Packing in your day job and putting everything into a home business can come with tremendous advantages. It’s more accessible, fits within your schedule, and when you have a bright idea, you can head into the home office, get into work mode, and let your inspiration flow. This type of business might be more convenient, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re universally easier to run, especially when you’ve got kids running around the place. We will explore 5 home businesses for moms in this article.
Editor’s note: A home-based business that I do is Pampered Chef. I make money throwing virtual Pampered Chef Facebook parties for my guests. If you want to learn more, click here.
This is a guest post by Kayleigh Alexandra. Take it away, Kayleigh!
Kids are both an excellent reason for and against operating a business out of your home. On the one hand, running one makes it easier to spend more time with your growing family, while on the other, a growing family around you can make it harder to dedicate yourself to your business.
It’s an unfortunate catch-22 that exists even with an abundance of babysitters and new technologies available to keep them distracted.
There is a way to make these two elements work together seamlessly, though, and that’s involving your kids in your home business. Kids of all ages can be significant assets to a home business, offering unique points of view an adult could never see and creative ideas uninhibited by regular doubts.
If you’re a budding entrepreneur of a parent who wants to see their kids as much as they see their laptop and financial reports, here are five business ideas you can involve them in.
#1 Clothing store
Online shopping is going from strength to strength. You don’t need me to tell you that, though. No doubt you’ve bought clothes, gifts, supplies, and everything else online numerous times, and you’ve seen a ton of creative stores with innovative product ranges and designs that makes you wonder, “maybe I could start a store of my own.”
If you’ve ever had that particular itch, a great way to scratch it is by opening a virtual clothes shop. Clothing retail is one of the biggest markets in eCommerce, with many people preferring the choice and accessibility online stores give them. Rather than wait for your local store to get the latest items from your favorite brands, you can just hop onto their official website and start shopping.
Starting this kind of store is easier than ever, thanks to the litany of template eCommerce websites available like Shopify. What once felt like the most challenging hurdle to starting an online business is now one of the easiest to jump.
✅Click here to check out Shopify and get a free trial!
How to involve the kids
But how do you get the kids involved? There are so many ways! Clothes are an instantly available item that will ignite your child’s creativity and imagination. If they’re old enough, kids may be at the age where they’re beginning to take significant interest in what they wear.
There are a couple of different avenues you can make when it comes to running an online clothing store.
Design your own clothes
Firstly, you can design your clothes and ship them directly from your home online. This is easy to achieve with template design programs and a simple printing press, which you can easily involve the kids in.
You can base your entire store around clothes designed by younger people, giving it a unique feeling and very bespoke, original designs. Finding blank templates to print your designs onto is simple, with just a few add-ons to your online store.
Printify is a great app for Shopify that allows you to print on demand. You just upload your designs to the app and then it will ship clothing or other boutique items to your customers. No need to keep any inventory!
✅Check out Printify now and start a home clothing business
Resell Vintage Clothes
Alternatively, you can resell vintage or old clothes online. There is a huge market for sustainability right now, with more and more (mainly young) people looking to buy older clothes rather than feed fast fashion by purchasing new items.
Reselling clothes is, again, very easy to involve your little ones in, as they can help you pick out retro items or make adjustments to damaged ones. Selling vintage clothes is a great way to teach them a bit of the clothes that were popular when you were growing up, and once again add a unique flair to your products.
You can get started by using Etsy or make your own Shopify store. This is one of the great home businesses for moms to do with their kids.
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- 10 Simple Online Business Ideas to Rebrand Yourself
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- How To Start a Business For Moms
#2 Craft store
Are clothes not quite fulfilling that need to start an online store? There is another avenue that’s equally popular and accessible at the moment with a little creative thinking.
Craft stores exploded onto the eCommerce scene at the turn of the last decade and have only grown in popularity since. They feed into creative’s desire to sell and show off their products, and the consumer’s interest in more bespoke items that they can feel they’re supporting an independent, and more sustainable business through buying.
If you’ve been toiling away in the basement for years on small craft items as a side project, it might be worth seeing if there is an audience for your wares, small or mass market.
How to involve the kids
Again, there are numerous ways you can involve your children in this type of business. They can help you create the craft items, meaning you can market your products as family-made by a family business. This gives your business an extra bit of authenticity and an excellent niche you can use in your advertising.
If you’re making bespoke, traditional toys, for example, your children can be an excellent product testing ground for them. Plus, your little ones playing with your creations is a brilliant form of content marketing that can make a store stand out and convince a shopper of their quality.
It is easy to get started creating your own craft store on Etsy or make your own Shopify store!
#3 Web design
Becoming a web designer might sound a little complicated for a parent new to the profession and looking to get younger children involved, but it is not that complex of an industry.
Basic web design skills are easy to learn at home in preparation before starting a new business, with several convenient online plans existing out there.
You can get started with Weebly to design websites. Weebly is a drag and drop editor so you don’t need to know any HTML or other coding languages.
✅Check out Weebly now and become a web designer!
How to involve the kids
As far as your children are concerned, kids are being taught coding languages at an earlier and earlier age in school these days, meaning they likely already know more than you do!
There are more ways your kids can get involved in web design than relying on the teenage ones to do the heavy lifting on the back end.
Web design, in many ways, is like an art. There are a lot of creative elements to be found on a website:
- composition of the front page
- design elements
- banners and text font
You can get your kids heavily involved in this process, asking them to design what they would like a website to look like and working back from this initial concept. Their ideas may be a little outlandish, but their creative thinking will be freer than your grounded adult mind.
This is an excellent way to both test your older kids and helps them develop new skills as they work alongside you on website projects. For younger children, you can use them as guinea pigs to test the useability of the website on multiple platforms, seeing if they can quickly get around it with limited exposure.
#4 YouTube channel
Managing and creating content for a YouTube channel isn’t for everyone, but it’s a brilliant modern business opportunity that you can quickly get the kids interested and involved in.
Child-friendly content is huge on Youtube. The platform has it’s own YouTube Kids section just for kid-oriented videos, cutting out anything inappropriate and allowing children to both enjoy unique content and create their own.
The rise of the child YouTube star may not be something everyone is entirely behind, but, along with series focused on the daily lives of families, it offers a unique business opportunity for work-from-home parents of talented kids.
Family-focused channels
As kid-lead channels are somewhat rarer and tend not to be for everyone, we’ll focus on the most family-focused channels. This kind of content exploded in popularity as part of the vlog scene, which helped YouTube enter its first boom, with engaging, charismatic parents documenting their lives with their children, both for entertainment and as a unique form of parenting advice.
This kind of content is still hugely popular today, with the concept of influencer culture turning this type of content creator into a household name in some circles.
This is a trend you can latch onto with just a camera and a bit of charisma. You can make videos that are more of a how-to of parenting, using your kids as examples. Or you can simply show off your day to day lives, letting your kids and their wit, excitement, and sense of adventure be the star.
Show off what is unique about your family, documenting vacations, holidays, and your daily routine for entertainment purposes.
How to monetize
Where does the money come from, though? Monetizing your videos to display both sides- and pre-roll ads can help you earn a pretty penny if you have enough viewers. Likewise, when you build up enough of an audience, you can use your platform to review products and partner with brands, leading to increased revenue and gifts.
One of the best things about the YouTube channel side-business model is that it can run in tandem alongside your main moneymaker. If you run a business out of your home, then document that!
Parents looking to explore a similar avenue will be very interested in learning about how they can balance a home-business life with being a full-time parent. Your content can explore these themes and offer advice, rather than just being a silly family adventure channel.
Of course, the big question that comes with approaching this business model is whether or not you want to expose your children online like this. This is a question only you as parents can answer and will come down to your relationship with privacy and how comfortable you feel putting your family on camera for the world to see. This is the most critical decision to make regarding this business opportunity.
#5 Community businesses
Believe it or not, as much as we’re wrapped up in our social media selves and enjoying content through multiple screens, the average person still puts a lot of value in their local community. One way to make some money fast with the kids by your side and make yourself a valuable member of your community is to set up one of these many odd-job businesses.
There’s something pleasantly traditional about going out into the community with your kids and doing work that helps others, for a modest fee, of course. It’s a relatively easy business model to set up in the first place, and one that can quickly snowball into more and more work after just a couple of successful jobs. It’s one of the awesome home businesses for moms to involve their kids in.
Of course, the kind of work we’re talking about are everyday tasks that people may not have the chance to do themselves and offering solutions for neighbors under challenging situations. This means work like dog walking, babysitting, and decoration.
How to involve the kids
This is something you can quickly get, particularly older kids involved, allowing them to learn the value of hard work and understand how communities should operate. From a young age to their teenage years, it’s something they can help you develop as a reliable family business.
The flexibility of this type of business is one of it’s most significant benefits. When you, and your family, don’t feel like looking for work, you can simply shut up shop for a little while and relax. Jobs will always be there. As long as your name is known in the community, work will regularly come your way.
Another brilliant way to get the kids involved in this kind of business is to let them design the marketing material. Promoting this as a truly family business will attract attention. Likewise, if you have them create the posts and online content to advertise your availability on social media and around the community, it will draw attention for its sweetness and honesty. Even if the little ones don’t want to help paint or walk the dog, they can understand how to make a poster showing their Mum at work.
More Home Businesses For Moms?
Your home business world doesn’t have to exist at odds with your parenting world. Managing a home business is an excellent opportunity to get your kids involved and watch them flourish while learning new skills. It may unearth some brilliant creative talents, or give them the skills they need to set them down an exciting entrepreneurial path of their own. Don’t be afraid to bring them in.
Editor’s note: A home-based business that I do is Pampered Chef. I make money throwing virtual Pampered Chef Facebook parties for my guests. If you want to learn more, click here.
If you have more home business ideas for moms, then please comment below. I want this to be a great resource online for moms!
About the Author:
Kayleigh Alexandra is a writer for Micro Startups, your online destination for everything startup. She’s passionate about hard-working solopreneurs and SMEs making waves in the business world. Visit the blog for your latest dose of startup and charity insights from top experts around the globe @getmicrostarted.
Related Posts:
- 10 Simple Online Business Ideas to Rebrand Yourself
- 13 Best Work from Home Business Ideas That Make Money Online
- How To Start a Business For Moms
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