Can a home buisness really make that much money?

[jjmennonite]

I am one of those slutty single mothers and with my personality, I could have NEVER survived emotionally working from home. I need adult company. I had a degree and a career before I had my child. My child was in day-care and had wonderful care-givers and was definitely raised by me, not by the day-care.

In order to be a successful home-businesswoman you would have to be very disciplined, among other talents, that I don't have.

[clibbyjo]

For sure you can.

Homeschool business makes enough money for my sister to support her family of 8,have a giant motor home and a completely remodeled house.(her husband also works a different job,but his is mostly for the benefits)

My daughter's piano teacher is a single mom and she charges $10 for 1/2 an hour. Her son who teaches guitar/drums charges $17 for 1/2 an hour.She has a daytime job,but I think the lessons help a lot.

If I HAD to get an outside job, I would most likely open an afterschool/summer daycare for the evil school kids.I have so many public school people asking me to homeschool their kids, I could do it on a part time basis and make a decent amount in the process.Once summer working would pay for a trip to Europe,and that is very tempting for me. :dance:

I do get paid for readings and photography, but I don't have time to do either full time while homeschooling. I may do readings full time when the kids are grown.

[Ava]

The company I work for started out as a 'home business', technically, run by 2 friends out of the 1 friend's house. They only lasted a few months before they had to hire an employee (me) to help out, and in the beginning I was the only one of the 3 getting paid. Luckily it was an industry that didn't need much more in the way of startup costs than a few computers, and luckily they managed to get a few good clients right in the beginning. We work with a lot of people trying to start their own businesses and a lot of them never really get off the ground.

Working out of a bedroom wasn't practical after a while, so we got a real office with real full-time employees and real medical benefits and whatnot. I feel like, if you did start a business that was successful, you'd either have to limit yourself to what you can do yourself, alone, regardless of how much demand there is for whatever you're doing, or you're going to have to expand and hire other people and whatnot.

And working from home is still working... we had one of the owners bringing his young son in once a week for a while to cut down on daycare costs, but that had to stop after a while because everybody did less work when he was around. We're all technically allowed to work from home part of the time but I'm the only one that ever really does it (and I do it less and less often) because everyone else claims that they can't get as much work done when there are all these distractions around. Having children to watch could only make it worse. And I have absolutely no idea how you'd be able to teach them and put in the 40-60 hours worth of work it would take to build and maintain a successful business (never mind the fact that not everybody can or wants to do that), in addition to all your other responsibilities as the only adult in the household. I don't think the people advocating this really have any idea of what it's like to depend solely on yourself.

[Guest Anonymous]

I think it depends on the type of home business. I tend to doubt that selling cutesy things on Etsy would bring in enough to support a family for a year. However, I know people who have done medical coding or paralegal work from home and they make anywhere from $30-45K per year on it. Some of the people who teach music lessons from home also seem to do all right. They won't get rich, but they're not in the poorhouse either.

My husband coded at home for a while. He made MAYBE $27,000 a year. MAYBE. Yes he was just starting out, but it was awful. They expected him to work 14 hour days and only paid him for 8.

[Kitchen Princess]

I was a medical transcriptionist at home in the '90s, before the digital revolution. It was a job I could do while I homeschooled and raised my kids. I could do 3-4 hours a day (I usually woke at 4:00 a.m. to type) and I didn't make enough to live on, but then I didn't need to. I only needed a part-time income then. I quit doing it only because we moved away.

Now I own and operate a food truck, which is ostensibly operated out of my home, but it does its thing on the road. I'm in my second year, and have not made a profit, but that's typical of start-ups. It's not really a home-based business in the way she's talking about. Further, I work on it at least 60 hours a week. There's more time in the prep and planning and follow-up than in the selling. I do expect to turn a profit this year, by the time all is said and done.

[Rosa]

like everybody else said - you can make money (I work from home) but you have to do the work. Not everyone can work and parent at the same time - I have a friend who did for a long time, but she had 2 other adults living with her helping out part of the time and her kids are really good. I tried to do the same job, couldn't do it while parenting (have I mentioned my son slept about half as much as most toddlers? And is hyperactive?) and couldn't get steady enough work to cover the childcare I needed to be able to work. I had to get an office job and stick it out for 2 years before the same company would give me part time from home work - steady hours, decent wage. No benefits.

I know Zhuzhu Pet thinks health insurance is a luxury but how are you supposed to work with sick kids you can't take to the doctor? Last winter we all got whooping cough and it made it really hard for either of us to work (kiddo got over it quick because he'd been vaccinated; grownups hadn't kept it up to date and got it bad.)

[VVV]

I teach private music lessons at home as a supplement to my outside job, and I charge $60/hour. However, I have the education and the credentials to justify my fee. And it can be exhausting.

Teaching private lessons is NOT a "do this at home so you can be with your kids" occupation. When my kids were little, I only scheduled lessons at times that my husband would be home. A weekly lesson time cannot be adjusted if a cranky baby is refusing to nap, or has an ear infection, and it isn't fair to the student to be taking their parents' money while only giving them half my attention. Not to mention the ongoing distraction that small children can be.

My kids are older now so they are fine by themselves in the house while I'm teaching in my studio behind the garage, but this is no more Mom time at home than it is when I am teaching my university students at school. The one difference is that if there is an emergency, my kids can get me immediately. But I do not claim to be available to them, or spending quality time with them while I am teaching, because I am not.

[Rosa]

These "every mom should stay home" people sure don't seem to think that parenting or schooling is important, since they think you can do it at the same time you're blogging and running a business and reading the bible 10 hours a week and cooking all the meals from scratch and all of that. It's like the kids are supposed to raise themselves and all Mom does it take photos for the blog and take breaks to beat them every once in a while.

[liltwinstar]

Funny that widowed dads are never told to quit their jobs and start a home business and pick up the homeschooling where the mom left off. Pretty sure he would be told to hand his kids off to another homeschooling mother during the day, and then after a decent amount of time, he would be told/"encouraged" to remarry. I remember that when we were fundie, there was this idea that you had to take out a big life insurance policy on the dad, because he was the primary breadwinner. But not on the mom, because she's expected to just add "make a living wage at a home business" to her already-full plate of childraising and homeschooling.

[Rosa]

Well, it's got to be easy, right? If it were hard it would be men's work. Like making decisions.

[mirele]

Home parties - Mary Kay, Tupperware, and all that sort of thing. Again, more suited for part-time income, but can be turned into a full time job if you're determined. Some of them require an initial investment, but there are small business loans (if you're not so fundie that you refuse this sort of thing), or maybe assistance from your church.

Before you do any "home party" type of "business," I'd recommend checking out pinktruth.com. It's mostly about Mary Kay but the information can apply to any Multi-level Marketing operation. Basically, the situation is lousy and the vast majority of women in MK either break even or lose money.

As for me, I work at home three days a week. The EPA is onto my county (Maricopa County, AZ) to reduce emissions and Maricopa County, in turn, leans on large employers to allow employees to work from home to reduce the number of trips in cars to the office. I couldn't do it with kids at home, however, as my job requires me to instantly drop whatever I'm doing (either research or writing a report) to join calls and troubleshoot issues. I've found myself picking up a cat and putting her outside my home office door because I simply couldn't deal with her neediness right when I had to respond to something urgent. I should note that my team lead is in Utah and my manager is in North Carolina (and they've never met in person, either). Virtual teams, FTW!

[justakitten]

I work from home (I'm in real estate), but it's very, very hard. Luckily my husband has some flexibility to take a day off here and there, but the rest of the time I hire a friend to babysit. That only happens about an hour a week. The rest of the time I am working while the girls are playing in the same room, during naptime, or after they go to bed. A lot of stuff happens on the weekends as well.

[sacrilicious]

I work primarily out of the home but sometimes have to bring projects home with me, so I know how hard it is to do work while being the primary caretaker of my child. Agree with everyone else who said you have to treat it like any other job and put in the hours. I could work from home, but it just wouldn't work because my clients would need my attention 100% and not divided between them and a child, and I'd have to put her in daycare, anyway, and how do you pay for daycare when before you are turning a profit?

[Lunatic]

I work from home three days a week and could work at home full time but I need adult company! I like to see my coworkers and go out to lunch. But I work for a large company and have an education that allows me to do this job. I spend a lot of time analyzing and writing and there's no way I could do this while my kids were pestering me. My husband stays at home with them and he also freelances in graphic design but only when I'm not working or the kids are occupied with something else.