You’ve heard the buzz about the ways to make money online. Most people are aware of the enormous financial power and opportunities available in the online world. As such, many people are keen to find legitimate ways to either supplement their income or make enough money online to quit their 9-to-5 jobs altogether.
For a single mother with a small child at home, finding a proven way to make money online makes a lot of sense. It gives you the flexibility to accommodate your child’s needs and can boost your financial resources. When done right, making money online can offer you an invaluable benefit of having the most flexible work schedule that would be hard to find in a typical workplace scenario.
If you are just starting to research how to make money online as a single mother, you need to consider a few things. This will help you avoid getting lost in the ocean of possibilities listed on various websites. While many of the popular options for making money online work for single people or two-parent households, they are not always relevant (or desirable) to single mothers. If you are serious about making money online and see it as a long-term time investment, you need to choose the right option for you at the very start.
If you are just at the brainstorming stage, here is the first crucial step to take.
Write down a quick list of answers to the following questions:
- What is the minimum amount of money I want to make online every month to supplement my current income? (no need to define the maximum, as the sky is the limit in online world)
- How much time can I actually spend (and want to spend) working on my computer each day?
- Do I want to produce/create my product or service online, or re-sell someone else’s products and/or services?
There is one key benefit to answering these three questions from the very start of researching how to make money online. It’s the amount of time (and headache) you will save by not considering opportunities that have nothing to do with your personal interests, abilities, and financial goals. There are a lot of articles online that simply list all conceivable ideas on how to make money online. You could waste a lot of time pondering ideas that could be eliminated from the start if you have clarity on your individual goals.
Once you gain a bit more clarity on what you want to achieve, consider these 5 ways to make money online best suitable for single mothers:
1. Sell your professional services online (aka freelancing)
Are you a graphic designer, writer, translator, painter, or accountant? Do you have a nice voice and can do commercial voice-overs? Whatever skills you’ve got, make money online by listing your services on professional online platforms like Upwork or Fiverr and get paid for putting those skills to work! If you are new to the idea of freelancing, just visit these sites and browse other freelancers’ profiles first. Doing this will give you some ideas how you can get started. Freelancing is a good way to start earning extra income online. Your ultimate goal is to gradually build enough clients to transition to full-time freelancing. Out of two platforms, Fiverr is a bit more user-friendly, and has millions of users, so you might want to try this site first.
2. Get paid to care for animals (aka petsitting)
Do you love dogs, cats, or other types of pets? Did you know that you can start making good money by listing your pet sitting service online on a platform like GoFetch? Did you also know that pet owners in the United States spend $5.41 billion on pet-related services? That means that there is a great demand out there, and you can make good money by becoming a part of this industry. What’s more, if you enjoy caring for animals, this will be the easiest job you’ll ever have!
Of course, you need to be certain that neither you or your child are allergic to animals. You also need to make sure that you have enough space in your home to provide a good care for pets boarding with you during the day or overnight.
Another crucial thing if you live in an apartment is to check your residential by-laws. Ensure that your building does not prohibit animals (those buildings suck!)
3. Become a blogger
If you’ve been thinking about blogging for some time now, perhaps it’s the time to start! Whether you like to write about your favorite recipes, parenting tips, or share your professional knowledge with others, you can make a good supplementary income by blogging about it. It is much easier to start than you think. All you need is an idea for your blog’s type of niche, or area of focus. It could be a specialty cooking blog, crafts blog, traveling blog, etc. Once you choose a niche, I recommend writing 2-3 practice posts in a Word format on your computer to get a feel of what it’s like to create blog content. If you like it, your next step is to purchase a domain name and monthly hosting plan for your blog. This is where your blog will live online.
I did quite a bit of research on the best domain and web hosting providers prior to launching Single Mom Prosperity. After crunching some numbers, I recommend a Canadian hosting company that I am using to power this blog. The company is called Bluebird Hosting and it offers both lowest prices in Canada and quality support to run your blog smoothly. They also have free plans if you just want to dip your toes into the world of blogging.
Another popular and highly recommended hosting provider (US based) is Bluehost. This provider is very well known. Besides low hosting prices, Bluehost offers many free tools and tutorials to help you start a blog. Check them out and see for yourself!
(Disclaimer: While I recommend only those products and services that I personally trust, some links, like Bluehost, are referral links, which at no additional cost to you, help me earn a small commission and make it possible for me to run this blog. This is a formality that is required to be communicated by some companies and I am happy to comply with that).
There are many ways to make money online as a blogger, which is called blog monetization. One of them is to create unique content and then sell your product or service on the blog. Most owners of cooking blogs, for example, offer free recipes to create blog traffic and grow their audience. After they have a following, they create and sell actual cooking books based on these recipes and sell them both online and in book shops.
Another way to monetize your blog is to create high-quality content. You need to write about your main area of interest or expertise, and then sell adding relevant paid ads to your blog.
The beauty of blogging for a single mother is that you get to write about what you know and enjoy whenever you have time to do so. Whether you are raising an infant or a teen, you can easily accommodate their schedule and your blogging needs. Writing also has a meditative effect, so you will feel more relaxed and centered on a regular basis.
4. Write and sell e-books
Writing and selling e-books (digital format books) online could be one of the most profitable ways to make money online. You might be surprised to learn how many people made a fortune writing e-books just about everything that may seem quite common or ordinary. This means that even if you don’t think you have an idea for an e-book, you most likely do! As a single mother, you can write about your experience raising a child alone, or tips on surviving a nasty divorce, or best ways to entertain a child on a tight budget.
Once you write the content for your e-book, you need to either invest a few hundred dollars in editing and proofreading it, or, do it yourself for free if grammar has always been your thing. Since e-books are in a digital format, there are no publishing fees that are typically associated with print publishing. All you have to do is create an attractive cover for your book and turn your content into an e-book format. All this you can do at a low cost by hiring a freelancer on Fiverr.
After you finish formatting your e-book, you’ll need to upload it to Amazon and start selling! You can read a lot of helpful information about Amazon digital publishing on their page here.
5. Make money selling stock photos
Do you like taking photos of various places you go to? Do you often get compliments on your photography skills? Great! You can make easy money online selling these photos to businesses and companies who need various stock photos for their websites and ads. As long as you can take high-resolution photos with your cell phone camera, or an actual digital camera, you can upload and sell photos on popular stock photos websites like Stockfresh or Shutterstock.
Some people make it big selling stock photos, while many earn very small but helpful supplementary income. If you like taking photos anyway, then why not give it a try? Perhaps you can later turn it into an actual photography business, which is often cited as one of the most established ways to make a good income and have a very flexible schedule.
I hope you’ll find these strategies on how to make money online as a single mother useful, and will give some of them a try. While there are many other ways to make money online that you might find, I selected these five for a reason. All of them have a very low barrier in terms of the financial investment required. They also present a low risk for your personal safety as a single mother. Try to stay away from seemingly simple ways to make money online. These include writing reviews, getting paid for browsing the web, any forms of gambling, and installing various apps that analyze your personal browsing habits. These will drain your precious mommy energy and pay very little for the time you spend on it.
From a personal safety standpoint, I also don’t recommend becoming an Uber driver or Airbnb hostess. While these two options present a very lucrative opportunity to many people, they are not safe for single mothers whose children depend on their mom’s safety.
So be brave within a reason! Become a freelancer, start a blog, write an e-book, take great photos, or become a highly-referred pet sitter! You might not know yet which one will bring you most money at the end, so go for the one that makes you feel most excited. This way you will not only learn how to make money online but also do something you actually enjoy doing.