This is the fourth in a series of posts giving advice on how to get started making an income from home.
In the previous installments, I’ve shown how to:
- Identify your skills and interests
- Investigate your option for making money from home
- Identify your goals
How committed are you?
There’s a variety of ways to make money from home. Some are casual, where you can drop in and out as you please, others involve a commitment either long or short term. This is why we identified our goals previously.
Aside from the answer to why you want to work from home in the first place, you’ll need to ask yourself these three questions:
- How many hours do you have to spare?
- How many hours are you willing to dedicate to work each day and week?
- Can and are you willing to make a long term commitment?
Armed with that information, go back to your list of potential money earners. Review all the options on the list:
- How much time will each option take each day and week?
- How much money can I make doing this? And what is my potential profit/hour?
- Will I have to commit long term, or can I do it casually?
- Do any of your options require any investments, such as materials or shipping costs?
- If you are thinking of selling anything, consider how much time you will need to spend marketing your wares.
What you're basically doing, is making a business plan. In the end, you want to make sure that your chosen option is profitable.
What you define as profitable, depends on what your expectations are. That's why we looked at your goals for working from home.
Now you have all the information you need to do some calculations. Make sure that your expenses will not be greater than your potential earnings, first of all. And then consider how much of a profit margin you will actually have. Calculate what your hourly rate will be, and decide whether or not you're satisfied with that. If not, try another option.
The level of commitment is a very important point to consider as well. There are many ways, especially only, where you can make small amounts of cash with very little effort and no requirement to be consistent. On the other end of the scale, if you're thinking of starting a business, or taking on (freelance) work, you will have to commit to a certain number of hours each day and week, often over a longer period of time. Of course, the earning potential in this type of option for making money as a WAHM is generally greater as well, but you have to be very certain you'll be able to keep up with the commitment. And not just now, but a few months down the line as well, when the novelty of it has worn off!
Don't forget that your situation might well change! You might be able to commit to a freelancing job that will cover the next couple of months because the kids are in school, but then over the summer holidays, for example, you won't be able to do much other than casual work whenever you happen to have an unexpected hour or so to spare.
Example - My list
To show you an example of how to put the advice above into practice, we'll go back to my situation.
Remember, my main goal was not to bring in a lot of cash, but rather find a worthwhile occupation where I could use some of my skills to enrich my life and be more than just a mother and housewife.
Now back to my list of skills and interests. Were any of the realistic options for me?
Knitting
Knitting items for profit, it soon turns out, was not for me. Materials are expensive, it takes a relatively long time and people are not really willing to pay enough for handknits that would make it worthwhile for me.
It is also very difficult to market handknits. While etsy is great, is is, by all accounts very hard to get your items noticed.
Of course, it can work for some people. As a lovely commenter on the original post pointed out, if you find a very specific niche, you might be able to sell.
For me personally, I also concluded I'd get bored of knitting specific items. It's a hobby I use to express my creativity, if I turned it into a business I would no longer enjoy it.
I did discover that there is potential in selling knitting patterns. I'm keeping that option open as a possibility for the future, as I want to learn to design anyway.
Writing, research & translation
I'm addressing these together, as I'm approaching them in the same way.
From the start, this one had far more potential. Once I stumbled across elance and odesk, I pretty much knew this was what I wanted to do. A way of using real skills I have, while making a reasonable amount of money.
Of course, there are also downsides to websites like those. They really do pay under the market rate, and it can be a long and frustrating process to get noticed.
The other side to it is that once to accept a job, you do have to commit to getting it done in the amount of time agreed. When I started working as a WAHM in January 2013, I was able to commit to at least two hours a day, and knew I would be for the next few months.
I began bidding primarily on translating jobs, and got two of those. These were only small assignments, quickly completed.
Later, due to my credentials as an academic and historian, I was able to 'win' a job writing a large number of short articles on historical topics. This project took several months, and was a nice steady income for a while.
In the end, I made several hundred dollars doing freelance work. I enjoyed it, and I intend to continue building a career and a portfolio as a WAHM freelance writer in the future, but after finishing my first large writing assignment, I was no longer able to commit to work (even though the contractor offered me a repeat job). I was at that point seven months pregnant, so the time had come to take it a little easy for a while.
In late pregnancy and in the newborn stages, my focus will be on more casual writing work, such as at Webanswers. I've also begun this blog and started a Hubpages account. I'm not expecting to make much money, if any at all. For now, I'm content to keep honing my skills and keep myself in the habit of writing.
Cooking
I almost immediately knew that starting a food related enterprise wasn't going to be for me. In fact, I didn't want to start any enterprise. My children are still quite small, and I simply don't have the time to invest in starting an actual business. I'm not ruling it out completely for the future, when the children are in school, but it will be many years away if I ever do it.
I did consider blogging about food, or otherwise combining it with my writing skills, but in the end decided that while I am interested in the topic, I would not be able to keep up finding interesting things to write about in the long term. In addition, there are a lot of food blogs out there, and it would be very difficult to get noticed.
Your turn!
Now you have the basic information you need to get started working from home and making some money as a WAHM.
Please do leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you.
This series was intended to give general advice on how to get started. I'll be updating this blog further soon with more detailed looks at various ways of making money as a WAHM, so please stay tuned.
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