Are you looking for ways to contribute to your household income? As a stay at home mom, you may not feel you are very qualified to do anything that will make you money without going out and getting a job.
I don’t know about you, but I never considered becoming a stay at home mom, until I was pregnant with my first baby.
I had a great, high paying career and was the bread winner of my tiny family. However, growing this little person made me realize just how much I wanted to be a stay at home mom.
So I got researching, exploring and tried to figure out if finding a job as a stay at home mom was realistic.
And let me tell you, I found tons of legit ways moms can make money from home. But before you start reading all the various types of jobs, let’s go over a few truths about finding work at home jobs.
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The Truth about Stay at Home Jobs
As I mentioned, I researched a ton of information about ways to make money while staying with your kids at home.
I spent a year just reading article after article and watching videos. Then I pulled the trigger and started testing the jobs myself.
I did everything from online surveys, job boards, looking for job postings on the big sites, to starting my own blog (which has turned into several) to virtual assisting and food photography.
I found out which jobs actually make not only a livable income, but high paying incomes. And it’s amazing at all the possibilities that truly exist. I also made lots of connections and spoke with lots of moms about how they make money from home.
The jobs I found that worth worth the time or energy nearly always had to do with job boards. And the online surveys which a lot of sites rave about where never worth the time or energy.
I suggest not bothering with any of those if your serious about finding a way to make money from home.
Instead I’ll share all the legit stay at home mom jobs that are well worth the time and energy spent, so you have the time to be present mom in your kids life, outside of the work.
And most, if not all of these require no bachelor’s degree or even college degree at all. Let’s see if we can find your dream job!
Stay at Home Mom Jobs
Here’s a whopper of a list, but go through these to see if any call out to you, or would fit your passions or what your good at.
After all, if you find yourself enjoying the work, it’s like making money just having fun. Which is really living the dream right?
Virtual Assistant
This is always my favorite job for stay at home moms. That’s because there are hundreds of virtual assistant services you could offer.
Becoming a virtual assistant means that you provide a service for a business who either doesn’t have time for those tasks or needs specialized skills.
I’ve personally offered my skills and services for money when ever I wanted or needed extra cash. You can make anywhere from $20-$100 an hour depending on what services you can offer.
This is one of those jobs you can do with NO experience, but you’ll need a little know how.
There’s a good chance you already have some of the skills you need to be a good VA.
Some of the services that many company and businesses need including
- Email management
- Scheduling
- Translation services
- Transcription
- Customer service and replying to emails
- Proofread documents
- Write articles
None of these types of services are particularly difficult. Especially if you already check your personal email and post on Facebook regularly.
There’s a high chance you already have the skills you need to start your VA business.
But there are also lots of high paying virtual assistant services that require more specialized skills. Things like email marketing, video creation services and ad management.
The amount of services you can offer are absolutely mind blowing. I guarantee you there is something on the list that you would be great at and enjoy doing or learn to do.
Plus you can often set your own hours and work at night or during nap time.
As a VA you’ll need a reliable internet service and a computer. You’ll also need decent organizational skills and good communication to get clients who will want repeat business. Oh, and a good attitude never hurts.
Watching Kids
If you are already at home with your own kids, adding a few more can be an easy way to make money for you.
You can advertise your services in your local Facebook moms group and find an extra 2-3 kids to watch per week.
This won’t make you tons of money, but you can expect anywhere from $50 to $100 dollars extra per week, per child.
If you really find yourself loving this idea you could even open up your own Home Daycare.
Babies cost more for in home childcare, since there tends to be more cost to you with all the diapers and feedings where as older children have more independence.
It’s also great for the kiddos, as yours will be having friends to play with. It’s a win-win.
Social Media Management
Social media managers are in charge of managing company’s social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Their job is to create engaging content for their brand, so that they stay relevant in the eyes of consumers.
They must be knowledgeable about trends and popular culture in order to stay ahead of consumer demands and stay on top of what people want from a company.
Social media managers also monitor customer feedback online, which helps them stay up-to-date with how the public perceives their brand or campaign.
The best way to learn about social media marketing is through hands-on experience; there are many great courses offered online that can help you take your career into your own hands!
It’s great for stay at home moms who already love posting on social media.
Selling on Etsy
Etsy is a great place for stay at home moms to earn money, no matter what you have to sell. They are limited to hand created items or vintage items.
If you have a personal hobby that you love doing, like personalized jewelry making, you can sell physical products in your spare time.
I however prefer digital products. You create something once and can sell it an unlimited number of times.
It’s a way more passive form of making money and way more profitable in the long run.
I can confirm it’s surprisingly easy to create great printables and sell them on Etsy.
I was curious if this was a legit way to make money online, and spent a few days creating some printables to sell in a shop.
Now, I am no Etsy expert, I actually feel like I have NO idea about that realm. This was just a few days of experimenting to see what happens.
I literally forgot about the shop until months later when I noticed random money in my account.
Low and behold it was making some change. Nothing huge, but it’s generated about $1000 since I opened it. With only a few, very cheap printables!
If I put some actual effort into it, it would make quite a bit more.
Food Photography
Photography is a great hobby! It’s fun, creative and can be very profitable.
Photographers work in many different fields from photographing weddings to shooting wildlife to capturing moments during political protests.
Now, for stay at home moms, getting out to political protests isn’t as feasible as finding things in the home to photograph. Like food!
It’s totally legitimate work. I personally have a big passion for food photography, and I make really good money whipping up recipes and taking photos of them!
I kid you not. And this one is great for moms. The plus’s are you can make the food, photograph it and then eat it!
It’s surprisingly easy to get started too. Since I know so many website owners, I simply sell to them. But it’s a very popular and growing industry.
Many food companies are paying photographs to photograph their products and paying good money for it!
Selling Stock Photos
This is another one of those fantastic home jobs for moms. If you get yourself a decent DSLR and start taking pictures, you can sell them on stock photography sites.
You basically create the photo, upload them to the stock photo site, and then website owners can purchase a license to use your photo.
You’ll earn an income each time one of your photos is licensed.
I use tons of stock photos for many of my sites. Many people happily pay for that perfect photo they need to depict visually what they are demonstrating.
And you may think you have to have people to take photos of, but not necessarily.
You can set up an area and take photos of various items in your house. Cups, teapots, shoes. You can photograph pets or insects from the back yard.
Getting creative with what you have can result in a nice steady passive stream of income.
Freelance Writer
Freelance writing is a perfect job for the mom who loves to write. Basically you create articles, similar to this one, for website and business owners.
I’ve been on both sides of freelance writing. I’ve sold articles I’ve written to people, and purchased articles from others.
It can save businesses tons of time.
Obviously the biggest perk of this job is the freedom to work from home. This means that you can set your own hours and take time off whenever you want.
You also don’t have to commute to an office, which can save you a lot of time and money.
Plus it won’t get boring because of the variety of projects that you can work on. You may be assigned a project one day and then be given a different project the next day.
This keeps your work interesting and prevents boredom. Plus, free lance writers can make high salaries if they can write in certain subjects or understand SEO (search engine optimization.)
Blogging
Did you know that one of the most popular stay at home mom jobs is blogging??
True story. Mom blogs can make really good income. This is how I got started making money online.
I started a mom blog about health, pregnancy and life with littles. I worked on my own website while staying at home with my kids.
I don’t actively work on my mom blog any more, but its still making me a passive income years later. When I was working on in actively, I was making $3,000 a month with it.
Now it only make a few thousand a year, but not bad for a site I’ve actively ignored for the past few years. (I since put more of my focus into other sites now, like this one.)
There are even courses dedicated to showing you how to start a mom blog!
>>You can read my full Review of Blog by Number
Basically having your own site means you have a tiny piece of the internet that’s all yours. You can guest post on other sites, write blog posts and figure out how to drive traffic to your very own blog.
The downside is that it’s a ton of work, up front, for nearly no pay. The pay comes later as your articles start to rank in google and you get traffic from social media.
The thing about it though, investing in your own blog is super rewarding. There are many blogs out there making thousands each and every month with ads and affiliate links.
Flipping Furniture
One way many stay at home moms stay afloat financially is by buying old furniture, refinishing it and then selling for a higher price.
This can be an excellent opportunity to make money because the prices are low when the furniture isn’t very pretty.
When you’ve finished refinishing all of the pieces, they will be worth more than before!
I suggest using the local facebook garage sales groups for the buying and selling. You can also check out craigslist for free furniture that may be available in your area.
You may have to stay up late or work on weekends to finish everything in time, but this could easily turn into your main source of income if you put enough time and effort into it.
So if you love getting your hands dirty, this could be a great job for you.
Graphic Designer
Graphic designers are in high demand. People need pretty graphics for their social media posts, digital products and advertisements.
You can learn a few basic graphic design skills and then sell them to clients. You can use business Facebook groups to advertise your business or create a Fiverr account and advertise your services there.
Plus as a graphic designer, you can work completely online. So all your work is done your laptop or tablet.
Selling Unused Items
Decluttering your home and selling things you no longer need may be the quickest way to make money for moms.
Facebook Marketplace makes it very easy to connect with buyers in your town that may want what you don’t.
If no one around you wants your old items, you can always list them on eBay to increase your exposure.
Reselling items in this way can actually become a full time business venture for work at home moms! After some research, you may find ways to get inventory that you can then resell for a profit.
Check for wholesale liquidation centers in your area. They may have merchandise you’d find at Walmart or on Amazon for a fraction of the cost.
In fact, many liquidation centers sell perfectly good products by the pallet at a huge discount. These items can then be resold on Facebook Marketplace or eBay.
Arbitrage is another closely related idea, in which you sell items on behalf of others and make a commission for yourself.
There are many people that have things to sell, but may not have the time or knowledge to fool with selling them.
For example, you may have a friend that has a large baseball card collection. He can give you his collection to sell online or locally on Facebook.
The advantage for you is that you get 20% of the sales. If you end up selling all the cards for $5000, that’s a nice $1000 for your time.
Word of mouth is powerful. Once your friend sees you can move their baseball card collection, they will definitely tell their friends who also have cards collecting dust in their basements.
