Making money and looking after the kids

I want it all! I want to be able to be home for my children, but I want to make some money. The transition from being a well paid IT Manager to being a stay at home mum has been a difficult one. The other half is the one who makes the money, I'm the one who spends it. It was quite a change suddenly not having my own source of income, and I guess ultimately I felt a bit guilty. Admittedly after 4 1/2 years, the guilt has worn off a bit, but it would still be nice to contribute financially.

So what are the options? With Holly in pre-school, and Michael in Occasional Care for 2 days, I have about... 8 productive hours to work in! Bit tricky finding a part time job that meets the requirements.

As the children get older though, part time work could be an option during school hours, allowing me still to be home when they are.

For now, there are some work at home options. When Holly was about 7 months old, I started a Family Day Care business through the local council family day care. I looked after up to 4 other children in our home for three days a week. That still gave me time just for Holly, and brought in some income. After Michael came along, it took a while to get back into the swing of things, and I haven't gone back to Family Day Care. It's still an option, if I can convince myself it makes sense financially and logistically with things like pre-school drop off and pick up.

There are many other work at home options, some of which you fit in round the children, some of which need evening and weekend commitments; Party Plans, Tuition, Internet based businesses, Life coaching, Telemarketing, Writing, Editing, Pet Minding, Translating, Transcribing and more.

What I'd be wary of are those adverts that say you can make thousands from home, but don't actually tell you what you'd be doing. In my view, if an advert doesn't tell you anything about what you will be doing to earn the money, it probably isn't something you would want to be doing.

Also, if you are paying to find out how someone else got rich, ask the question, do they make more money from telling me how they got rich, than from the actual underlying business idea?

Having said this, there are definitely some genuine options for working from home, and some of the advertised schemes can make money, just maybe not the millions the advertisers claim to have made.

This, for example, is my attempt to make some money through Blogging. As you'll see, there are Google ads on my Blog. If a reader clicks on one of these ads, I get commission. This is called affiliate marketing, and is not just used by Google, but by many other organisations. It is a way of advertising where the advertiser does not pay unless someone looks at the ad, or in other cases, actually buys something. In this latter case the referring web site owner receives a commission on a per sale basis.

The challenge for me is to get enough people to come to my Blog, to make it worth while.

If you look at my website, www.athomemums.com you will find much more detail on the different work from home and part time work options available, including making money through affiliate marketing.

Let me know what you think!