Best Jobs for Stay At Home Moms

Being a mom is the best job in the world. It’s cliche, but if you’re a mom, you know it’s true. It sure doesn’t pay the bills, unless of course the gas company accepts hugs and kisses. The best jobs for stay at home moms are those that allow you to be a mom first, and make a little extra, too.

Content Writing

You can write for yourself or you can write for someone else, but writing pays, especially if you’re good. Here are some ways writing can bring in a little extra dough.

Start a blog

What else do stay at home moms do best, if not lecturing people about how they should be doing things? You tell your kids what to do all day. Put those skills to good use!

You can start a blog about anything you want. Background in interior design? Start an expert design blog. Educated in finance? Give smart advice on how people should be creating a monthly budget.

Blogs make money in lots of different ways including ads, affiliate posts, or selling digital goods or services.

But best of all, a blog allows you to keep being a stay at home mom. You can set your own schedule. Rough night teething? Take the morning off. Planning a trip to the zoo? Don’t work today!

Blogging isn’t for everyone, but it’s something anyone can do, and it’s a great job for a stay at home mom who wants to set her own deadlines and still enjoy being with her kids.

Find a job on Problogger

One of the foremost sites for finding paid writing gigs in Problogger. There’s no subscription fee, and you can apply to as few or as many jobs as you’d like. You’ll find tech writing jobs, parenting writing jobs, design writing jobs, political writing jobs, sports writing jobs, and more.

Really, all the writing jobs. You name it, it’s there. And if it’s not, keep checking back, because it will be.

Most jobs require that you submit examples of your previous work, but if you worked in a former life (i.e. before you were a mom), then you can use that material.

If you don’t have a portfolio, don’t fret! Challenge yourself to a few test articles and then submit those.

Jobs on Problogger tend to pay more for more experience, so if you don’t feel like you qualify just yet, check out Upwork. It’s a great way for you to get your foot in the door and build up your portfolio before taking on a more challenging gig.

While you’re at the mercy of the client’s deadlines, there are still flexible people out there willing to work with you to get their content written with quality and professionalism.

Data Entry

If you want to put your strong keyboarding skills to work, but you don’t want to write, data entry is a flexible job that allows you to work from home with your kids. Many data entry jobs aren’t on a strict schedule and don’t require you to complete your work during the normal business day.

As long as the data is input by the deadline, most employers won’t care when you do it. It requires attention to detail, which is a skill you’ve honed over years of staying at home with your kids and taking care of the house.

You can find data entry jobs in a lot of places. Online job boards are a good start. You may also want to check out some local start up groups in your area. Entrepreneurs can use all the help they can get, and because they’re trying to use their funds wisely, they likely don’t have an office anyway, so work is remote and flexible.

Resell Items

If you love shopping more than you love working, then perhaps you should make shopping pay. Especially if you can’t get enough of bargain shopping, this “job” may be for you. There are a couple of ways to make this work.

Buy discounted items and resell them

As the name would suggest, this involves buying cheap things and reselling them for more money. You can buy things cheap in clearance aisles, discount racks, thrift stores, garage sales, and more.

Use your knack for finding quality items at a huge discount and then find a place online to sell them for more.

Flip your used items

Ready to get rid of that old bookshelf you found for $5 at a garage sale years ago? Once again, you can sell your discount items for more money, even if they’re old!

Vintage is in, so perhaps you can sell it as is. But even if it needs a fresh coat of paint, you can distress it to make it look shabby chic and the price instantly goes up.

For many, this is just a fun hobby to pass the time, but you can use it to make money, too. The internet has coined the term “flea market flipping,” because buying and reselling cheap items is so popular.

If you’re in the business of flipping items, they may require more of an investment than your typical “buy something cheap and resell it for more” idea. But if you can turn $100 into $500, I’d say that’s worth it.

Virtual Assistant

Many professionals and teams need administrative support and they don’t care if it’s remote. All they need is help managing their email, calendar, and social media accounts. Some may also need someone to plan events, organize meetings, schedule travel, or do research.

These are all things an administrative assistant would do, but be sure when you apply, that it’s for a virtual assistant so you don’t have to be in the office.

This type of job may also require you to have a dedicated office space where you can get some quiet, so it may be better suited for stay at home moms whose kids are already in school.

You may also break the tasks involved in this job apart and search for them individually. Rather than a virtual assistant, someone may be looking for a virtual social media manager, or a virtual event coordinator.

If your skills are better suited to one area of this job over another, hone in on that as you search for jobs you qualify for.

Online Teaching/Coaching

This has become a popular profession as of late. In light of world situations, homeschooling has become a necessary part of almost every family’s routine. However, online teaching and coaching programs have been around for a while.

With modern technology, this is becoming more of a reality, and many people are beginning to realize that they can succeed at teaching, even without a degree.

Tutoring

Plenty of kids need a little extra help, and often, parents have a hard time helping because they’re already so busy with work, sports, dinner, and everything else on their calendar.

If you have subject matter expertise, put it to use by helping other parents teach their kids from home. Advertise in local circles, at your child’s school, or somewhere else online. I can almost guarantee someone will be very grateful for some extra help with their kid’s math or science homework.

Teaching English

The need for online English teachers continues to grow. Young children all over the world desire to learn English, and if it’s not taught as a part of their curriculum in school, they’re finding it online.

The best part about this type of job is that you don’t need a teaching degree and you don’t have to be bilingual. These students are eager to learn and they’re diving into programs taught by native English speakers that don’t speak any other languages at all.

The problem you may run into is that a lot of these programs require you to be available when the students are available, which means odd hours, late evenings, and weekends.

Coaching online

There are plenty of programs out there that allow you to coach others when it comes to health and wellness. From Shakeology to Beach Body, you can build your own business (a la Mary Kay) when it’s convenient for you and from your own home.

The benefit to this is that not only will you be helping others, but you’ll also be jump-starting your own health. If you have a background in health and wellness, you may already be pretty healthy, which makes this job even easier.

However, as moms, we all need to focus a little more on ourselves, and this is a great opportunity to care for our mind and body the way we should.

Home Daycare

You may have decided early on that you were going to be a stay at home mom. You just knew it was right for you. You couldn’t imagine leaving your babies to go to a job you hate. But that’s not true for everyone.

Some moms work because they have to, and some moms work because they want to. Either way, they need to know their children are safe and loved while they’re away.

You’re at home all day anyway, so why not use your home for business? Running an in-home daycare can be a rewarding experience for you and your children. The socialization and friendships your child will create with the other kids may last a lifetime.

If you love taking care of kids, this is a great way to ensure that you’re still able to be with your own kids while making some extra money helping other moms out.

While there are a lot of moms who will pay good money to make sure someone they trust is watching their kids, you can set yourself apart from the other home daycare centers in a number of ways:

• Build an age-appropriate curriculum
• Take field trips (according to state regulations)
• Allow flexible payment arrangements (check, PayPal, Venmo, etc.)
• Make gifts for parents on holidays (handprints, footprint art, etc.)

Design and Photography

Your creative side doesn’t have to take a backseat to being a mom. If you’re staying at home now, but you desperately miss your design job or your freelance photography business, keep doing it!

There are so many freelance design and photography opportunities that it’s impossible to count them all. Plus, if you simply enjoy creating things from the comfort of your own home, you can always list these items on Etsy or another artsy sales site and make a little money.

Even if you don’t feel like you have the chops to go freelance (you do), you can find remote design and photography jobs online pretty easily.

Using technology like Photoshop makes it easy to create, edit, and transfer files from the couch. That means as long as you get it done by the deadline, it doesn’t matter when or where you do the work.

The great thing about design and photography is that it’s not always about the education, the degree, or the experience. Some people are naturally blessed with these skills. If you have what it takes, you’ll get hired.

Start an Etsy shop

Along those same lines, if you’re crafty and creative, you could start an Etsy shop for all of your own designs. Whether it’s home decor, furniture, textiles, or something else, Etsy is a great outlet for you to sell your stuff.

If you love doing it, it doesn’t hurt to see if others love what you do, too. Once again, if it’s good, it’ll sell. If it’s not, at least you had fun in the process. Your designs won’t always be everyone’s cup of tea, but that’s ok!

Proofreading and Editing

If you don’t want to write, you could try proofreading or editing. To clear things up right from the start, these are two different things, and there are many different types of both. It would take much more time to explain than we have room for here, but here’s a quick rundown.

Proofreading happens at the surface and is typically done on the final document. Once a draft has been edited, it goes through proofreading, which addresses obvious things like punctuation, formatting, misspellings, and other inconsistencies.

Editing happens from the first draft all the way through to the final draft. A document can be edited multiple times because editing requires an in-depth look at the core features of the writing, enhances the language for better readability, and may include an overall word reduction if necessary.

Proofreading and editing for creative writing

Writers of creative works, like poems or books, will hire editors and proofreaders, especially if they regularly publish their works or sell them to make money. The quality of the writing needs to be good if they want anyone to pay for it. Even the highest profile authors have an editing and proofreading team.

Proofreading and editing for professional sites

Any type of writing needs editing and proofreading. Even journalists and writers of nonfiction need someone to edit and proofread their work. You can find editing and proofreading jobs in many of the same places as you can find freelance writing gigs.

Proofreading and editing for legal material

Court reporters and stenographers also use editors and proofreaders, but it’s completely different from normal editing and proofreading. It requires a bit of training, so if editing and proofreading transcripts interests you, you may need to invest in some online courses.

It doesn’t take long to learn, and you can do it all completely remotely. These types of jobs work largely by word of mouth, so if you can prove yourself in the industry, court reporters will use you over and over again, and they will recommend you to their friends.

Transcription

If you’re a skilled typist, transcription is another really great remote opportunity. It can be done part-time or full-time and there are plenty of flexible scheduling options. You may be typing out audio, reviewing written content, or correcting transcription errors.

People who create YouTube videos use transcriptionists. Bloggers use them often, too. There are a lot of paths you can follow on your journey to transcription. It just depends on what type of transcription you want to do.

Beauty Services

Esthetician services are popular among both men and women. Learning to do hair, nails, facials, and more can be very lucrative. Better yet, you can do them out of your home as long as you’re set up for it.

You don’t need big, fancy, expensive equipment to get the job done, either. You can learn to do nails quickly and easily. It requires a minimal investment, and you can generally make pretty good money.

Plus, you get the adult interaction you often crave and you can spend time with your friends all day.

This type of job also allows you to take appointments only when you feel like it. Of course, you can’t just cancel on your clients willy nilly, or you won’t have any clients left! But you choose if you only want to work in the afternoon, or if you want to plan a day with your kids two weeks from now and not schedule any appointments.

Laundry Services

Along those same lines, you could provide laundry services to busy people who simply want one additional chore taken off their plate. You set your own rules and deadlines here, too. Don’t want to do other people’s underwear? Don’t. Feel uncomfortable handling their items marked as delicate? Refuse.

You have a washer and dryer in your home for your laundry, so make it pay for itself already. You don’t need special skills. Besides, you do enough of your kid’s laundry that you have the skills you need anyway.

Bonus: the machines do all the work for you.

Renting Baby Items

Are you looking for a way to make extra money while truly not doing any work at all? Rent out your baby gear. This is particularly lucrative if you live in a popular tourist area, but it could potentially work anywhere.

If you have items like strollers, baby carriers, car seats, and other travel items that you don’t use every day or you don’t need at all anymore, you can rent them out. Selling them would of course make you some money right now, but renting them over and over again keeps the money coming in.

Especially if you can offer these items conveniently and at a better price than anyone else, people will be seeking you out to find all of the items they need while they’re traveling in your area.

Keep in mind that you will need to put some rules in place to protect yourself from an item that isn’t returned or one that is returned in worse condition than it was lent out. It may require establishing deposits refundable upon return of the item.

Travel Agent/Virtual Tour Guide

If you live in a particularly touristy area or you are well-traveled, being a travel agent or a tour guide may work for you as well.

As a travel agent, you can work remotely, especially with all of the resources at your disposal. Help people find the best deals, book their airfare and lodging, and even coordinate a schedule of sites to see while they’re there.

While many people love to travel, they don’t like the logistics involved in booking and scheduling it. Charge a service fee for doing it for them and customize the services you offer based on their particular interests.

If you’re familiar with a lot of tourist destinations, you can also create virtual tour guides and share them. Upcharge the clients you book through your travel agency for video guides to popular sites they may want to see.

If any of these tourist destinations are near you, find some time to create video walkthroughs (legally, of course) and add your own personal touches to top it off.

The Right Stay At Home Mom Job For You

Your skills, interest, and past experience will dictate which of these jobs is perfect for you. Right now, if you’re a stay at home mom and you’re not making any extra money, it may not hurt for you to give a few a try before settling on the one you enjoy the most.

After all, a sense of urgency may force you into something you don’t like at all. Take your time, do some exploring, and choose the one that still allows you to do what you already do best – be a stay at home mom.