Top-Notch Ways for Stay-at-Home Parents to Boost Their Income

Being a stay-at-home parent takes a lot of time and dedication, but it doesn’t mean you have to put your career goals or other pursuits on hold. Many side hustles and even full-time jobs are well suited for stay-at-home parents who want to bring in a little extra cash. Below, learn more about the opportunities available and find a few helpful tips for success.

Opportunities Abound

Take a minute to think about your passions and strengths. No matter what comes to mind, you can find a way to turn it into a lucrative home-based career. One great idea to consider is dropshipping. With dropshipping, you operate an ecommerce store but don’t need to worry about shipping items or finding room to store products at home. Instead, a third party handles inventory and shipping. When managing your ecommerce store, you can use software like eChannelHub to promote your business across multiple online marketplaces.

Another example is starting a blog. Turning out articles consistently takes a lot of time, but content creation tools can help you come up with new ideas and even revamp old content you’ve written to give it a fresh spin.

Freelancing is another great option for parents. When you think of freelancing, writing and editing might be the first thing that comes to mind. However, there are countless ways to become self-employed. For example, accounting, sales, tutoring and administrative work can all be done on a freelance basis from home.

Set Yourself up for Success

After exploring a few opportunities and settling on one that sounds good, it’s time to start turning your idea into a reality. No matter what you do, you’ll likely need to have a dedicated work area. Focusing on work with kids around is hard, but it’ll be easier to stay on task when you have a quiet place you can work without as many disruptions.

When setting up a workspace, try to choose an area that doesn’t need to serve more than one purpose. For example, your kitchen table might be the only available space right now, but it will quickly get tedious having to clear off your work stuff each day for mealtime.

After choosing where you want to work, make sure you have the right tech to get your work done. Most work-from-home opportunities require that you have a laptop or computer, but you’ll also need to have a decent internet connection and adequate virus protection.

Cybersecurity is important when casually browsing and using the internet, but it matters even more when you’re using the internet for work purposes. An unchecked malware attack can easily jeopardize your work, making you lose hours or days of progress.

Establishing a Business

If you find success with freelancing, running an ecommerce store or any other side gig at home, you might want to expand your growth by incorporating an actual business. You might not realize it, but many small businesses are actually run from home. In fact, as Fit Small Business points out, about half of all small businesses are home-based.

You don’t need to officially incorporate a small business in order to be successful, but at some point, it might become the move that makes the most sense. Incorporate.com explains that there are numerous benefits to establishing yourself as a sole proprietor. For example, incorporating yourself makes it easier to secure financing and avoid personal liability for your business. Moreover, it affords you with more credibility, which can help fuel your success.

Parenting often feels like a full-time job, but many parents wish they had a way to earn more income while putting their other skills to use. Luckily, opportunities like freelancing, dropshipping, blogging and starting a business can provide just that. If you’re a stay-at-home parent, it’s worth exploring some of these options to see what might work for you.