Side Hustles for Stay-At-Home Moms

If you’re looking for a way to increase your income, this list of side hustles for stay-at-home moms has some great ideas for you!

If you get emails from me, I’m guessing you care about saving money, living frugally, preparing for future you – the whole nine yards. 

I spent a lot of years learning how to live on less and stretch our dollars. I’m the world’s biggest fan of saving money on groceries. 

It’s a very good skill to have, and I highly recommend chasing down ways to save money. 

But I also can’t tell you the sense of relief I felt the first month I made enough money to have some leftover, with the promise of doing it again the next month. The weight I didn’t even know I was carrying vanished. It allowed me to get to a place where we could live on last month’s money, and there is no peace of mind like the peace of mind of knowing that your bills are already paid. 

Saving money is good, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say making it is even better. And that’s why we need side hustles for stay-at-home moms.

It’s especially true now. I’m sure you’ve noticed that no matter what you do, expenses are getting more expensive. It costs me $8 just to drive to and from church on Sunday or to go grocery shopping (and yes, we definitely try to combine the trip!).

My point is that saving only gets you so far. Tightening the best isn’t a solution. Increasing your income is. 

It’s so easy to say but not as easy to do. Believe me, I get it. 

I remember when a stay-at-home mom was just that – a stay-at-home mom. Today, most homeschooling moms I know are also work-from-home moms. 

We live in a world where living on a single income is increasingly hard. Just as often as not, people have side hustles in addition to their regular jobs in an effort to get ahead or even just make ends meet. 

What about you? Do you have a side hustle? Are you thinking about starting one? 

Side Hustles for Stay-at-Home Moms

For me, the number one criterion for a side hustle was that I could do it from home, that was my non-negotiable. Which left me with a problem. What could I do? 

The Venn diagram of where my skills and potential for making money intersected was very small. 

I’m pretty good at baking, but that’s about it. Most side hustles you see are coding and graphic design – things tech-savvy people do on a computer – and that is not me. 

At first, when I did have an idea, I would look at it from every angle, then not start because I was afraid it would fail, but what I learned is that you can start something, fail, start again, fail again. Nothing truly terrible happens, and eventually, you find one that works! 

So, I’ve had several failures. Both in that, the idea failed, and in that, it would have worked, but it just wasn’t for me. 

Some Great SAHM Side Hustles with High Earning Potential

Sourdough Bread/Baked Goods

I did this for a while by posting my baking days on Facebook, so area friends could order a loaf. It worked really well! I also have a friend who sells gourmet cupcakes using the same tactic, and people flock to her weekly order post (note: they’re not decorated cupcakes, just nicely iced). I planned to expand my business by attending local farmer’s markets to gain more customers but ended up switching gears before farmer’s market season. 

Farmer’s Markets

You don’t have to be a gardener to sell at a farmer’s market! Depending on your local state laws, you can sell baked goods or canned goods. Other ideas would be handmade soap, lotions, salves, and woodwork such as wooden spoons, bowls, cutting boards, etc. 

Customs Cookies

It blows my mind when I show up to a baby shower or birthday party, and there are platters full of custom, hand-decorated sugar cookies. These cookies often cost $4-6 dollars each. Cookie decorating is a skill you can learn with YouTube tutorials or online Classes such as Miss Biscuit’s online cookie decorating class. 

Cake Decorating

This is another high-dollar baking service. Back in 2009, I charged about $2 per serving (an 8” round cake is considered 20 servings) to decorate a very simple wedding cake; I can’t imagine what that price tag is now. This is, again, something you don’t have to have years of training to do. I took Wilton Classes at Hobby Lobby and learned even more through YouTube and online forums such as Cake Central. I was very hesitant to take these classes because I don’t have the best hand-eye coordination. I thought you would need to be an artist to decorate a cake or cookie, and in some sense, you do, mostly to come up with ideas. But decorating techniques are very easy to learn, and there are tools to help you do it. 

Dog Treats

They say pets are the new kids, and judging by the spending pet owners do, it’s entirely plausible. These can usually be sold at farmer’s markets too, and even online using sites like Etsy as an easy way to get started. All you really need are a few good dog treat recipes, cute packaging, and a love of animals. If you love animals, you already know how willing people are to spend money on quality treats for their pets. 

Printables

If you’re great at something organizational or artistic, you can sell printable versions! Again, Etsy is a great site to start. You may have noticed that I have a couple of printables that I sell of the organizational variety – a meal planning binder, a finance binder, and a garden journal. I don’t actually sell them on Etsy because I have my own website, so I just need a delivery service so that when people pay, they get to send their downloads. I use Sendowl for this, but there are a lot of other options too. 

Here’s a free workshop to learn about making and selling printables on Etsy. 

Homemade Soap

People – including me – love homemade soap. Especially if you make soap that smells really nice, has health benefits, or is unique. My niche is soap made with goat milk and essential oils.  I have a friend whose niche is beautiful bars with less emphasis on the ingredients. Both niches are successful. I did start out selling soap on Etsy and added farmer’s markets later on. I enjoyed doing it, but when we moved to Texas, my focus shifted to a different business, and I let the soap-making go. (You can find some of my recipes here). However, just because it didn’t end up being for me doesn’t mean it isn’t a great business. Soap and bath products, in general, have a lot of potential. 

Stock Photography

If you’re good with a camera, you can sell your work on sites like Shutterstock or iStock Photo (Shopify has a list of 18 places to sell stock photography here.) If you’re not good with a camera, take it from me, you can get good (more on that in a minute). 

Food Photography

This is where I landed after several other side hustles that, for one reason or another, didn’t work out. When I have time, I make a recipe, take pictures, edit them, and list them for sale in a food blogger’s group. This has gotten my name out there, and today, I mostly work in a freelance capacity, sometimes developing and photographing a recipe for a brand or blogger and sometimes using a recipe they provide. 

To be clear, I was a terrible photographer. To be even clearer, I had no aptitude or natural talent whatsoever. I had no concept of light or composition. I took classes and eventually became good enough to charge several hundred dollars per session for food brands that need promotional pictures for their products and bloggers that need pictures of their recipes that make readers’ mouths water. 

The main takeaway here is that you might think something is outside your skill set, but you’d be surprised by how much you can learn with a little practice. Because you’d be surprised by just how many side hustles for stay-at-home moms are out there. 

Having a side hustle has been an important part of our financial growth over the past decade or more. My husband’s side hustle turned into his full-time business. My side hustle has allowed us to catch up on investing for retirement and put the kids in extra-curricular activities that aren’t cheap. 

I’m definitely not saying we should give up on being frugal – not ever. But while you can work hard and be happy even if you’re poor, financial security is life-changing. And the more streams of income you have, the more secure you are. 

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