Starting a Business as a Stay-at-Home Mum (and 7 Ideas to Get You Started)
Are you a stay-at-home mum? Or do you know someone dear to you who is?
If your answer is yes, then you must be fully aware of what it means to be a stay-at-home mum; the stress of doing your maternal job well, the chores that line up in your day including taking your kids to school and back, doctors’ appointments, dance lessons, among other similar activities. You are also responsible for grocery shopping, attending school meetings, planning family meals and, of course, budgeting.
Sometimes, it can be exhausting. You crave for when your children would be of age, so you could go back to the workforce and begin to earn your own money.
But, here’s a catch: you do not have to wait till you can return to the workforce to begin earning your own money. You can earn money even as a stay-at-home mum. Yes, you absolutely can.
Read on as we discuss 7 ideas to get you started:
1. Sewing/crafting
Are you good at hand sewing? Do you enjoy making embroidery crafts? You can maximise this talent as a stay-at-home mum to start a business where you mend and sew for your clients. With your crafting skills, you can design window curtains for interested clients. If you do a good job, you’ll be sure to have a regular flow of clients and even referrals. Before long, your business starts growing and expanding.
2. Start an online boutique on Etsy
There are many ways to monetise your sewing and crafting skills: you could have direct clients whom you sew for and then you could decide to take your craft online and sell them there. There are many online places where you could sell your crafts and sewing projects. Etsy is one of those places and a popular one at that. Etsy is most likely the biggest online marketplace where you could sell your crafts and handmade items.
This online marketplace gets a lot of web traffic and attracts lots of craft lovers. You do not need to pay any membership fees. You only need to pay 20 cents for each item you put up for sale.
3. Start a home laundry business
There are some, many homes actually, that would be very glad to have someone take their laundry challenge off their backs. You could start a home laundry business to fill in this need, and you might well be on your way to servicing a lot of clients. All you need to do is ensure you have a working washing machine, an iron, and other laundry basics.
As a home business owner, you’ll also need a mobile phone and a viable means of transportation. Transportation is important because you’ll need to go to your various clients to pick up their dirty clothes, and after washing and ironing them, take them back to them in a nicely packaged form.
4. Open a cake-decorating business
If you’re good at decorating and making cakes, you can offer services as a cake decorator to the public. From cupcakes to birthday cakes or even wedding cakes, there’s a whole lot of cake-decorating jobs you could do to make money. You can also start out with cake decorating classes on social media, that way, you’ll be getting lots of exposure for yourself and your business.
5. Start an online fitness business
Online fitness businesses are springing up everywhere. This tells how lucrative the service is. If you’re fitness savvy, you could open a fitness business where you get to offer your services as an online fitness trainer. All you need do is open a vlog on YouTube and keep uploading your fitness workout videos as you engage your target audience and make money. Before you do so however, it might be wise to get yourself certified in the field to ensure that your advice is reliable and will be effective for your viewers. Plenty of courses are available for enrolment online, as are things like affordable online yoga teacher training if you also wanted to branch off into various different areas.
6. Monetise your writing skills
Web content writing will be a good fit for you if you love writing. The good news here is that websites have a constant need to keep publishing articles to their readers. For this reason, they are always looking for new writers. So, if you’re a good writer, you should know that your skill is in high demand. You could decide to contact these websites directly to offer your writing services or go to third-party freelance websites where clients and freelance writers like you meet.
7. Make money with your photography skills
Good photographs are in high demand on the web. You do not have to be a professional to make money with your photography skills. You simply have to take good photos and sell them online. There are many stock image sites where you could earn a passive income with your photos. Some of these sites include Shutterstock, iStockPhoto and Bigstock. If you’re good at it, you could earn a lot of money from just a single image.
There you have it. Being a stay-at-home mum is not a sentence to stay broke for a long time. As a reminder, whatever business you choose to do, do not underestimate the power of social media for small businesses; utilise it. The businesses listed above are sure to make you money while comfortably working from home. Which would you choose?