Starting self employment

[Welikebeingcosy]

Hi I'm a bit overwhelmed with options and I wanted to get them out there and if anyone has any thoughts or is also looking at self employment feel free to jump on...

I want to be self employed, mostly as I live in the suburbs with not much job opportunity and don't want to be commuting to the city all the time and leaving 15 month old with nursery for too many hours a day.

I've been self employed before but part time as a side thing whilst at university- doing things like ebay and having a vintage clothing stall.

Basically I'm not entitled to any free childcare for another year. I'm on universal credit and they will pay childcare for my hours worked but it has to be trading hours with an income so this will take a bit of time to work up to.
The risk would be to use my savings to pay for childcare to have the time I need to work on my goal and build up my business idea.
However I don't feel super confident I will get loads achieved right now, because of weaning hormones, lack of sleep (15 month old still waking up 5 times a night or more), and adjusting to the emotions of leaving little one at nursery when she still screams as I leave her anywhere and the house still being undecorated and messy after moving in in January.

So I was thinking instead of losing all my savings, I could put my ideas to one side for now and do online things like 20cogs and selling stuff on ebay and matched betting which will guarantee an income and I could claim this as trading hours to get the childcare reimbursed, then work my way up to being confident enough to work properly on my own ideas as then I will know how the days will look and feel with LO at nursery.

Buying to sell on eBay is not as easy as you think it is. Finding something that will sell is hard enough, let alone something that no one else sells and that will earn you profit. Matched betting will give you some income, but it isn't taxable income and is not classed as working, so you cannot say you are working doing matched betting in order to get free childcare.

Selling on ebay is as easy as I know it is because I've sold on ebay as a job before and it's been very profitable for me and I find those kinds of things super easy.
If I'm doing things like ebay and inboxpounds this is work which will entitle me to free childcare so it doesn't matter what other things I'm doing alongside it.

If it's so easy to make a good profit why are you claiming UC and trying to get extra for childcare costs? Tax Credits would have treated eBay selling as self-employment but UC is a different ballgame.

Because being a single mum with no family help, I dont have time to do ebay right now but once I am allocated some childcare hours I will be able to work on it, provide for myself and hopefully come off UC. I already spoke to my work coach and he approved it, :)

Then I think you may have answered your own question? If you've had great profitable success selling on eBay before then I'd concentrate on building that back up.

Matched betting is difficult in that you always end up getting gubbed eventually. I made about 8k from it a few years ago but it's only really a cert when you're doing the newbie offers and no matter how hard you try and look like a normal punter - you'll get gubbed in the end!

8k is a lot! It can be reinvested in other things. That is almost a year of income for me! I'd be happy to make anything from it and plod along whilst I build a long term business. Yes answered my own question, but I wrote this post a week ago and have since acted on it and moved forwards with my ideas! :)