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How do you make money while homeschooling?


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You can do many network marketing companies - Avon, Arbonne, Pampered Chef, Mary Kay, Usborne, etc, etc, etc. Usually these will only work if you are self-motivated and good with people, very social.

 

Some women do photography or other artwork- making jewelry, sewing or knitting, check Etsy for ideas.

 

I do medical transcription but usually you need training and experience before getting hired.

 

There is lots of stuff you can do, it really just varies.

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What qualifications do you have? Among the homeschooling moms in our local group and my SAHM friends, we have:

petsitting

cleaning houses

teaching GED classes

teaching college courses

teaching birth preparation classes

doula

making jewelry

making pottery

making perfume and selling at fairs

translations

foreign language lessons

instrument lessons

tutoring

graphic design

web design

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In my area, there is a huge demand for 'home helpers' or respite care workers to help with disabled children and adults.

 

Some other ideas (that work in my area):

 

house cleaning/office cleaning

tutoring

virtual customer service

bookkeeping/payroll service

music, writing, or foreign language lessons

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What are your hobbies, previous jobs, or educational background? Mine your own past and skills for ideas. I'm a fulltime writer, but it took years to build up my business.

 

You could also try the wahm.com forums. They have a ton of work at home job listings. My little sister picks up odd jobs there sometimes. She also does Mechanical Turk through Amazon to help add a bit to her husband's income here and there. I'm not 100 percent sure what Mech Turk is, but it sounds like they have a ton of little small tasks, like rating web pages or taking photos of stuff, that they pay small amounts of cash for.

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You could also try the wahm.com forums. They have a ton of work at home job listings. My little sister picks up odd jobs there sometimes. She also does Mechanical Turk through Amazon to help add a bit to her husband's income here and there. I'm not 100 percent sure what Mech Turk is, but it sounds like they have a ton of little small tasks, like rating web pages or taking photos of stuff, that they pay small amounts of cash for.

 

 

I haven't been working on there as much lately, but I've used Mechanical Turk quite a bit in the past. You have to pay attention to be sure you're not spending a lot of time on a task that doesn't pay much, but it's great to be able to work any time, day or night. I've written a lot of articles and ads. There's transcription work, but it doesn't pay as well as some outside companies. There are usually surveys from university psych programs. I've sorted addresses. Some of the higher-paying posted jobs are scams, but it's usually pretty easy to pick those out.

 

I wouldn't expect to be able to make enough money there to replace a full-time income though. When I was spending a lot of time watching for HITs to be posted, I was still only making about $100 - $150 a week. It was money that I wouldn't have been able to make otherwise, so the extra time it took to earn it was worthwhile. It's hard to make minimum wage there though, and you are supposed to report your earnings and pay the self-employed tax rate on it, which lowers your earnings even more.

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The PPs gave some great suggestions. I've tried quite a few things like selling knitted items, selling things on eBay, Pampered Chef, working in my own time for a friend of mine, mystery shops, etc. I've learned a couple things that maybe will help you sort through the options: I need to have a deadline set by someone else otherwise I procrastinate, I don't like advertising myself very often, I can't count on 10 uninterrupted minutes any time of day while I am at home, and watching other people's kids is a lot harder to manage than I thought. This has made mystery shopping pretty nice (though I'm still VERY new... I just posted I was thinking about it not long ago), and I'm thinking that selling my knitting at a local shop will work better than using Etsy or eBay because I can't get the hits I need to actually move items along.

 

I've found that being quite frugal with my husband's paycheck is going to work the best for us in the long run, and if I can make a couple extra bucks to buy some new knitting needles sometimes, awesome. We're blessed we are able to make due with his paycheck alone, but it does take determination to stay on budget. I'm not sure if cutting costs can free up some income for you, but when we got real about what is a need, and what is a want, we were able to start paying off some debt and make progress.

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I am working part-time in the field I worked in prior to homeschooling/being a SAHM. It is a flexible field with part-time and contract positions available. If I were starting from scratch with no real education or job training skills, I would look into being a dental assistant, which is a less involved process than dental hygienist but is a stable field with part-time hours and good hourly pay.

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I've done some freelance writing in the past and made a bit of money that way. Lately, I've been making some money by reselling things I find at the local thrift stores. If you have decent stores around that don't know anything about what they're selling, you can make a lot of money that way. For example, I found a leather Coach bag (genuine, not a knock-off) and paid three bucks for it. Turned around and sold it to someone else for a good chunk of cash. ;)

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I am a sales rep in a call-center part-time in the evenings after dh gets home. 4 hours a night, 5 days a week. Is something like that doable for you?

 

It would be perfect. I made a nice little living in arts administration. It was great working and doing this through government but working with individual artists is tough because no one has money to pay or pay on time.

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So, I'm seeing a lot of jobs that pay 5 cents? Is that correct?

 

 

Yep. That's why you have to pay attention to how long it takes you to complete a task. If each of those takes less than half a minute, I'd probably do it if I wasn't working on something that pays better. If they take half an hour, I'd skip it.

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I make money blogging and I do photography. This coming year, I am going to start the process of doing social media management. I am taking it slow though. The most I have made blogging in a month is about $600. It isn't a ton but it helps supplement our income!

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Yep. That's why you have to pay attention to how long it takes you to complete a task. If each of those takes less than half a minute, I'd probably do it if I wasn't working on something that pays better. If they take half an hour, I'd skip it.

Even if it takes less than 30 seconds, and you were able to do 2 tasks per minute straight for an hour, it would only net $6 at that rate (5c per half-minute). I just don't see it as a way to make more than a few dollars. The whole thing, frankly, strikes me as utterly bizarre.

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I babysit a toddler and a preschooler. I have the preschooler for 3 days a week and one of those days she goes to co-op with us and does classes there, so I really only have her at home 2 days. She does a little preschool work and plays and does whatever we do. The days I have the toddler 2 days a week are tougher. I have to be really organized and have a schedule for the week where we do a lot of the main lessons on the days that I don't have the kiddos or at least the toddler. And we have to stay on task when they are here, so there has to be a good schedule and routine... But it has kept me at home and we love having them.

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Even if it takes less than 30 seconds, and you were able to do 2 tasks per minute straight for an hour, it would only net $6 at that rate (5c per half-minute). I just don't see it as a way to make more than a few dollars. The whole thing, frankly, strikes me as utterly bizarre.

 

 

Oh, it absolutely is bizarre. And you can't replace a regular full-time income with it.

 

On the other hand, I can't think of any other job where I would have been making that much money. I have a limited employment history, I can't work any sort of regular schedule, and I would be paying some of my earnings for childcare for multiple children if I was trying to do something outside the home. This doesn't require any of that.

 

$6/hour was my cut-off. I had a few jobs where I could make $10/hour. One of those was comparing records to see if they were the same person for 2 cents a record. It sounds ridiculous, but once you knew how to do it, you could scan the page and do each job in a couple seconds. It's probably a quick route to repetitive motion injuries too.

 

It paid for a few bills, which made things a little more comfortable. It was probably a more productive way to be wasting my time than a lot of the time I spend online. I could click away on Facebook and read about drama that doesn't concern me, or I could click away and earn a few dollars. I really don't have the free time to spend on either these days, and I probably should avoid this site a bit more too.

 

The site as a whole is legitimate, even if it is bizarre, and even if there are occasional scams. You get money from your jobs transferred to an Amazon payments account. From there you can use it on Amazon or transfer it to your bank account.

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The site as a whole is legitimate, even if it is bizarre, and even if there are occasional scams. You get money from your jobs transferred to an Amazon payments account. From there you can use it on Amazon or transfer it to your bank account.

 

When I found out about it a few years ago, I tried a few. I then stopped! ha.

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  • 1 year later...

oh geeze I didn't even notice that. I hope I didn't post in it twice, I hate when that happens lol

Looks like the post from person who resurrected it was removed. I thought it was suspicious. The person only joined yesterday and had 2 posts.

 

Might still be an interesting topic. :D

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