Category: Earn Extra Money

Spent all your money holiday shopping and want to put some extra cash back into your wallet? Or are you looking for ways to earn a whole second income?

Whatever your goal, you can turn a passion into a side gig or a profitable venture that you allows you to escape the chains of your day job.

If you’re wondering how to make money in the winter, stick around for a few profitable ideas. You might even turn your side gig into a full-time money maker!

Get Crafty

Cold months call for beenies, mittens, and scarves. As a crafter, you can make a living putting your creations on sites like Etsy and Ebay. If you make your own patterns, Craftsy is a great place to share your talent so others can make similar items.

If your local church hosts a winter bizarre, you can sell your crafts there too. You might even take special orders and make a difference in your community.

Quilters can find themselves in popular demand during the winter season. Quilts and blankets are popular gifts. You could fund your holiday shopping with the money you make selling these crafts.

Teach a Class

If you’re confident in your ability to share your crafting talents, you could teach a class.

Popular classes include:

• Knitting/crocheting
• Quilting
• Scrapbooking
• Hand lettering
• Painting/watercolor
• Jewelry making

You can teach classes online or at your local craft/art supply stores.

You may even offer weekly, bi-weekly or monthly classes to your community. Post flyers for your class on community boards and on free online announcements and newspapers. Offer the class for free and charge for supplies – or vice versa, or charge a flat fee to cover your costs for your time and supplies.

If crafts aren’t your thing but you have a profitable skill, you can teach that too. Photography, computer software, woodworking, and even language classes are marketable classes you can teach online and in your spare time.

And if teaching isn’t your thing, you could tutor instead.

Start a Delivery Service

Many people would rather work in an office than go out and brave the elements in the cold months. Others are homebound and aren’t able to run their errands as often as they’d like. You can help them out by starting your own delivery service.

Set your base price and choose what service to provide. Will you pick up groceries? Deliver take-outs?

There are a few ways you can run your business. You can contract stores or restaurants that you’ll deliver from. Or you can charge a flat rate, a percentage based on the total order, or a mileage fee.

Get the message out that you’re offering your services in the area. Let the stores or restaurants know about your services so they can refer you to their customers.

Put Your Shovel to Work

A snow shovel is your best friend when you have to pull a car out of a garage but your driveway is covered with inches of snow. People often have to get up early to shovel snow before leaving for work. You can take care of that for them with your snow shoveling service.

Work out a shoveling schedule with potential clients to have their driveways and walkways cleared by the time they leave or arrive home. You can set your own price base on square feet, inches, time, or occasion, and accept daily or weekly payments.

Shoveling snow is one of the best ways to make money in the winter for teenagers. If you’ve got an active teen, this might be a great way for them to start their own seasonal business.

Just make sure to stay warm in the snow; a case of frostbite can put you out of business fast. Wear comfortable, insulating clothes to protect your skin. Learn more about Ecosox and avoid frostbitten toes.

Put Your Truck in Gear

You can’t talk about how to make money in the winter without mentioning snow plowing.

There are some jobs that are just too big for a shovel. If you own a truck and plow, you could be someone’s lifesaver.

Setting up a plowing service can be done in a couple of different ways. You could subcontract yourself out to your town or neighborhood, or you could run an on-call business. Determine what would work best for you to cover your expenses.

Don’t forget to check into necessary permits and insurance for the area you live in.

Babysit Snowed-in Kids

Just because the school is calling it a snow day, it doesn’t mean parents can stay home from work. They’ll need a sitter – and that could be you.

You can help them out in a jam and make some cash on the side. You can design activities for them based on the snow day. All you need is some construction paper, scissors glue, and markers.

You could also sign up for an online sitter service where parents in need of a babysitter can look for someone local.

Sell Your Baked Goods

Holiday treats are popular in the winter months.

If sugar cookies are your specialty, invest in holiday cookie cutters and package your cookies for sale. Include your business card with a list of items you bake and their prices.

Every holiday dinner needs dessert. Offer your baking services to family and friends who are cooking for the holidays but don’t have the time or don’t know how to bake. They put in their request, and you charge them for the product or a service fee.

Set Up a Hot Chocolate Stand

If you want to teach your kids how to make money in the winter, a hot chocolate stand will do the trick.

Much like a lemonade stand in the summer, they can set up a table with a thermos or two of hot chocolate and sell it for $0.50 – $1 a cup. They can even charge an extra $0.05 for marshmallows.

It’s Not Just about How to Make Money in The Winter

As you see, it’s not that difficult to supplement your income. We hope this article gave a better idea of how to make money in the winter so you can afford all those gifts and treats without feeling guilty for overspending.

Visit our page to learn more ways to earn money. Whether you just want to make a little extra money or make a full-time income, we have tons of tips and ideas to get you started.

Small-sample polls have indicated that between 5 and 14 percent of Americans currently own cryptocurrency.

But, these same polls also show that as many as 21 percent of US residents are considering trading in cryptocurrency in the future. After all, investing is a great way to make money from home and virtual currencies like Bitcoin are said to be the future.

If you’re considering getting into the cryptocurrency business but aren’t sure where to start, here are 10 great cryptocurrency trading tips.

1. Do Your Research

If cryptocurrency is a whole new world for you, you need to learn to walk before you can run.

That means starting with the basics, such as learning how to purchase and store cryptocurrency. Coinbase and Kucoin are beginner-friendly purchase sites that are easy to use if you’re wondering where to trade cryptocurrency.

But, before you start trading, get to grips with basic cryptocurrency theory. That means familiarizing yourself with all the trading terms and understand spread and depth charts. And, always make a point of tracking cryptocurrency news every day.

Then, when you feel ready, a crypto trading bot can help you maximize your potential and put all your research to good use.

2. Only Invest What You Can Lose

The most important advice for any cryptocurrency trader is to never ever invest more than you can afford to lose.

Consider any money you’ve converted into cryptocurrency as lost forever. There are no guarantees when trading cryptocurrency. And, losses don’t just come from market dips. Changes in government regulations, bugs and hackers can all result in watching your money disappear.

If you can’t handle that worst-case scenario then it’s time to reconsider your maximum investment amount.

3. Follow Bitcoin News

When it comes to cryptocurrency you have Bitcoin, and then you have altcoins, which are all other types of cryptocurrency, such as Ethereum and Litecoin.

Most altcoins are traded according to the current Bitcoin value. When Bitcoin goes up in value, altcoins tend to lose value. But, if Bitcoin prices dip, altcoin prices can suffer as people revert back to physical, or fiat, money.

The best times for altcoin growth are when Bitcoin value remains steady, or sees organic growth or decline.

4. Diversify

You wouldn’t head to Vegas and put all your money on the black, and trading cryptocurrency is no different.

While your earning potential increases with the amount you invest in one type of coin, you also have more potential to lose. Divide and conquer to reap bigger benefits across the whole cryptocurrency market.

For example, Bitcoin might be the most famous cryptocurrency but between January 2016 and January 2018, its value increased by 34 times. Pretty good huh? Well, not when you consider than Corgicoin’s value increased by 60,000 times during that same period.

5. Justify Every Trade

One of the key rules when it comes to learning how to trade crypto is to always have a clear strategy in mind.

Rely on your research to ensure that you justify every trade with sound analysis. As a beginner, you’re a small fish in a big pond full of whales waiting for you to make a wrong move. For every gain, someone else loses, so don’t trade if you’re not convinced about your strategy.

6. Know When to Take Some Profit

When you start riding a profit wave, it can be too exhilarating to let go. But, no one ever lost money by cashing in on a little profit on the way.

For example, if a coin’s value increases by 30 percent, consider taking some profit, even if your goal was a 40 or 50-percent increase.

Leave it too long and you run the risk of losing profit you had in the bag, or even turning that profit into a loss. Play it smart this way helps protect your original investment and keep a steady stream of profit coming in.

7. Consider the Bigger Picture

As learn how to trade cryptocurrency, you’ll realize that some coins have more staying power than others.

Place these into medium or long-term holds and don’t even consider panic-selling if their progress isn’t linear.

BNB is a good example of a good long-hold coin. It may have dipped by 20 percent for a period, but its value increased by threefold soon after.

8. Set Stop Losses

For any coins that aren’t in your medium or long-term holds, always set a point of acceptable loss. If their value starts to dip, this is when you sell to avoid more loss.

As well as helping to mitigate your losses, deciding on your point of acceptable loss means you now have a reference point to judge future trades.

9. Don’t Believe the Hype

Everyone loves a freebie. But, be cautious of getting caught up in the hype of free ‘advice’ when it comes to cryptocurrency.

People will often pump up the value of a coin by praising it on social media. This results in mass FOMO and an increased interest in that coin, meaning the pumpers can dump it on eager buyers for a higher price.

Cryptocurrency is volatile, but a sudden increase in value often evens out. Non-organic pumps are often followed by dips so keep your FOMO in check and stay cautious.

10. Learn from Your Mistakes

As with anything in life, it’s inevitable that you’ll make mistakes when trading cryptocurrency.

But, don’t let these losses discourage you. Evaluate the situation and try to understand what happened. Maybe you sold too early out of fear, or perhaps you held on too long riding that profit wave.

Wherever you went wrong, learning from your mistakes will make you a better cryptocurrency trader in the end.

Thrive in the Cryptocurrency Business

As these tips show, thriving in the cryptocurrency business takes a lot of research and careful planning.

But, if you’re willing to take the risk, you could become the next cryptocurrency success story, or at least make a tidy profit in your spare time.

Of course, trading cryptocurrency is just one of many ways to make money. Check out my other blog posts for more thrifty business inspiration!

Despite what they say, you can have it all.

Around 57% of moms have started their own business or at least thought about it. That goes to show how strong the entrepreneur spirit is among moms. But striking the balance between running a retail business and being a mom can be tough.

Below, we’ve put together 8 tips to help moms run a great retail business.

1. Focus on What You Do Best

When you’re running a business and a family at the same time, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details.

On the business side, try to limit the time you spend wrapped up in the minutiae. That’s a good way to burn out your passion and lose sight of what drew you into your retail business in the first place.

Try making a list of the key features you enjoy about running your business and try to focus on those. You might have to wear some different hats occasionally, but you can get a lot done without getting caught up in the details.

2. Accept When You Need Help

If it comes to it, consider hiring people to tackle the minutiae while you focus on the parts that inspire you.

Being a mom means you also have a family to lean on. If you feel like you’re the one supporting everyone else, it might be time to flip that on its head. It may surprise you to discover how much your family can pick up the slack when you need them to.

3. Build a Community

One of the fantastic things about owning a small business is the connection you can build with your local community when you start out.

You’ll usually find friends either in your local area or in an online community who will help you out with advice and support. This can be invaluable throughout your whole business journey as it means there’s someone extra to help you out.

Social media makes it easier than ever to find fellow business moms or businesses of a similar size. Banding together can even help you with marketing and cross-promotion.

4. Consider Your Growth

When owning your own business, you have some major choices to make concerning the future of your business.

In general, most businesses seek constant growth and new opportunities. But if you began your small business with love and passion, you may not want it to grow out of control – particularly if you want to keep playing a day to day role in it.

That might mean turning down opportunities for growth. But if you’ll be happier for it in the long run, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The beauty of owning your own business is that you get to call these shots.

5. Protect Yourself

Running a business can often involve facing some difficult situations. Those situations may include threats to your personal or business security.

Take precautions to stay safe when you’re doing business. Shoplifting, break-ins, and threats of violence can all result in heartbreak, as can trouble with the people you hire.

With a few preventative steps, you can reduce the risk to yourself and your business. You can read more here about shoplifting prevention.

Staying on good terms with your local community can also help you stay safe as you do business.

6. Be Strong, Be Bold

This one’s a twofer, but they’re related skills.

In business, remember to be strong. Assertiveness is important for many reasons, from dealing with staff to saying “no” to excessive requests for freebies or your precious time. Carrying your business with strength will also show you won’t let other businesses bully you.

Being bold is another key business skill. By this, we mean don’t be afraid to strike out for new opportunities. That might mean handing out business cards without shame or being the first one to tout your business. Being bold is one of the best ways to unlock new business, so throw out the fear and get out there.

7. Don’t Forget Your Family

In all the excitement of running a business, it can be a struggle to strike the right work-life balance.

While you’re unlikely to forget your family altogether, it’s easy to get swept along in the current of doing day-to-day business and fail to make enough time for family.

Try to ensure you balance work time with family life by putting strict limits on the number of hours you work and ensuring you take days off. Making time around public holidays and family celebrations are also vital.

If someone in your immediate family expresses concerns about how much you see each other, be sure to listen. While you might not be able to accommodate them, it’s important not to turn defensive and lose sight of your own feelings.

8. Stop and Breathe

Being a mom is a full-time job in itself, nevermind running a retail business on top of it. With your head buried so deep in work, it’s important to sometimes stop and take a step back.

Try to get a look at the bigger picture. You may discover things you could be doing differently, or you might discover some misaligned priorities. It’s a great chance to think about your work-life balance and spend time with the people who matter most to you.

It’s also a brilliant opportunity to take a look at your business. You might spot opportunities for growth or promotion you hadn’t considered before, for example. Or you can take the time to come up with your plan for the next year to take advantage of a trend.

Mom’s Retail Business Dreams

With these 8 fantastic tips, you should be able to have it all and achieve mom’s retail business dreams. Business and family life both share one thing in common: you never stop learning. So learn and grow as you work, and you’re sure to find the balance that works for you.

Looking for more business tips for moms? Make sure to follow our blog.

Everyone loves a good photo booth. They’re a huge hit at weddings, birthdays, company parties, and holiday events. They can fit pretty much any party theme and they’re a wonderful way to make sure everyone has something to remember the memories made.

But, have you ever thought about everything that goes into setting up a photo booth? Most people would rather hire a photo booth business than go the DIY route.

This means someone has to offer photo booth services, though! That person can be you. Owning a photo booth business may be one of the best decisions you ever make.

Here’s how to actually make it happen!

1. Identify a Target Market

Although a photo booth is easy to work into any celebration, it’s better for your business if you identify a target market. You can’t just assume that you’ll open for business and all of a sudden be setting up a photo booth all over town. You need to figure out whether you’d prefer to do corporate events, weddings, birthdays, or some mixture of these things.

Then, really get to know your target market. Figure out how much a corporate event usually costs. Understand how to get attention from soon-to-be brides and their wedding planners.

Whatever kind of event you’d like to focus on, get a deep understanding of the people who plan them. This is your first step in generating leads and making sales!

2. Research Your Competition

Keep in mind that you’re probably not the only person who’s decided to start a photo booth business. Do some research to figure out who your competition is in the local area.

Figure out how long they’ve been in business and what events they specialize in. Learn more about what sets them apart, then start thinking about how to differentiate yourself.

3. Figure Out a Funding Strategy

Here’s the thing: you can have the most amazing photo booth business ideas ever, but you won’t succeed if you don’t have enough funding to start your business.

Luckily, you can avoid a lot of the overhead traditionally associated with small businesses. You don’t necessarily have to pay for things like a photography studio space or a whole lot of high-end photography equipment, either. You do still need to set some money aside for things like marketing campaigns and branding tools, basic photo booth equipment, and employee salaries if you plan to grow a team.

4. Buy All the Essential Materials

The basic materials of a photo booth include the backdrop, the camera, and the props. A photo booth business, though, should have multiple of these.

Invest in at least 10-20 photo booth backdrops so you’re able to provide your clients with options. Figure out what kind of camera and printing system you’d like to set up with as well, and always have one or two back-ups ready to go. Get storage and transportation devices for your equipment, too.

As far as props go, the more you have, the better.

5. Invest in Marketing and Advertising

Once you’ve done all your market research, budgeting, and bought all your supplies, you’re almost ready to open for business. The next step is to start branding your photo booth company and marketing your services!

This is huge. You need to have a marketing campaign going before you’re actually ready to launch. Such planning helps you hit the ground running and make sales as soon as you do open for business.

A few great marketing tools to do this with are:

• SEO and content marketing
• PPC
• Radio advertising
• Print marketing
• Event marketing

Digital marketing is non-negotiable. It’s up to you whether you want to go the SEO or PPC route – or create a mix of both – but you need to do something to create a strong digital footprint.

Radio ads will help you reach your local audience, and you can gear them to the stations/time slots that make the most sense for your target market.

Print marketing means buying business cards, flyers, and maybe a billboard ad or two. Event marketing, on the other hand, means showing up to networking events to talk about your business and attending conferences like wedding expos or entertainment events.

6. Ask for Help

There’s no shame in reaching out to friends and family members when you’re getting your small business off the ground. Think about it: how great would it be to see if your cousin wants your photo booth at her wedding or if your sister can talk her boss into having a photo booth at the Christmas party this year?

Using your personal connections to generate business is genius. It boosts the amount of work you’re able to do in a short amount of time. It helps you get customer reviews and a bit of experience under your belt, which are both necessary when appealing to the photo booth clients you don’t personally know.

7. Celebrate Your Wins

Keep in mind that success doesn’t happen overnight. Creating a thriving small business takes lots of time and sacrifice.

But, soon enough, the fruits of your labor will start to show! Celebrate them.

Congratulate yourself when you book your first client that isn’t a friend or family member. Set specific milestones to reach as a business owner and do small celebrations every time you hit another one. Each new success story is a big deal. It’s a sign that you’re going in the right direction and that all your hard work is paying off.

Plus, these moments are what keep you going during the times that business does slow down or things don’t go as planned.

Start Your Photo Booth Business Right Now!

What are you waiting for? If you’ve already thought of the perfect name for your photo booth business or you can’t help but daydream about the kind of clients you’ll have, you clearly want to do this.

So, just go for it!

Start making all the plans today to launch your new business in the near future. For more tips to help you go from the career you have now to being your own boss, click here.

Whether you’re a brand new mom or your kids are already getting big, you’re probably running from one thing to the next–without much time to stop and catch your breath.

Sometimes childcare isn’t enough. If you’re an ambitious entrepreneur and a mom, you’ll have to find time to balance both.

So is it possible? Can you handle a business while staying at home with the kids?

It might not be easy to build a successful home business while balancing household duties and growing families, but it’s definitely not impossible. Like any other business venture, you need to generate a business that’s both profitable and enjoyable–all while managing your home life.

Here are some tips for running a business with your hectic schedule as a mom–so you can have the best of both worlds.

10 Tips for Running a Successful Home Business As a Busy Mom

It’s challenging to build a successful home-based business–especially when you’ve got a house to manage and kids to raise. But with the right amount of planning, determination, and time management, you can be a great businesswoman and a mother. No sacrifices required.

Let’s take a look at some tips you can use to manage the responsibility of being a mom in business.

1. Make Your Home Into a Corporate Office

The first step towards building a business out of your home is taking it just as seriously as you would any other job.

When you work in a corporate office or you have an office job, you come into work every day with specific goals to accomplish before the end of the day. The same thing applies when you’re working from home.

Set aside a home office and treat it like your official workplace. This means having a desk, an office chair, a well-organized space, and no distractions.

Once you’re in this office, have a schedule and a to-do list just like you would in the workplace.

In this case, you’re not working for a boss–you are the boss. So you need to hold yourself accountable for being productive and sticking to the schedule.

2. It’s Okay to Say “No”

As a mom, you probably say no to your kids all the time: staying up late, eating more dessert, or playing an hour more of video games.

You have to take that same attitude to your business too. There might be more pressure to say yes all the time, but if you take on everything on your plate, you’ll be busy from morning until night.

You need time for your family–and you need time for yourself. Don’t be afraid to say no or push back meetings or ideas that you don’t have time for.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Set Boundaries

As a busy, working mother, you already have a lot on your plate. Don’t be afraid to set boundaries on what you’re willing and able to do.

If you have a spouse or significant other, talk to them about how to divide the load for household chores or childcare duties. Women do an average of 60% more household chores than men, and mothers are often expected to carry the brunt of the housework.

Even if you’re working from home, it’s still a job, and you still deserve to be taken seriously for your work.

Be sure that childcare and chores are divided evenly among those in the household–including spouses, significant others, older children, or other able family members.

4. Get Outside When You Can

While it’s important to have an at home office that you can count on, don’t keep yourself trapped indoors all day.

Not only is it bad for your health, but you’ll be more likely to get distracted or become stressed while you work. Try getting out of the house and working in a local coffee shop or the library. You could even attend business networking events when you can–especially if there are ones for working women or moms in your area.

Don’t isolate yourself indoors. Whenever you have the chance to get out of the house–leaving kids with a spouse, relative, or sitter of course–it can be good for you to work in a different environment.

5. Find an Online Community

Working at home alone can often feel isolating. Know that you’re not alone–and you’re not the only mom out there handling the responsibility of a business.

Try to connect with other moms in business and entrepreneurs online. You can search Linkedin, online forums, or social media for “working moms” or “business moms.”

Not only will this give you a network for support, but it also lets you meet and bond with other moms who have the same things on their plate. You can share tips, advice, resources, and inspiration with other women devoted to motherhood and their personal businesses.

6. Keep Yourself Healthy

It’s hard enough to balance childcare and a career–it’ll be a lot harder if you’re sick. Take care of yourself and try your best to stay healthy.

Exercise daily or a few times a week if you can, drink water throughout the day, get 8 hours of sleep a night, and make sure you’re eating well. You can try taking vitamins or supplements if you feel like you’re not getting enough from your diet–or if you find yourself feeling sluggish or tired.

When you do find yourself getting sick, don’t be afraid to take time off. Try to get a family member or a sitter to care for the kids, and keep your work minimal, if at all. You need the time and the rest to recover fully–so you can be back at work again as soon as possible.

7. Set Aside Time for Yourself

When you have kids, sometimes it can feel like it’s all about them. And it is! But it’s also about you.

Your health and well being are just as important. After all, you can’t take care of your family if you’re not taking good care of yourself.

If you push yourself too hard, you, your kids, and your work might suffer. When you’re working from home, it can feel like the work never stops.

Take at least one day off each week. On that day, don’t check your work email, don’t answer the phone, and try not to worry about what’s usually on your mind. If you want a break from childcare duties too, ask your partner or a relative–or hire a sitter to help you out on that day if you can.

8. Treat It Like a “Real” Business

When it comes to home businesses (especially for working moms) there’s a stigma of it not being “real” work.

Sometimes this myth comes from others, but oftentimes it’s perpetuated by home business owners themselves. The confidence needs to come from you. You run a real, serious, honest business–so treat it like one!

Invest in a professional looking office, website, and business structure to make sure that you’re not sabotaging your own success. Your business deserves to be taken seriously–and you do too.

You should also be investing in business tools, like time tracking programs, collaboration apps, and online postage. With Certified Mail Labels, you can skip the trip to the post office and send mail 24/7, every day of the year.

9. Draw a Line Between Your Jobs

For the sake of your kids as well as your business, it’s important to draw a line separating your work and motherhood.

Whenever you’re with your kids, be present and give them your full attention. They can usually tell if you’re checking your work email or making business calls while you’re supposed to be spending time with them.

In the same way, be present when you’ve dedicated time to work. During working hours, put all your attention towards the work at hand, and let people others know that you won’t be available for other things–just like in a regular office.

This promotes efficiency in both areas–business and motherhood–and it will keep your lives from bleeding into each other and affecting your relationship with your kids.

10. Fight Off the Feelings of Guilt

As a mom, you’re likely to deal with some kind of guilt. A quarter of working moms cry once a week–both from the stress and the guilt. These feelings came come from choosing to work instead of caring for your kids full time, taking a moment for yourself to relax, and just about everything in between.

It’s important that you try to avoid any feelings of guilt. Remind yourself that there’s nothing wrong with supporting your family–both financially and as a stay at home mother. You deserve to live the life that you want to live, even if it’s challenging.

Moms in business can do it all, but they’re also still human. You need to take some time to rest and recuperate.

Putting It All Together

Being a mom and running a business is like having two full-time jobs. It isn’t always easy to balance a successful home business with caring for your household.

But you’re not an ordinary mom–you’re a working mother. You deserve to have the best of both worlds without sacrificing your well being.

With the right mindset, good time management, and a lot of hard work, you can build a successful home based business without giving up the time to be a great mother too.

Looking for more tips and tricks to survive your time as a working mom? Check out more working from home advice on our blog!