How can you earn money when you’re a housewife? Is it possible to gain a passive source of income without submitting to a regular job?
Whether you are busy raising children, or they have flown the nest, having the freedom to stay at home has many benefits, yet missing a full-time income isn’t one of them.
Trust me, I would know.
I have been a housewife for well over 10 years now and during that time I have tried everything from survey sites to selling old stuff on websites like Craigslist and Facebook.
And although these are great ways to make some quick cash, they never provided the long term income I was looking for. Over time, I tried other methods that were more rewarding and provided a more sustainable amount of money.
This has allowed me to maintain my lifestyle as a housewife and stay at home mom. The best part is that none of these methods require me to leave the house, all of them can be done from home and I actually do the vast majority of the work in the evenings when the kids are in bed.
It also means I can take some of the financial pressure off my husband, and I don’t know about you, but I wanted something to focus on for myself. So self-employment was ideal, it allowed me to build skills, boost my finances and regain my own independence and self-worth.
Best Ways for Housewife’s to Make Money
This list is a collection of some of the best ways I made money online while being a stay at home mom. I have only included those that do not take much if any financial investment to get started.
And don’t worry! None of these involve you having to do the hard sell to family and friends!
1. Make Money with a Blog
Running your very own blog is a great way to reach new audiences online and if done right, you can easily make a consistent amount of money each and every month. Currently, I run a few blogs and they now make enough money that I don’t need to worry about having to work for someone else.
My blogs cover various different topics and I make money from them in multiple different ways. This includes a combination of ad placements, affiliate offers, sponsored posts, as well as my very own products and courses. Read my full guide on how to start and make money with a blog for beginners here.
How to Start a Blog
When I started my first blog (not this one) I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I just wrote about anything and everything and there was no consistency or consideration for my audience. Therefore, it took me way longer than it should have to grow and make money from it.
That’s why I would always recommend anyone just starting out, or anyone interested in taking their blog to the next level to enroll on a training course. There are various courses available, which cover everything from keyword research, to choosing a profitable and low competition niche, as well as how to monetize your blog.
Starting a blog is completely free, well almost anyway. But you will need hosting (I prefer Siteground hosting) and a blog theme, although you can get some very nice themes for free, I find most of the better ones are premium.
2. Make Money with Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing involves promoting other company’s products and services and in return receiving a commission on any of the sales made through the links you promote.
For instance, if you set-up a lifestyle blog, or a blog talking about your personal hobbies and passions, you could quite easily provide honest reviews and compare products associated with that topic. This is one of the main ways popular bloggers, YouTuber vloggers, and celebrities make money online – through their affiliate commissions.
How to Become an Affiliate Marketer
One of the easiest places to begin affiliate marketing is with the Amazon Associates program. It’s completely free to sign up and you will earn 8% of the cost of the item on Amazon but that depends on the category the item is in.
Over the years, I have made thousands of dollars with the Amazon Associates program, so it’s certainly worth considering. To sign up, log into your Amazon account and navigate to a link at the bottom called Amazon associates. It literally only takes a few minutes and once complete you can begin promoting products with your unique link.
You can promote these links on various platforms including your own blog, websites, as well as social media websites such as Facebook.
To summarise Affiliate Marketing involves activities such as keyword research, competition analysis and most importantly selecting a product to promote that is going to be profitable. To get started you can enroll on a course like Wealthy Affiliate, which takes you through the entire process step by step.
It doesn’t just stop at Amazon either. In fact, there are many other popular affiliate marketing platforms out there, including shareasale.com and Commission Junction. There are many courses available that take you through the process of affiliate marketing, so it’s certainly worth considering if you are a beginner.
3. Make Money as a Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant is a great job for stay at home moms and housewives as you can do it part-time and in many cases can choose your hours.
As the name suggests being a virtual assistant involves you completing tasks online in return for payment. This can include everything from checking and responding to emails, writing blog posts, to managing a company’s social media accounts. The list of tasks you can be asked to do is almost endless, so it’s typically a case of browsing for roles and jobs you think you would be happy to complete.
How to Become a Virtual Assistant
Becoming a virtual assistant is quite easy and you can find many job openings on sites like UpWork, Freelancer and plenty of other online job boards.
It does help if you have a proven track record, references and a portfolio of work, but everyone has got to start somewhere. You just need to submit lots of friendly pitches and leverage your previous experience. It also helps to have a good quality laptop.
When I first started out as a Virtual Assistant I was running my blogs on the side and making a good amount of money from it while they grew. My VA work involved managing a few big sites social media accounts, such as Pinterest and Instagram and writing blog posts on a range of diverse topics.
When first starting out, try to aim at applying for a few different jobs every day. The amount of work I secured was quite thin at first, but as I built up my reputation and reviews, the requests came in thick and fast. Although, eventually I didn’t even need any more work as a few of the roles I had provided long term and consistent work.
4. Make Money Freelance Writing
If you’re more of an introvert like me, you’ll probably prefer a role such as freelance writing. For me, this has always been one of the quickest and easiest ways to make extra cash online.
You will usually find that the majority of freelance writing jobs are for website owners including blogs and eCommerce stores. The topics you can be requested to write about can be incredibly diverse, so be prepared. Usually, they expect articles to be writing anywhere from 700 words, all the way up to 2,000 words in length.
How to become a Freelance Writer
Similar to becoming a Virtual Assistant, the majority of freelance writing jobs can be found on websites specializing in freelance work. That includes sites like Upwork and Freelancer, but you can also find success by promoting yourself on LinkedIn and investing in a professional blog to promote your previous writing experience.
Believe it or not but there are also many websites actively looking to pay freelance writers to work for them, typically they request you to write about a very specific topic, such as finance or something just as specific.
For example, this site provides some great details on sites offering payment for writing jobs. But you can just as easily find more with a simple search on Google. Just search “get paid to write” and have a look through the results. I used to do this on a regular basis as opportunities change quite often.
5. Author Your Own eBook
The days of dreaming about being accepted by a leading publishing house are long gone thanks to websites like Amazon. Now, you can write your own book and market it to your target audience almost immediately.
A few years ago I wrote a series of non-fiction romance books as I had always been a fan and reader of that genre. Anyway, they did extremely well, so today I have continued to add books to the same series in my spare time. You can also run your own course through the medium of an eBook or video series, this training course provides a great overview of growing these types of online course businesses.
How to Write a Book & Self-Publish
To begin, all you need is word processing software like word and you can start. Short novels are typically around 50,000 words in length, but you don’t have to limit yourself to fiction. You can just as easily research and writes a guide on a specific topic like photography, finance, investing or skies the limit.
Once you have it written, you will need to format it, which is easy enough and all of the specifications are outlined Amazon’s website quite well. What’s great about Amazon is that you can sell it as an eBook or in paperback format.
The thing to remember about self-publishing is not to neglect the marketing side of things. For instance, people find your book based on the category it’s in, as well as the keywords you use in the book’s title and description. This is where I failed when I was first starting out, but after I used the Kindle course, I knew exactly how to optimize my listing and my sales quickly increased.
6. Join a Graphic Design Contest
Do you have experience making graphics with software such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator? If so you can easily put those skills to work and potentially get paid by submitting your designs on sites like 99 Designs and 48hourslogo.
People request many different designs to be made including website logos, product packaging, and book covers to name a few. You can easily submit a few different designs each day and you have a chance to win the contest and be paid.
How to Join a Graphic Design Contest
These sites are what are referred to as contest design sites. Sign up is completely free and once a member you will be able to browse new jobs that are posted frequently.
You submit your design making sure to follow the proposal’s requirements and if he picks you as a winner, you will get paid. There is always a chance you might not win, but if you are confident with your design skills and abilities, it’s certainly worth a shot.
7. Get Paid to Give Your Opinion
Did you know that your opinions are worth money? I didn’t at first either, but there are many companies that are willing to pay you for your opinion. You simply need to complete questionnaires or surveys and you can be rewarded, often via payment, but some companies also offer payment in the form of gift vouchers too.
Many companies are looking to collect this type of data including consumer product researchers who want to know to create the next big thing, as well as government think tanks who want to help shape future policy. Either way, it’s clear that your data is of great value to them.
Recommended Programs:
How to Get Paid to Give Your Opinion
As you may know, there about a gazillion survey sites you can sign up to online, some offer better rewards than others. With the effort you put into providing your answers, it’s always nice to know you are being fairly compensated.
For this reason, I personally only ever bothered using American Consumer Opinion. I preferred their format and found that they paid a little more than some of the other big survey platforms. They also didn’t spam my inbox as frequently as some of the other big names either.