The most common reason most people put their child into childcare is because they need to work. But there are ways to work at home and be with your children and it isn’t an insurmountable task either.
First off what will working at home be like.
- Yes you will need to have flexible working hours
- Yes it will be harder, just working and being a parent
- Yes you will have less free time (to begin with)
- Yes it may be scary, but only because you are sailing into the unknown. Many work at home parents take this step, but it isn’t scary once you have done it.
- Yes you will most likely have less income to start with, but you may actually be better off.
But why would we do all that? So we can watch our children grow. As I have always said, you can always go back and have a career later, but you can never go back to your children’s childhood.
If you are working from home while you may be earning less, you will also be spending less. When you do the calculations, factor in
- Transport costs (car, bus, train, tram, taxi etc)
- Possible dry cleaning
- Childcare
- Lunches out
- And this one doesn’t have a financial cost but the 1-2 hours per day you sit or drive to and from work.
So what jobs can be done at home?
- Virtual Assistance / Assistant
- Own Business
- Blogging / Online Site
Virtual Assistance
Virtual Assistance can cover a vast array of tasks including
- Data Entry
- Web Design
- Document Creation
- Facebook Page Creating
- Blog Writing
- Programming
- Online Advertising / Marketing
- etc etc.
- Anything you can do virtually, the list is almost endless, but hopefully that got your brain thinking of various things
To see some more examples have a look at what this virtual assistance company does
Own Business
While virtual assistance is actually your own business and is essentially a service based business, I wanted to discuss a bit more about a business selling products. This can be done and is frequently done by thousands if not millions of people around the world. Setting up your own business can be a huge task and will most likely require capital expense but the rewards are far greater.
Here are some great support sites
Wahm.com (USA)
WahmCanada.com (Canada)
Wahm.co.uk/wahm08/ (UK)
If you live in another country, just google for wahm and your country and there are bound to be ones specific to your region.
Blogging / Online Site
If you have a popular blog or site you can make money by having a affilate products, your own products or just advertising on the site. It is an easy system to run, but it comes with a catch. It is easy to run after a few years. In the first few years you will be researching ways to get traffic, finding out which ways best benefit your readers while still giving you an income and finding the motivation to go on. Blogging takes a long time to establish itself to become popular and viable as an income stream.
If you want to learn how we’ve created this site, and got it to support us, you can check out our Business Blueprint.
But if you decide to take this path, continue working and in a 2-5 years work from home then I have a few tips for you
- Don’t give up, you will get there (come back and read this in about 1-2 years time)
- Do it with something you are passionate about, otherwise it will be harder to keep going
- Always keep researching on ways to improve your readers experience and value they get from your site
- Quality over quantity everytime
- Be consistent. If you post once a day, then keep it up at all costs.
- Network with other successful people in your industry (guest posting etc, this is the quickest way to build readership, but remember you need quality content first)
Beware Of Scams
I have been on the Internet since before Google was formed, over the years I have come across almost every way to make money online. The basic jist is, if they promise you large amounts of money in a very small space of time (less than a year), don’t do it. If there was something like that out there, I would be doing it 
So the main thing here is, there is always a way to work from home. You just need to find out
Photo Credit: rankun76
