Maternity leave business ideas

[CorporateGirly]

Hi all,

I will be on 9 months maternity leave from early August. With my last maternity leave I was quite lazy (it’s inherent, I struggle with it 🤣) and didn’t do much other than obviously look after my DS and watch some TV.

This time I want to go in with a different attitude and ideally make some money. I am thinking I want to start up my own business of some sort (only small that can work around looking after my newborn DD) and I need some ideas please.

I don’t have many skills or expertise, to be honest. I am a PM day to day but still working my way up so need support in this role still.
I love baking on a weekend and my cakes are generally yummy but I am no good at decorating so can’t set up a cake business really as I think I would get lots of negative reviews 🤣
I did think about making fudge maybe, but not sure on the demand so would have to look into that.

To be honest I’m open to anything - I know some people set up businesses like being an online travel agent. I’m up for anything like that, if there are examples where this has actually worked for anyone?! Plus something I don’t need a huge following on SM for as I don’t have a lot of friends/large following myself.

Any ideas welcomed!

Won't you have two young children to look after? I think you will be quite busy with that.

I wouldn't do anything that would mean an expense on your behalf. Do you need to earn the money or do you just want the mental stimulation?

My DS goes to nursery 4 days a week, and is with my in laws one day a week so he only needs “looking after” in the evenings and weekends. My DH is around to help with this.

Yes I will have a DD newborn to look after, but that’s why I said in my original post that it needs to work around looking after her.

I feel like I see posts/influencers on SM who work/earn money whilst looking after a newborn so I don’t think it’s impossible?

Yes ideally I don’t want to do anything with a huge outlay or will cost too much money for me to do.

It’s for both stimulation, and money! ☺️

Remember that many of the people advertising the lifestyle of side hustles are also selling that lifestyle, whether through MLMs, ‘how to make four figures a month in an hour a day’ digital downloads, coaching etc.

Don’t make any costly (financially or time wise) decisions based on what other people are claiming on social media, if you look a little more closely most will have an agenda and that will be making you a customer in some form or another.

Unless you are embarking on an industrial scale operation then baking cakes and making fudge will earn you buttons. I’m a florist and women with kids think they can set up a floristry side hustle to do while the baby sleeps. Even working from home with a workshop doing a small enough wedding you can manage on your own will generally be full on long days from Thursday to Saturday and part of Sunday.

If you actually want to earn money then I would focus on the knowledge and skills you already have and monetise that.

I think those influencers have built up a brand and a following long before they give birth, they aren't starting from scratch. I know people who continued their self-employment with a very young baby around but they already had an established business.

Sorry but running a side hustle with a newborn isn't all you think it is. How will you deal with a baby you can't put down while customers are contacting you constantly to find out where their orders are, while you have an absolute breakdown because you're physically and mentally exhausted.
Don't believe what you read on social media, it's smoke and mirrors and absolutely not what you are led to believe.
Enjoy your maternity leave. Your job is to just look after your baby, recover from labour and look after yourself. Don't feel like you should be doing more.

Hi. Did anyone working in the travel space ever come back to you for a chat. I'm doing this myself and still fairly new to it but can give you some info if you like x

Are you actually even allowed to work elsewhere during your maternity leave? Many employers do not permit "side hustles".

Oh look, the MILMs have arrived

The only thing I can suggest is babysitting while looking after your baby at same time. In your shoes I would drop a day or two at big child’s nursery to save money instead of working more.

Is in inteletravel you’ve joined up to? Please be careful, it’s an MLM structure business that targets women at vulnerable points e.g. maternity leave / money troubles.

According to the 2024 PlanNet Marketing (the company behind Inteletravel) Income Disclosure Statement 2024, 92% of their agents earned less than $41 in commissions for the year.

Please don’t feel obligated in the coming months to do whatever it takes to make Inteletravel work as an income source for you, whatever pressure you get from your upline - it’s not you, it’s the model.

I think recommending it to others as a sensible option before you’ve started making a decent income from it yourself is morally risky territory.

Morning. Thanks for the reply. I know there is a lot of misinformation out there. I've deffo already made more than that in commission. Not looking to get into any arguments on here but as the original poster mentioned they would consider the travel side was simply offering the opportunity for a chat if wanted. 😀
I do understand why some people are turned off by the idea and that's ok. It's not for everyone.

The friendly message and smiley face doesn't disguise the fact that you are trying to sign up more poor suckers to get dragged into your MLM/pyramid scheme

Its not for anyone who actually wants to make money or keep their friends

Can I really make money on inteletravel or was I just sucked into a pyramid scheme? If so is there any real ways to start up being a travel agency? : r/antiMLM

My post contained a link to the figures publicly declared by the company that owns Inteletravel.

They are legally obliged to share those figures publicly, have done so and I linked to them. That isn’t misinformation, it’s information from the company you pay to be a member of 🤷🏻‍♀️

As you’re early in your journey I feel sorry for you rather than feeling angry you’re trying to recruit women at such a vulnerable time in their lives.

I hope you see the light before you lose too much money or too many friends.

Here’s the link as I don’t think it worked in my first post so I appreciate you may not have realised it’s from your company itself @donli82

https://www.plannetmarketing.com/Portals/0/DistDocs/Income%20Disclosure.pdf?ver=SJYL-MOWqW41UKhPZZY36Q%3D%3D

What shocks me is there is no legal requirement in the UK to publish an income disclosure which does at least give a sense of how pisspoor the outcomes are for almost everyone. However, it’s not even the full horror as the numbers don’t reflect early drop outs who have spent money but don’t remain active (ie paying money to PNM/IT). Their losses SHOULD have to be reflected. Expenses day to day of being involved aside from paying to play are also not reflected. Rather than average numbers I’d like to see a visual representation like a scatter graph showing every sign up however short term and see how many actually fall south of £0 and lose money.

There was an article in the dreaded Sun at the weekend about someone’s bad experience in this MLM. Even one of their top UK people confessed (a few years ago) to earning 70p an hour once she examined her costs versus her income over a year and once she factored in how much of her time she used in that year. Time that could have been spent actually earning a living.

MLM should be illegal. There is genuinely nothing they do in these cults that you can't buy in the usual retail channels.