If you’re a working mom, you’ll be familiar with feeling guilty. When you’re working, you feel guilty that you aren’t spending time with the kids. When you’re spending time with the kids, you feel guilty that you aren’t working.
The great thing about more of the world going online is that there are more opportunities available for people to be able to earn a living in a way that allows them to structure their time so that they can still find time for the things that are important to them. If you’re good at it, you’ll even be able to make more money than you ever could working for someone else, particularly if you are a part-time worker.
More than this sense of freedom, though, building your own business is a wonderful way to make your mark on the world and to feel as though you built something that is just for you.
Affiliate links
The basic premise of affiliate marketing is that you build a trusted reputation, which allows you to make recommendations to your followers about products or services that they should use. The products or services that you recommend would give you a small percentage of the sale each time someone buys through you. If you have enough followers, then this can eventually be a nice source of passive income. This means that your website and content will be doing the work for you.
The key to being an effective affiliate marketing is finding a niche that other people will be interested in, but that hasn’t been written about extensively online. It should also be something that you are actually interested in. You will have a lot more fun writing content about something you love, and people can tell if you are faking.
Dropshipping
Like affiliate marketing, dropshipping requires you to build a trusted following of people who will want to buy goods from you. So you will need to do a lot of work up front, generating engaging content, but like affiliate links, this can eventually become passive income once your site is up and running.
The idea behind dropshipping is that you have a website selling goods, but when you receive an order rather than going to you, it goes to a third party. This third party will hold your stock, and they will pack and ship it for you. This is great news for people who don’t have a lot of storage space or capital for inventory. It also makes starting your business that little bit easier.
If you want to make money dropshipping, it’s important that you choose your partner and your product carefully. Think about trends that are happening in the world and try to be part of them. An example of a good area to be in at the moment is wholesaling e-liquids. People are more focused than ever on the health of their lungs, and more and more smokers are exchanging their cigarettes for vapes instead.
Patreon
Patreon is a site that allows creators to build up a following, who then pay a monthly subscription to be allowed access to specialist members-only content. The key to Patreon, as with any other form of digital business, is to build a connection with your audience so that they want to hear more of what you have to say.
Check out this article for advice on how one user made money on Patreon.
Freelancing
As more and more people start businesses online, more people need to access services like copywriting, web design, illustration… the list goes on. Sites like Fiverr and Upwork allow you to advertise yourself as a freelance worker and for other people to find you and commission you to do work for them. If you have a skill in a certain area, it’s a great way to find yourself varied work and eventually earn quite well.
Just some of the skills that are in high demand on Fiverr are:
- Social media services: Social media is essential to building up a customer base, and it takes a lot of time and effort. If you’re a small business owner, this can be a pain point because you need to be spending your time on other aspects of your business. This means that business owners will pay good money for you to work on social media projects for them.
- Writing: Every website, blog, and social media page needs content. That content takes time to create, again time that business owners don’t have. That’s where you come in.
- Virtual Assistant: Are you super organized and love keeping things in order? Offer your services as a virtual assistant, and you could be earning very well indeed.
