Lifestyle Magazine

Home businesses are everywhere even before the economic decline. Most stay-at-home moms and dads have to find ways of earning extra money while minding the kids and the home.
Two attractive factors of home businesses: instant result and small investment.
Here are some types of home businesses:

• Baking cookies and cakes. Bake and deliver cookies, cakes, and other sweet goodies to nearby school canteens. Collect payment daily or weekly.
• Candy making. Candies such as cereal and chocolate bars can be made and packed in the evenings. Use colorful paper and cellophane for wrappings.
• Cooking packed lunches. Dial the numbers of your neighbors, friends and relatives and offer to cook and pack their work lunches. You may collect payment during payday. To earn more profit, use washable food containers because brown bags have price tags, too.
• Small-scale catering. Social gatherings maybe as simple as a kiddie cake party or as sumptuous as a sit-down 4-course dinner. Each occasion need much attention to details so be prepared and carefully plan everything.
• Wedding planning. A wedding is a special occasion. It helps to ask the client for personal preferences.
• Pet care. Animals are family members to their owners. More people need minders for their animals when they’re at work or away in holidays. Offer this kind of service if you’re an animal lover yourself.
• Dog walking. Most dog owners do not have enough time to exercise their pet everyday due to long working hours. Advertise your hourly rates for walking the dogs outside your gate, together with your contact number; and you’ll surely get an influx of customers.
• Pet grooming. You will need to undergo a short training for this one to learn the basics of bathing and grooming a pet. A dog is cleaned differently from a cat.
• Parttime secretarial jobs. Common customers for this type of service are college professors and students, lawyers, and doctors. For medical transcription jobs, you may be required to take a short course. Having a medical background will help a lot.
• Accounting jobs. Most small businesses and professionals in practice will seek your accounting (if you’re an accountant, of course) prowess for taxes and balance sheets reasons.
• Outsourcing jobs. Online jobs such as web design and development, programming, social networking, writing, VOIP, and data entry jobs are getting popular with stay-at-home individuals.
• Blogging/Writing. Setting up your own web page is free. Write about your personal passions to make your start easy and natural. Read a lot so that you will learn more methods of earning money from blogging and writing.
• Painting. Paint with oil or watercolor and have your art framed professionally. Display your artworks in the living room so that visitors will notice them at once. Take pictures of your paintings and upload to websites that help artists sell their works.
• Teach art. Most parents have to go to work on Saturday mornings. Taking the kids to weekend art lessons will be more attractive than leaving them to babysitters.
• Candlemaking and soapmaking. Aromatic candles and beauty soaps are popular gift items.
• Ceramics and pottery. You will need to buy some equipment to make your own pots.
• Computer Repair. Most people are afraid to even peek inside their CPUs or click according to instructions. You just have to take up a short course on computers to avoid disasters.
• Sewing or embroidery. Curtains and seat covers are easy to sew, as well as the pillow cases and bed covers. You may want to invest on a sewing machine that can do embroidery, too.
• Photography. Most people love to take pictures of happy occasions, or even when they just felt like it. Set up a small room to be your home studio where clients can pose with their pets or favorite stuff. Offer to have these photo framed, too. Additional services are ID pictures and laminations.
• Baby-sitting or child-minding. Prepare to get calls from clients at night. Do not forget to bring extra clothes when at work because children are playful during bath time.
• Garage organising. This type of service needs a lot of planning and timing. Before you take out the stuff outside the garage, everything must be properly recorded and the sun is shining, of course.
• Room renting. Rent out your extra space to earn extra money. Store properly or take out the stuff that is inside that spare room. Old gadgets should go to recycling stations and winter clothes or blankets should be put in vacuum storage bags to save space.