to get started.
They even give you $5 just for signing up!
How much can you make?
On average, you won’t earn very much on “get paid to” sites, and this is the case across the board.
The average income on a “get paid to” site would be somewhere in the $1 to $2 an hour range. But this is perfect if you just want something to do and want to make a little extra money while doing it.
With InboxDollars, there is a $30 threshold that you have to meet to cash out, and if you cash out at under $40, there is a $3 fee.
If you cash out over $40, then you will have no fee to pay.
InboxDollars, like most of these sites, pays you through check or PayPal and it can take up to 16 days to receive your money, depending on membership status.
6. Create an Affiliate Blog
If you have a passion that you love talking about and you want to share it with others and even get paid for it, then an affiliate blog may be the way to go.
With affiliate marketing, you are promoting somebody’s product and if a reader of your blog goes and purchases that product through your affiliate link, then you make a percentage of affiliate income.
How to get started
If you want to get started with an affiliate blog, you will first have to create your blog website. This is very easy to do with a site developer tool such as Wix that can walk people with no web design experience though making a whole site.
Then, you’ll want to find your niche that you will focus on. This can be things revolving around:
- Food
- Fashion
- Photography
- Travel
Whatever your passion is – and it can be as specific as you want it to be!
Then you’ll need to find an affiliate program that has products that fit into that niche, which is easy because there is affiliate programs for just about any type of product. There’s even an Amazon affiliate program, which makes things really easy!
Once you have all of this down, you will want to start getting blog posts written and published. And you want to start driving traffic to your blog.
This can be done through Google Ads or through SEO or search engine optimization. Then you just keep writing the articles and the more traffic you have, the more you can make with affiliate marketing.
How much can you make?
With affiliate marketing, how much you can make can really depend on the size of the blog or site and that can also be directly affected by how good you are with all the SEO stuff.
But there are people who make anywhere from a few hundred dollars per month to over $10,000 per day! It comes down to the individual. I personally earn over six figures per year as an affiliate and I share how I do it here in this free beginner’s guide.
7. Start a Pet Sitting Business
If you love pets and you don’t mind taking care of other people’s, then starting a pet sitting business might be good for you.
How to get started
Getting started with a pet sitting business may be a little more work than some of the other options, but if you really have a passion for animals, then it may be worth it for you.
The first step to starting a pet sitting business is to see if there is any local and state regulations where you live that require you to get a business license or any other special requirements to ensure you are operating legally.
Related: Can You Really Make Money Dog Sitting?
Once you have all of those legal aspects covered, then you may want to look into insurance. They do offer insurance for pet sitting and you may want to consider it in the case that someone’s pet gets hurt in your care.
After all of this is taken care of, then you just want to get the word out for your service and make sure you have pricing covered and thought about before you start getting your name and business out there.
How much can you make?
The amount you make with a pet sitting business can depend on what services you offer and the location.
With your pet sitting, you can offer services such as grooming or training, and these can be extra costs that you would able to charge for.
Another thing to thing about is a lot of people do pet sitting at the owner’s house, but you could also offer your home as the location for pet sitting and then you could charge more for your home as opposed to the customer’s home.
Regardless of what you decide to offer, first year pet sitters can expect to earn an average of $20,000 to $35,000 after expenses.
And if you’re minding a dog, you could supplement this by charing extra to walk the dog or by signing up to a dog walking app that pays you to walk other people’s dogs, like PetBacker for example.
Conclusion
In the end, there are multiple great ways to earn money, even with all the busy-ness of being a homeschooling mom. It all depends on what your passion is, how much you want to make, and how much time you have to dedicate to it.
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