
Ask HN: My wife needs something to do from home to make money... - mkelley
My wife is a stay at home Mom and is bored - unfortunately she doesn't have the best formal education credentials but she is far from stupid. However this does heavily impact her ability to get a job that pays much more than minimum wage, usually labor intensive. She has a herniated bulging disc in her lower back, so I'd prefer her not do a lot of manual labor all day. I wanted to hear from you guys what sort of entrepreneurial endeavors she might embark on with my programming/web expertise and a little bit of cash backing her. The catch is, she needs to be able to do it from home. She doesn't need to get rich - even earning ~$1000/mo would be acceptable as long as the man(woman) hours to money earned ratio is reasonable. Ideas?
======
patio11
A younger, stupider me would have suggested writing for one of the freelancer
sites. However, that seems to put her on a collision course with lots of not-
so-savvy-but-they-don't-need-to-be folks who would be thrilled to make 1/4 of
her reserve price.

Ignoring credentials for a moment, does your wife have any skill which is
commercially valuable? Can she develop one? Many knowledge-worker things can
get delivered over the Internet at fairly high price points.

For example, does she have a solid grasp of high school mathematics? Does she
understand who cares about that and why? If so, that trivially supports $40+
an hour. (Customer: Tiger Mom in a high-achieving suburban school district.)

Does she have native proficiency in a foreign language? (n.b. English is a
foreign language to lots of people who have money!) Tutoring goes from free to
$10 to $40+ an hour. (Why the range? Customer selection. Think less "high
school foreign exchange student" and more "executive recently transferred from
Nomura Securities to their NYC office who feels his career growth will be
stymied by his poor conversational English skills.")

Does she have a hobby which is common among upper middle class Americans and
which carries social esteem? Can she teach it?

For more about this general topic, see Ramit Sethi.

~~~
SkyMarshal
_> For example, does she have a solid grasp of high school mathematics? Does
she understand who cares about that and why? If so, that trivially supports
$40+ an hour. (Customer: Tiger Mom in a high-achieving suburban school
district.)_

Doing that in person is probably most lucrative. I know a physics grad in the
Bay Area who does it as a regular job, full-time income for after
school/evening/weekend work. But also worth checking out the new wave of
online tutoring sites, that connect real tutors to real students. Tutorspree
is the only one I can recall, but pretty sure there are a few others:

<http://www.tutorspree.com/>

------
prbuckley
Skype for the sick, create a service that does scheduled calls (ideally video
calls) to the elderly and infirm for a fee.

I had this idea because my father suffers from Parkinsons disease and gets
quite lonely in the house during the day. He lives in Florida and I life in
California and I can't call him as much as I would like to given the time
difference. I know he gets lonely and would love to just have a conversation
with someone during the day. I would pay to have someone skype him for 20-30
minutes in the middle of the day just to provide some conversation.

I am guessing that there are many other people who are in my situation with
sick or elderly relatives. I know I would pay for a service like this and you
would be bringing happiness into peoples lives.

~~~
thefreshteapot
when I am an old man, I hope my family make more of an effort than to plan for
strangers to call me. This seems more for your own guilt than helping them.
That said, I would have loved the chance to skype with my grandad or tap into
his "what I am doing" view.

Knowing how many older folk play crosswords, I think an async game you can
play is far more meaningful.

~~~
georgieporgie
_when I am an old man, I hope my family make more of an effort than to plan
for strangers to call me._

That's a really rude statement. Also, you have no reason to think the parent
commenter's father enjoys games, or even to think that an aged person with
health problems is interested in puzzles over human interaction.

~~~
thefreshteapot
I stand by it, I dont think it is rude.

I think it highlights the focus we as technology advocates hold that
technology can solve society based problems. Turn back the dial 50 years, we
held our elders in far higher respect than we do today.

That said, I want to show you an example of something a bit more meaningful
with skype and the older generation.

<http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17870178>

Clearly this is not for all people, yet I feel it is more interesting than
just to ring up and hold a "30 minute" conversation because someone is paying
you to do it. Not only that but I would bet it gives some of these ladies
focus, purpose, still have something to give to society.

~~~
tbeseda
Is there data for well elders were respected now and 50 years ago?

I think this is a common cultural misconception. Much like "Americans are
getting dumber," is socially manufactured.

~~~
philwelch
For one thing, nursing homes used to be unthinkable. You wouldn't kick elders
out of the family home.

~~~
nasmorn
You could also expect them to die in a reasonable timeframe. Caring for
someone for 6 months is a totally different thing from doing so for 6 years.
It is a gift and a curse.

------
buss
My girlfriend was doing medical transcription for a while before going back to
school. It's boring, but it's a somewhat skilled position and thus the pay is
decent (my girlfriend topped out around 2k per month). Your wife will have to
get a medical transcription certification first, though.

Here's the company she worked for: <http://www.nuance-nts.com/> \- they're the
same people that do Dragon Naturally Speaking and Siri. Kinda weird to be
training algorithms that are replacing you.

~~~
Kognizant-Kog
Hey. Glad I ran into this post. My girlfriend likes paperwork, has been
working as a nurse for four years, and is looking for a change for at least a
bit. Can you tell me where your girlfriend got her transcription certification
and how long it took?

~~~
buss
She got her certification from <http://www.careerstep.com/medical-
transcription-editing>

It's between a 4 month and 1 year course, depending on how much time you spend
training. She finished it in about three months by working on it all the time.

~~~
Kognizant-Kog
Thank you!

------
franze
just a wild, very wild and untested, idea. a mini-niche "mechanical turk"
iphone(andorid) app.

i.e.: if your wife is called "gloria" the app is called "Ask Gloria"

    
    
      * user types in an question/request.
      * gloria (the real gloria) response.
    

the app is free(? or 0.99) with a 1 question package.

an additional question pack (of 5 questions) costs 10(?)$

the selling point is that not an anonymous person or siri-AI answers your
stuff, but a real human being. the app can be pitched to techblogs and other
stuff as an (funny and "slow life") alternative to siri & co.

it's the smallest niche i can think of. just a wild idea, would love if you
give it a try and report back to HN.

~~~
jarin
This is a pretty cool idea, but it could easily go out of control if even one
news outlet picks the story up. I'd raise the price by a lot (like $9.99 a
question), in order to keep volume reasonable.

~~~
renownedmedia
Would anyone actually pay $10 a question?

~~~
jarin
People will pay for anything :)

~~~
Mz
Yes, but how do you get them to do that?

(Serious question. Not kidding.)

~~~
vegas
Have you tried asking yet?

~~~
Mz
Yes. But apparently extremely badly...or something.

------
egypturnash
IMHO, If you have an income stream that supports it, then the answer is not "a
side business". It's "go to school for something she wants to do better". And
if taking care of the kid doesn't give her a chance to leave the house, the
answer is "online classes and night classes when you're home to take care of
the kid".

(If the thing she wants to do better is "draw" then here are some super
awesome free drawing lessons from a master animator:
[http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-
le...](http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-lessons-
fundamentals-of.html) )

------
rhspeer
QA, testing web sites in late development and logging bugs.

Most developers hate doing this, & PM's are not good at anything.

I usually pay $40/hr for this, however it only takes a few hours, and that
rate means the bug report is reported in a way that it's easy to read and
recreate without having to have a conversation about it.

~~~
pbj
I'd love to get into doing this on the side, but 99% of QA jobs I've seen
require solid knowledge of programming. Is this not the case?

~~~
jholman
At all of my past companies (the current is notably different), and the
majority of companies where my programmer friends work, QA requires no
meaningful knowledge of programming, just knowledge of

    
    
        the product
        how programmers (the people) think, and how to cope with them
    
    

That said, it's not at all clear to me how this is a work-from-home job.

~~~
skbohra123
Check out <http://99tests.com> it's crowdsourcing based testing service.

------
Moneyherd
What is your wife interested in? It's much easier to run a small business when
you are genuinely interested in the field.

(A) Customers respond to someone who knows what they're talking about

(B) In any case you're happier doing something you enjoy

Suggest some possibilities!

------
cristinacordova
She could be a virtual personal assistant and work from home on Zirtual:
<http://zirtual.com/>

------
arkitaip
Maybe drop shipping? You have to make an effort in finding a !crowded niche
but there's money to be made if you got your act together. Check out this
Reddit IAmA
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/se78n/i_make_over_100k...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/se78n/i_make_over_100k_per_month_running_dropship/)

~~~
deepandmeaning
Hi Arkitaip, there was a thread exposing this guys posting as dishonest. I
can't find it on Reddit any longer, but I did find this:

[http://r.bernsteinbear.com/r/self/comments/sgaka/dont_trust_...](http://r.bernsteinbear.com/r/self/comments/sgaka/dont_trust_dropshipredditor_regarding_yesterdays/)

The gist was the links he posted to the PPC/SEO companies were actually his
own (and this was his true purpose).

[Edit, found the link!]

~~~
arkitaip
Thank you for bringing this up. I've read that thread a couple of times but
this has completely escaped my attention.

I still think there's business in drop shipping as long as you do your home
work and apply common sense.

------
gouranga
Buying shit on Cragslist (or Gumtree in the UK) and selling on eBay and vice
versa. My better half manages 500-800GBP a month with this quite happily.
Persuaded some muppet to sell her a Korg Triton for 80GBP and got 580GBP on
ebay for it :)

Unfortunately it got converted to clothes and shoes pretty quickly :(

~~~
joh6nn
let me translate what you just said:

"Persuaded some muppet": she gained her mark's confidence.

"to sell her a Korg Triton for 80GBP": she ripped her mark off.

"and got 580GBP on ebay for it": and then she profited from the rip-off.

in some circles, that is referred to as grifting.

~~~
gouranga
It was knocked down from 120 from someone who hadn't done their pricing
research so it's fair game :)

Taking from idiots is an evolutionary step. Look at VC funding!

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Ignorance =/= idiocy.

~~~
gouranga
No but idiocy is directly proportional to ignorance.

------
mkelley
Thanks for all the replies, I actually wasn't expecting so much of a response
- maybe there are a lot more people out there in a similar situation. I like
the medical transcriptionist suggestion, as well as the ebay & craigslist buy
& resell though I'm not sure she or I know the best type of items to focus on.
As for a niche site selling x-type of items... that sounds alright and one
I've thought of - but what's a good niche market where the google ad words
prices aren't astronomical? Anyone?

~~~
rwhitman
If she's going to dip her toes into ecommerce there is no point in developing
a site and trying to build up traffic. Thats a losing battle. Start with a
platform that has a built in network where the marketplace and infrastructure
is already there for you like eBay stores or Etsy. If she nails it on eBay
_then_ you build a site and drive sales to her site.

If she's willing to put in the work and knows a market pretty well it
shouldn't be hard to acquire things for below their value, pretty them up and
flip them on eBay. My girlfriend made a few bucks buying shoes at sample sales
and selling them on eBay, but she knows the market pretty well.

Back in the day I used to snipe music gear auctions with bad listings on eBay
for below value, clean them up and take some nice photos and flip it back on
eBay. Bigger ticket items mean good margins.

I would also have her take a look at some of the types of gigs on ODesk or one
of the personal assistant micro task sites (FancyHands, TaskRabbit, Zaarly
etc), she might be able to build up a skillset out of random virtual gigs

------
petercooper
Does she have a good grasp of written English? (I'm not pulling your leg. Many
people struggle to type readable, grammatically correct sentences.)

People have already mentioned SEO, but there's a broader demand for 'article
writers' and even people who can write summaries of Web pages, produce ledes
for online news services, do proof reading of text, etc.

------
kleiba
_unfortunately she doesn't have the best formal education credentials but she
is far from stupid._

Could she not use the time to improve her credentials?

------
rak
Is all manual labor off the table? Does your wife have any crafting skills?

On Etsy, I've seen a lot of people making things that don't seem like they
would be labor intensive beyond the occasional shifting and arranging of raw
materials.

If she's capable of making things that would do well on that website, count me
among the jealous :)

Good luck.

------
qwak
My partner spent the last couple of years travelling around a lot between
countries and couldn't maintain a normal job. She ended up finding an academic
essay editing/proofing service that would send her jobs to do. They gave her
some training via skype to start with, and she's enjoyed the work. Look here:
<http://www.uni-edit.net/>

~~~
Drbble
Undermine kids education while taking their money and cheating their peers.
Nice.

------
luv2code
My wife was in the same position. She found some work pretty quickly
networking at startup meetups. She ended overseeing a technical project, and
doing some lite database work. She had a few opportunities; but picked the one
that had the fewest hours.

If she has some skills, or can even pretend to have them, there are people
that are desperate to give work to other people they meet at meetups.

------
dneb7
I'm getting ready to start an online forum, but I don't relish the prospect of
having to monitor it for spam/abuse. It seems like having one person casually
scan 10, 20, 50? forums throughout the day could easily keep the spam at bay,
and each of those forums owners would probably be quite happy to pay $100+?
per month to keep their forum spam free.

~~~
danneu
Forum spam is a generally solved problem. And a non-issue for a forum with no
traffic.

If you are ever getting hit with xrumer blasts, you just need to rotate your
"What is 5+5?"-type registration questions because someone hard-coded your
registration process into xrumer.

Beyond that, if you have any users at all, you'll be able to cultivate an
armada of volunteer moderators to help you out.

------
karanbhangui
Where are you located? My startup is looking for customer service reps.

------
srconstantin
The lowest stress, highest paying per hour job I can think of is tutoring high
school students. $50 an hour is normal, $100 is possible in affluent
neighborhoods if you have a good pitch about why you're worth it; I have even
heard of $500 an hour, but that was a math PhD student who found a remarkably
rich Manhattan family.

------
Schultzy
Please forgive the self promotion, but in an effort to teach myself something
about code, and to help people I know in a similar situation as you described,
I have been building out a Website with resources for making a little bit of
extra money that I think you might find helpful.

<http://cushmoney.com/>

Personally, I would suggest taking a look at both LeapForce and LionBridge,
because they offer 10-20 hours a week working from home at $15/hour evaluating
Google's search results and doing other online tasks. They have an
application/approval process to go through, but it could be a good fit for
what you are looking for.

Side note: I know the site isn't really polished yet, but I'd love some
constructive feedback if you have any.

------
olalonde
I was looking for something similar for my girlfriend. I was thinking she
could market/translate Western apps/websites for the Chinese market since she
is Chinese and speaks Mandarin and Cantonese. Not sure how to get her started
though. Would you pay for such a service?

~~~
protomyth
I would (for the text of an app), but I have no real clue where one goes
(other than a search) to find / advertise that type of service.

~~~
davidcann
<http://www.icanlocalize.com/> has been very good for iPhone apps.

------
sparknlaunch12
What is she good at? What are her interests? What would she like to spend 24/7
doing?

We wrote up a post last month -
[http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/step-1-where-
to...](http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/step-1-where-to-begin/)

Essentially if you want to go down the path of a real business (ie one that
generates $1k per month) you really need to be pursuing something you believe
in and are willing to commit 110% towards.

While all these online ventures being suggested here are noble and probably
relevant. You have to ask the basic questions first.

------
tluyben2
My sister is a stay at home mom as well; I got her onto oDesk and she's having
a good time and making more than $1000 the first month working part time while
nurturing her daughter at home.

------
spiredigital
Mkelley – Drop shipping has been mentioned a few time, and I wanted to give
you my thoughts on the business model.

I've had a lot of success with drop shipping eCommerce and have been doing it
full-time for more than 4 years. Robryan is right to some extent - it can be
harder than it looks - but with some dedication and a good niche, it's a great
way to create online income. A few tips from my own experience:

\- Picking a niche where you can add value is crucial. The more complex niches
are often best as these are the ones where you can create the most educational
content related to your products. If you aren't able to offer some kind of
value-added information, you have to compete on price. And I don't recommend
that.

\- Finding good supplier(s) is really important, and I highly recommend only
getting into a market if you have TWO suppliers. As Robryan alluded to, it can
be difficult to keep warehouse inventory synced up with your website, which is
why I ALWAYS use multiple suppliers with overlapping product lines. The vast
majority of the time Supplier A doesn't have an item, I can get it shipped
from Supplier B.

\- Multiple suppliers prevents you from being totally dependent on one source
of inventory. It also gives you geographic diversity, allowing you to save on
shipping costs - and reduce transit time - by routing orders through the
warehouse closest to your customer.

\- Not seeing the physical products you sell CAN be a challenge, and it's
often a good idea to order a few of your best sellers. However, I can tell you
from personal experience it's possible to become an expert for a line of
products that you've never touched. With the wealth of product pictures,
reviews and information online you really don't have to touch something to
know a lot about it. As your business grows, you'll quickly learn the ins-and-
outs of the niche through your customers experiences, opinions and problems.

\- You WILL need to be be good at - or willing to learn - marketing and SEO.
PPC advertising has gotten so expensive that you won't be able to make much of
a profit using that as your primary traffic driver. PPC is a great tool early
on to drive some traffic and make sure it's converting at a reasonable level,
but long-term you'll need to build organic traffic if you want to make any
serious money.

\- One of my favorite aspects of eCommerce is that it's a great model for
automated, passive income. If you invest a LOT of time up-front in building an
information rich-store and market it well, the operations side of the business
(fulfilling orders, dealing with returns, solving customer problems) is fairly
simple to outsource. I recently took a 7 month working vacation to travel
around-the-world while my team back home managed the business. Did it require
a lot of up-front work? Absolutely. But I believe the long-term ROI (return on
investment) with eCommerce beats many other business models.

I'm not sure if eCommerce would be the right path for your wife, but I hope it
is helpful! If you're interested in learning more, I blog about building
eCommerce stores and would recommend a post detailing how I got started:

<http://www.ecommercefuel.com/my-corporate-escape-story/>

I also spent the last week working on a 50+ page eBook that covers how I pick
a niche, find suppliers and evaluate market demand and competition. It's a
free resource I'll be giving away on the blog in the next few weeks, and would
be happy to send you a copy if you're interested. Feel free to email me, or
reply here in the comments.

Best of luck!

~~~
damian2000
Another way to differentiate yourself from the plethora of eCommerce sites
around is to have _really_ good customer service and delivery. I once setup a
small online shop selling one particular hot form of consumer electronics at
the time, and what gave me the edge over drop-shipped competitors was
overnight delivery to anywhere in the country. We always had stock on hand.
People are willing to pay extra for good service and certainty, especially
when they need something quick.

The way the business worked was that I was working full time in an unrelated
s/w development job. My wife would pack the orders in the morning and the
courier would pick up from our home location every afternoon. I looked after
the invoicing etc. at night; but with an automated process it really didn't
take up much extra time. I did try drop-shipping as well but it didn't work
out as well for us, although of course drop-shipping would probably enable you
to have a larger sales capacity.

~~~
spiredigital
You're exactly right - outstanding service is a GREAT way to differentiate
yourself. And it's often some of the best marketing you can do, too.

I'm constantly amazed at how many companies will make you send something back
to get a refund / replacement, even if it only costs a few bucks.

If our customers receive a defective item that costs less than $20, we simply
ship them a new item immediately, without asking them to return the old one.
It only costs us a few bucks, saves the customer up to 2 weeks of wait time,
save us having to process the return and usually earns us a life-long customer
and vocal advocate. It's a no-brainer, and I don't understand why more
companies don't do it.

~~~
shimon_e
Does no one send faulty item back to the manufacturer so they can prevent the
same fault from happening again?

~~~
spiredigital
If the defect is recurring, or on a really expensive item - yes. It will go
back to the manufacturer. But many defective items aren't indicative of a mass
problem, but rather a one-off slip up.

If it costs $10 to ship a product from the customer to the wholesale, and then
another $10 so ship it back to the manufacturer for a refund, it just doesn't
make sense to do for inexpensive items each time a defective one is
discovered.

------
jondot
VoiceBunny perhaps? <http://voicebunny.com/>

------
alzberg
I'm making this suggestion because I would personally use this service and I
know several others who would as well. I've recently been obsessed with spring
cleaning and getting rid of my excess things, but here's the problem: I would
love to make some profit off of the stuff I'm already planning to get rid of,
but I don't want to put in the time/effort to individually list and ship each
item on eBay, Craigslist, Copious, etc. I would love to have someone else do
all of this for me and keep 40% or more of the profit. This is kind of like
eBay/Craigslist flipping, except your wife wouldn't have to buy the items
initially.

------
lubujackson
If she's tech-minded she might be able to learn how to do some SEO work for
local businesses. She can literally call up every restaurant in town and see
if they want help with their website or their Yelp page, etc.

------
lolilives
I recently started using concierge services available to some credit cards.

Basically, concierge workers are similar to personal assistants and will
fulfill requests such as book concert tickets, make phone calls for
reservations, do some google research regarding one topic or another.

I found out that most concierge workers actually work from home. If she's ok
with that kind of work, it might be worth looking into. Here's a reference:
[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/VIPdesk-com-
Reviews-E29813....](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/VIPdesk-com-
Reviews-E29813.htm)

------
jmonegro
This might be right up her alley:

<http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/how-to-build-a-niche-site/>

It's not HN-ey, but I can see it working for her.

Best of luck!

~~~
scoot
This site promotes horrible spammy paractices such as "article spinning"
(automated word substitution) and cross-posting the same (spun) article to
numerous sites to with links to the niche site to enhance google-rank. Every
link here is an affiliate link for another marketing site in the dense web of
self-referential marketing guru sites. Not HN-ey is one way to put it!

~~~
Mz
So are there better resources you would recommend?

Thanks.

~~~
scoot
Sure. Check out SEOmoz.com. These guys provide great tools for SEO
intelligence, and are not afraid to advocate doing things "the hard way",
which will pay real dividends in the long term. If the tools are too pricey
for the stage you're at, the blog is still invaluable.

~~~
Mz
Thanks.

------
andyjenn
Do your accounts, chase invoices, quarterly returns etc.. pay her a salary
reduces corp. tax liability and enfranchises her into your startup.. it's
working out for us both.. so far

------
scotty79
Let her make and sell stock photography. Maybe it's not usually a good way to
make money but it's lots of fun and seeing even small bits of passive income
is very pleasant.

------
menothere
Does she enjoy being around kids? Considering the severity of her herniated
disc, she may be able to successfully start an at-home day care for children
in your neighbourhood. My aunt does this and she is making reasonably good
money. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but it's definitely
more than minimum wage. IIRC, she takes care of about 12 kids scheduled at
different times through out the week. Usually no more than 4-6 at a time
though.

------
abeh
SEO consulting - it can be learned relatively quickly, is not that technical
for the basics, and is a great complement to your programming/web expertise
for your projects

~~~
cgag
Do you have any recommended resources?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
SEOmoz ties in with a lot of the most high profile SEO resource points.

------
venturebros
AirBNB hires at home customer service reps or at least they used to anyways
not sure if they still do.

A lot of companies hire people to manage social media too.

~~~
meta
Do you have any good links/references/experience with 'managing social media'?
My wife has been offered a social media position with a small local company
but neither of them know 'what to do' beyond managing facebook and she really
wants to do well at the job (she's excited!) so is looking for ideas.

~~~
orky56
I've done some research into the area. Email me and we can chat.

------
kirk21
Some random thoughts: Prepare food and sell it or help tourists out. Create a
website about living with a hernia.

~~~
onetwothreefour
Or get a discectomy and get the hernia fixed? :)

------
Mz
Elance, textbroker, mechanical turk, etc?

~~~
jackowayed
Mechanical Turk has a _terrible_ person hours:revenue ratio if you live in a
developed country. Not as familiar with the others, but I think Elance tends
to pay pretty poorly too.

~~~
Mz
From what I gather, it depends in part on the person. I never figured out
elance but at one time was making over $200/week on textbroker. Yes, I felt
the ratio amounted to slave labor but I was also clear a lot of the
difficulties were on my end, not theirs. I am currently trying to develop my
own sites, which have never made anywhere near $200/week. I remain torn
between going back to those slave wages and continuing to gamble my time on a
possible pay off somewhere down the road while, in the mean time, there is no
income.

~~~
a3camero
Contract programming? Try advertising on Kijiji/Craigstlist. There's always
people out there who will pay you to make a website. Takes away the risk of
not making anything from the site.

~~~
Mz
I don't happen to be a programmer. I have skills at doing things the world
says cannot be done. There appears to be no money in either doing the
impossible nor in trying to share information on how to do so.

But thanks anyway.

~~~
mad44
You made me curious (about your skills at doing things the world says cannot
be done). Can you elaborate?

~~~
Mz
Oh, sure. I'm talented at solving certain kinds of "personal" and social
problems. Doing so tends to leave no evidence, thus I get called a teller of
tall tales. Some issues I have addressed:

Recovery from child sexual abuse. I talk about that sort of/some on a blog
called November West.

Raising and effectively educating very challenging children. I talk about that
on a site called Kids Like Mine.

Getting well when doctors say it cannot be done. I talk about that on a site
called Health Gazelle.

I don't know how to get traffic or effectively monetize any of them, in spite
of the big reaction it often gets out of the handful of people that read them.

------
overgryphon
Earning the credentials to have a satisfying career once the kid no longer
benefits from a stay-at-home mom is more useful than earning side income doing
something boring.

After 10-15 years of being a stay-at-home mom, she will be even more bored if
she can't find a job and no longer has children to care for.

------
graeme
She could offer lessons on Craigslist. Depending on the subject, you can
usually earn 20-40$ an hour.

------
rmATinnovafy
What is her current skill set?

------
imcqueen
can she market childrens apps? its very difficult to get your app exposure. i
personally would pay for something like that. today the main option is review
sites but theyre super saturated.

------
Vadoff
Not programming related, but a good way would be ebay. Just have her buy/sell
in an area she's familiar with and it's pretty easy to make money while
enjoying a hobby at the same time.

------
readme
Education is going to be vital. Don't expect her to become an autodidact
overnight. Get her enrolled in some online courses. A lot of community
colleges have day cares, as well.

------
andrewhillman
How about get her blogging (if she has neat viewpoint on something) and some
adsense. It would take a while to reach $1K per month though.

~~~
damian2000
Agreed - you probably won't reach anywhere near $1K per month unless you are
in the 300k hits per day territory, which is pretty much impossible for most
bloggers. Just extrapolating my own blog figures from adsense - I've made
maybe $50 in adsense so far, from half a million views (over the past several
months). While blogging is technically easy to monetize, it is very difficult
to make decent money from it.

~~~
MoonUnit
If you are making only 1k per month from 300k hits per day that means you are
either not presenting the adsense in the correct way or you are blogging about
a subject that does not have any competition for the niche that advertisers
are willing to pay for clicks other than a few pennies. As an example I have a
site that makes around $400.00 per month that only get 150-300 hits per day.

With proper research and the way you setup the blog you can potentially create
a great income stream even without hitting huge amounts of traffic. It is all
in what you blog about and the amount of people who may be interested.

------
Jemm
In Canada a major pizza chain uses stay at home people to take telephone
orders. Needs a good Internet connection from what I hear.

------
rmATinnovafy
If she chooses to start a small (micro) business I will do the marketing stuff
for her. No charge.

No strings attached. Just paying it forward.

------
zem
craigslist/ebay flipping - find stuff that seems to be underpriced, badly
described/advertised, or worth more than the seller is asking because of some
feature that you have special knowledge of but they don't, buy it, then turn
around and sell it for a profit (hopefully!)

------
bdunbar
Not HN-ish but has she considered Avon?

My wife sells Avon and it's a not half-bad way to make some income on the
side.

~~~
alanfang
Avon is not only a pyramid scheme but a terrible way to make money.

~~~
petercooper
My wife does Avon with reasonable success. For her time she probably earns
about minimum wage but she enjoys it because of all the walking.

That said, I don't think it's a good choice for the OP simply because of all
the travel and sorting boxes, etc, involved.

------
hnwh
try trada.com amazon mechanical turk, odesk.com elance.com

------
newobj
Placenta encapsulation

~~~
newobj
Ooooook. My wife makes hundreds of dollars a month doing this; it was a
serious comment.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Intriguing - women send your wife their babies placenta and she makes it in to
capsules for them??

------
benihana
Is she good at making things? She could set up an Etsy shop. Know a couple of
stay at home moms who make a few thousand dollars a month selling art or
crocheted things.

------
whitesnow
live cam stripping. enjoy.

------
flotblot
Am waiting on a new HN submission, "Tell HN: My husband needs to get off of HN
and start working so I don't have to pick up after his sorry ass, and BTW- I
don't need your help. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."

------
jasonhitchcock
Someone's gotta make the cam joke, and I guess it's going to be me.

------
Tichy
On TV they always do this phone sex thing :-)

~~~
adventureful
Not the most appropriate response to a husband. This isn't Reddit.

~~~
gouranga
Why does noone on HN have a sense of humor?

~~~
petercooper
I think, like me, you're from the UK? Most HN readers are American and
different cultures usually have _different_ senses of humor and taboos.

Doing sex phone work is a bit "ooh, naughty" here but as a topic for general
conversation is far less offensive than in the US. We even get light hearted
documentaries about sex phone operators on TV
([http://steverogerson.suite101.com/my-phone-sex-secrets-
chann...](http://steverogerson.suite101.com/my-phone-sex-secrets-channel-four-
documentary-a404459)) featuring students and grannies who've decided to give
it a crack to earn a few quid, but when set amongst US norms your suggestion
is barely better than suggesting she walk the streets.

tl;dr - When in Rome..

~~~
SkyMarshal
While I appreciate cultural differences, especially with our brothers across
the pond, on HN it's just noise, not signal, no matter where you're from.
Plenty of lad mags and subreddits for that stuff, but it just clogs up the
bitstream here.

