Note: This post was previously published on an older blog of mine.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I would fill notebooks with business ideas and probably highly inaccurate calculations of how much money I would make. I still do this. One business was a dog poop clean up business called The Poo Fighters. I’m not kidding. I had it all planned out, but it never ended up happening. I still believe that it would be a successful business if you live in the right area. I’m trying to convince my husband to do it. Silly businesses aside, when I became a mom my entrepreneur spirit didn’t subside. Sure, I have like 23 less hours in a day now, but I still love finding ways to earn an income from home.

My son is only two so working from home is challenging, but non-negotiable. I was working from home before a baby was even in our sights because I wanted to be able to be home if/when kids started popping into our family. So naturally here I am as a work at home mom. I want to share the different ways I have and currently make money from home. I want to empower other parents to be able to help support their family financially, and find something that’s their own, all while being home with the kids.

How I’ve earned money in the past

First I want to quickly go over the ways I’ve been able to make some cash in the past while being home with my son. Most of these didn’t work out for one reason or another which I’ll detail. But all are great ways to make an income from home.

Blog Design

I did this for several years before having my son and just kind of carried it over once I brought him home. I still secretly hope that I get to do design again one day.

Income: $0-$1,000/month ($0 if I didn’t have clients lined up)
Hours per week: 0-30 depending on if I had a client or not
Pros: It was good money, it was fun (usually), I could do it from home on my own schedule and the cost of running this business was very low.
Cons: When I was doing design work I had an infant. Some days I would have several hours of a lovely happy baby who would just hang out next to me and take awesome naps while I worked. Some days I had an angry, crying baby and could barely get out of bed let alone get on a computer and make pretty things or concentrate on HTML code. Not knowing what your days will look like is really tough and I ultimately decided that the risk of not being able to meet deadlines wasn’t acceptable so I stopped offering design services.

Jamberry

I only did this for a couple of months. If you don’t know about Jamberry, they are nail wraps. I really did love the company and I loved having pretty nails all the time.

Income: I made around $1,500 over the course of approximately 3-4 months
Hours per week: 5-15 depending on how many online parties I had scheduled
Pros: It was fun, a lot of my friends loved it and they kind of sold themselves to people who already loved them. I got lots of fun bonuses and still have enough nail wraps to last me until the day I die.
Cons: Once all of the people who were interested had hosted parties it kind of died down and I’m not the type to bug people to host a party or buy my stuff so I just stopped.

Facebook Sales

If you have a lot of extra items around the house this might work for you!

Income: varied a lot! Maybe $50-$300 a month depending on what I was able to find to sell
Hours per week: 1-5
Pros: It was super easy to just post items from my phone and go meet people in a public place to sell the item (or do porch pick up which you can do at your own risk). There wasn’t much work involved. It helped me clear a lot of clutter.
Cons: You need to live in an area that’s good for this. We moved and where we live now everyone is really flaky so I mostly stopped doing this. Also if you don’t have stuff to sell this obviously won’t work.

How I earn money now

Now let’s talk about how I bring home the bacon (I’ve never said that in my life) currently. I’m lucky enough to have a mother in law who comes over 1-2 days a week to hang out with my son. I get some work in and they get to bond which is very sweet. But I didn’t always have her help and these are all doable regardless of having someone around to help.

Ebay

This is my main source of income at the moment and I’m loving it. It’s a lot more work than you’d expect, but it’s something I’m really happy doing and hope to grow quickly in the near future. What’s funny is ebay was one of my first entrepreneurial adventures back in high school and here I am back at it.

Income: approximately $3600 gross sales & $1,000 profit (March 2017)
Hours per week: 20-30 on average depending on how much time I have and how many items I have ready to be listed
Pros: I love thrifting and that I’m saving items from landfills. It’s something that I think I can easily grow with employees. There’s no shortage of thrift stores, yard sales, etc. to find inventory. I don’t have to go find my own buyers, they’re already on eBay.
Cons: I have to store lots of inventory which clutters up the house. It’s really hard work to get to the scale where you’re making a good amount of money. It’s a slow start to build up the business at first.

Poshmark

If you have trendy clothing you’re looking to get rid of definitely try out selling on Poshmark. (Not a member? Use my code for a $5 credit when you sign up: HPFBZ)

Income: varied a lot based on what I had posted, but I’d say $100-$200/month average
Hours per week: 1-5
Pros: Listing on Poshmark is super easy and they just send you a shipping label so you don’t have to figure out shipping.
Cons: You have to spend a decent amount of time sharing as well as have a bunch of items listed to really sell a good amount on there.

YouTube

I’ve been earning a little bit and there from YouTube for a couple years now. I have a lifestyle channel and a resale channel. The resale channel is where I mostly earn at this point.

Income: I’m technically not allowed to share actual amounts, but it’s not much (less than $100/mo)
Hours per week: It really depends. Some weeks I don’t spend any time, some weeks I spend 10 hours recording and editing videos.
Pros: I love it so much! I love sharing and I’ve found that I love sharing via video.
Cons: Editing videos can be time consuming and the payout really isn’t worth the effort if you don’t like what you’re doing.

There have been other really minor things here and there that I might share in the future, but these are the main things I’ve been doing over the past two years to bring home some money while staying home with my son. I hope this information helps you and inspires you to get something started yourself! Even if you just want to make an extra $100 a month for fun money or to throw in to savings.