This post may contain affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. You can find my full disclosure page here.
Note from Lisa: I’m so excited to share this guest post with you! In it you’ll find nine legitimate passive income ideas for stay at home moms and dads that you can use in 2020 and beyond. Ready to learn more?
Take it away Davies…
Let’s face it
Being a parent is such a blessing, but it also comes with many responsibilities. If you don’t have a secure job or a stable source of income, parenting can be really difficult. According to Forbes, more Millennial women are becoming stay-at-home-moms (SAHM) and 1 in every 5 US families comprises of stay-at-home-parents (source).
My wife (Aurelia) and I have been stay-at-home-parents for the last five years since we got our daughter (Casey). After losing my job at a reputable law firm in Atlanta and my wife quitting her job to raise Casey, I was desperate and in a financial mess. That’s when we turned to stay-home-jobs to make ends meet and that’s what we want to share with you in this article.
How Can You Make Money As a Stay-At-Home Mom or Dad?
There are many ideas (both online and offline) you can undertake and earn income from the comfort of your home. As long as you are passionate, knowledgeable, and willing, you can earn a decent income without doing much.
Some ideas include blogging, YouTube, podcasting, selling eBooks etc. Offline ideas include side hustles like delivery apps, cashback & discount programs, charging scooters, renting your things, etc.
In this post, we share with you 9 legit passive income ideas for stay home parents that are simple and lucrative over time. We have undertaken most of these ideas and can attest that they actually work! They are simple but require a lot of dedication and patience before becoming lucrative.
The best part? Most of these ideas don’t interfere with your parenting duties and can become highly passive once you get started.
Let’s dive right in
1.Blogging
If you are passionate about something or are knowledgeable in a specific topic, you can share your knowledge with others through a blog, monetize it, and earn a decent passive income from it. Blogging is very popular today (source) and having a blog is an excellent way of starting your online business. With the right content, strategies, and a growing audience, you can earn over $1000/month from a monetized blog.
For example, I am a passionate writer so I started a freelance writing blog, DT Writers, to help people create blog content. My wife also loves sharing her parenting ideas with new moms through her blog. Together, we make more money from our monetized blogs than we did at our previous jobs.
Creating a blog is easy but getting it to the monetization stage (the stage when you start earning income from it) is the hardest part. You have to dedicate your time and some money to build your blog, generate traffic, and grow your audience.
The idea is to choose a niche topic for your blog in order to beat competition and grow your audience fast. For example, instead of blogging about ‘parenting’, you can narrow your niche to ‘parenting for millennial moms.’ That way, you resonate with a specific audience and grow your blog fast because any millennial mom looking for parenting tips is likely to visit your blog.
With the right strategies, you can monetize your blog and start earning passive from it. Some ways of monetizing your blog include placing ads selling digital & physical goods, affiliate marketing etc. With the knowledge gained from your first blog, you can create another one and earn more income.
Resource to Help: Here’s a step-by-step guide to starting a blog as a busy mom.
2. YouTube
If blogging is not your cup of tea, you can consider sharing information in video format and earn money. Video content is on demand and currently, YouTube is the king of video content sharing. With the right idea, interesting content, and a sound following, you can monetize your channel and earn a decent income from it.
All you need is content that attracts an audience and with time, you can monetize your channel and earn a decent income from it. Getting started on YouTube is easy but getting your channel to the monetization stage is the hardest part. Currently, you need to have at least 1000 subscribers and 4000 watched hours over the last one year for your channel to be considered for monetization.
As a stay home dad or mom, you only need to identify a niche and create interesting or educative content. Once your channel is monetized, you can earn income without too much effort. You can monetize your channel through placing ads, selling products, affiliate marketing etc. With the right strategies, YouTube can be a good source of income in 2020 and beyond (source).
3. Creating Niche Sites
A niche site is a blog that shares specific information about a niche topic – meant to resonate with a particular audience. The audience shares common interests and a niche site is a resourceful source of specific/detailed information.
For example instead of blogging about outdoor photography, you can create a niche site that shares detailed information about the topic. You can create a niche site like ‘Outdoor Photography with DSLR Camera’ or ‘Outdoor Photography with second-hand DSLR Camera.’
That way, anyone who wants to learn about outdoor photography with DSLR cameras will most likely end up on your site. So, a niche site helps you beat competition and stand out from millions of other pages that people search online. This helps you generate traffic, grow your audience, and get your site to the monetization stage.
Your content is key. Always remember that your audience visits your site to research information about a specific topic so you should offer the best quality content, do immense research, and simplify your content to make it easily understandable. With a sound audience, you can monetize your site (through ads, affiliate marketing, selling products, email marketing etc.) and start earning passive income from it. With the right content, a growing audience, and working strategies, you can earn over $1000/month with a niche site (source).
4. Podcasting
Are you knowledgeable or passionate about an idea? You can share the knowledge with others through podcasts and earn a passive income while at it. Podcasts have become very popular nowadays and more people listen to them than before. 70% of the US population is aware about podcasts, 32% listen to podcasts monthly, and 22% listen to podcasts on a weekly basis (source).
You just need to identify a popular topic or niche, create content, generate traffic, and grow your audience. With this, you can monetize your channel and earn a passive income from it.
Just like blogging, content quality is key for any podcasting business. It helps you generate traffic and grow your audience fast. However, building a successful podcast business is not easy.
You need to create time in your busy schedule to record, edit & post content, promote your podcast, and monetize your content before you can start earning a passive income. Then you can monetize your podcast through placing ads, affiliate marketing, selling products etc. You can also earn income through membership fees and donations.
With a loyal fan base, quality content, and a monetized podcast, you can earn thousands of dollars every month from your channel.
Note from Lisa: Interested in podcasting, but not sure you’re ready to start your own? Consider becoming a Podcast VA. While it’s not passive income, it will give you valuable experience you can use to launch your own podcast someday!
5. AirBnb
Do you have a hospitable room in your house that you don’t use? You can rent it out to willing travelers on AirBnb and earn a passive income. My wife and I rented out a room in our house to travelers and made over $30/night. When the travelers increased, we made over $1000 in a month from AirBnb.
If you don’t mind having guests staying with you for a couple of days, then renting out your space on AirBnb can be a lucrative source of passive income. You need to prepare your room and make it as comfortable and habitable as possible. Take HD pics of the room, open an AirBnb account, post the pics, and wait for a willing customer to contact you.
The more positive reviews your rental space gets, the more popular it becomes. To get extraordinary reviews, always treat your guests the same way you’d want someone hosting you to treat you. Aure and I go overboard and offer our guests free wine and Wi-Fi during their stay.
One secret we’ve learnt on AirBnb is charging the most fair price for your rental space. Guests love places that guarantee them value for money and where they can feel at home. If you charge a good price and offer your guests a memorable stay, you can be sure to make decent income without too much hassle.
Resource to Help: Make Money On Airbnb: How To Quickly And Easily Earn $2,500 A Month From Your Home
6. Selling eBooks
You can make money off creating and selling eBooks. Creating eBooks is both easy and highly passive. If you don’t have time to create your own eBook, you can outsource the work to other writers and wait for your book to be completed. At DT Writers, we’ve helped countless clients create eBooks and sell them at a profit.
All you need is to identify a popular topic, create content about it, and sell your content to willing customers or your audience. Publishing eBooks is a lucrative idea (source) as more people prefer eBooks to hard cover texts.
So long as you identify a niche topic, write popular content or the kind of content you would like to read, you could be sure to earn passive income once your book starts to sell. Platforms like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing allow you to write, upload, and sell your words easily.
Although you need some financial investment to have your book written, edited, promoted etc., once it is completed and uploaded, your work is done and you can start to enjoy passive income.
7. Affiliate Marketing
Are you passionate about any products that you use? You can market the products or services as an affiliate marketer and earn a commission on sales. To get started, all you need is to identify a product or service you use and love, promote it to a target audience, generate leads and sales, and earn a commission on sales.
It’s important that you choose products you know and use every day. This helps you offer better advice based on your personal experience. You will need to sign up on an affiliate marketing service like Amazon Associates, Clickbank, JVZoo, ShareaSale, Ultimate Bundles, etc. You then need to market the product/service to a targeted audience and wait to earn a commission for any sales made.
Affiliate marketing can be a highly passive way of making money making it a worthy idea for stay home parents. Depending on the products or services you sell, you can earn thousands of dollars every month as an affiliate marketer.
8. Chatbots
Chatbots have become very popular communication tools. Currently people are making good amounts of money creating and selling Chatbots online and monetizing Chatbots. You can earn up to $2000/month as long as you provide quality content and monetize your bot.
The best part?
Bots are becoming more popular. By 2020, 80% of businesses will be using Chatbots (source); by 2021, over $4.5 billion will be invested in Chatbots and other interactive AI systems (source).
Like a blog, you have to monetize your bot to earn passive income from it. Monetizing your bot requires hard work but the results are worthwhile. Some ways you can monetize it is through advertising. You can also earn money from it by using it to generate leads, conduct surveys, landing page conversions, eCommerce etc.
As long as your Chatbot is not spam and offers quality content, you can make a lot of money from it passively. Getting started is also easy and all you have to do is to create Chatbots from the internet on sites like Tidio. Passive income from a Chatbot is not that difficult. It is also a great alternative for a low capital startup.
9. Renting Your Things
You can rent out your stuff to others who need it and earn a decent income. There are many peer-to-peer rental platforms where you can post your stuff and rent it out to willing clients. On sites like Fatllama, you can rent everything from electronics, clothes, supplies, cars, sound systems, books, jewelry, tools, machinery etc.
The best part?
These are things you actually own so you don’t need to invest any money to get started. According to Fatllama, some people make over $9000 renting their stuff on the site. All you need is to sign up on any peer-to-peer rental site, post HD pics of the stuff you’d like to rent, and wait for interested clients to contact you.
By charging a fair price, you can be sure to attract more clients. Renting your stuff is easy, highly passive, and lucrative, making it an ideal venture for stay home parents.
The Bottom Line?
There tons of ideas you can undertake and earn a decent income as a stay home dad or mom. Most of the ideas I shared with you in this post are ideas that I have actually tried out with my wife.
With the right strategies, dedication, and discipline, you can undertake any idea and turn it into a passive income stream for 2020.
Remember, starting out with any idea requires patience and passion.
Ultimately, the fruits are sweeter than you’d expect. Especially because you can combine any of the ideas and make more money in the process.
Note from Lisa: Parents, you really can make passive income from home. Davies shared nine legitimate ways to earn money while you’re raising your kids.
And if you need help finding time in your busy schedule to make it happen, be sure to check out my course, Balancing Diapers and Deadlines. It’ll help you carve out time for an at-home business.
These are all really cool and awesome ideas!