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Ask HN: My wife needs something to do from home to make money...
My wife is a stay at home Mom and is bored - unfortunately she doesn't have the best formal education credentials but she is far from stupid. However this does heavily impact her ability to get a job that pays much more than minimum wage, usually labor intensive. She has a herniated bulging disc in her lower back, so I'd prefer her not do a lot of manual labor all day. I wanted to hear from you guys what sort of entrepreneurial endeavors she might embark on with my programming/web expertise and a little bit of cash backing her. The catch is, she needs to be able to do it from home. She doesn't need to get rich - even earning ~$1000/mo would be acceptable as long as the man(woman) hours to money earned ratio is reasonable. Ideas?
- alzberg 14y agoI'm making this suggestion because I would personally use this service and I know several others who would as well. I've recently been obsessed with spring cleaning and getting rid of my excess things, but here's the problem: I would love to make some profit off of the stuff I'm already planning to get rid of, but I don't want to put in the time/effort to individually list and ship each item on eBay, Craigslist, Copious, etc. I would love to have someone else do all of this for me and keep 40% or more of the profit. This is kind of like eBay/Craigslist flipping, except your wife wouldn't have to buy the items initially.
- rmATinnovafy 14y agoIf she chooses to start a small (micro) business I will do the marketing stuff for her. No charge. No strings attached. Just paying it forward.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
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- imcqueen 14y agocan she market childrens apps? its very difficult to get your app exposure. i personally would pay for something like that. today the main option is review sites but theyre super saturated.
- jmonegro 14y agoThis might be right up her alley: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/how-to-build-a-niche-site/ http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/how-to-build-a-niche-site/ It's not HN-ey, but I can see it working for her. Best of luck!
- scoot 14y agoThis site promotes horrible spammy paractices such as "article spinning" (automated word substitution) and cross-posting the same (spun) article to numerous sites to with links to the niche site to enhance google-rank. Every link here is an affiliate link for another marketing site in the dense web of self-referential marketing guru sites. Not HN-ey is one way to put it!
- Mz 14y agoSo are there better resources you would recommend? Thanks.
- scoot 14y agoSure. Check out SEOmoz.com. These guys provide great tools for SEO intelligence, and are not afraid to advocate doing things "the hard way", which will pay real dividends in the long term. If the tools are too pricey for the stage you're at, the blog is still invaluable.
- Mz 14y agoThanks.
- bobds 14y agoCheck out http://www.seobook.com/ http://www.seobook.com/ and http://www.seo-theory.com/ http://www.seo-theory.com/
- robryan 14y agoTrue, this kind of thing still works though. Google updates are slowly trending towards hitting low quality stuff like spun articles though.
- bdunbar 14y agoNot HN-ish but has she considered Avon? My wife sells Avon and it's a not half-bad way to make some income on the side.
- alanfang 14y agoAvon is not only a pyramid scheme but a terrible way to make money.
- bdunbar 14y agoa terrible way to make money. Depends on one's situation. As the poster described his wife, it sounds - to me - like a valid opportunity. Avon is not only a pyramid scheme No, it's not.
- petercooper 14y agoMy wife does Avon with reasonable success. For her time she probably earns about minimum wage but she enjoys it because of all the walking. That said, I don't think it's a good choice for the OP simply because of all the travel and sorting boxes, etc, involved.
- 3pt14159 14y agoNot quite a pyramid scheme but it is something one of my old highschool friends spams everyone about all the time.
- Mz 14y agoElance, textbroker, mechanical turk, etc?
- jackowayed 14y agoMechanical Turk has a terrible person hours:revenue ratio if you live in a developed country. Not as familiar with the others, but I think Elance tends to pay pretty poorly too.
- Mz 14y agoFrom what I gather, it depends in part on the person. I never figured out elance but at one time was making over $200/week on textbroker. Yes, I felt the ratio amounted to slave labor but I was also clear a lot of the difficulties were on my end, not theirs. I am currently trying to develop my own sites, which have never made anywhere near $200/week. I remain torn between going back to those slave wages and continuing to gamble my time on a possible pay off somewhere down the road while, in the mean time, there is no income.
- a3camero 14y agoContract programming? Try advertising on Kijiji/Craigstlist. There's always people out there who will pay you to make a website. Takes away the risk of not making anything from the site.
- venturebros 14y agoAirBNB hires at home customer service reps or at least they used to anyways not sure if they still do. A lot of companies hire people to manage social media too.
- meta 14y agoDo you have any good links/references/experience with 'managing social media'? My wife has been offered a social media position with a small local company but neither of them know 'what to do' beyond managing facebook and she really wants to do well at the job (she's excited!) so is looking for ideas.
- orky56 14y agoI've done some research into the area. Email me and we can chat.
- hnwh 14y agotry trada.com amazon mechanical turk, odesk.com elance.com
- hnwh 14y agotry trada.com amazon mechanical turk, odesk.com elance.com
- Moneyherd 14y agoWhat is your wife interested in? It's much easier to run a small business when you are genuinely interested in the field. (A) Customers respond to someone who knows what they're talking about (B) In any case you're happier doing something you enjoy Suggest some possibilities!
- Vadoff 14y agoNot programming related, but a good way would be ebay. Just have her buy/sell in an area she's familiar with and it's pretty easy to make money while enjoying a hobby at the same time.
- olalonde 14y agoI was looking for something similar for my girlfriend. I was thinking she could market/translate Western apps/websites for the Chinese market since she is Chinese and speaks Mandarin and Cantonese. Not sure how to get her started though. Would you pay for such a service?
- protomyth 14y agoI would (for the text of an app), but I have no real clue where one goes (other than a search) to find / advertise that type of service.
- davidcann 14y agohttp://www.icanlocalize.com/ http://www.icanlocalize.com/ has been very good for iPhone apps.
- cristinacordova 14y agoshe could sign up to be a translator on mygengo: http://mygengo.com/ http://mygengo.com/
- gbog 14y agoI have seen on Cosplay branch of 4chan many people trying to buy things on Taobao, they had hard time messing with the messy Chinese interface, she could target them.
- arkitaip 14y agoMaybe drop shipping? You have to make an effort in finding a !crowded niche but there's money to be made if you got your act together. Check out this Reddit IAmA http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/se78n/i_make_over_100k_per_month_running_dropship/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/se78n/i_make_over_100k...
- deepandmeaning 14y agoHi Arkitaip, there was a thread exposing this guys posting as dishonest. I can't find it on Reddit any longer, but I did find this: http://r.bernsteinbear.com/r/self/comments/sgaka/dont_trust_dropshipredditor_regarding_yesterdays/ http://r.bernsteinbear.com/r/self/comments/sgaka/dont_trust_... The gist was the links he posted to the PPC/SEO companies were actually his own (and this was his true purpose). [Edit, found the link!]
- richardw 14y agoThanks for the note, although we probably shouldn't write off the whole post as misinformation. I think most of the info was really useful for people looking to get into the business.
- arkitaip 14y agoThank you for bringing this up. I've read that thread a couple of times but this has completely escaped my attention. I still think there's business in drop shipping as long as you do your home work and apply common sense.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- robryan 14y agoDrop shipping can be harder than it looks, you need a quiet diverse skill set. You need to be across marketing, seo etc. You need to have a site (or ebay or something) that works well and keeps current with your suppliers products and their stock levels. You need to accept payments and deal with fraud. You need to field questions from your customers as the merchant, without generally being able to have access to the products you are selling. You need to deal with shipping companies and angry customers questioning the legitimacy of your products. (Because they are cheap and coming from another country and they were slightly different to the last one they brought.... they must be fake). Affiliate marketing is a lot easier place to start, you send s customer, get a commission and don't have to deal with the rest of the process. In terms of products I think the greater opportunities are in drop shipping, as long as you can do everything mentioned. There are people though making a fortune on leads without having to worry about everything else.
- kirk21 14y agoSome random thoughts: Prepare food and sell it or help tourists out. Create a website about living with a hernia.
- onetwothreefour 14y agoOr get a discectomy and get the hernia fixed? :)
- Beavis3000 14y agoUh huh-huh. Huh huh-huh huh-huh-huh.
- colinshark 14y agoActually, that's Butthead's laugh.
- techiferous 14y agoA one-hour old account with negative karma. Sounds like HN needs an auto-delete algorithm.
- buss 14y agoMy girlfriend was doing medical transcription for a while before going back to school. It's boring, but it's a somewhat skilled position and thus the pay is decent (my girlfriend topped out around 2k per month). Your wife will have to get a medical transcription certification first, though. Here's the company she worked for: http://www.nuance-nts.com/ http://www.nuance-nts.com/ - they're the same people that do Dragon Naturally Speaking and Siri. Kinda weird to be training algorithms that are replacing you.
- Kognizant-Kog 14y agoHey. Glad I ran into this post. My girlfriend likes paperwork, has been working as a nurse for four years, and is looking for a change for at least a bit. Can you tell me where your girlfriend got her transcription certification and how long it took?
- pbj 14y agoMost community colleges with any sort of health programs (which are most) offer medical transcription programs. They're usually only a semester or two long and typically are very affordable. That said you may be able to find faster private/for profit certification programs.
- Kognizant-Kog 14y agoThanks very much. I will look into it.
- buss 14y agoShe got her certification from http://www.careerstep.com/medical-transcription-editing http://www.careerstep.com/medical-transcription-editing It's between a 4 month and 1 year course, depending on how much time you spend training. She finished it in about three months by working on it all the time.
- Kognizant-Kog 14y ago
- rak 14y agoIs all manual labor off the table? Does your wife have any crafting skills? On Etsy, I've seen a lot of people making things that don't seem like they would be labor intensive beyond the occasional shifting and arranging of raw materials. If she's capable of making things that would do well on that website, count me among the jealous :) Good luck.
- cristinacordova 14y agoShe could be a virtual personal assistant and work from home on Zirtual: http://zirtual.com/ http://zirtual.com/
- dneb7 14y agoI'm getting ready to start an online forum, but I don't relish the prospect of having to monitor it for spam/abuse. It seems like having one person casually scan 10, 20, 50? forums throughout the day could easily keep the spam at bay, and each of those forums owners would probably be quite happy to pay $100+? per month to keep their forum spam free.
- britta 14y agoMost of the forums I've seen have a "report spam" feature that could be made more prominent, but human moderators are also valuable. Along the same lines, I know there are independent product developers (iOS apps, Android apps, web apps, etc.) who are tired of doing email support themselves, but find it hard to find competent contractors to do thoughtful first-level support for them. This usually doesn't require advanced technical skills, mostly just being able to interpret vague descriptions, escalate important reports, and respond with polite standard English. I imagine building up a good reputation on a public Q&A site (the Apple discussion forums or something) could be a helpful first step for this, and then using connections to get an initial client or two who can vouch for you.
- danneu 14y agoForum spam is a generally solved problem. And a non-issue for a forum with no traffic. If you are ever getting hit with xrumer blasts, you just need to rotate your "What is 5+5?"-type registration questions because someone hard-coded your registration process into xrumer. Beyond that, if you have any users at all, you'll be able to cultivate an armada of volunteer moderators to help you out.
- franze 14y agojust a wild, very wild and untested, idea. a mini-niche "mechanical turk" iphone(andorid) app. i.e.: if your wife is called "gloria" the app is called "Ask Gloria" * user types in an question/request. * gloria (the real gloria) response. the app is free(? or 0.99) with a 1 question package. an additional question pack (of 5 questions) costs 10(?)$ the selling point is that not an anonymous person or siri-AI answers your stuff, but a real human being. the app can be pitched to techblogs and other stuff as an (funny and "slow life") alternative to siri & co. it's the smallest niche i can think of. just a wild idea, would love if you give it a try and report back to HN.
- domainkiller 14y agoIt's what ChaCha was supposed to be, I guess they still are.
- franze 14y agowith Chacha you ask "a person" (maybe, if the question wasn't asked before), with Ask Gloria you ask Gloria. but yeah, the product has similarities, but the marketing and selling point would be different.
- fffggg 14y agoIt's a really cool idea. I would worry about it interrupting normal life. If Gloria has limited availability (on lunch, sleeping, at a movie or otherwise living life) then the app is significantly less useful.
- Schwolop 14y agoUse twilio to cache the calls. Charge for urgency of response.
- anthonys 14y agoVodafone in Australia (not sure about everywhere else) once had a similar service which they pitched as being able to find the answer to anything. I only used it once or twice, often while trying to prove something in a bar. Pretty handy service however I think you'd want to be able to call in your question as there might be a bit of forwards and backs in trying to work out exactly what you're trying to get the answer to.
- benihana 14y agoIs she good at making things? She could set up an Etsy shop. Know a couple of stay at home moms who make a few thousand dollars a month selling art or crocheted things.
- andyjenn 14y agoDo your accounts, chase invoices, quarterly returns etc.. pay her a salary reduces corp. tax liability and enfranchises her into your startup.. it's working out for us both.. so far
- Tichy 14y agoOn TV they always do this phone sex thing :-)
- adventureful 14y agoNot the most appropriate response to a husband. This isn't Reddit.
- gouranga 14y agoWhy does noone on HN have a sense of humor?
- garethsprice 14y agoBecause it keeps the signal to noise ratio high. I got thoroughly downvoted for making a few wisecracks when I first arrived here and didn't get why. After being here a while I appreciate being able to read comment threads that are centered around useful conversation from people who know what they're talking about and not a contest to see who can crack the funniest joke. If you like that, Reddit's good.
- olalonde 14y agoWe do have one but there are other sites for this.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jasonhitchcock 14y agoI got your back.
- adventureful 14y agoWhen it's pointed toward someone's real wife, in a sincere thread about something important - well, sex worker jokes aren't funny in that situation. Particularly given the guy isn't a friend of yours, nor is the wife. Suggestion: never try that anywhere but a web forum.
- abeh 14y agoSEO consulting - it can be learned relatively quickly, is not that technical for the basics, and is a great complement to your programming/web expertise for your projects
- cgag 14y agoDo you have any recommended resources?
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoSEOmoz ties in with a lot of the most high profile SEO resource points.
- kylebrown 14y agoI know a couple of different businessmen who got a hard pitch over the phone from YellowBook to buy their SEO services, one a plumber and the other water damage restoration. The latter was conned into buying a $600/month premium contract for six months! Its essentially fraud..
- rhspeer 14y agoQA, testing web sites in late development and logging bugs. Most developers hate doing this, & PM's are not good at anything. I usually pay $40/hr for this, however it only takes a few hours, and that rate means the bug report is reported in a way that it's easy to read and recreate without having to have a conversation about it.
- pbj 14y agoI'd love to get into doing this on the side, but 99% of QA jobs I've seen require solid knowledge of programming. Is this not the case?
- rhspeer 14y agoMy little world of web apps there are 2 types of testers, both valuable. 1) Programmer testers that write reusable, and automated tests, as well as encourage & assist the dev team to write their own tests. These folks work through the entire project , usually on product type projects. 2) Manual Testers (there must be a better name) These folks are good communicators that focus primarily on the client perspective. Developers, and their tests, tend to evaluate code in a rigid & consistent way that may not reflect the end user experience. These testers are also used on products but more commonly on turn-and-burn projects for Agencies or startup MVP's that are not huge yet. If you did want to get into programming I do think that QA is an outstanding way to bootstrap a web dev career. I've laid out a plan here http://www.robertspeer.com/blog/no-degree-no-problem-some-hard-knocks-may-apply/ http://www.robertspeer.com/blog/no-degree-no-problem-some-ha... It's not how I got got into making web apps but I think it's a solid way to get into a well paying career.
- jholman 14y agoAt all of my past companies (the current is notably different), and the majority of companies where my programmer friends work, QA requires no meaningful knowledge of programming, just knowledge of the product how programmers (the people) think, and how to cope with them That said, it's not at all clear to me how this is a work-from-home job.
- gouranga 14y agoBuying shit on Cragslist (or Gumtree in the UK) and selling on eBay and vice versa. My better half manages 500-800GBP a month with this quite happily. Persuaded some muppet to sell her a Korg Triton for 80GBP and got 580GBP on ebay for it :) Unfortunately it got converted to clothes and shoes pretty quickly :(
- joh6nn 14y agolet me translate what you just said: "Persuaded some muppet": she gained her mark's confidence. "to sell her a Korg Triton for 80GBP": she ripped her mark off. "and got 580GBP on ebay for it": and then she profited from the rip-off. in some circles, that is referred to as grifting.
- damian2000 14y agowho the fk sold it for that price - beaker? ;-)
- gouranga 14y agoNot far off :)
- rmATinnovafy 14y agoWhat is her current skill set?
- lubujackson 14y agoIf she's tech-minded she might be able to learn how to do some SEO work for local businesses. She can literally call up every restaurant in town and see if they want help with their website or their Yelp page, etc.
- flotblot 14y agoAm waiting on a new HN submission, "Tell HN: My husband needs to get off of HN and start working so I don't have to pick up after his sorry ass, and BTW- I don't need your help. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."
- graeme 14y agoShe could offer lessons on Craigslist. Depending on the subject, you can usually earn 20-40$ an hour.
- tluyben2 14y agoMy sister is a stay at home mom as well; I got her onto oDesk and she's having a good time and making more than $1000 the first month working part time while nurturing her daughter at home.
- jasonhitchcock 14y agoSomeone's gotta make the cam joke, and I guess it's going to be me.
- qwak 14y agoMy partner spent the last couple of years travelling around a lot between countries and couldn't maintain a normal job. She ended up finding an academic essay editing/proofing service that would send her jobs to do. They gave her some training via skype to start with, and she's enjoyed the work. Look here: http://www.uni-edit.net/ http://www.uni-edit.net/
- Drbble 14y agoUndermine kids education while taking their money and cheating their peers. Nice.
- luv2code 14y agoMy wife was in the same position. She found some work pretty quickly networking at startup meetups. She ended overseeing a technical project, and doing some lite database work. She had a few opportunities; but picked the one that had the fewest hours. If she has some skills, or can even pretend to have them, there are people that are desperate to give work to other people they meet at meetups.
- whitesnow 14y agolive cam stripping. enjoy.
- mkelley 14y agoThanks for all the replies, I actually wasn't expecting so much of a response - maybe there are a lot more people out there in a similar situation. I like the medical transcriptionist suggestion, as well as the ebay & craigslist buy & resell though I'm not sure she or I know the best type of items to focus on. As for a niche site selling x-type of items... that sounds alright and one I've thought of - but what's a good niche market where the google ad words prices aren't astronomical? Anyone?
- ctdonath 14y agoUsborne Books is a major distributor of childrn's books. Sales are robust, it's big enough to have real influence & support but individual sellers can make good in their own region. Pretty much a "make as much as you want to" (with proportial effort). Worth looking into. http://www.myubam.com/ecommerce/opportunity.asp?sid=H3967&gid=143603270 http://www.myubam.com/ecommerce/opportunity.asp?sid=H3967...
- rwhitman 14y agoIf she's going to dip her toes into ecommerce there is no point in developing a site and trying to build up traffic. Thats a losing battle. Start with a platform that has a built in network where the marketplace and infrastructure is already there for you like eBay stores or Etsy. If she nails it on eBay then you build a site and drive sales to her site. If she's willing to put in the work and knows a market pretty well it shouldn't be hard to acquire things for below their value, pretty them up and flip them on eBay. My girlfriend made a few bucks buying shoes at sample sales and selling them on eBay, but she knows the market pretty well. Back in the day I used to snipe music gear auctions with bad listings on eBay for below value, clean them up and take some nice photos and flip it back on eBay. Bigger ticket items mean good margins. I would also have her take a look at some of the types of gigs on ODesk or one of the personal assistant micro task sites (FancyHands, TaskRabbit, Zaarly etc), she might be able to build up a skillset out of random virtual gigs
- egypturnash 14y agoIMHO, If you have an income stream that supports it, then the answer is not "a side business". It's "go to school for something she wants to do better". And if taking care of the kid doesn't give her a chance to leave the house, the answer is "online classes and night classes when you're home to take care of the kid". (If the thing she wants to do better is "draw" then here are some super awesome free drawing lessons from a master animator: http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-lessons-fundamentals-of.html http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-le... )
- petercooper 14y agoDoes she have a good grasp of written English? (I'm not pulling your leg. Many people struggle to type readable, grammatically correct sentences.) People have already mentioned SEO, but there's a broader demand for 'article writers' and even people who can write summaries of Web pages, produce ledes for online news services, do proof reading of text, etc.
- karanbhangui 14y agoWhere are you located? My startup is looking for customer service reps.
- prbuckley 14y agoSkype for the sick, create a service that does scheduled calls (ideally video calls) to the elderly and infirm for a fee. I had this idea because my father suffers from Parkinsons disease and gets quite lonely in the house during the day. He lives in Florida and I life in California and I can't call him as much as I would like to given the time difference. I know he gets lonely and would love to just have a conversation with someone during the day. I would pay to have someone skype him for 20-30 minutes in the middle of the day just to provide some conversation. I am guessing that there are many other people who are in my situation with sick or elderly relatives. I know I would pay for a service like this and you would be bringing happiness into peoples lives.
- rmATinnovafy 14y agoI'm sorry about your dad having Parkinsons. As a father and son, I can relate to how you feel. Your idea is good. Maybe someone will take up the offer. Good luck and good health to both of you.
- dave1619 14y agoThis is a great idea. Growing population of elderly. This could be a great way for adult children to gain piece of mind that their parents are ok.
- cpeterso 14y agoiPads make video calls very simple even for people who are not computer savvy. Just configure the software once and it's always ready.
- asdfprou 14y agoYou should check out TAGLab at the University of Toronto. They are working on a very similar problem. One of their projects involves a touch-sensitive picture album where the patient can request interaction with a loved one. The patient taps a picture and a notification goes to the recipient, and on the other end the recipient can take a photo or write a note or record a video to send back. http://taglab.utoronto.ca/ http://taglab.utoronto.ca/
- zem 14y agocraigslist/ebay flipping - find stuff that seems to be underpriced, badly described/advertised, or worth more than the seller is asking because of some feature that you have special knowledge of but they don't, buy it, then turn around and sell it for a profit (hopefully!)
- spiredigital 14y agoMkelley – Drop shipping has been mentioned a few time, and I wanted to give you my thoughts on the business model. I've had a lot of success with drop shipping eCommerce and have been doing it full-time for more than 4 years. Robryan is right to some extent - it can be harder than it looks - but with some dedication and a good niche, it's a great way to create online income. A few tips from my own experience: - Picking a niche where you can add value is crucial. The more complex niches are often best as these are the ones where you can create the most educational content related to your products. If you aren't able to offer some kind of value-added information, you have to compete on price. And I don't recommend that. - Finding good supplier(s) is really important, and I highly recommend only getting into a market if you have TWO suppliers. As Robryan alluded to, it can be difficult to keep warehouse inventory synced up with your website, which is why I ALWAYS use multiple suppliers with overlapping product lines. The vast majority of the time Supplier A doesn't have an item, I can get it shipped from Supplier B. - Multiple suppliers prevents you from being totally dependent on one source of inventory. It also gives you geographic diversity, allowing you to save on shipping costs - and reduce transit time - by routing orders through the warehouse closest to your customer. - Not seeing the physical products you sell CAN be a challenge, and it's often a good idea to order a few of your best sellers. However, I can tell you from personal experience it's possible to become an expert for a line of products that you've never touched. With the wealth of product pictures, reviews and information online you really don't have to touch something to know a lot about it. As your business grows, you'll quickly learn the ins-and-outs of the niche through your customers experiences, opinions and problems. - You WILL need to be be good at - or willing to learn - marketing and SEO. PPC advertising has gotten so expensive that you won't be able to make much of a profit using that as your primary traffic driver. PPC is a great tool early on to drive some traffic and make sure it's converting at a reasonable level, but long-term you'll need to build organic traffic if you want to make any serious money. - One of my favorite aspects of eCommerce is that it's a great model for automated, passive income. If you invest a LOT of time up-front in building an information rich-store and market it well, the operations side of the business (fulfilling orders, dealing with returns, solving customer problems) is fairly simple to outsource. I recently took a 7 month working vacation to travel around-the-world while my team back home managed the business. Did it require a lot of up-front work? Absolutely. But I believe the long-term ROI (return on investment) with eCommerce beats many other business models. I'm not sure if eCommerce would be the right path for your wife, but I hope it is helpful! If you're interested in learning more, I blog about building eCommerce stores and would recommend a post detailing how I got started: http://www.ecommercefuel.com/my-corporate-escape-story/ http://www.ecommercefuel.com/my-corporate-escape-story/ I also spent the last week working on a 50+ page eBook that covers how I pick a niche, find suppliers and evaluate market demand and competition. It's a free resource I'll be giving away on the blog in the next few weeks, and would be happy to send you a copy if you're interested. Feel free to email me, or reply here in the comments. Best of luck!
- andrewhillman 14y agoHow about get her blogging (if she has neat viewpoint on something) and some adsense. It would take a while to reach $1K per month though.
- damian2000 14y agoAgreed - you probably won't reach anywhere near $1K per month unless you are in the 300k hits per day territory, which is pretty much impossible for most bloggers. Just extrapolating my own blog figures from adsense - I've made maybe $50 in adsense so far, from half a million views (over the past several months). While blogging is technically easy to monetize, it is very difficult to make decent money from it.
- MoonUnit 14y agoIf you are making only 1k per month from 300k hits per day that means you are either not presenting the adsense in the correct way or you are blogging about a subject that does not have any competition for the niche that advertisers are willing to pay for clicks other than a few pennies. As an example I have a site that makes around $400.00 per month that only get 150-300 hits per day. With proper research and the way you setup the blog you can potentially create a great income stream even without hitting huge amounts of traffic. It is all in what you blog about and the amount of people who may be interested.
- patio11 14y agoA younger, stupider me would have suggested writing for one of the freelancer sites. However, that seems to put her on a collision course with lots of not-so-savvy-but-they-don't-need-to-be folks who would be thrilled to make 1/4 of her reserve price. Ignoring credentials for a moment, does your wife have any skill which is commercially valuable? Can she develop one? Many knowledge-worker things can get delivered over the Internet at fairly high price points. For example, does she have a solid grasp of high school mathematics? Does she understand who cares about that and why? If so, that trivially supports $40+ an hour. (Customer: Tiger Mom in a high-achieving suburban school district.) Does she have native proficiency in a foreign language? (n.b. English is a foreign language to lots of people who have money!) Tutoring goes from free to $10 to $40+ an hour. (Why the range? Customer selection. Think less "high school foreign exchange student" and more "executive recently transferred from Nomura Securities to their NYC office who feels his career growth will be stymied by his poor conversational English skills.") Does she have a hobby which is common among upper middle class Americans and which carries social esteem? Can she teach it? For more about this general topic, see Ramit Sethi.
- alinajaf 14y ago> "executive recently transferred from Nomura Securities to their NYC office who feels his career growth will be stymied by his poor conversational English skills." Have paid double the top end of your range for lessons over skype. IME they also tend to be a lot easier to teach than students paying at the lower end.
- SkyMarshal 14y ago> For example, does she have a solid grasp of high school mathematics? Does she understand who cares about that and why? If so, that trivially supports $40+ an hour. (Customer: Tiger Mom in a high-achieving suburban school district.) Doing that in person is probably most lucrative. I know a physics grad in the Bay Area who does it as a regular job, full-time income for after school/evening/weekend work. But also worth checking out the new wave of online tutoring sites, that connect real tutors to real students. Tutorspree is the only one I can recall, but pretty sure there are a few others: http://www.tutorspree.com/ http://www.tutorspree.com/
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- Schultzy 14y agoPlease forgive the self promotion, but in an effort to teach myself something about code, and to help people I know in a similar situation as you described, I have been building out a Website with resources for making a little bit of extra money that I think you might find helpful. http://cushmoney.com/ http://cushmoney.com/ Personally, I would suggest taking a look at both LeapForce and LionBridge, because they offer 10-20 hours a week working from home at $15/hour evaluating Google's search results and doing other online tasks. They have an application/approval process to go through, but it could be a good fit for what you are looking for. Side note: I know the site isn't really polished yet, but I'd love some constructive feedback if you have any.
- newobj 14y agoPlacenta encapsulation
- kleiba 14y agounfortunately she doesn't have the best formal education credentials but she is far from stupid. Could she not use the time to improve her credentials?
- jondot 14y agoVoiceBunny perhaps? http://voicebunny.com/ http://voicebunny.com/
- sparknlaunch12 14y agoWhat is she good at? What are her interests? What would she like to spend 24/7 doing? We wrote up a post last month - http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/step-1-where-to-begin/ http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/step-1-where-to... Essentially if you want to go down the path of a real business (ie one that generates $1k per month) you really need to be pursuing something you believe in and are willing to commit 110% towards. While all these online ventures being suggested here are noble and probably relevant. You have to ask the basic questions first.
- scotty79 14y agoLet her make and sell stock photography. Maybe it's not usually a good way to make money but it's lots of fun and seeing even small bits of passive income is very pleasant.
- Jemm 14y agoIn Canada a major pizza chain uses stay at home people to take telephone orders. Needs a good Internet connection from what I hear.
- srconstantin 14y agoThe lowest stress, highest paying per hour job I can think of is tutoring high school students. $50 an hour is normal, $100 is possible in affluent neighborhoods if you have a good pitch about why you're worth it; I have even heard of $500 an hour, but that was a math PhD student who found a remarkably rich Manhattan family.
- readme 14y agoEducation is going to be vital. Don't expect her to become an autodidact overnight. Get her enrolled in some online courses. A lot of community colleges have day cares, as well.
- menothere 14y agoDoes she enjoy being around kids? Considering the severity of her herniated disc, she may be able to successfully start an at-home day care for children in your neighbourhood. My aunt does this and she is making reasonably good money. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but it's definitely more than minimum wage. IIRC, she takes care of about 12 kids scheduled at different times through out the week. Usually no more than 4-6 at a time though.
- lolilives 14y agoI recently started using concierge services available to some credit cards. Basically, concierge workers are similar to personal assistants and will fulfill requests such as book concert tickets, make phone calls for reservations, do some google research regarding one topic or another. I found out that most concierge workers actually work from home. If she's ok with that kind of work, it might be worth looking into. Here's a reference: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/VIPdesk-com-Reviews-E29813.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/VIPdesk-com-Reviews-E29813....
- overgryphon 14y agoEarning the credentials to have a satisfying career once the kid no longer benefits from a stay-at-home mom is more useful than earning side income doing something boring. After 10-15 years of being a stay-at-home mom, she will be even more bored if she can't find a job and no longer has children to care for.