LEGIT How To Earn While The Kids Are In School

[June]

I’ve realized that flexibility is one of the most attractive advantages of working from home. That, and the kind of peace and quiet that being in an office with nosey co-workers can’t offer you. Being a WAHM means juggling different sources of income while making sure the house and everything in it still look decent. The husband and kids (and cats) need to be fed on time, and there are tons of chores to do on a daily basis - wash, rinse, and repeat.

But there are still those blessed hours of silence and solitude when I find myself actually sitting down and wondering “now what?”. These hours are usually when the kids are still in school and my husband is still at work. I’m not one to be idle and waste time on activities that don’t benefit me and my family (I do relax during the weekends, so don’t be so quick to call me a workaholic...yet!). So in the process, I have learned to do several income-generating activities during those hours that I’m all alone! Here are some of my favorite ones.

Doing data entry and simple online tasks

This is perhaps one of the easiest part time jobs to get into because employers usually don’t require a high educational attainment or even an extensive past work history. The most this job requires is being a fast but accurate typist, and also someone who is familiar with spreadsheets and repetitive, rote tasks.

Amazon Mechanical Turk or MTurk promises you can “make money in your spare time” and aside from data processing and verification, you can also choose to do image or video processing, and even gather information for website content! Clickworker is also looking for Internet habitues like you and me who can search and categorize data for their clients, as well as create text and copy editing!

Freelance writing

I’ve already written about earning extra income as a ghostwriter, which goes to show how many ways you can become a freelance writer with your own schedule and area of specialization. Also, depending on your experience, you can actually earn a lot from freelance writing! The secret is in knowing which sites and platforms pay well, so I did you all a favor by rounding up some of the better-paying and fairer content sites currently in existence (you’re welcome!).

• BlogMutt - if you’re a US-based freelance writer, with impeccable grammar and strong research skills, BlogMutt may have a job for you every single day! You simply select a topic, write a post, and if a customer purchases your post, you get paid!
• Buy Keyword Articles - touting a “people-based content writing” platform, this site pays by the hour and writers can earn up to $18 hourly via PayPal!
• Crowd Content - Crowd Content is constantly looking for writers and editors for their different customers. This platform is open to writers in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK. Depending on the client and the kind of content, writers can earn an average of 8 cents per word.
• Hire Writers - whether you’re a beginner or an experienced writer, Hire Writers is looking for you! Signing up is free and is open to residents of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Successful writers can earn up to $20 per article (with payment sent via PayPal).
• Love To Know - this site emphasizes their flexible schedules and how members are free to choose their working hours in a remote set-up.
• Online Writing Jobs - open to all talented freelance writers with strong writing skills (and a strong motivation), this platform currently needs SEO content writers, copywriters, bloggers and community influencers, and subject matter experts to create content for the brands and companies that are their clients.
• SkyWord - SkyWord needs writers and content creators for their blogs, social media posts, and feature articles for their media and Fortune 500 clients. The pay is very impressive - some have reported getting a hundred dollars for an assignment!
• SmartBrief - based in Washington, DC, SmartBrief is open only to US residents. They pay by the hour, and writers can earn up to $14 hourly!
• The Content Authority - The Content Authority has prerequisites to becoming a writer with them, including good English reading and writing comprehension, at least high-school level proper grammar, the ability to do proper research, meeting deadlines, accepting feedback from clients, and knowing how to follow instructions.
• Words of Worth - I read a post on this forum about this site being legit, so I’m adding Words of Worth to this list. There’s a short questionnaire to determine eligibility to be a writer for them.

Joining GPT sites and forums

Hi, everyone! Here’s a shout-out to you, haha! We’re all here for various reasons - to earn a little side income, to share feedback and experience with different GPT and paid survey sites, and I guess - to make friends and make daily life more exciting? At any rate, this forum has become one of my go-to sites to spend some time on while waiting for the kids to get home, so I’m thankful I’ve stumbled upon it

Tutoring other kids

I recently wrote an article about working from home, and some of the jobs you can try out at first. There is an entry there for tutorial and online teaching, as well as language and coaching lessons, along with links to resources. There are a lot of things you can teach online in the span of a couple of hours, so it’s a good way to spend some of your free time and get paid for it to boot!

The verdict?

These are just some of the tasks I’ve done while waiting for the kids to come home, laden with their own homework and looking for snacks to fill their hungry tummies. They are very doable activities, with just a steady Internet connection and enough time to accomplish tasks, and before you know it, you’ve already augmented your income while the kids are in school! Sort of like waiting for glue to dry, but with financial perks.

Your turn!

Aside from participating in this forum and your preferred GPT and survey sites, what other profitable activities do you do in your free time? Please share them below and let’s talk at length about them!

 

[metsrock69]

These are some good points for not only the kids being in school, but for anyone who has some free time as well. As for profitable activities, I enjoy going to auctions and selling stuff I find

 

[ruthmongare]

In fact freelancing and blogging earns one well and the good thing is that you can make them your full time job as long as you get good clients and good traffic to your blogs.

 

[bojel]

Very informative post. Thank you for sharing this however, I wanted to know what to do on LoveToKnow. Is this a writing job site? Or a forum site? Blogmutt souinds interesting however, it is not available to my country.

 

[bojel]

I love to work at Lovetoknow because of the different topics that you can do. Here you can have flexible hours to do your job. You are paid because of your performance to do the job. And what is important is that you can have a team to be with you to assist and to be of help to do the job.

Is this is forum or blogging site? I think it is not. I tried visiting the site today and I have seen about job openings and more on technical.

 

[Fred W]

Not a WAHM myself (hehe, obviously) but my wife is now. Before she quit her office job to work full time at home though, I was the one who had to figure out ways on how to earn while the kids are in school. I have two kids, and for a time they had slightly different schedules so that left me with a non-linear timeline to take them to school and pick them up, help them with homework, and get their snacks and dinners ready. You know that scene in The Incredibles when Bob had to be a stay-at-home dad while his wife had to do superhero duties elsewhere? Yep, that was me for some time! Not that I minded - it just sort of had me puzzled for a bit on how to juggle domestic and work-related stuff.

On that note, my hat’s off to you WAHMs!

Now it helps that my wife and I are sharing both breadwinner and homemaker duties. We can work around our own schedules and pick up the other’s slack during sick or “off” days (everyone has them). So far, the best income-generator for me as a home-based freelancer is ghostwriting. I have clients who have me write up content for their blogs, websites, product and service catalogues, and even speeches and other things requiring their personas to shine through. It pays well, and it leaves me time to do surveys and GPT stuff, which earn me some extra passive income.

Other than that, I did try to rent out my garage and car several times, but my wife wasn’t very comfortable with the entire economy sharing scenario. I’m looking towards other potential sources of income as the original post mentioned above, and I will be sure to give them reviews based on my personal experience.

 

[Holden]

Tutoring kids is one of the unfulfilled niches in online teaching. Most of the online courses and companies seem to focus on language skills. And I get why – with various economies becoming more and more global, there’s even more reason now to learn a new language (usually English and/or Mandarin Chinese).

Most of the students of those language classes are usually college-age kids or professionals. With that sort of demand for language instructors, I think teaching kids has fallen on the wayside. I know this because when I decided to teach creative writing for kids on Udemy, I was surprised by the amount of parents who bought my lessons. Paydirt! (Still had my regular classes, of course)

This is my way of saying, there’s value in trying to work for unfulfilled niches. While most people are headed one way (i.e. teaching English to non-English speakers), you can always go down a different road. And I happen to think teaching kids is one of those niches.

You don’t have to teach writing as I did. You can also teach math, science, or art classes. Anything you feel you have the skills and ability to teach, you can try out. Doing it online reduces the difficulty trying to schedule classes with your students. Go for it!

 

[Naomi]

I’ve written about my experiences doing adult-chat (via Flirtbucks and other sites) in the past. If you’re okay with this sort of work, I think it’s a great job to do when your kids (and everyone else in the household) is away at school. Just make sure you know exactly what time your kids are heading home to avoid any awkward or embarrassing situations! Lol.

But don’t knock it. This was a serious side hustle for me. I was able to earn around $60 an hour juggling multiple chat windows. And despite the name “Flirtbucks” most of my chats were pretty innocuous and harmless. Mostly, I chatted with lonely guys who didn’t have the confidence or social graces to talk to actual girls. So I guess I was their training partner in that regard, lol. Most of them just wanted to talk about their hobbies and be reassured that they’re not weird or immature. (Although that one otaku who collected bishoujo figures had a lot of work to do in the social graces department)

I had to stop because I wanted to look into other earning methods, like taking stock photos and transcribing, and doing adult chat was kind of difficult – if not totally impossible – to do alongside those things. But you should definitely give it a shot if you’ve got the heart for it!

 

[Amos]

This is a great list, and I hope a lost of full-time moms (and dads, too!) find something here that they can use. As a stay at home dad, I love watching videos. It’s the perfect way to earn while my grade school daughter is away at school, or one of her many extra-curricular projects (she’s joining the soccer team, and I can’t be more psyched). But just because they kids are away at school or wherever, that doesn’t mean we have “free” time necessarily. I am actually more busy when my girl is away, since that’s one of the few times when I can put in a few hours of uninterrupted work. My to-do list quickly piles up when the kid is out of the house. And that’s why I keep mentioning watching videos to earn. I’m not the best multi-tasker in the world, but watching videos is something I can easily do while doing other, more engaging, work. For example, I’ll be working on a blog or transcribing an audio recording for a client. I can keep videos playing in the background. The earnings from that isn’t so high, but since I literally don’t need to do anything with it, it’s like a little bonus over my regular earnings.

 

[Amos]

Sorry for posting again! But I thought I’d give an update, now that the holiday break has been over and my kids are all back in school. As mentioned in my previous post, watching videos is one of my favorite earning methods when I’m alone at home (the wifey works a regular corporate job). I still do a lot of other stuff, but watching videos is like my force multiplier, haha.

But that’s not why I’m posting. Since everyone is out of the house, I also found this time to be a great opportunity to earn… Pokémon GO Coins. Yes, I am a total Pokémon Go addict, haha. Pokémon Go Coins, or PokéCoins, as they’re called in the game, aren’t “real” money, but darnit, it’s such an important part of the game that it might as well be!

Any Pokémon GO players, here? Since I have quite a bit of, er, unsupervised time, I’ve been all over the neighborhood looking for gyms to take over and sit my Pokémons at. This is so far the only legit way Pokémon Go Coins (other than actually buying them – but where’s the fun in that?) I get bonuses for each Pokémon sitting on a gym. I know the hype around the game has died down, but I still enjoying playing!

 

[rocketman]

Hey this was me when my kid was still in preschool and it was my task to pick her up right after and take her to the park. My ex-wife was working as a teacher in another district so it was all on me to prepare stuff for my daughter and fetch her when school ended for the day but in between those were hours that vexed me. I felt like i was wasting time not being productive when i could be earning some extra money for my daughter’s education and other needs. So yes i did try data entry jobs and crowdsourcing work to earn while my kid was in school. And since you mentioned Clickworker i want to give a short review here about it.

• I did some product descriptions and proofreading for the site, those made up the bulk of my tasks at clickworker
• I use their Android app which is cool because even while waiting for my kid at the playground i can still get to do easy tasks (when they are available) and earn on my free time
• It’s a microwork platform so yeah i didn’t get to earn megabucks. But i did earn enough for a couple of after-school ice cream and donut treats with my daughter so it’s all good, man.

 

[Kanvi]

Good article, however, a bit limiting on what one can actually do. There are tons of others sites such as upwork.com, guru.com, fiverr.com, peopleperhour.com, etc. where you can also put up a profile and put your skills up for bidding at their market places, be it coding, photography, designing, writing, you name it.