How might I earn £1000 a month working from home?

[Mumblepot26]

Hello! Mumsnet Jobs team here. We've noticed this thread is fairly old now, and some of the information is out of date. We've put together this article of advice, tips and tricks to start working from home. We hope it's helpful!

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Hello, i wondered if any of you had any ideas about how I coud earn £1000 a month working from home?

I have spent 20 yrs working in the health service as a nurse then counsellor, just gone back after second lot of mat leave and realised I am done with the nhs, after child care I bring in £1000 a month, so I figure if I can earn this at home, I will be able to stay at home until kids in school. Any ideas ladies? (Working as private counsellor not an option at the moment as we don't have enough space)

[PetiteRaleuse]

Xenia bashing unfortunately seems to be a MN sport, which is very unfair as pretty much everything she says makes perfect sense. It's possibly just the usual British sneering at success. That said, on this thread she's not had too hard a time for once.

OP, I too am looking at ways to make some sort of income from home in the not so distant future, and am looking at the various options, and thinking of trying to do a bit of everything I am good at rather than trying to make one thing work. I don't know if that is a good idea, but it seems the most realistic to me at the moment.

[naturalbaby]

A lot of what Xenia says must make sense given the success she describes at home and work - with several well educated children thrown in. It's interesting to hear about the losses as well - it's often easy to just focus on the massive gains and not be fully prepared for the losses. I think that's the main reason why I haven't risked more - low risk, low failure but low pay as well.

[bringbacksideburns]

Xenia Bashing??

Unbelievable. But then we are all Cleaners in this country and not obsessed enough with money, apparently. Because money makes a person doesn't it?

[Xenia]

I think I feel sufficientlyh secure to write about losses on property, 100% failed applications for board posts, 100% failure on bids for state sector work (you'd have thought a 100% female company would be just the job in our socialist town halls...) etc etc.

I don't put all my chickens in one basket. I do 4 or 5 things so they would all have to go very wrong to lose all income. I think the spreading of risk is sensible particularly if you are 100% responsible for your children. Even when I bgan to work for myself in 94 I only did that when I was earning exactly the same at the weekend from things not connected to my employment did I take the plunge and even that was all borne of failure as I was not promoted where I was.

Have a look at peopleperhour.com. I bid and sometimes get work from that, usually little stuff. I did 2 hours work from there last week.

I also marked A level and professional exam papers for a time - it paid for our holidays to Gites de France in my 20s with 3 children under 10. Also worth taking on bits of work others don't really want because often that leads to something bigger as someone remembers you.

Money by no means make a person but it certainly helps to ensure you have leisure to be with children, think, time for yourself rather than just fighting to stay on top of things which is much harder on the minimum wage than otherwise.

This was a thread about how to make £1000 a month when huge numbers of women make £1000 a day so I was just trying to say make £1k a day y9our aim aim high. It's fun.

If I were on a thread about personal happiness or how to be a good person of course I would talk about other issues too. It is a money thread so money is written about.

[Mumblepot26]

Xenia, you are so spot on!! Am loving your attitude and feeling quite inspired!! off to work now, so must rush but just wanted to say massive thanks to everyone for your thoughts.

[Xenia]

Thanks. Let us make every mumsnetter aim for work which pays £1k a day for this Autumn. Perhaps a mumsnet course on how to earn £1k a day would be good.... laughing as I type as it now feels like a pyramid scheme - in today's papers is the scandal of a new one in India whcih has just collapsed - Emus grown by farmers.

[twentyten]

Really enjoying the comments-Xenia you raise some great points about big dreams.And spreading risk.
Op-what about using space somewhere else for counselling? Hire a room?Lots of places have facilities and you could add.
I've had a "portfolio life" for 15 years-some work very well-paid,some for free-in schools and other voluntary stuff,now some less well paid but less stressful/less travel- but it's all connected via peple/contacts-including work in Ireland and Europe(now possibly Dubai)
Think about who you know.how could you help them- profitably?What do they need?

[Xenia]

Yes, no qualifications needed for that. Someone even paid me £240 an hour for lilfe coaching by phone!

I like TT's suggestion of working out who you know and how you could help them.

[twentyten]

Xenia not surprised you got paid that.Your approach is refreshing and very unusual- I think the key in this is about working out what it is that you are really good and find people or organisations who will pay well for it.
Playing small - a frequent female habit I'm sorry to say doesn't deliver the big dreams-financial or otherwise. And failure/rejection happens. Move on.

[MelanieSminge]

Don't bash Xenia, she is interesting and unusual, especially about losing as well as winning.
Why should intelligent women work for £6 an hour as cleaners or whatever 'to fit in with the kids'?
Yes we should raise our expectations!
I have an online business (startup) and aiming for 1k a day sounds brilliant, just to raise the bar, iykwim.

[twentyten]

certainly no bashing from me!Admiration!

[PetiteRaleuse]

My female boss admitted to me recently that she goes home in the evening and stresses that she is not good enough to earn her salary, and that she doesn't understand how she got there. She didn't believe me when I said that she was being paid the market rate and that she does a bloody good job and deserves her pay. Her predecessor, OTOH, was a bloke, was crap at his job (and got fired) but still used to whine he wasn't paid enough.

Women aren't encouraged or expected to aim high financially, and far too often don't believe they quite deserve it somehow when they do succeed.

It is actually a post of Xenia's on a thread I read last year which encouraged me to ask for and obtain quite a significant pay rise.

[MelanieSminge]

haha Xenia can make even more by being a making money guru to us here on mumsnet!

[DolomitesDonkey]

It's a catch 22 though, is love to pay for good advice for xenia, but need to earn the money first to pay her! ;)

[naturalbaby]

I was very tempted to PM Xenia recently for some hints/tips/life coaching after reading her input on a sahm thread...£240 an hour you say??

[Xenia]

PR, that's wonderful. What is fascinating is why I think I am worth it. I don't think I was particularly over praised by parents. I did get far and away the best exam results ni the school I suppose and top of year at university kind of stuff, Mensa, fairly okay looking etc so may be objectively I just know I'm worth quite a bit but I don't think it's just that. May be it's inherent personality.

I do turn away stuff that is too low paid. I spend quite a bit of time helping people find someone to help them. I do some stuff unpaid. I just stopped doing some work abroad as I felt it was paid at 50% of what I felt was right for me for that whcih in a sense felpt like burning pound notes and I on,ly did it because I had got my divorce debt under £1m at last. I suppose I tend always to appear delighted to do work for people.

The figures are interesting. Am I opid the minimum weekly wage for a hour because I have an IQ over 150... I am tongue in cheek here of course... or because I just happened to get those books in my teens about what jobs pay more or because of luck. It's probably a mixture of things but I do think women should aim high.

When we say what people earn we have to remember over half of it is confiscated in the UK though so you only keep half because of tax, NI etc.

People are worth what others are prepared to pay them. So if you can pick a niche where most people won't do it - it might even be something like no other beautician in your area is prepared to do intimate vagina waxing or no other cab drivers are female and prepared to do the mid night to 6am slot on New year's Eve =- there are always things other can't do.

I am certainly not saying it's easy. As I say I fail at lots of things. I wrote 5 books in my teens and all were rejected by publishers again and again and again.

[DolomitesDonkey]

Bugger. I've got an IQ of 150, it must be my face then!

[Rollersara]

This thread is deviating from the OP a bit but very interesting. I had a revelation last year when I applied for a job despite being happy in my current role. At the first interview I realised I had the skills and it was a niche area, so when they asked about salary expectation I suggested £5k above whatwas advertised and told them why I was worth it. I didn't get the job, apparently I split the interview panel because what I suggested was quite radical, but it was nothing to do with the salary I asked for.

[Xenia]

DD, I suppose we could do a graph or chart showing what makes some women earn a lot and what makes them not. I doubht looks is top of the tree unless you're an actor or model although the prettier you are the more you earn and also the richer the husband you tend to acquire too studies show.

It might have to be quite a complicated chart. Obviously ify ou leave school at 15 to have a baby and have no GCSEs it is going to be much harder over the next 50 years to earn a lot than if you graduate from a good university particularly if you then pick a high paid career.

I do think though picking something where you can work for yourself ultimately when you have experience is wise and I would encourage my chidlren in that. If you can own rather than being a hired hand worker you will probably have more choices. If you pick something which most people cannot do as they will never pass the exams or say you're David Beckham and no one else can play football as you can you are going to get more pay. I could not substitute for DB nor a surgeon but I would be pretty good at substituting for most cleaners and plenty of admin people.

[LaTrucha]

I am really enjoying checking up on this thread. I am in a moment of anxious transition and it is helping to keep some of the dark clouds of self doubt away. Earning has never been important to me until now. I preferred to do something I loved for peanuts. Things are different now and the transition is not easy. I probably will never earn a £1000 a day but I am at least viewing my employment prospects in a new and positive light. Thanks everyone.

[Xenia]

That's good. Wwell I was pyaing a mortgage and half the cost of a full time nanny when I was 23 and school fees byu the time I was 25 so I always had a necessity to earn reasonable sums just to keep us going, so one advantage of having marriage and responsibilities at a young age - you put a lot of effort into well paid careers.

[LaTrucha]

I get that. I really enjoyed what I did but there are now definite downsides. It would be good to have a more solid base now. The only clever financial thing I did was to near pay all my mortgage.

[Xenia]

That s a very good thing to do. We always tried and I still do to prioritise paying off debt. That might mean you seem to have less money to spend than others - I just replaced knickers with holes in which felt very extravagant as I prioritise debt repayment over knickers always and that's one reason I've done reasonably well with money. although I suppose a lot of women make their fortune through wearing sexy knickers as it were as it enables them to attract a rich husband which is probably an easier way to wealth particularly if you hardly have any GCSEs.

I was thinking of more of my failures today, there are loads. I just seem to forget them and do something else. Another was bikram yoga franchise - I even wrote to Lord Mandelson who does it but he never replied.

This weeks is buying a public lavatory in London to convert to a home... I would give that a 0.1% chance of proceeding but it would be fun to try.

[DolomitesDonkey]

This is something I really admire about you Xenia, your ability to laugh about it all and see the funny side - you don't seem afraid to send yourself up.

So, for those of us camping out in the Xenia fanclub - is there anywhere we can see you speak publicly? I had read on these boards once that you did do that sort of thing.

[MelanieSminge]

This weeks is buying a public lavatory in London to convert to a home
do it Xenia! That is one of my favourite fantasies!