How to Make Money While Homeschooling

Are you here because you’re looking for an easy and full proof way to get money deposited into your bank account while you’re spending time with your kids? Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not what I’m here to tell you about. Easy and full proof don’t exist in this world 😉.

What I can tell you, though, is that many homeschoolers all over the world are working very hard, both in homeschooling and in money-making work, and are succeeding in both. Here are some ways they make money.

Full time or part time job outside the home. These parents hire somebody else to watch their children while they are at work and schedule their homeschooling around their work schedules. Sometimes that means that structured learning takes place in the evenings and on weekends. Other times, they outsource parts of homeschooling, hiring tutors or signing their children up for online classes for certain subjects. You can read more about how these amazing parents do it in this blog post by Jen Mackinnon.
Remote work from home. This is still a job, and these parents are working on somebody else’s schedule. However, some remote jobs have early morning or late evening hours, so parents can spend most of their days with their children and do their work when the children are asleep or done with their homeschooling for the day. For example, some homeschoolers I know teach online, and their students are located in distant time zones, so that their teaching time does not overlap with their time with their children.
Freelancing from home. Many fields easily land themselves to freelancing opportunities: writing and editing, graphic design, web design, video editing, accounting and tax preparation, coding, data analysis, and many more. The advantage of freelancing is that you set your own schedule and you can choose which projects to take on and which to decline. The flip side, of course, is that your income is not steady. It depends on how many projects you take on and how much time you spend on them. And, especially in the beginning, you might find yourself in between projects and spending much of your time marketing your services and looking for new clients. Keep in mind that freelancing is essentially running your own service-based business, with all the legal and tax consequences.
Make and sell your own products. Like with freelancing, you would be running your own business, but selling products rather than services. The type of product you can sell is limited only by your imagination and can be physical or digital. Homeschoolers I know sell anything from printable homeschool unit studies to online video courses to homemade lotions and creams to vitamins and supplements. The advantage of a product-based business, especially if your product is digital, is that any product could be sold to an indefinite amount of customers. Your earning potential is not limited by the number of work hours you can fit into your day. Once you invest time and effort into creating a valuable product, you can earn money from its sales for many years. The flip side, of course, is that you need to be able to sell your product. You might spend time and effort on developing a product, only to find out that no one is interested in buying it. And, unlike with freelancing, you are not getting paid by the hour. Experts recommend researching your target market before you begin product creation. This method would take longer to start earning money but can potentially result in a higher income.
Affiliate marketing. If you don’t have your own product to sell, you can make money selling other people’s products. Essentially, you recommend a product to others and receive a commission from each sale. You can learn more about affiliate marketing in this blog post from Optin Monster.

This post is just a brief overview of how homeschoolers make money. There are many ways of doing it, and each family has to find what works for them – often, through trial and error. But you can minimize error by talking to and learning from homeschool parents who are successfully combining work and homeschooling.

This Monday, Julie Mendez of Working While Homeschooling will be sharing her tips and advice with us at the March live session. Join live and ask Julie all your questions!

Julie’s talk is part of the Digital Homeschool Convention 2020-2021 School Year Sessions. Digital Homeschool Convention members attend the live session at no extra cost.