Exploring Your Skills and Abilities
Explore your interests. Your journey to earn extra income begins by taking a look at what you enjoy doing, are interested in, or are passionate about. Often, interests can be translated into income, especially if they are backed-up by skills or experience. Write down a list of all the things that interest you, or that could potentially interest you. Seeing these written down in front of you is an excellent way to envision potential income opportunities, and ideally, income opportunities that are aligned with your interests. For example, you may enjoy cooking, sports, writing, mathematics, automobile repair, or gardening. These can all be translated into income opportunities. Also be very aware of what you absolutely dislike doing. While sometimes it may be necessary to do activities you don't like (especially if there is available income doing it), it is possible to leave these activities as a last resort. You may, for example, dislike writing immensely.
Evaluate your previous experience. Looking at your prior experience can be a great way to uncover income opportunities. Experience can include employment, but also education, leisure activities, or anything else you have done. For example, if you are a teacher (or have experience teaching something), you can perhaps monetize this. This can be true for almost any previous experience including experience doing arts and crafts, office administration work, writing, taking care of animals, or even babysitting.
Examine your skills. Finally, examining what you are good at can be a useful way to uncover opportunities to make money. Being skilled at something or being able to do something others can't do as well can mean others may be willing to pay you to do it. If you are a naturally talented baker for example, or have a gift for speaking one or more languages very well, you can look to monetize that. Look at your interests, skills, and experience combined to gain helpful ideas.
Plan to balance work with household responsibilities. Being a housewife or stay-at-home-mom requires a lot of work, and many consider it their full-time job. Making time to earn extra income will mean taking time away from household responsibilities. Take a look at how you're spending your days now, and decide what you can give up in order to make room for outside work. For example, maybe you spend several hours cleaning every day. Figure out what chores can be done less often, or assign them to someone else in your house. Childcare is in itself quite time consuming. Depending on what type of work you decide to do, you may want to consider joining a childcare coop or asking a relative to watch your children for a certain amount of time so you can devote that time to working.
Choosing a Means to Make Extra Money
Babysit other children. If you are currently a mom, you already have a valuable skill-set and resources that can be incredibly useful to other parents. Many parents are looking for babysitting or daycare services, and with daycare often being expensive, you can likely find many parents who are willing to pay a slightly lower rate for personalized care. You can advertise on websites like Kijiji or Craigslist, or make posters for sign-posts. You can also use your Facebook or other social media to advertise.
Tutor either online, or at your residence. If you have any specialized knowledge that you can share, you can run a home-based or online tutoring business for a fee. This is especially useful if you know an academic discipline very well, but can also be incredibly useful if you know a second language. To advertise home tutoring, you can use a website like Kijiji or Craigslist, advertise through your children's or other local schools, or network with local parents. For an online business, websites like Tutor.com can be helpful. Teaching is done entirely online, and you are paid an hourly rate. The catch is you must have a college degree to teach certain disciplines, and you also must be available to tutor at least five hours per week. If you know another language, Italki.com can allow you to teach another language online and get paid hourly to do so.
Sell products you created. If you can create something valuable, you can likely sell it. The ideas in this regard are endless, and can include things like baked goods, photos, arts & crafts, dresses, and nearly everything else. If you have something you can create, the main challenge is knowing how to market and sell it. Using your online social networks can be a great way to advertise if you are just starting out. In addition, making a Facebook page for your business, which features photos of your product can be an excellent way to share what you do with your immediate friends, and hopefully generate referrals from them. Certain products also have corresponding websites on which to sell them. For example, if you do photography, websites like Shutterstock and Istock can allow you to sell images. Etsy is also a useful website for selling artwork. Sell knitting patterns on Raverly. Of course, websites like Kijiji and Craigslist can also be useful for connecting with local buyers. You can also make your own website or E-store if you are ambitious, and use online advertising (like Google Adsense) to generate traffic. Etsy.com is another venue you can use to sell homemade products. See How to Sell Crafts on Etsy for more information.
Freelance write or blog. If you are a skilled writer, and if you are knowledgeable and/or have unique experiences or perspectives to share on a topic, it is possible to make money online through freelance writing or blogging. Creating a blog is fairly straightforward. You can use a website like Blogger to create a free blog, or you can use a site like Wordpress.org for a small fee of about $4 per month. It is important to know that making money on a blog can be a difficult prospect, as the amount of money you make is dependent on the size of your reader base. Freelance writing and/or editing is also a viable option. There are many websites that offer freelance writing jobs fairly quickly, like Elance, or Textbroker. These websites are suitable for those just starting out, since the pay rates are typically not exceptional. Other ways to find freelance writing work are to search freelance writing job boards, use websites like Freelancewriting.com, or even pitch article ideas to publications.
Considering Alternative Income Options
Consider couponing. Sometimes, increasing your income does not need to come from earning more, but can also come from spending less. "Couponing," or the strategic use of many coupons and promotional offers, can achieve this outcome through locating and collecting coupons that can then be put towards reducing the cost of everyday items. Where do you locate coupons? There are a multitude of sources. The standard location is in the Sunday paper, but printable coupons are also available online from websites like Coupon.com, or manufacturer websites for the particular item for which you are shopping. Your mobile phone can also be an excellent resource for locating coupons and matching them to sales at stores in your region. One mobile app that is particularly popular is Favado, which enables you to both locate sales in your region and print out coupons corresponding to those sales. If you are interested in pursuing couponing further, popular blogs like The Krazy Coupon Lady can offer a host of resources to get you started.
Monetize your online activity. There are websites online that will pay you to do activities like searching, watching videos, completing surveys, shopping online, or playing games. Currently, some popular resources for accomplishing this are Swagbucks, and Ebates. Swagbucks allows you to earn Swagbucks currency for doing online activities through their website, which are then redeemable for cash or gift cards. As one example of how it works, you may choose to shop for products via the Swagbucks store (through which you can purchase products from thousands of major stores). For every dollar you spend, you would receive one Swagbuck, which is equivalent to receiving 1% cashback. Ebates.com offers a similar benefit, whereby you can earn cash back for purchases you would have normally made regardless. It is less diverse than Swagbucks (since Swagbucks allows you to make money via many online activities other than shopping), but can offer excellent deals. Note that that are many sites like these two. An online search will reveal many potential options to use. Be wary of buying things you don't need to gain benefits on these sites. Carefully consider any purchase first to decide if you really need it, then determine its lowest cost.
Review products online. There are countless websites online that will either pay you directly, or offer you discounts on products for writing reviews. Reviews can be written for everything from websites to bathroom products. A Google search of "make money online reviewing products" or something similar can yield countless resources. Usertesting.com is one popular website which pays via PayPal for reviewing websites and apps online. While there are limitations to how much you can earn, it can be a useful way to make a few extra dollars. Snagshout.com is another popular website that allows you to receive large discounts on products you purchase on Amazon in exchange for writing a review of the product after you receive it. This can be a useful way to reduce your overall expenses, and thereby increase your available income.
Managing Your Time
Create a schedule. Once you choose an additional means to make money, you will likely have a deficit of time compared to before. If you have children or other responsibilities, this means that time management is critical. Creating a schedule and budgeting your time is the most important step in time management. You will need to create a block of time each day to allocate towards whatever money making opportunity you choose to pursue. To do this, write down your current daily routine for each day of the week (or as close to it as you can accurately represent), with the associated times for each activity. Try to find an empty time — or at least a less busy time — during which you can work on your new job.
Eliminate unnecessary activities. If you find yourself short on time, eliminating unnecessary activities can be helpful. What is an unnecessary activity? Any activity that can be easily removed from your schedule with little impact. Most people, whether they know it or not, spend ample time each day doing unnecessary activities. Observe yourself for a day. You may realize you spend an hour on Facebook everyday for example, or two hours watching TV. While eliminating these activities completely is probably unwise (downtime and social time are important), you can perhaps cut both of these activities in half. The newly freed-up time can be allocated to more productive activities.
Create goals. Creating a list of daily, weekly, or monthly goals can be an excellent way to stay on track and manage your time. Simply create a list of the main things you choose to accomplish each day. For example, if you are babysitting, you may make your daily goal to advertise your business in some way. This can be done at any time that is appropriate for you. If you are using daily goals, setting aside ten minutes at night to plan the next day can be a useful strategy. Keep your list of goals somewhere that is clearly visible. It will keep you focused on the tasks you need to be doing and away from the tasks you don't need to do.
Comments
0 comment