4 Easy Business Ideas for Stay at Home Moms
Ezra Cabrera | January 13, 2022
Key Takeaways
- Moms in this time and age can earn while staying at home. There are a lot of business ideas for stay at home moms that won’t require them to leave or to spend too much time away from their kids.
- Most business ideas capitalize on already existing skills or materials to turn additional profit, such as extending child care services to other parents, selling objects, or offering services like writing or virtual assistance to companies.
- Proper preparation and diligence must be exercised before starting any freelancing jobs, including checking applicable laws and regulations to avoid penalties and charges.
Keeping a family together is no easy task: not only do you have to settle the bills, but you are also expected to raise the kids well. Moms have it harder, though, with societal expectations looking to them for child-rearing and housekeeping.
However, moms no longer have to choose between one of the two. There are business ideas for stay at home moms that make it possible to earn serious cash without having to leave the kids elsewhere. With the growing gig economy, people can now pursue work opportunities wherever and whenever they want to, giving them the chance to pursue other things – balancing work and life, going on travels, studying, or taking care of the family.
Ideally, stay at home moms are looking for small business opportunities that are both profitable and manageable. It’s great to have something that can help pay for the bills without taking up so much time. If you’re also looking to balance being a full-time mom and having a freelance gig on the side, here are some suitable business ideas for stay at home moms you can try.
1. Take Care of Other Kids
By now, most of you are probably aware that some moms are better at working and keeping children in line compared to others. They have the gift of patience, an eye for child safety and welfare, empathy, and that uncanny ability to instantly connect with children – even those not their own. If you’re one of those people, and you enjoy looking after your kids, why not put that talent into something profitable?
In starting your own child care, you take care of other mothers’ kids as they work away from home. The task includes feeding them, looking after them, and ,depending on how long they’ll be left in your care, put them to sleep. In some cases, the provider of child care can also pick up kids from school. The fees are negotiable, depending on the agreement between the parent and the child care provider.
However, before you start taking each other kids, try to check the following factors first:
Requirements
Offering child care will most likely require a license. According to parenting and child care services portal ChildCare, regulations regarding child care licensing include considerations for the number of children you plan to give care to (child to staff ratio), the plan for children supervision, building safety, and health requirements like food served to children or immunizations of the staff.
There are also exceptions to the licensing regulations, such as taking care of relatives’ children, maintaining a very small group, or operating for below the prescribed number of hours. However, even child care providers who are exempted from licensing requirements must still comply with health and safety requirements if any of the kids in their care are receiving federal child care financial assistance.
Take note that licensing requirements vary from state to state, and you can check which are applicable to you should you ever start taking care of other people’s kids at the National Database of Child Care Licensing Regulations.
Pay
As one of the business ideas for stay at home moms with a potential for expansion, the pay for offering child services depends on your business sense. Some moms are content with taking care of a few kids to earn additional income and cover bills or save a little. Meanwhile, others have a knack for both providing child care and for managing businesses, growing their centers by accepting more kids into their care or even establishing branches in other places.
For starters, rates vary depending on a number of factors such as the work you’ve agreed to do, the length of hours you’ll be looking and taking care of the kids, and the number of children in your care. Additionally, the pay may even vary from week to week. Make sure to be aware of certain circumstances such as the kids being sick or if the parents take a day off and be with their kids could take a day off your schedule.
Scope of Your Services
“Taking care of children” is a wide and vague statement, and you should narrow it down when you start presenting your services to your client. Try to define the services you will provide, how many children you’ll be accepting, the ages of the kids, the time you’ll be looking after the kids, and more. You can even define stuff such as whether you’ll be picking kids up from school or whether you or the parents will provide the food for the kids.
With a defined scope of work, you can set your duties and liabilities for your small business. Not only does it help you better picture where your responsibility to the client lies, but it also helps you remember the boundaries between your duties as a child care provider and as a stay at home mom.
2. Writing
Writing is a very diverse field, and easily makes the list for business ideas for stay at home moms, especially if you have previously pursued a professional career. If you’ve written technical reports, emails, or any form of document, you’re off to a start. Writing is a basic skill used in a lot of industries, and even though you’re no longer at the office, you can make a profit off of it. You can either start your own small business as a self-publishing author or you can write for others and get paid for it. Either way, here are some of the freelancing jobs for writing you can do as a stay at home mom:
- Writing novels and short stories
- Blogging or writing web content
- Proofreading (Reading and checking written materials for errors)
- Copywriting (Writing for public relations or marketing materials)
- Publication contributor for newspapers and magazines
- Ghostwriting
- Resume writing
- Grant writing
There are writing opportunities for people with specialized technical knowledge – such as engineering, law, or medicine – that usually pays at a higher rate. On the other hand, people who love telling stories and sharing them might find growth and comfort in writing articles for travel blogs or lifestyle publications.
What makes writing great as one of the feasible business ideas for stay at home moms is that there are a lot of flexible working hours available in this line of work. Most writing jobs just set deadlines and just leave you to it. For example, a blog article with a certain topic, keyword, word count, and other requirements might be handed to you and is expected to be submitted after 24 hours. You don’t need to report every minute you’re writing to your client as you return on or before the deadline with the article asked of you. Of course, there are still conventional part time and full time arrangements for writing that generally don’t require you to always be in front of your laptop or computer.
If you’re looking to self-publish, you can start your own blog. This way, you can write about what you want, when you want. Once you’ve built a following for your page, you can start monetizing it by adding paid ads to your page. Also, depending on your niche, you can strike up partnerships and advertisement agreements with different brands to write reviews or promotional materials for them in exchange for a fee.
A similar structure goes for aspiring novelists, you have to create your manuscript. It may either be for a full novel or a set of chapters to show for it. Then, with or without the help of a literary agency, you’ll have to find a publisher who will take your work for mass production. Other writers opt to get their works published by themselves, in as many copies as their budget can afford, and start selling at local bookstores or online.
3. Selling
Selling is perhaps one of the most thriving sectors of the gig economy today, with almost everything you can think of put up on online stores and social media. This is also one of the most accessible business ideas for stay at home moms because most of the time, you can start with things you already have at home. If you’re still undecided, check out some ideas for selling that you can start in your free time.
Consignment Shop
As a mom, you’ve probably seen how fast your kids grow up and leave outgrown clothes collecting dust somewhere. One way to let go of those clothes is to let other kids have a go at them by opening a consignment shop right at your home.
This is also one of the timely and potentially profitable business ideas for stay at home moms since the pandemic has left people looking to save more bucks with pre-owned clothing. As a would-be owner of a consignment shop, you don’t have to pay for the inventory you take from your supplier until they have been sold. You’re basically selling someone else’s goods for them, with your own profits factored in of course. This is perfect for stay at home moms looking for a small business that doesn’t require a significant capital. You have a place of business (your home) and an inventory of items to sell. Additionally, you can keep an eye on both your kids and your store, so you’re hitting two birds with one stone.
Baking/ Cooking
If you’re the kind of person more inclined with cooking or baking, then you have another skill that is among the most in-demand business ideas for stay at home moms. You can start with the tools and equipment you have in your kitchen. There are a lot of online tutorials that can teach you tips and tricks to using conventional kitchen wares in place of more expensive equipment. Of course, you can use your earnings not only to sustain the family, but to improve your small business with the latest tools and equipment.
Usually, in selling food or baked goods, you have to focus on a certain idea or set of items. In finding what items to sell, you may either opt to fill in an existing market gap in your area or focus on the items you’re really good at. For the first one, you need to see what food items or snacks are already available in your area and what isn’t available, that’s your chance. With the second one however, you might capitalize on a family recipe or your own twist for a meal, regardless if there are similar offerings already available on your local market.
Buy and Sell
This one is a bit risky, since it requires research and a capital to get the ball rolling. Whether it’s clothes, toys, or even real estate, you have to be well-prepared before entering–and you being interested in the field you’ll deal in really helps. The premise is simple: you buy something and you sell it at a higher price.
Take note that this doesn’t work with everything, every time. It requires a special skill to appraise and identify valuable items from garage sales, thrift stores, and online selling platforms. Most people hold on to items of great value without knowing them, and it’s your job to look for them and sell them to people who do.
Arts & Crafts
One that never goes out of style, selling your own handiwork is usually among the easiest business ideas for stay at home moms. Like other ideas above, this builds on something you’re interested or skilled at – knitting, sewing, printing, making jewelry, and more – then you can sell them through your social media or through platforms like Etsy or Ebay.
Generally, the price of each good you sell depends on the materials you used and the time you spent making them. One challenging part of this trade is that starting entrepreneurs are often hesitant to put a price that accurately reflects the cost of their work plus a fair profit, which in turn makes the small business unsustainable.
4. Work as a Virtual Assistant
As a virtual assistant (VA), you perform administrative or even executive tasks from the comfort of your home. Usually, you answer to an entrepreneur or a business, working remotely to perform as a part of the team. There are a wide range of activities that can be entrusted to VAs, from transcribing documents, social media management, making appointments and booking schedules, to ghost writing speeches.
Working as a VA opens a lot of opportunities, especially since virtual assistants are in demand in almost every industry. Some companies even prefer VAs over full-time, office reporting employees because they cost less, plus there’s no need to pay benefits since they are generally independent contractors. From your end, working as a VA is often considered as one of the best business ideas for stay at home moms since it doesn’t require specialized skills – although organizational and communication skills are highly prized in the market – and has no license or certification required.
Since this is a freelancing gig, you can take on multiple part time or full time clients, provided that your time allows you to perform effectively. In terms of pay, rates for VAs also vary depending on the industry and the scope of work. More specialized work like transcription in the medical or legal fields tend to pay more. With the seemingly endless opportunities for virtual assistants, you can start by assessing your skills and find an opportunity that will put those strengths to good use.
Points to Consider:
Now that you’ve probably learned some easy business ideas for stay at home moms like you, you’re already thinking where to start, and how your schedule will look like moving forward. However, before you go make sure that you make these considerations:
1. Compliance
Make sure to comply with relevant and applicable city, state, and federal laws regarding the small business you’re planning to engage in. There are certain benefits to registering your business, down to the legal business structure you’re planning to have. Whether it’s a sole proprietorship or a limited liability corporation, there are pros and cons: make sure you choose what fits your plans.
Depending on your income or the service and products you provide, there are certain exemptions to registration rules. There is no general rule and laws vary from place to place, making it prudent to check your local city’s website or making inquiries before jumping right ahead to the side gig of your choice.
2. Vision
You have to have a clear plan once you start taking on a side gig. If you’re planning to offer your services for profit such as writing or working as a virtual assistant, are you looking for career growth or are you just looking for something to help pay the bills for the time being? It would help inform your decisions about what projects you’ll take: whether you’ll go part time and project-based or go entirely full time for long-term engagements.
If you’re looking to establish your own small business like creating a child care center or selling stuff, make sure you have a business plan ready. There’s nothing more dangerous than to step in unprepared, since it’s difficult for a new business to survive just by playing things by ear.
3. Priority
Your priority will set the direction of your small business. Some stay at home moms are pushed toward finding a side gig because of necessity like bills or unexpected financial challenges while others are looking at it as a long-term commitment with tiered plans as the kids grow up. Regardless of your plans, it might be a good time to include the whole “stay at home mom” scenario before you start your plans for a small business or a freelancing gig.
Final Word
There’s no longer a need to choose between earning and keeping the kids safe and healthy. Freelancing has allowed people to work from the comfort of their own home, at their own time – and this applies to stay at home moms. These business ideas for stay at home moms everywhere is just the start. The real challenge is not in meeting the demands of these small business ideas turning into life, but in juggling home and work once they mix up in the same place, often at the same time.
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