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 We've noticed this thread is fairly old now, and some of the information is out of date.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)

[DolomitesDonkey]

If I can make 1000 a day then I will be afford to spend quality time with my family and persuing my hobbies.

If I make considerably less than 1000 a day I will spend the next 30 years on a wheel.

I'd rather throw time (and hard work) at the situation now and take that gamble!

[DolomitesDonkey]

As Xenia so frequently points out - I will be able to pay someone else to do the dreary time-consuming stuff such as scrubbing the oven & toilet (n.b., not with same brush), getting the dust off the top of the wardrobe, etc.

In my dreams I use a valet service to book my holidays. I don't require an island, just a small personal ski resort.

[Schoolworries]

Yes, your right. Im trying to work now but keep getting a 10 month old pressing the "off " button on my PC!

[Xenia]

Glad Lostg is inspire. The best way to deal with these things is say if your husband were talking about how to earn £1k a day would he think or you think he was "putting money over children" (of course not so similar comments to or about women are just sexist and to keep them down).

I think all we can expect of women is the same as men. Edwina Currie had a lot of wise words on all this recently - men and women both delegate things. Now it might be you pay someone to scrub your floor because you earn 40 x an hour what she or he does so it makes sense but few men and women with children do so little they have no balance.

The main point I think I hvae is that anyone with a child under 5 will be very busy and tired and that that period is a tiny tiny period of life. My youngest of 5 children just shaved for the first time. The period when they are little is very short so if it's hard just endure it because it will soon be over but don't make career decisions you then regret for 40 years.

Lostg, any training is good, training as a nurse - you might as well complete it. Old age care is going to be a massive market. In fact I was supposedly this month going to think about a business in that area but not had time. Some nurses have set up staff agencies and made a lot of money that way and because they have the qualification they are more likely to understand and attract other nurses.

I was talking to two people over lunch on a work thing today and what struck me was all three of us were happy and liked our work and I was saying what a nice change it made from my meeting middleaged fed up people. If you don't like something try to change it rather than just moan about it. I certainly accept it is not easy particularly at the moment.

Our gas man who is here today is doing fine because he is just like me - he comes when he says, he does the job well and he will work a 12 hour shift - he's now just gone over the 12 hour mark to finish. He even asked if it were okay to stay late and woudl I be turfing him out! The opposite - I'm delighted he is utterly reliable and conscientious. Most people aren't so it's not that hard to be better than a lot of people simply by turnuing up early, never missing an appointment adn doing what you say you'll do. That is beyond loads of people.

[caramelwaffle]

Salaries for the UK here

2008 figures, however, updated by respondents.

Just to throw out some ideas.

[recall]

I agree with Xenia regarding acquiring a niche skill, I have focused on a very tiny part of nursing, it was very scary at first, and I sometimes work 16 hour days because I work for myself. I once drove from Exeter to Newcastle and back in a day to earn £125. My family and friends all thought I was mad, but I was just starting out and could not bare turning down a job. I worked throughout my 3 pregnancies only taking off a couple of weeks to establish breast feeding. I remember working one day and having to hide very strong Braxton hicks from my patient,( I think I went into labour the next day )Sometimes I was working at a loss.

Some of the people who in the past have said I was "mad" working the long strange hours have also said "its alright for some" regarding my my financial situation as it is now.

I have earned £1000 in a day, although i don't every day. I suffer from ADD which I think has helped me to hyper focus and be creative, and get so bored in employment that I had to find another way.

OP, working from home....how about an e commerce ? Learn how to make a web site and flog something from the comfort of your laptop, or even drop shipping.

I do odd things to make cash, I once bought a second hand pair of UGGs and customised them with rabbit fur. The UGGs cost me £17 and the fur was £8, I flogged them on e bay for £45. It took me an hour to sew them, so that was £15 for an hour's work. I did it sat at home with my 3 children. I was just curious to see if i could make some cash and it worked. A bit random I know.

You could utilise your RGN qualification and go on an aesthetics course ? Could then do Botox etc, maybe not from home, but could hire a clinic at weekends when you ( possibly - I don't know your situation ) have a partner around to look after the children, or even practice in people's homes - save on outgoings.
Doing a very rough calculation, you would only need to do 5 to get your £1000.

[mathanxiety]

You would be amazed what people will pay for simple home sewn items (but this would probably be a sideline). DD1 used to make jewellery and sell it a local fairs, Christmas events, etc. She used my best nail clippers instead of buying a set of wire clippers. My Dsis's MIL made a packet selling fascinators online after she did a short adult education course immediately after the big Royal wedding.

With a background in nursing and then counselling you are really well set up for career advice, life coaching, lifestyle coaching (weight management, bad back management, losing pregnancy weight, diabetes management, personal coaching) or offering services to small businesses such as interviewing and evaluation of candidates, management communication in small businesses, managing business climate/atmosphere in small businesses -- it isn't such a stretch from individual counselling to tackling group dynamics and there are books galore that you could absorb. If you sit down and break down the various components of what you have done, with emphasis on the 'soft skills'
you will see certain strengths emerging, especially in communications and understanding group dynamics.

I know an ex nurse who makes a lot as a specialised masseuse for post natal abdominal issues and she talks you through birth trauma/ishoos with your own mother at the same time -- she is great and has quite a reputation. Her hours are school hours and she has a waiting list.

A lot of women are nervous about flying by the seat of their pants and feel they need to be completely qualified for any business endeavour, with the perfect business plan, the right education, contacts in their field, everything lined up oh so nicely on your desk, stapler and phone and printer full of paper and all the right looking business cards and supplies; they seem to operate with the old nightmare of finding themselves with all their clothes flying off in the middle of the supermarket never far from their minds -- I have learned from seeing DS and his friends tackle projects that none of that is at all necessary and that most men (especially younger ones) do not fear embarrassment as women do at all.

You need a website that says 'quality' loud and clear. Technology has liberated us from so much that was needed in the past.

You need to keep a weather eye out for opportunities and go for it. As Xenia said, failure is part of the game and you can't win em all, but it doesn't reflect on you -- men seem to know this but women worry too much about perfection, getting it right. It won't always work out but just try to cover your ass until you hit on something that works.

[naturalbaby]

Maybe I should go for a nursing degree then, I keep putting it off as I have 2 under 5's and am worried about the shift working to start with.

I love the customised UGG story!

[Xenia]

recall, we are very similar and I suspect many successful women are. I drove quite a long way yesterday for not massive huge amount of pay. In fact I'd earner more by 9.40am at home yesterday than I did on my fairly long trip but sometimes you have to do things at a loss in order to succeed later.

I was telling one of my children about the toddler experiment psychologists do - does the toddler want one sweet now or two later? Those of us who go in for deferred gratification (I certainly am) tend to do better eg our year of one of us working at a loss as childcare was more than one of our net salaries and recalls and my taking 2 weeks off to have a baby. I worked until I went into labour. In fact these sorts of things are often very good for women. it's the ones who spend the last 2 months on the sofa not moving eating donuts who have the medical issues.

I agree with matha too - try flying by the seat of your pants. My random idea last week (conversion of lavatory to property and I only mentioned it because it was current, I have ideas all the time and most fail as that one will) would be a flying by seat of pants thing. When you start most jobs you don't know much and you bluff. You need to spend as long on telling colleagues and those who matter how wonderful you are (women are useless at this compared to men) as being good at the work. There is no process of osmosis whereby bosses see you working silently 12 hour days crying into your documents. Instead work smart as well as hard and make sure everyone hears how wonderful you are at it all.

i certainly think some qualifications are wise so if naturalbaby could do a nursing degree that might help although some people study things for many years and hardly make a penny and others set themselves up the next day diong a business and make a lot from the start if it's something where you don't need the qualification to work in it. If you work for yourself you decide the hours which is why so many British women run their own companies and more women are millionaires in the UK than men at the moment.

[venusandmars]

For me, it's been about 3 things - expectations, risk, and excitement

Expectations: when I left school I decided not to go to university but worked and studied part-time - my reasoning was that I was hoping to get married one day and have children, so what was the point in getting a degree just to stop working and stay at home (rather now at how I thought). So I got a jib that was well within my capabilities and did some part-time qualifications too. That was all OK. I quite liked what I did, had a relatively secure job, and went back part-time after my dc1 was born. I could have stayed in that job and would now have been earning about £15K pa. Well actually, I wouldn't because the place I worked closed last year and my friends who still worked there are all redundant with very little prospect of finding something else.

Excitement: What I did find out (about myself) was that I liked learning and that I had more ability in some arenas than I had ever thought. So I did some more qualifications (part-time, with a young child, while working). Then I moved to a completely different career path.

Risk: I moved from a secure job to work on a 6 month contract. Because I believed there would be more opportunities, because I had some level of self-belief, and because although I liked my previous job, the new job intrigued me and excited me more.

Expectation: When I made the move I'd seen a job advert for a job earning £20K and I thought 'that's the job I'd like to aim for in 20 years time'. Within 2 years of moving job (all on relatively insecure employment contracts) I was in a post earning £20K. I learned such a lot about my own low-level of expectations from that. Not that they were bad, but just that they were unambitious.

Risk: I never stuck on a mainstream career track - I took opportunities that others thought were taking me off track, secondments to other organisations, transfers to different industries, posts in remote locations that required me to travel 2 hours to work and then 2 hours back again.

Excitement: And I always tried to do jobs that I loved.

Risk: Ten years ago, despite being in a well paid job, in a lovely organisation, my work/life balance was out of kilter, so I left and started working freelance - much to the horror of some people around me. My mantra was 'to do work that I loved, working with/for people that I liked'. And so it has been.

Excitement: The work I do now is nothing like the work I did 10 years ago (although it uses some of the same skills). I keep gravitating towards new challenges and new interests which keep me motivated.

Risk / Expectation: well who knows? I would find it difficult to guess or imagine what I might be doing in another 10 years time. But I believe I'll be happy, motivated, as successful as I need to be and satisfied with my income.

And apologies if all of the above sounds trumpet-blowing and self-congratulatory. I'm not super-woman, I'm not some kind of hero. I'm not even especially talented or gifted. I am good at what I do (although there are probably others who are better); I can manage to market myself (although there are others who would make a better job of it); I am motivated to do the work I do (although I can spend hours sitting on my lazy back-side staring out of the window).

I met recently with some others in the same 'industry' and a couple of them were commenting on my current work - along the lines of 'well it's alright for you, you've got experience in x' or 'well of course if I lived where you do, I could make that income' or 'well I can't make that commitment because my husband / child / horse needs to be looked after'. Yet from my perspective they have equal (if not more) talents than I have, and equal (if not more opportunities), and I have equal (although different) life constraints.

Sorry. This is probably not helpful to anyone on here, but I've enjoyed musing on it

[MarshaBrady]

This is a great thread and I agree with Xenia about attitude.

I admit I am still in the investment stage of one career even though I could earn a lot more on a day rate in another. But I'd actually rather stand alongside with the big players in major institutions then stand in the boardroom offering my thinking. But they are sort of connected.

It's much slower due to two dc but am getting there. The main thing is love what you do, and do it as well as you can.

[MarshaBrady]

For the minute anyway. Good to be flexible.

[Xenia]

venus, that is lovely. It's is not trumpet blowing. There are far too many threads from women on credit crunch issues - how can I save £1 a week etc and I think it is important women know that other women out there can do well so it lets them know what is possible. I also always wanted a family. At age 14 I was reading books about the best birth position even... but I always wanted to work full time and have a large family and be able to support it (probably because when I grew up women had started to do much better and I was virtually weaned on all those wonderful early feminists who were going on about women's earning power - I was lucky).

I also share that risk taking. I started to work for myself in 94. It could have failed. I try to spread the risk. i do a lot of different things.

One thin in venus' post is common to many who do well of both sexes - if you can go that extra mile. get up at 4.30am having arranged a baby sitter to get an early flight for a meeting abroad (I try to do as little of this as possile as my body likes hours of slee but I've done it when I have to) whereas some women say - I am a woman with a baby so I can only work 10 - 2 at most.

I agree with Marsha - love what you do. If you don't like it change it. I suspect people who carry on working at my age when perhaps they don['t need to tend to be doing it because they like it. Many serial entrepreneurs on selling the first business cannot just retire to the beach in Belize. It's dull. it's nice to have the beach there if you need it [ not resisting despite being told off about it above the inevitable mention of my tropical island here.. laughing....jsut to encourage the others...] but most of us need work we like as well.

In fact I'd better do some particularly the bits of work I don't want to do today so keep putting off. Also my sons are not even up yet. It is hugely easier with teenagers than babies. With a baby I would have been up with it from 6am having also breastfed it at mid night and 4am and probably had it screaming for an hour in the night too. Now I'm lucky if I see them by lunch time in holiday, dead easy, a piece of cake adn they are available to do things at work - at 11pm when our gas boiler man left I had at least 2 of them helping me and him lift massive old boiler structures.
I would add a random thought - keep fit, keep getting dirty, be prepared to carry heavy things, put your arm down a drain, be physical. I suspect if you move a lot (doesn't need a gym or m embership just moving stuff, carrying toddlers,) you keep your health and strength even at my age (50 exactly,just)

[DolomitesDonkey]

max I agree that's a real danger (aiming for perfection before opening for business). I have doubted whether I "should" put my name to a skill when I don't have the paper qualification which "may" be attached to it. Then I came to the conclusion that I am fully capable - and I'm sure we've all experienced the academically qualified but hopeless.

My "ideas" are continuously in evolution and I'm most definitely flying by the seat of my pants.

But as others pointed out, a man wouldn't turn down the work or get the jitters.

[Vaginald]

Wow, this thread has made me feel inspired!!!

[recall]

I wanted to buy a pub, I went to the bank and they said no because I had no experience in that field. I bought an old trailer and sold burgers in a lay bye for 10 months. When I went back to the bank, I had a "successful mobile catering business" whacked on the business plan with slightly exaggerated accounts to prove it - I got the money- I bought the pub.

Whilst I was waiting for the purchase to go through, I got a job working full time in a shitty but busy old pub. Then when I opened my own pub I was fast behind the bar and the my new judgey customers seemed to get confidence from the fact that i ( appeared ) to know what I was doing.

So that was 18 months spent flipping burgers and being a bar maid. Then I got to own my own pub !

Don't accept no - find a way around it, and keep going like a dog with a bone.

[recall]

The people who I said I was "mad" for driving so far also sniggered when I told them I used to have a burger van, and the same people look shocked when I tell them which pub I used to own ( it is well known round here )

[twentyten]

happy birthday(belatedly) xenia!Really good to hear from you and venus-validates my thinking and approach.Refreshing!
Women so often "play small"..........

[recall]

Another idea for making money fast with little initial outlay is by going on Shiply and delivering tat for people. Just register and bid for jobs, if you only have a car then bid for fragile items. Work out a route and go for it for a day, I reckon you could earn about 4-500 in a round trip if you got organised. Could even take the kids with you at a stretch although maybe not ideal. (my 5 year old would love it because she likes travelling with me, I think she sees it as an adventure and gets my full attention.)

[NellyJob]

another one is instead of scrabbling around for cleaning jobs, which I know some mums do, start your own cleaning company, all it takes is a load of leaflets through doors and some cleaning stuff, and a vehicle I suppose.

[EightiesChick]

Have skimmed this thread but will read properly later. On the subject of knowing your own worth and not letting yourself be sidelined at work, I read two books a few years ago that were really helpful:

Lois Frankel, Nice Girls Don't Get The Corner Office
Pat Heim, Hardball for Women

Note that these aren't about getting highly-paid jobs, but how to avoid some of the things women often do that minimise their contribution to the workplace and thus chances of advancement. One tip from Frankel I remember was that women often ask for much less in terms of departmental budget at work, thinking that saving the company money will earn them brownie points (Frankel says this often doesn't get noticed), whereas men say 'My dept is really important so we need X' and gets it because everyone thinks they're right. You have to be prepared to shout about your successes.

OP, someone's made a good point though that if you're planning on doing this without childcare, your options are limited either to what can be done with the kids around, or what you can do in the evenings/weekends and is preferably very portable.

[Onthebottomwithawomansweekly]

Mumblepot how about telephone underwriting?

Some large life insurance companies are now offering a service where a nurse rings the client at an agreed time and spends 30 mins going through medical questionnaires with them.

Handier for the client than having to take time off to go for a medical, and better for the company than having a sales person with no medical qualifications asking sensitive medical questions.

They probably farm it out to large medical practices with links to life assurance, so you might have to cast around a bit to find the provider, but if you can guarantee quiet times to ring the clients, and provide confidentiality (i.e. keep the documentation locked up at home) this might be something quite well paid that you could do?

[Onthebottomwithawomansweekly]

Oh the telephone underwriting can probably be done during the evening and at weekends because people don't like to have long convos about their health during their own working hours, which are usually office hours.

Separately I'm printing off this thread, there are some incredibly interesting posts on this about women and employment.

[Onthebottomwithawomansweekly]

*printing off this thread for my DD!

[Xenia]

Really good example - recall and getting her pub. Well done.

Agree with eighties too - my second daughter will be negotiating pay soon. It is very hard to argue what you are worth. One solution is get a job offer so you can say well X offered Y so I need Z to stay but then may be that alternative offer cannot be found. It will be interesting to see . I think when she got this job she accepted less than the agent expected and less than the man doing it before (who seems to have been sacked) and it was so much less the agent invited her to a champagne lunch as I think the agent got more because she could keep the difference. ANyway the main thin in this climate is for new graduated to get any jobs but it is fascinating for me to see her example in this recession. The books 80s suggest sound just the right kind of thing once you are in a job to help you improve your profile - your personal brand as it were.

Also make sure you are on Linked-in as that is what a lot of people check first. Try to look good on it.

The medical underwriting idea sounds good. It is not as expensive to market new businesses as it used to be now we have facebook, twitter and all the rest.