If you've made the decision, whether by necessity or choice, to stay at home to look after your kids you might find yourself needing or wanting to earn a bit of extra money. There are many exciting ways that you can start making that cash today. Here are five to get you started:
Amazon Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourcing marketplace where you can work on tasks (or HITs as they are called) to earn bits of money that is paid into your Amazon Payments account which can then be transferred into your bank account. There is no fee for signing up, but Amazon requires a holding period where you must be active on Mechanical Turk for ten days before being allowed to transfer any money you've earned. The HITs you are allowed to work on will depend upon your HIT acceptance rating, how many HITs you've already worked on, and qualifications that you have received. Earning a sizeable amount of money with Amazon Turk is possible depending upon how much time you devote to it.
Join a Survey Site
Survey websites offer you small amounts of money for making an account and completing surveys. This method of earning money can be very slow going as you might not be eligible for all of the surveys on the website, but it's a nice bit of extra cash to go towards something fun! There should be no fee for signing up, so quickly leave any website that requires one. Swagbucks, Harris Poll Online, and PaidViewpoint are some good websites to use.
Offer Your Babysitting Services
Since you're already watching your own child(ren) consider if you could also take on watching someone else's. People pay a fortune every month for daycares and babysitters to watch their children while they work or when they go out somewhere nice for a break. Think about how many kids you could look after and what hours would work best for you, and then make your services known to the world.
Pet Sit
If you want to earn a decent amount of cash but don't think you want to take on the responsibility of other people's children, consider looking after their pets instead. If you like animals, pet care is an easy way to earn some money with very little hassle for you. Consider which animals you'd rather watch and the level of care that they would need. A dog would need more attention than a hamster for instance, but you can also charge a lot more.
Find Some Online Tutoring or Editorial Work
Finding online tutoring or editorial work tends to be a little more like an actual job interview. Many websites that hire people for these services will require you to either have a degree, pass some online tests, or both. The pay for this work could really help you contribute to your bills, but might require a bit more of your time.