The term stay-at-home moms generally refers to the parents who choose to stay home and take care of their growing kids. Thus, whether a parent is a mom or dad is immaterial. Conversely, the folks working "remote" for their employers are excluded from this chapter's purview.
According to Pew Research, "Stay-at-home moms and dads account for about one-in-five U.S. parents."
Of course, most of those parents are either professionally self-employed or are running some home-based businesses. Still, post pandemic, those who are planning to take the plunge may explore the following options as well.
1. E-book Creation for 3rd Party Writers – Due to the fast-growing popularity of self-publishing platforms like Amazon's KDP, Barnes & Noble Press, Lulu, etc., E-books has skyrocketed in recent years. Of course, the idea of "creating" the E-book forces many writers on to the sideline, meaning they could use technical help in going live. Stay-at-home moms exploring new business opportunities should seriously evaluate this technical option – connecting future writers to the hosting platform – as part of their overall mix of alternatives. All one needs to get started is a simple landing page (e.g., Word Press website), which could be easily marketed via social media.
2. E-book Marketing Service – One of the fundamental differences between the traditional book publication and E-book publication is marketing and promotion. Publishers take full responsibility to market and promote traditional books, while self-publishing comes with self-marketing. While the E-book writers possess the domain knowledge or technical expertise to write their books, they are not necessarily experts in marketing and promoting their books, making them stand out and narrow down the competition. The stay-at-home moms with good knowledge and understanding of social/marketing may explore this home-based opportunity. Specialized 3rd party marketing tools are available for subscription. Some platforms have built-in marketing and promotion tools like affiliates, cross-selling, referrals, mailing lists, special discounts, coupons, etc., which can be a standalone service or can efficiently be run add-on to # 1 above.
3. E-Book Writing and Editing Service – Many people have brilliant ideas but do not have the necessary time or professional writing skills to take them to the finish line. The stay-at-home moms with good writing skills may step in and fill in that economic void. Those with minimal time may consider the "Editing" service. On the other hand, those with backgrounds in fine arts or visual arts may seek out the prospective writers needing such skills, including designing children's books and science fiction. As the business grows, other similarly-qualified stay-at-home moms or local students majoring in those areas could be trained as sub-contractors. All an entrepreneurial mind needs to get started is a landing page coupled with targeted social marketing. Later, this service could be vertically integrated with the # 1 and # 2, as described above.
4. Conducting Online Surveys for Research Outfits and Political Parties – Market research houses and political parties need constant help with online surveys. Those who have backgrounds in market surveys, polling, and conducting online interviews can explore this business opportunity. Alternatively, some stay-at-home moms can do the survey/polling on their own and then package and sell the services to various institutions or political parties in need of such survey results. This business may have a more extended gestation period, but it could be enriching with proper social marketing and networking over some time. Of course, sound technical knowledge regarding online sampling, survey methodologies, polling techniques, etc. is imperative. From local to state to national, political elections have become extremely poll-driven, so the parties have been learning to evaluate a myriad of external poll results to challenge their internal results. Again, excelling in local political polling would require significant interactions with the grassroots (could be time-taking!).
5. Online Property Tax Appeal Filing – Property tax assessment is one of the most controversial services local governments are generally tasked with. In larger jurisdictions, almost every other property assessment is frowned upon, leading to sizeable appeals. Unfortunately, many homeowners are either unaware of or are too afraid to challenge their values. While the old-fashioned consultants are still hanging on to their antiquated solutions, a new generation of problem solvers is on the horizon, posing an existential threat to the antiques. The stay-at-home moms with the local residential market's basic knowledge can quickly get into this online business and claim a forward-looking pie. All it requires is a comparable sales (comps) program and access to the home sales database (they generally come bundled together from the data vendor). This is a marketing-oriented business, but rewards are significant, considering the tax savings are usually evenly split. Stay-at-home moms with Data Science/Quantitative background can easily take the solution to the next level, potentially doing away with the old-fashioned competition altogether.
6. Owning and Marketing Niche Job Sites – Nowadays, ready-made job sites can be purchased or licensed for as little as $99/year from a whole host of well-known developers. Of course, as purchased or licensed, those sites are empty shells without any jobs to offer. The easiest way to get started is to become a licensee (generally free) of a significant site operator like Indeed, CareerBuilder, SimplyHired, ZipRecruiter, etc. which allows the licensee's site to be instantly populated with tens of thousands of current jobs from the parent site. Since the jobs are already available and are updated continuously, the stay-at-home moms can concentrate on targeting candidates. When a redirected candidate (from licensee site to parent site) is hired from the parent site, the fee is shared. Ideally, instead of running the site as a generic site like the parent's, it would be prudent to run it as a very specialized site (preferably in line with the stay-at-home mom's area of specialty) with highly targeted jobs and candidates, e.g., travel nursing, airline crew, new STEM, appraisers, etc., to avoid having to compete with the major players from the get-go. While streaming in the jobs, filters can be set up complementing the niche. The sites can be hosted by well-known US-based companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, etc. for under $15/mo.
Nowadays, there are numerous online business opportunities for stay-at-home moms, aligning very well with their strengths. The marketing-oriented options (surveys/polling) will take longer to yield results than their counterparts requiring much lesser marketing efforts (E-book creation). Similarly, high-ticket-value opportunities (job sites) will require more creative marketing than those requiring straight forward marketing (blog marketing).
-Sid Som, MBA, MIM
homequant@gmail.com
homequant@gmail.com
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