Earning Money From Home With a Baby

 I have a Pinterest habit.  I’ve had it for quite a few years. Anyone else? One of the things I keep seeing over and over is the Work at Home Mom. WAHM is a common acronym for it in the Australian cloth nappy groups. The "How I earn money as a Stay at Home Mom'' posts.  I hadn’t realized until recently that I had really internalized it.  I felt like that was who I should be.  I’ve tried a few methods, but nothing has really worked for me in the past.  I’m going to talk about the things I have tried.  After doing some real reflection I have decided there are some methods that I am passionate about that I hope to use to make money from home in the future.  

Some methods that did not work for me:

Crochet. Probably the first thing I thought about since I was doing a lot of crocheting in college. I did a lot of research about selling crochet and Esty stores but decided I could not crochet fast enough and the profit wasn’t worth the commitment it would take.  

Prints on Etsy. I actually set up a store to sell designs such as a day planner or meal planner and calendar page.  It didn’t go anywhere though. I tried to advertise on Pinterest, wasn’t quite ready to post on my own Facebook.  I didn’t sell a single thing.  

Surveys. So many surveys. They really just don’t pay enough. I’ve gotten a bit of money from a few, but it’s really not worth the time I put into it.  I’m convinced the way people make money with surveys is with the referral code. If you have a lot of friends who will sign up, or a big platform it may work. 

MistPlay. This one I think did work a little bit. So far I have gotten $20 from this. I will continue to earn from here after Lent. (I gave up phone games this year to be more mindful with my time.) It is however not a strategy that will ever replace your main income. Mistplay for those who don’t know is a service that rewards you for playing games with points. Once you have earned so many you can redeem them for gift cards.  It is specific games, that Mistplay gets paid to promote. I would be playing a game anyway so might as well earn some money from it. As mentioned above, I think people make the most money by referring others to it. And they are definitely counting on people spending actual money on the games, which is something I refuse to do. 

While I have a lot of things that haven’t worked out for me and I have read on a lot more things I will probably never try, I do have some more ideas I want to try in the future.  Two of the ways pertain to this blog. If I ever start to get enough consistent views, I want to set up affiliate marketing and ads.  Ads are probably obvious. You get paid per view or per click.  Affiliate marketing is when you promote products, people use your link and you get paid.  Amazon is an extremely common one and one I plan to use. 

Since I wrote the above paragraph, I have the option to sign up for adsense. Which means I can put ads on the blog. That is exciting.  It also encourages me to sign up for Amazon affiliate, so I will do that sooner rather than later. I believe it will take me a year to earn out, but having the ability to put ads on the site is exciting. 

I found when building this blog, I enjoy building websites. I would love to earn money to do so.  I have set up a gig on Fiverr and I hope to earn money through that at some point. I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t work. But I would love to build sites for people. I have built a site for a friend for her small business.  I found the process was enjoyable. This blog is hosted on blogger and my friend’s website is hosted on Shopify. While my friend did not pay me, Shopify does pay a referral fee to a Shopify partner who sets up a storefront. So I get a percentage of her monthly fee for as long as her store is open. 

If you are considering either a blog or a Shopify account and need help building them, please consider reaching out to me using my contact page or social media. I am also willing to work on other hosts, since I use the built-in templates it is fairly easy to adapt to any of them.  

The last way I plan to earn money from home is by ghostwriting. We will see if it ever gets off the ground. But it is something I am very interested in. I recently saw a youtube video about someone who makes a living ghostwriting, in particular pet memoirs.  I thought it was really interesting.  I didn’t finish the video (it was about how she spent her money, not the ghostwriting) and started planning.  Pets sound fun, but when I started to think about doing a practice run with my parents’ dogs, I started thinking about my grandmother. Her life is fascinating and I would love to learn more about it and preserve it for future generations. So I think long term I would like to focus on writing histories for families. Grandparents and parent’s memoirs.  I plan to start with my own grandmother if she cooperates, and go from there. I'll probably advertise on Fiverr for that as well. I have also convinced my brother to let me help him write a memoir of his through-hiking the Appalachian Trail.  Once I have those two projects under my belt, I think I would be ready to start charging.  I find the first project is always a mess so you need practice before starting to sell the work. 

I have now completed my trial runs for memoir writing and I now offer copywriting and memoir writing services.  Please see the services I provide section of my website if you are interested.  

I am starting a youtube channel as well to follow along on my journey in freelancing and copywriting.  I doubt it will ever be monetized. I will however use affiliate links under it.  If you have an affiliate connection, it makes sense to use the links everywhere you have a platform. 

I am excited to try writing from home.  I would love to bring home an income while staying at home with my daughter.  I have tried to find work outside the home, however, we have decided it is not worth it at the moment with covid continuing to put Melbourne in lockdowns and the cost of childcare.  I am really passionate about writing and have loved the process of blogging.  I love working with the elderly and I’m excited to see what stories I learn while writing memoirs and biographies.