If you enjoy reading and/or writing, there are a number of ways you can make use of those skills to work from home as a mum. Have a read through but if none take your fancy, check out our 50 work from home jobs for mums.
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Work from Home Mum Writing Jobs
These work from home mum jobs all require good writing skills to succeed. Make sure you research them carefully though, they all require other skills or knowledge in addition to writing.
Creating Information Products
If you have expertise in something, it’s like you can leverage that to make a living. One way of doing that is to create an information product. Information products are things like courses, ebooks, workbooks or guides that share information that you have and other people need.
The first thing you’ll need is to have information people want. You might initially think you don’t have anything to offer but take some time to think about it carefully. You don’t have to have a degree in something to share your knowledge. it could just be something you’re good at. Think about your hobbies, could you write a beginners guide? Create something on a particular aspect of it you’re good at? Think about your parenting, are you really good at creating healthy snacks? do you use a particular parenting style you could share with others? What about your work experience? Could you create something to help people break into your career area?
You’ll have to then decide what format you’d like you product to take. Think about your audience and topic to help you decide. If your audience are time poor an e-book might work. If it’s something very practical a work book might be the way to go. If it’s complicated, an course might work best, you can learn course creation here*.
In addition to your writing skills, to be successful with an information product, you’ll also need to either already have, or being willing to learn, marketing skills. Platforms like Amazon for books and Udemy for courses can help you get your product out their but then you’ll need to promote your product to the right audience,
Writing E-Books
The publishing word is very different now and the barriers to publishing your own books are very low. We’ve talked about about creating information based ebooks but you could also write your own fiction book.
Promoting a fiction book will be more challenging and realistically probably make you less money but if it’s something you’re passionate about and have always wanted to do then it’s worth considering. You could even combine it with something else to create more income.
There are lots of online communities on all of the social media platforms to support independent authors so make sure you join some on whatever your preferred platform is. The Society of Authors is a good place to start and you could also take on online course to find out more about self publishing*. As someone who reads a fair number of self published authors, my advice would be to spend money to hire a professional editor, the difference really shows in the final product and I’ve not read sequels to books before because the urge to edit what I’m reading ruins it for me.
Blogging
Obviously, I am a blogger so I’m a bit biased on this one. Let me start by saying, it’s not a quick way to make money. It takes time to build an audience and you won’t make money until you’ve done that. You can build your audience through social media, optimising your site for search engine traffic or rough Pinterest but they all take time. Luckily there is plenty of great advice out there to help you start a blog.
To be a blogger you need something you want to write about. If it’s something you care about you’ll be less likely to give up when it gets tough. Some people are”lifestyle bloggers” and have a fairly brood range of topics they write about but it can be harder to make money out of blogs without a specific niche.
Once you’ve got an audience, how do you make money? There are three main income streams bloggers rely on. The first is seeking advertising on your site. While you can add Google Adsense before you have much traffic to your blog, you won’t really make much money until you are are getting tens of thousands on visits a day, and even then it wont be a full time income.
Som bloggers do very well with affiliate marketing. They write about products relevant to their audience and include an affiliate link to the product. If their readers goes on to purchase then they get a percentage. Amazon Affiliates is the best know affiliate scheme but here are plenty of others. Affiliate marketing works best where you have a specific niche and their are related products your audience is interested in. Check out this course* to get started.
The other main way bloggers make money is through working with brands, usually on sponsored posts. If you have an audience that brands want to reach then they will often pay to feature on your blog and/or social media. Your audience doesn’t have to be Huge for brands to want to work with you, they just need to be focussed on the people they want to reach and be well engaged with you.
Plenty of bloggers also make money from information products described above as they have a ready made audience to sell them to.
Freelance Writing
If you’re good at writing but aren’t too bothered what you write about then freelance writing could work for you.
If you have subject expertise then you could use those to pitch for jobs writing things like subject textbooks or manuals. Freelancers are usually give a contract to create the required work in a set period of time. Copywriters often work freelance so if you are good at persuasive writing then that could be an option.
Many writers who are published in magazines and newspapers are freelance these days so if you have particular ideas of a publication you can pitch to them direct.
Many websites also hire freelance content creators to write content for websites and this can offer very flexible work. You could also sell your services direct on sites like fiver or people per hour.
If you’d like to get started in freelance writing you could take a distance learning course*.
Jobs that Involve Both Reading and Writing
Some jobs require you to both read and write, after all, you can’t have one without the other. Here are the ones that can be done from home.
Publishing a magazine
Publishing a local or specialist magazine makes use of your writing skills for pieces you write yourself, and your reading skills for editing other people’s work.
These types of magazines are usually free and distributed locally or to relevant employers and they make their money by selling advertising space.
How much writing you wanted to do yourself would be up to you but it’s likely that people from local or relevant businesses and organisations would be happy to create content for you for free in exchange for mentioning their business. A fair amount of the content would also be “advertorial” where it reads like an article but has the aim of convincing the reader of something.
While reading and writing are heavily involved in publishing a magazine, the main part of the job, unless you can hire someone else to do it, is selling advertising space. Consider carefully weather that’s something you want to do before you seriously consider this option. Some people are born salesmen, some (including me!) aren’t.
If you are keen to give it a go, you’ll also need the skills to prepare the magazine for print. If you don’t fancy going it alone there are a number of franchise options you could consider.
Translating
Translating is a true combination of both reading and writing but of course only an option if you have a second language which you speak well.
Lots of material needs to be translated from boring stuff like product manuals to textbooks, websites and fiction. You can get in touch with The Institute of Translating and interpreting if you are interested in giving it a go.
Work at Home Mum Jobs that Require Reading
Who wouldn’t like to read all day and get paid for it? Unfortunately there are so many of us who love reading there isn’t really any need for publishers to pay us to read and review their books. There are however some jobs that’s involve a fair amount of reading.
Proofreading
Proofreading involves reading work to check it for errors. You need excellent attention to detail to be a proofreader and well as good general knowledge to identify incorrect facts, excellent spelling and spotless grammar (that’s me out then!)
Some proofreaders specialise in a specific area in which they have knowledge for example proofreading medical or legal texts where there are a lot of very specific language they need to understand.
Most proofreaders work freelance and there are a number of courses you can do to train as a proofreader. This proofreading course* can be done via distance learning.
Editing
Editing is a bit like proofreading but goes a step further and instead of asking if work is correct, asks if it is as good as it can be.
All fiction books benefit from an editor to make sure the story makes sense, the characters are consistent and the writing is of a good quality. The same goes for narrative non fiction and magazine and newspaper articles.
While editors were traditionally employed by publishing companies many now work freelance, often working for companies who used to employ them.
For both Editing and Proofreading, you can in touch with The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading.
Indexing
Most non fiction books include an index at the end to help readers locate a specific piece of information. Creating an index is a real skill and involves deciding what to include and what to leave out as well as ensuring accurate page numbers are given for each entry.
The decisions involved mean that some types of books need indexers who have specific knowledge to create the index in order to ensure that the right information is included.
The Society of Indexers is the governing body and offers a range of courses for people who are interested in becoming indexers. As with editors, indexers used to be employed by publishers but many now work on a freelance basis.
If none of this take your fancy, why not check out the best work form home mum jobs for organised types.
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I love to read, and I have time as well I’m unemployed.