How I Make $150-$200 a Week at Home

How I Make $150-$200 a Week at Home

Working From Home

When I made the decision to stay at home with my twin boys, we knew there would be financial hardship. I was a full time teacher of science and department chairperson. That meant we were giving up a pretty good salary so that I could be the sole care provider for my children. It was not too long into my time as a stay at home that we realized we needed some supplemental income. We tightened our belts but it still was not enough to pay for our expenses and the added preschool expense. I then began in earnest a search to find out how to work from home. I have to say that at first I found more scams than honest work. Here are some of the ways that I’ve used to make sure I bring in $150 to $250 a week.

The first thing I did was open an eBay store. I had twins and with two of everything I knew it would feel good to clean out some of the stuff I had accumulated. A great deal of the stuff I had was new or very gently used. Piece by piece, toy by toy, I started selling. I also worked at a toy warehouse three times a year that sold discontinued new toys. I started purchasing them at a closeout price and listing them on eBay as well. After six months I had earned over $1,500 or roughly $250 a month. I am still selling on eBay and I can say that after profiting this much I will never have another garage sale again. I am now looking at making this a part time job.

I also began to look into writing. I had always been a decent writer, even though science was my major field of study and career aspiration. I found many sites likeYahoo Voices, Helium, Hubpages that would publish my work and sometimes earn me upfront pay or sometimes revenue shares. I also discovered content mills like Textbroker and iWriter where you write for a price. I enjoy writing at night when the twins are asleep and I can collect my thoughts. On average from all of the writing sites I was averaging about $100 a month.

Then I stumbled onto freelancing sites where you can look for more permanent work and search by the type of specialty that you are interested in. The two best sites that I have worked with are oDesk and eLance. These two sites have allowed me to find more projects than I can handle. I have completed two very large projects that dealt with science education on oDesk and then picked up a gigantic one on eLance just this week. These projects are perfect for me as a science teacher and keep me engaged and happy about the work I do. I am averaging $600 a month on these sites to date.

I like to have little supplemental income so I have signed up for surveys and ejury sites. My favorite two survey sites (that are very reputable) are SurveyClub Research and Pinecone. I usually get between 5-10 surveys a month and I usually earn about $30 a month from them. I have only served on two online juries but they paid $50 each time. On average I pull in $30 a month from this type of work.

Finally, I’m a teacher after all. I have signed up at several online tutoring sites. My favorite is one that matches me up with tutees based on the subjects I feel most comfortable teaching. Wyzant has helped me to find a number of tutoring jobs for high school students. This is the only job I have to travel outside the home, but I am earning $80-$120 a month doing this work.

It is not impossible to find work. I do feel that sometimes it is hard to keep them all going and sometimes I let one slow down when others get busy. In all, I am now able to productively stay at home with my kids and earn enough to pay for their preschool and supplement our income.