Working from Home as a Stay at Home Mom

Are you a stay at home mom who is discouraged, thinking you could never earn any sort of income while staying home with your children? This series is for you! I have a heart for women who desperately want to earn some sort of income, while still being a homemaker, and even a homeschooling mom! It’s not easy, but thanks to the internet, we live in a generation where it is possible!

This series is going to be broken up into 4 parts: 

Should I Work From Home?

Blogging For An Income

Direct Sales for the Stay At Home Mom

Owning Your Own Business

Let’s dive in and get started with the first topic! So…should you work from home?

Some questions to ask yourself…

Do you have your husband’s blessing? Trust me, this isn’t optional. It’s a necessity. You must, absolutely must have your husband’s support and blessing before you start working from home. When dinner is running late, or you are up burning the midnight oil, you need to know that your husband understands, and is supportive of you.

Is your health strong enough to handle working from home? Be honest with yourself. The first five years of our marriage, my health could never have handled me working like I do now. If you barely have any energy to take care of your home, children, and husband, unless your family is on financial disaster, don’t take on another job!

Are you wanting a job only to prove your worth to people? Being a stay at home mom can be hard. Sometimes it’s a job that people make fun of, because they don’t see the worth of you being home. Don’t start working from home only to show others that you can be a supermom.

Why should you work from home?

There are numerous reasons why a mom should work from home. You want to stay home with your children, you want to homeschool them, or be there for them when they get home from school, you don’t want to put them in daycare, or maybe you just like the idea of being a homemaker!

Financial reasons play a huge part in why you might want to work from home. Your family could be in money troubles, or you might just want some extra spending money. The reasons behind why you need to earn money will greatly affect what type of work you do, and what effort you put into it.

Think Through Your Interests and Passions

This is the fun part. At least to me it is! Sit down and brainstorm about what you might be interested in doing. When you work from home, you need to have a huge passion for what you are doing! If you are self employed and working from home, it takes more energy out of you than just showing up at work and doing whatever you are told. Having an interest in what you do is another absolute must!

Write down on a piece of paper

What you can talk about over and over again, without getting tired of it?

What do you think about during your spare moments?

What gets you excited?

What do you believe in? Are you a firm believer in helping others, or teaching children to read, do you love fashion, or herbs? Would you love to be a doula, or do you love accounting type work? Everyone has a type of work they strongly believe in, and you need to find what that something is for you!

You might end up with more than one thing. For example, I love homeschooling, books, Jane Austen, music, and modest fashion. I also love flowers and pretty houses.

Even though I like all of those things, I’m not a good fit to have a business in each of those interests. For example, I love flowers, but I don’t do a good job of growing flowers and vegetables. Having a greenhouse and selling flowers wouldn’t be a good fit for me.

I also love pretty houses, but organizing and even decorating sometimes doesn’t always come easily for me. Just because you love something doesn’t always mean you have a talent in that area.

Once you have it narrowed down to a few interests, then stop and think through how popular those interests are. A niche is a good thing, but if it’s a really small niche, you won’t have a large audience to market a business to.

Finally, look at how feasible it is to grow a business from home with the interests you have left. Is it something you can do from home? Ask yourself all of these questions before you jump into working from home.

Once you have all these things done, stop and pray about the decisions ahead of you! Ask God to give you peace and clarity about working, and if this is something that He would bless you in!

Part two coming tomorrow….