In this post, I’m going to share three super-simple ideas busy moms can do and make money WITHOUT taking on the official mantle of Freelancer. Because freelancing is HARD WORK, and it’s TIME-INTENSIVE! Here are 3 ways stay-at-home moms can make money from home without freelancing.

What Work Can Stay-at-Home Moms Do to Make Money?

As if you don’t have enough on your plate right now… you may be one of the millions of stay-at-home moms wondering how to make money when your entire schedule revolves around your kids’ remote learning or homeschooling schedule. 

I’m not talking about the fact that you don’t have any free weekdays until Thanksgiving week. I’m talking about the fact that on Monday morning, your kid’s teacher may inform you that you need to be on-hand today to supervise your child while she’s in small reading groups for the first time. 

Or that there’s a new way to save homework on the platform that you need to learn and move all homework and classwork from Remind to the platform… please and thank you! 

Or that the reading books are finally in and you need to pick them up from the school tomorrow between 10AM and 12PM. 

Or that… fill in the blank with the hundred different things that regularly come up when remote learning.

Well, I’m in a similar situation, so I know what it means to leverage your time and your attention so you can be Mom full-time and still find a way to optimize your earning potential in the hours that are left, instead of the other way around. 

A regular customer service job is probably out of the question, regardless of who the company is that hires you to work remotely. Customer service just isn’t flexible enough. You need something you can do as you live your everyday life, and I’ve come up with five such revenue sources for you, Mama.

Idea #1: Photograph Your Dinner

Seems weird, right? But it’s not. Hosting Tribunal puts the total number of live websites at 1.7 billion, with about 500 million of those being blogs. Content around food is one of the more popular categories since food bloggers AND lifestyle bloggers rely on recipes and pics of different meals to help their readers find new meal ideas. 

That means there are millions of bloggers who include recipes and food as part of their regular content. And along with those recipes, clear pictures of delicious-looking, plated food are a standard.

Plus, you have to think about the fact that since COVID pushed everyone indoors, a lot more people are cooking for the first time, and they’re going to need those winter holiday recipes they didn’t really need last year. 

You don’t need any equipment for this. I would take pictures when it’s daytime to have the benefit of natural light. Maybe buy plates in a few different colors so that when you’re ready to plate and photograph your food there’s a nice contrast. And I would use my phone (my daughter’s phone actually has a much better camera). Progress photos are also important when you’re providing recipes. 

I once worked for a client who commissioned 75 different keto recipes WITH photos from a chef in the UK.  You don’t have to look for clients though. There are groups right on Facebook where people can go to buy and sell content.

One tip: Plan ahead. I’m writing this on Halloween. If you were to start food photography today, plan to take pictures for events that are eight weeks away. In this case, that would be Christmas and the New Year.

#2 Start a Blog

Believe it or not, starting a blog is a revenue-generating thing because there are multiple ways to generate money from a blog. 

1. You can sell your own products. These can be things like quilts you’ve made or maybe a little guide you put together on a hobby like growing fall perennials or marketing yourself as a freelancer (wink).
2. You can also monetize your site by promoting other people on your blog for a small fee. In the world of B2B marketing, I’ve seen websites that charge companies THOUSANDS of dollars to publish a single article to their site. But I’m talking more along the lines of what Elaine Rau did with LadyBossBlogger.com. Elaine invites professional women to guest post on her website for $200 a pop, or $500 if Elaine’s team writes the post. That’s not bad money for uploading an article or two, right?
3. You can sell other people’s products on your site as an affiliate. An affiliate is a trusted source who recommends products (that it would make sense for them to recommend) to their readers. If the reader clicks the affiliate link on your site to see the product, then buys the product at any point over the next 7 days or so, the affiliate gets a commission on the sale. So a fashion blogger could wear a cute pair of boots in a pic and add a link to buy those boots. I would probably recommend a piece of software or something that you can use to run your freelance business. That’s what I mean by recommending a product that it makes sense for you to recommend.
4. You can sell ad space on your website. For instance, a local small business may want to advertise on my site to promote their big sale if a lot of my readers are local (I’m specifically thinking about a Macaroni Kid situation of blogging and making money)
5. You can have Google Adsense ads on your site. That entails signing up for an Adsense account and when someone clicks on an ad they see on your site, you get paid. Google Ads are a lot smarter than they used to be, so the ads your readers see will likely be relevant to their lives, and maybe even something they want. 

#3 Write Articles or Blog Posts

Of course I would say this one, right? All I do is read and write. But this is a good one, I think, because writing for the web is relatively painless. The average person reads and understands on a 7th grade level, and optimizing content for search engines takes just a few tweaks and it’s done (keyword research, on the other hand…)

Now, how do you do freelance writing without becoming a freelancer, Sorilbran? This sounds like something you’re going to need a good freelancing site to do. Constant Content, my dear. Constant Content is a content service where agencies, companies, and publications can go to find and buy unique articles about different topics. 

Based on the screenshot below, if you can write knowledgeably about social media, social media marketing, or SEO, you can demand the highest rates for your content. More general topics like self-help and beauty topics can get you $40 or $50 per article. 

This is a platform I’ve used for years to earn extra money here and there. If I invested more time, I’d definitely make more money. And the good news is every article I’ve posted to Constant Content has sold. 

(Actually, while I was going through Constant-Content to write this post, I bought an article for the first time, so… there’s that, too).

You can also sell your articles in Facebook groups where people buy and sell the recipes and coloring sheets. I think the key there is to spend some time in the group first so you know what kind of content gets posted and what kind of content sells.

Groups like are great for creators who are always posting new content, and group members get used to seeing great content from those creators, so you have to put your best foot forward when you first offer content.

Conclusion 

I hope this article helped you. There are literally thousands of ways you may make money from home, whether you’re looking for work you can do on your computer or angling to do something with your hands. And these are also good ones to do, kind of in the interim, as you’re training and upskilling to optimize your earnings as a freelancer. I think the trick for busy moms is finding work that doesn’t feel like work. Because the truth is freelancing takes its toll on you, even when you love what you do. It’s still hard work.

The three ideas in this post will provide you with the flexibility you need to Mom like a mofo and still be a present, useful educator (or teacher’s helper).