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How To Earn An Income When You Can’t Afford A Sitter

When you’re a stay-at-home parent, money is often in short supply. Unfortunately, so is affordable childcare. If you’ve done the math, you may have already figured out that it is often more financially feasible to stay home than to go back to work full-time. However, you can’t really afford to live on one income. What is a parent to do? Here, we take a look at a few solutions to your cash conundrum.

Branching Out.

You’ve left the workforce and can’t commit to a 40-hour-per-week position. Fortunately, you have options, and many of these revolve around starting your own business. Here are four things you must know how to do before you enter the world of entrepreneurship:

Establish a budget. Many startups launch with very little money in the bank. Chances are, you will start with even less. Take the time to get to know your budget. Then, determine how much you can set aside for your own business. The goal here is to make money, not to completely deplete your savings.

Know your strengths. The things we want to do and the things we’re good at are often different. Fortunately, they do often align. Before you try to start your own business, sit down and make a list of your strengths and weaknesses.(1) This can help you set a clear path for yourself and become better acquainted with what you might need help with down the road. For example, if you are not strong with numbers, you likely do not want to start a bookkeeping business [2]. Similarly, this weakness should point you in the direction of hiring a bookkeeper yourself once you get up and running.

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Identify a niche. Once you have identified your strengths, decide how they can best serve your most ideal customer. Knowing your niche [3], which is a specialized segment of the market, is one of the most important things you can do when starting a business. It will help you target those who are most likely to buy from you, and understanding your niche can help you cater your marketing to this demographic.

Learn to market. Speaking of marketing, before you start a business, you must also be comfortable selling yourself, your skills, and your experiences. Marketing today often begins online with social media [4], content, and ad campaigns. If you don’t understand how to shine a light on your business’s best features, set aside marketing money in your startup budget.

Business Ideas That Make Sense For Parents

Launching a new business is an intimidating endeavor. After all, there are so many options. How do you know which is right for you? While only you can answer this question, there are several options that make sense. Two of these are to start an e-commerce business or a consultancy. Both of these provide the flexibility you need to stay at home with your children while supplementing your family’s income.

Consulting. A consultant is an expert in an industry that works on a contract basis to help other business owners make better decisions for their own enterprise. Depending on your current experience level, launching a consultancy may be the perfect segue into entrepreneurship. If you’ve worked in cybersecurity, for example, you can help other businesses keep their networks and systems secure.

E-commerce. An e-commerce business sells products exclusively online. And given that today’s consumers mostly shop from the comfort of home, it is a booming industry with exponential growth potential. By now, you’ve already identified your niche, so you will need to cater your e-commerce business [5] around that.

To get started, build your website. It should include an active blog from the very beginning, which will drive traffic to your product service pages. You will also want to figure out shipping — it might be best to price your products so that you can provide “free shipping” to help you better compete with Amazon, Walmart, and other companies that don’t post a separate shipping charge.

If neither of these options feels quite right, consider exploring the world of freelance work or capitalizing on your non-professional skills.

Freelancing. You can freelance with just about any skill set. Artists, writers, marketers, software developers, and data entry services [6] specialists are just a few examples of the types of professionals who can find great success working as contractors. As a freelancer, you set your own rates and work when you can. This means you can sneak in a few hours of work during nap time while the kids are little and segue into working longer hours once they start school.

To find a freelance opportunity [7], Freelancing Hacks recommends joining an online job platform or checking Facebook groups that cater to freelancers in your area.

Non-professional skills. Finally, don’t rule out your non-professional skills. This could be anything from a favorite hobby to simply babysitting for your friends and family. Keep in mind, however, that once you start earning money, you’ll need to keep up with your incoming payments and begin paying taxes as self-employed.

Childcare costs often soar, which might be more than your individual earning power. Because of this, it often makes sense to find money-making opportunities that you can do from home. Take the time to explore the above, and you may just find that your next new career gives you the flexibility to earn an income without sacrificing the quality of care your children receive since that care will be given by you.