How do you make money from home?

I have to start making decisions about what I'm going to do work-wise next year. I would prefer to work 3 days (rather than 4), but it will leave me $50 a week worse-off than we are now. Whilst we could survive without that $50, it does come in very handy and gives us a bit of a buffer for unexpected expenses. I would really prefer not to have to work a whole extra day (and have to pay childcare for it), just to earn that tiny bit extra. Considering it's not a huge amount of money, I'm trying to work out how I could possibly earn it from home.

So tell me, how do you make money from home?

What skills do you have? Are you a crafty person? Selling online often brings in a small income.

Starting a home business and making and selling something. Becoming a sales rep / party planner (ie Tupperware, etc). Nightfill at woolies / maccas etc.

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What skills do you have? Are you a crafty person? Selling online often brings in a small income.

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I'm not bad at crafts....I was more interested in what others do, I guess to give me an idea of what works.

I looked into a lot of options - I'm not crafty or anything like that so instead I went back to school for 6mths (2 weekends in school and the rest was via correspondence) and I now run my own business as a Marriage Celebrant.

Works for me as it gives me a bit of extra cash, works around the kids hours so DH can watch them on the weekends and as they get older and are in school I can increase the number of bookings I take.

It does however mean that pretty much all of the summer months I am booked for most weekends but that's my decision to take those bookings to get some experience and to also build goodwill and hopefully get more bookings by referral.

I do lits of little things to get some loose change. I do mystery shopping, surveys online you get points for that can be redeemed for cash, I also do art commissions - all these really only give me loose change, nothing you can come close to living off. I also am a consultant for a direct selling company (eg Tupperware but not Tupperware), and am launching myself as an independent practitioner in my field. These latter two I could live off, but I only get what I put in and while I get to choose when I work, I have to put hours in away from home.

Chody could you do tutoring??? :)

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Chody could you do tutoring??? :)

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I could. I'm contemplating it. I'm just seeing what others do for other ideas :)

What's your skill set / educational background?

Working from home is really hard. It is not so bad if you have one littlie who sleeps, but if they don't sleep or you have more than one, or they are really active it gets more tricky. I have done admin type work from home, sewing for myself, sewing for someone else and the hourly rate ends up pretty small. You have to enjoy the work, because some days it would be just a heap easier to drop the kids somewhere and head off to a nice office where you speak to big people and don't get whinged at or distracted or have to make 7 meals a day. You need to make your work space safe from kids, cos it is just more time wasted/money lost if you have to repeat work because it is lost or messed up.

Personally I think tutoring is the way to go if you have the skills, I doubt you can get the amount of money from making anything that you can get from two hours of tutoring for example. One evening or Sat morning a week tutoring I think is also more achievable than trying to fit in other things around children. I have a friend who did all through her leave and she did well out if it and enjoyed the work. She also did exam marking but that was a bit more problematic as required a lot of time over a few weeks. There always seems to be more money in teaching someone else something even if is a craft thing/IT skill than creating items yourself - (which is a good thing really - people being prepared to invest in learning rather than items).

We went through a long process of looking into different things DH can do from home, while being a SAHD. We looked at direct sales, at home businesses, typing, night fill, delivery driving, paid modding, online copywriting and editing, and heaps of other things. Heaps. Seriously.

At the end of the day, when you remove the cost of whatever you have to purchase, memberships you have to buy, extra cost of internet (if you have to upgrade to a higher speed or download limit to cover the extra use), postage, travel for the occasional meeting/work retreat, etc, and then get that net figure, and then work out how many hour you'll actually spend doing it (including travel, extra time to do your taxes, BAS, time responding to customer queries and complaints, time doing timesheets or banking or whatever, going to the post office to collect and resend items being sold, whatever, etc) and then calculate what you'll actually be earning an hour, roughly, it really wasn't worth it for us. We're talking less than a dollar an hour, in some cases.

So it was really pathetic what the weekly addition to our income was going to be.

And then we looked at the hours he'd be spending, and had a think about all the housework, laundry, activities with the kids etc he'd no longer be able to contribute ... and it really wasn't worth it.

So we looked at the amount per week we were looking at getting, and sat down and figured out ways we could actually reduce our spending to *save* (rather than earn) that - so that ends were met, and DH wasn't overdoing it, and the boys were still having all his time (and I still have clean work clothes, etc!)

And frankly, we're a lot happier for it.

I'd love it if I could tell you, "oh, I teach piano at my home three times a week for 45 minutes a time, and I get paid $30 a session" or "DH does dictation typing from home with this online group, he gets paid $35 an hour less tax" or "we buy headbands from this o/s website and sell them on a FB page here at a 400% mark up after postage" but I am yet to find something which is:-

* realistic with two boys at home
* worthwhile in terms of effort and reward - any time he's spending on that is time he's not playing with the boys, doing housework, or having some very deserved rest and time to himself to do his own things!)
* wage-comparable (ie: not pocket money, but actual "pay")
* ethical
* maintainable (something he can do for at least a couple of years)

That's our situation. If DH really enjoyed something crafty, it might be different - there's plenty of at home mums here who make MCNs and clothes and biscuits and so forth, and make some decent money doing so! But I suspect they enjoy doing it, and are very good at it.

So yeah, that's our take on it, for our family :)


ETA: we also looked at tutoring, as both DH and I are able to tutor in several different subject ranges, both highschool and uni, but we found that mostly we'd be expected to go to the student's home, or it would be during the dinner / bed / bath time, which with two little boys at home isn't realistic, at their current age (a bit noisy!) But if we could get some students from 8-10pm ish that would be great :)

I managed to do some work from home bookkeeping. It took a long time to find, I found most of the work was required onsite. It was worth it once I found it, but I had no flexibility with time due to the clients needs.

A friend makes decent 'pocket money' tutoring after school hours (3-5pm ish), just through word of mouth. She makes it clear that her toddler comes first, so if he needs a nappy change or is upset, she'll deal with him. She would often pick the child up from school when she picked her own up, or take them before or after other after school activities her eldest did. Once word got out, she was fully booked and had more work than she could handle.

network marketing is working for me. although it does require a mind shift, and you really have to want it. However, you have a ton of mentors and support.

I do transcription review work. I get $21 per hour of audio, no matter how long it takes me to review it. For me it's perfect - I was originally doing it 6 days a week but had to limit it to 3 days due to my mental state at the moment. I wasn't looking to earn a wage, I just wanted something that would slowly get me ready to go back to work. I make about $80-$100 a fortnight doing it at the moment :)

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I do transcription review work. I get $21 per hour of audio, no matter how long it takes me to review it. For me it's perfect - I was originally doing it 6 days a week but had to limit it to 3 days due to my mental state at the moment. I wasn't looking to earn a wage, I just wanted something that would slowly get me ready to go back to work. I make about $80-$100 a fortnight doing it at the moment :)

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If you dont mind me.asking how did you get into it?
Work from home has always been something i quietly look into every now and.then, its just so hard finding something that is genuine!

I actually found it on Gumtree! I sent them an email and didn't expect a response. Then they sent me the application forms and actually waited 3 months for me to sort out my ABN - I had one, but they ATO had actually cancelled it cos I'd never ended up using it. Then they sent me work, and I sent in my invoice, and I fully expected not to get paid, but figured I hadn't lost anything by trying. And then I got paid!

You need an ABN, a private computer, and headphones to be able to do it. I find an hour of audio take between 1.5-2 hours to process, although I've had some really bad quality ones that have taken hours to do :/ I'm happy to forward on anyone's resumes, but I've already forwarded a couole and they haven't heard anything, so I'm not sure they're taking anyone on at the moment. Just PM me for my email address :)