9 Online Business Ideas for Moms (with super low or no investment)

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When family is involved, often our brain gets stuck in things like “who has the time to start a business?”, or “I wish, but I don’t have money to invest right now” and lastly “I have no idea where to start from. What kind of opportunities are there for moms?”. Totally understandable. After writing “17 amazing online jobs for moms” which, thanks to my readers (I love you all, I swear!) had a huge success, I personally got lots of these questions. It’s my duty then to answer with a good list of 9 online business Ideas for moms with low or no investment.

I know you have it in you so I really want to encourage you and read this post until the end until you find the one that fits you.

Especially if you work full-time (but even if not), being a parent requires so much time (and money) that even the idea of planning and launch a business can make you itch. But let me say something, dear mama…

In 2019 the web is a real gold mine.

Brick and stone companies that don’t adjust to our time and won’t open their own websites will end up failing (besides few exceptions), whereas businesses that operate ONLY and exclusively online are and will always be the most successful ones. Why?

Because the costs to maintain an online company are infinitely lower than a physical company.

While the potential income is endless.

In this article we will explore in details the first steps you’ll need to take to start an online business, the costs and a general idea of revenue for each one of them.

Spoiler alert: this article is very long and detailed. Its purpose is to give you as much info as possible, but you can always skim if you’re interested in a specific topic.

Why should moms open an online company?

I could stay here forever listing all the benefits that come with working from home and, even better, with having your own business, but I’ll just list a couple that I hope will give you a clear idea of the potential:

• The freedom of working when and wherever you want
• The flexibility and being able to give priority to your family when necessary (without asking anybody’s permission)
• Very high potential income
• The opportunity of creating your own online business in your spare time, even while being a mom and working full-time (like me)
• Being able to harness your inner potential
• Doing something you really love

And more!

According to this article on Fundera, in 2017 women were already showing to be real champions in the entrepreneurial world and, according to this other article on Entrepreneur moms make the best online entrepreneurs.

You see? I’m not the only one who claims that! 🙂

This happens for thousands of reasons in my opinion, but I’m a little bitc… Picky.. And I say that it’s because the web can finally give us what society unfortunately often denies us: the chance to harness our potential, without having to give up on our time with family and earn good money.

There are many businesses that require more time than what a mom really has at disposal. Don’t get me wrong, everything is possible! But for now I’ll focus on these 9 online business for moms who are busy (is there a non-busy mom?) which are more popular and profitable.

You ready? Let’s begin!

The 9 Online Business ideas where moms are rocking

This article contains affiliate links. AT NO ADDITIONAL COST TO YOU, I will earn a small commission if you purchase anything through my affiliate links. For more info read my Disclosure page.

1. START A BLOG
   
   If already bumped into one of my articles, you already heard me mentioning this incredible online business opportunity as one of the absolute best for moms.
   Let me show you why more in details.
   
   Try to think about something you’re really passionate about and keep that thought on high heat. Now imagine you can transform that passion in a stable income helping other people who share your passion. Now, reduce the heat and add the opportunity to work whenever you want, in your spare mama-time (working mom or not). As a finishing touch, sprinkle some very low initial costs on top.
   
   I make that recipe every morning for breakfast 🙂
   
   Sounds like a magic formula, but I promise you it’s not! It’s real.
   
   Maybe you love crocheting, cooking, explore the world, keep in shape, throw some great parties or share your mama life. All these things, when shared on a blog, become resources for other people who look for solutions to their daily struggles.
   
   
   
   Now, let’s go back to the present time and keep in mind that, just like any other business, it requires time, consistency and even some sacrifice, besides lots of will to learn and to put yourself out there, but the results pay back immensely.
   There are bloggers that start earning a full time income in 6 months, others in 2 years.
   
   I say, even if you made 500 extra dollars a months to pay your loan doing something you love for few hours a week, would you spit on it? 😉
   
   How do you make money blogging?
   
   I already mentioned the 4 main income streams with a blog in my online jobs for moms article, which include:
   a) Ads on your website = passive income proportioned to your traffic
   b) Affiliate marketing = commissions earned through affiliate links
   c) Sponsored posts = being paid by brands to promote them or their products
   d) Products and services = creation and sales of your own products and services through your blog
   
   On this last one, I want to add one important note:
   
   The next 8 online business ideas for moms that you’ll read in this post can be easily integrated to your blog as products or services.
   
   Yep! You read me 🙂 And the great thing is that you don’t need to know what or how when you start your blog, you’ll learn it on the way.
   
   I, for instance, started blogging because in need of a creative outlet and to share my adventures with other moms. Only later one I decided to monetize it and my next two business goals are included in this list 🙂
   
   But I know nothing about starting a blog? Where do I start from? How much does it cost?
   
   Starting a blog is actually pretty easy. There are several free platforms, but I strongly suggest WordPress.org (NB: not WordPress.com). It’s completely free but then you’ll have to purchase a hosting service. I recommend Siteground, which is ridiculously cheap for only $3,95 a month.
   
   
   
   Then you’ll have to add the cost of a domain. With Siteground is included in the first year, so there’s that.
   
   I recommend a hosting service so that the website will be yours forever, while using other free hosting such as wordpress.com, there’s always the risk of losing it all in case the platform shuts down. This doesn’t mean that you can’t start using a free service, see if you like it and only then move to a self-hosted. Everything is possible, mama! But with such a low cost, you might save yourself some struggle in the future.
   
   Besides, Siteground offers a great customer support ready to answer all your question at anytime.
   
   Ultimately it’s your choice to invest in things such a graphic design, email provider, or facebook ads, etc. Although, there are tons of free resources out there that you can use to start without spending any money.
   
   Enough of blogging, let’s move on to the next online business ideas for moms, ok? 🙂
   
   
2. START AN E-COMMERCE STORE
   
   
   
   Opening an e-commerce store is not complicated, but there’s a wide choice of platforms.
   For more info you can read this comparison article with all the pros and cons of each.
   
   Yearly or monthly plan costs vary significantly according to your needs, but you can start for as little as $9 a month on Shopify to learn the basics and take as much time as you need to learn the tricks of the trade without spending a capital.
   
   When you’ll be ready to reinvest your first earnings, you can always move to an yearly plan that offers options more appropriate to your needs.
   
   An example of a single mom who’s absolutely crushing it in this field is Sarah Titus.
   Sarah went from being completely broke, actually with more than 30,000 dollars in debt and living in a shelter with two kids, to become millionaire in one year.
   As of today, Sarah makes over 3 millions a year with her e-commerce, working 10 hours a week and decided to create courses for other moms who want to create a successful online business.
   
   
   
   I have the pleasure to know Sarah only in the virtual world, but I can assure you that in this field there’s no more real person than her. Always available to offer support and advice, without asking anything in return.
   My next goal is indeed to reinvest part of the money earned with this blog to purchase her “Million Dollar Shop” course and start my own e-commerce 🙂
   
   There’s nothing more than online businesses to realize that it’s extremely important to invest first and foremost on ourselves.
   
   There are two types of products that you can sell through your e-commerce:
   a) physical products
   b) digital products
   
   While for digital products such as ebooks, e-courses, or printables everything starts and ends through the web, for physical products there might be the inventory, initial investment to purchase the products and storage issues.
   
   Luckly today there’s a thing called drop shipping where you don’t have to invest a cent to purchase the products or to handle the delivery.
   I suggest to explore platforms such as Shopify and Amazon which take care of the storage and shipping for you.
   
   
3. ONLINE SHOP
   
   
   
   In contrast to an e-commerce, an online shop is your personal “boutique” where you sell products that you personally create.
   
   In short, it’s the best way for artisans to spread their business all around the world.
   
   The most renowned platform to open an online shop is Etsy.
   
   Believe it or not, signing up and opening a shop on Etsy is completely free. You’ll only have to pay for listing, transaction fees and payment handling, which are very low in my opinion. Not comparable to a physical shop!! In addition, through Etsy you can literally reach people all over the globe.
   
   Besides the costs of the online shop, you’ll need to include the cost of the raw material you need to create your products.
   
   Although it allows you to create one or two “prototypes” of the same product (for example a T-shirt of two different colors) only for exposition purposes.
   This means that, you’ll have to buy the rest of material and create the products only after selling it. This way you won’t have to invest money before knowing how much it’ll actually sell and you’ll get to know exactly how much you spent for the prototypes before setting your final sale price.
   
   Just to clarify, something like this:
   Final price = material cost + shipping cost + fees costs+ net profit
   
   Now, I’m not an expert artisan, so I strongly suggest to research deeper on this topic. But if you’re a creative mom and would love to harness your handcrafting skills, then opening an online store is your business opportunity.
   
4. YOUTUBER
   
   
   
   At this point everyone knows: successful youtubers make a crazy amount of money.
   
   Especially because subscribing to Youtube is completely free.
   
   There’s a reason why even in this case it takes time and dedication before getting specific results. And the reason is that the Youtube world is extremely competitive.
   
   Why is this an online business for moms then?
   
   Because there’s still room for everyone on the web and you can really do it in your spare time.
   
   To learn the trade you don’t even need a super advanced technology (at least not at the beginning). Nowadays our cellphones or a simple laptop webcam can create videos good enough to become viral.
   
   Clearly this depends on what kind of videos you need to shoot. For example, if your passion is to record underwater videos, then you’ll definitely need the right equipment.
   
   In addition, online you can find hundreds of free courses on how rock on Youtube (which is more like a video search engine), how to video edit and much more.
   
   Lots of successful youtubers ended up teaching others their best tricks through online course.
   
   Ultimately this is another case in which a little bit of dedication and commitment can bring you lots money.
   
5. BECOME AN ONLINE COACH
   
   
   
   Are you an expert in a specific field? Do you like teaching?
   
   Then you could be an online coach.
   
   At the moment is one of the most trending online businesses. There are coaches for any field: nutrition, fitness, life coaching, relationships, you name it!
   
   To help you become a coach there are tons of online courses, free or not, and then you’ll have to have your own website (as mentioned in the “blog” section above) where you can promote your services.
   
   Ultimately, you’ll have to learn to market and find your clients.
   
6. PRO-FREELANCING
   
   
   
   I already mentioned in my previous articles how moms can work from home as freelancers in many fields and also which are the best websites where you can easily find online gigs.
   
   What I didn’t mention is that, with a very low investment, you can create your own website and transform those occasional gigs in a real online business.
   
   For example, a translator can occasionally translate as a freelancer or she could open her own translation online company. This way you’d increase your income AND you’d have complete control over your earnings.
   
   Let me explain better.
   Working as a freelancer you have to invest time in finding the gigs, create a client portfolio, finalize an agreement for the hourly pay and, eventually, commit the hours needed for the job.
   It’s still a great way to make money I promise.
   
   But what would happen if, at the same time, you collect all those experience and clients in your business website?
   a) no more commissions to pay to intermediary websites
   b) you choose your own hourly pay
   c) You’d build a better customer loyalty
   d) ultimately, you can pay other translators to do the job for you retaining a commission on each translation, generating a pretty good semi-passive income.
   
   Not to mention that, once you discover your own tricks and hacks, you could also create courses to teach other moms how to do it all 🙂
   
   Which brings me to the next point
   
7. ONLINE COURSES
   
   
   
   Online courses are literally booming right now.
   Just like for the coaching businesses, there a are courses for all tastes: from photography to sewing, from blogging to vegan recipes courses. Basically there’s really no limit to what you can create and sell.
   
   Costs?
   
   Really low.
   
   My favorite platform is Teachable. With the lower monthly plan of $29 a month, besides the platform where you can create your course, Teachable offers full support in the creation process and many other services.
   
   Is it necessary to have a blog or a website to create my course?
   
   No. But I strongly recommend it. People need to know who you are first, what you do and what makes you an expert in the topic.
   And there’s no better way to do that than having your own professional site or a blog.
   In this case you’ll have to add the costs for the website, but as already mentioned, can be really low or none.
   
   In all, we’re talking about less than $40 a month, but the income is potentially phenomenal.
   
   Compared to the coaching business where you can offer your service to one client at the time, creating online courses you can potentially reach millions of students at the time.
   
   Let’s say that coaching allows you to respond better to each client’s single needs, whereas online courses, for how accurate and detailed, respond to a more general need.
   
   Nothing stops you from creating a course and then dive deeper with your students by offering personalized coaching sessions 🙂
   
   
8. GOOGLE ADS MANAGER
   
   
   
   Starting a business as a Google Ads expert, you only need to find few clients a month (about 20) to make up to 10,000 dollars a month (even more in some cases).
   
   Yep, you got that right. By specializing in this field, already pretty widespread, you will handle Google Ads for small business and be paid each month to manage their accounts.
   
   Why is it different from the rest of freelance jobs?
   
   For two main reasons:
   a) It’s on average better paid
   b) you don’t need a diploma to become an expert
   
   There are online courses that will teach you step by step how to become a certified Google Ads Manager and open your own online business in this field.
   
   
9. VIRTUAL ASSISTANT
   
   
   
   The Virtual Assistant (or VA) falls both in the freelance jobs category and in the online business for moms.
   
   The VA cover several tasks: from managing emails, social media or website, to booking trips. From planning events to accounting. And much more.
   
   So it’s better to invest some time to specialize in two or three specific areas and focus on those.
   
   Exactly like the Google Ads Manager, it’s on average better paid than collaboration and you don’t need a diploma or college degree.
   
   It’s unlikely that a company that benefits from a VA services is looking for a short term collaboration.
   
   In addition, starting a VA online business, will allow you to work with more clients at the time, maximizing your time and your income.
   
   How much does it cost?
   
   If you have experience and you already know where to find clients, the cost is an absolute zero. Clearly, unless you decide to have your own website which, once again, is strongly recommended.
   
   
   However, if you need to invest something in your education in order to specialize and learn the tricks of the trade, there are online course like this one that will help you start your business on the right foot.
   

Let’s Recap

Holy moly… That was a pretty long article, wasn’t it? It took some commitment to write it, but I really hope it’ll help you achieve your dream to start an online business.

To better help you in your choice, let me recap really quick:

• Start a blog
• Open an E-commerce store
• Online shop
• Youtuber
• Online coaching
• Pro-Freelancing
• Create and sell online courses
• Google Ads Manager
• Virtual Assistant

In World Wide Web the opportunity are endless.

Most importantly, remember that most of these jobs can be easily connected to each other. I know mom bloggers who also have online courses, a shopify store with both digital and physical products and are also youtubers. Sometimes all in one business.

The most important thing is to take one step at the time 🙂

Show off your creativity and your entrepreneurial spirit that it’s in you and relish of the freedom and satisfaction that it offers.

You can do this!!

P.S.= if you liked this article or you feel it can help other moms, don’t forget to share it 🙂 Thanks

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