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Ask HN: My wife needs something to do from home to make money...

by mkelley on 5/6/12, 8:29 PM with 175 comments

• by patio11 on 5/7/12, 4:46 AM

  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.

• by prbuckley on 5/7/12, 2:47 AM

  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.

• by buss on 5/6/12, 9:38 PM

  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.

• by franze on 5/6/12, 9:46 PM

  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.

• by egypturnash on 5/7/12, 1:43 AM

  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... )

• by rhspeer on 5/6/12, 10:35 PM

  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.

• by Moneyherd on 5/6/12, 9:12 PM

  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!

• by cristinacordova on 5/6/12, 9:39 PM

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

• by arkitaip on 5/6/12, 9:20 PM

  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...

• by petercooper on 5/7/12, 2:18 AM

  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.

• by gouranga on 5/6/12, 10:22 PM

  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 :(

• by mkelley on 5/7/12, 1:10 AM

  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?

• by kleiba on 5/7/12, 6:46 AM

  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?

• by rak on 5/6/12, 9:39 PM

  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.

• by qwak on 5/6/12, 11:43 PM

  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/

• by luv2code on 5/7/12, 12:14 AM

  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.

• by dneb7 on 5/6/12, 9:42 PM

  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.

• by karanbhangui on 5/7/12, 2:24 AM

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

• by srconstantin on 5/7/12, 12:14 PM

  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.

• by Schultzy on 5/7/12, 5:01 AM

  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.

• by olalonde on 5/6/12, 9:16 PM

  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?

• by sparknlaunch12 on 5/7/12, 10:12 AM

  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...

  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.

• by tluyben2 on 5/6/12, 11:33 PM

  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.

• by spiredigital on 5/7/12, 4:21 AM

  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!

• by jondot on 5/7/12, 8:04 AM

  VoiceBunny perhaps? http://voicebunny.com/

• by alzberg on 5/8/12, 2:02 AM

  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.

• by lubujackson on 5/6/12, 10:48 PM

  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.

• by lolilives on 5/7/12, 5:30 PM

  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....

• by jmonegro on 5/6/12, 8:36 PM

  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!

• by andyjenn on 5/6/12, 9:47 PM

  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

• by scotty79 on 5/7/12, 11:21 AM

  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.

• by menothere on 5/7/12, 2:27 PM

  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.

• by abeh on 5/6/12, 10:26 PM

  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

• by venturebros on 5/6/12, 8:59 PM

  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.

• by kirk21 on 5/6/12, 9:30 PM

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

• by Mz on 5/6/12, 8:48 PM

  Elance, textbroker, mechanical turk, etc?

• by overgryphon on 5/7/12, 5:53 PM

  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.

• by graeme on 5/6/12, 11:30 PM

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

• by rmATinnovafy on 5/6/12, 10:35 PM

  What is her current skill set?

• by imcqueen on 5/6/12, 8:57 PM

  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.

• by whiskyant on 5/6/12, 9:14 PM

  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.

• by readme on 5/7/12, 1:31 PM

  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.

• by andrewhillman on 5/7/12, 4:32 AM

  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.

• by Jemm on 5/7/12, 11:21 AM

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

• by rmATinnovafy on 5/8/12, 2:43 AM

  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.

• by zem on 5/7/12, 3:28 AM

  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!)

• by bdunbar on 5/6/12, 8:45 PM

  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.

• by hnwh on 5/6/12, 9:10 PM

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

• by newobj on 5/7/12, 5:55 AM

  Placenta encapsulation

• by benihana on 5/6/12, 9:46 PM

  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.

• by whitesnow on 5/7/12, 12:23 AM

  live cam stripping. enjoy.

• by flotblot on 5/6/12, 11:30 PM

  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."

• by jasonhitchcock on 5/6/12, 11:35 PM

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

• by Tichy on 5/6/12, 9:59 PM

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