Work at home.How to make money working from home. Part 1.

There can’t be many people who haven’t thought, however fleetingly, about giving up the rat race and beng able to make money working from home. Sitting in your own place, working at your own pace, doing what you want, when you want sounds like a dream come true. But is there really a way to make that dream a reality? Can you work at home? The answer is yes, but it isn’t easy. It’s hard, it takes time and effort and the right attitude. You need to be pretty single minded to make any serious money. Of course, there are almost as many different dreams to fulfil as there are dreamers. We all know just what we would do if we had some extra cash.

Maybe you would be happy just making a little bit extra each month, something to put towards luxuries, such as a holiday or vacation to somewhere exotic. Maybe you want to save for a new car. If your dream only stretches to a few extra banknotes each month then maybe there is a way to make that dream come true. Maybe, just maybe you can learn how to make money and still be able to stay at home doing your own thing.

In each part of this series of hubs I am going to explore a different way of making money working from home, from a little to, hopefully, a lot. In this part I am going to give you a possible way to make a little extra each month that I know from personal experience does work. This is how I chose to make money when my husband fell ill a while ago and I had no choice but to stay home and look after him. The bills kept coming in and so I had to find a way to keep the money flowing too. I sat down and thought about the skills I had, something I was good at that maybe other people would be pleased to pay me to do for them, something I could do in the house. After an hour all I could think of was ironing! I got up and made myself an angry cup of coffee.

Ironing! Was that the only thing I could think of, how stupid was that. Then I gave it some more thought. It had to be something I could do at home, something I could leave and come back to if I had to attend to my sick partner. Something that didn’t cost anything to set up, all you really need is a half way decent iron which I already had. Ironing it was. I made up a few advertisements on the back of postcards and placed them in my local shops and post office. I wrote out and printed a hundred flyers, took a walk around the neighbourhood and delivered them all.

The next day I had a phone call from a local man asking for a price list. Of course, being me, I didn’t have one and so I bluffed and told him I would drop one round for him later. I worked out what I thought was a fair price, wrote out a list and delivered it to him. Later that day I had my first customer. By the end of the second week I had twelve, in a month I was making around £350.00 just from doing ironing.

I could iron an average of twenty things really well every hour. I found that it was mostly shirts that people really hated doing for themselves and my customers were almost all men. They dropped their things off in the morning on their way to work and picked them up again at night. So I had no delivery charges. I ironed as I watched tv, I could stop for coffee, to check on my husband, or to make a meal. It was perfect.

Doing other people’s ironing is a great way to make some extra money, but there is a limit unless you want to be tied to an ironing board all day, every day. I set myself a limit of three hours a day, I found that was about all I could tolerate and I have to admit it did put me off ironing pretty much for life. But if you need a way to make a little extra, regular cash each month then give it a try.

Build a regular customer base.

I think the key word here is regular, I built up a customer base, gave them a good service and in return I made an income I could rely on. I ended up recommending my neighbour to a few people when I felt that I couldn’t take on any more customers. She made a good regular income from it too. So, there you are, a proven way to make a little extra money each month. Let me know how you get on.

Read part 2 of how to make money working from home here.