working from home

[mrmnko]

hi

i'm a stay at home dad looking after my 2 children does anyone know of any small business i could set up. theres loads of get rich quick schemes on ebay but i just want something that i can earn a few quid while looking after my children. any ideas???

something to do with computers would be good.

thx

[lady_p_gold]

Well I suppose the obvious one would be to be a child minder, however there may be some prejudice or caution shown by some as you are a man, however wrong headed that might be ..... it is not easy to work from home with small children so good luck ..... maybe someone else will come up with something, and its something that every mother has thought about ! I once started a marriage bureau but I wouldn't recommend that !

[mrmnko]

thank you

i know what you mean about peoples perception of male childminding.

i was a teachers assistant for 2 years and had people against me then. will it ever change??

i doubt it.

thanks again

[WendyS]

I don't know how skillful you are with computers , but if you are reasonably competent and feel you have the skill to help people learn, which I assume you do have if you were a teacher's assistant, I wonder whether you could set yourself up as a Computer Tutor. Aim your target audience at a level you feel competent to deal with, i.e. possibly offering pensioners or the computer-illiterate an "Idiot's Guide to Computers", starting with "How to access the Internet, (including useful things like ordering Home Shopping from Sainsbury's etc), How to use e-mail, Simple word processing, etc.

There may not be a suitable day-time class for this in your local area. (Check your library or contact your Adult Education Class for a prospectus to see what the competition is like). If you feel you could make a go of something like this, put one or two lessons together and advertise for your first pupils on a "One to One" basis. If they feel comfortable with you and recommend you to others, you might be able to make some income from it.

I don't know how young your children are, but perhaps some local mothers might even be encouraged to become some of your first clients?

Good luck. Hope you can find something.

[Sparkles3]

you could try mystery shopping and there are also lots of surveys on line that you can do, some of which pay a bit of money, others that enter you into a competition. Choose carefully - some are just an opportunity to get your email address and send you spam! Reputable ones I'm aware of are: www.lightspeedpanel.co.uk www.yougov.co.uk a German one (in English) called something like Media Research Panel (try Google for that one) where you earn Amazon vouchers. Mystery shopping - try www.cybershoppers.nop.co.uk and www.retaileyes.co.uk . There is also an online one which is quite good, which involves looking at websites, www.edigitalresearch.com . None of these will make you a fortune, but are very flexible and I have done them working around staying at home with my children - gave me something else to think about!

[Tartan Tiger]

How about trading on Ebay?

I think lots of people go to car boot sales/charity shops to buy at the weekends and then sell it on Ebay during they week. You'd have to do lots of research to know what prices things generally go for.

Also, people sell things on the notice boards in supermarkets which you can make a profit on if you sell them on Ebay. Even broken washing machines can go for over �50 on Ebay if you live in the right area!

Get old stuff from your friends and sell it - make a deal to take 20% of anything you get for it - and they'll still be happy that you give them money for their old tat!

Ebay is an ideal business for working from home.

[DMA]

Typist - lots of small business cant type

Proof reader

Depends what skills youve got.

Bookkeeping may be easy for you to learn.Thats a good one to do at home. i have plans to do that myself as Im from accounting background.

Youd need to get a copy of SAGE or whatever. THere are alot of bookkeeping courses around.

[jason1980]

Hi. I self taught myself web design with an easy cheap graphics program & microsoft frontpage. After about 8 weeks I got a domain name for about �22 a year with free hosting and uploaded my website for webdesigns & logo designs. I advertised on google ad words and although not a great earner the main point of it was to earn extra money to pay for my AAT 4 year accountancy course which it did. Now that I'm fully qualified in accountancy I stopped doing it.

Before my AAT course I completed the OCR Advanced bookkeeping from home through my local college - you could give that go and you wouldn't need Sage with bookkeeping, just a lot of accounts pads & pro forma books. Bookkeeping is really really simple, just moving totals around from A - B and double checking totals to prepare a trial balance, profit & loss account, then balance sheet.

Good luck with whatever you choose. I've known people set up a cleaning contractors where they find companies that need cleaners, then find the cleaners to put in them - very little outlay and you don't need to clean yourself.

[papia]

You can earn thousands of dollersor more by doing
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