9 Ways to Make Extra Income With Children
We are a restless family of four, looking for adventure, ways to increase our funds, and more educaitonal options for our littles. We have exchanged things for experiences. Join us!There are various situations that we find ourselves in that make us need some extra income. Sometimes the problem is that we ahve a family and don’t want our family time taken up by extra work. The time we have with our kids is precious, so this is why we decided to put together some great side hustles that you can do while spending time with your children.
You can use this time to enhance their education, to give them some ownership over the money going into your world adventure or to bond with them over a mutual project. Whatever the reason we’ve come up 9 ways to include your kids in making some extra income.
Nerds will inherit the earth…this, in many ways, has become true and let’s face it, Geeky things are fun. From the magic of Harry Potter to the Heros of Marvel, selling popular trademarked products at conventions and festivals that you and your children enjoy can be great fun. You get to pick one of the many popular geek culture series that you all enjoy and then stock up on some popular prodcuts like shirts, scarves, wallets, vinyl figs, etc. Get your children involved in the sales by encouraging them to greet people, by making change or dressing up as one of their favourite characters.
Idea: Buy wholesale Harry Potter Beanies, Socks, Tees, Journals and Wands online. Come up with a fun HP sounding business name and attend conventions and festivals in costume.
Where to Sell: Research conventions and children’s festivals in your area and choose them based on the number of attendees, distance and table cost.
2) Manufacturing:
Do you and your kids love crafts or building things? If so, this is the one for you. I have seen tons of folks at craft shows where the whole family helps make the products that are being sold. I have seen families make old damaged books repurposed into very cool sketchbooks, wand makers, lego fridge magnets, sugar cookies and so much more. You can take these products and sell them at shows just like the above suggestion or even sell them through consignment stores or online on websites like Etsy or an eCommerce site you build yourself.
Idea: Buy cheap lego on Facebook classifieds, thrift stores and at yard sales. Clean them up and choose fun and simple designs that you can turn into keychains, magnets, journals and bottle openers using glue and craft supplies.
Where to Sell: Research conventions and children’s festivals in your area and choose them based on the number of attendees, distance, and table cost. Alternatively you can find local stores that will sell your products either through wholesale or consignment.
3) Children’s Book Writing:
Are you and your children artistically inclined and enjoy reading? Writing your own children’s books could be the perfect solution. Your kids could write the story, draw the pictures or a combination of the two.
The parent can do the bits the child doesn’t as well as dealing with the printing of the books. Once you get your books published the real trick is getting them sold. Making them into ebooks is the easiest way to self publish as it provides lots of avenues and little risk. Printing the books on the other hand means that you will have to sell a certain amount of books just to pay for the printing costs. For this you will want a website with a consistent brand and to be able to sell both in person to those in your community and to others online using Facebook ads and Pinterest.
A resource that might be helpful is to use the website Storybird, where you can write your story and use some artists beautiful pictures to help illustrate your book.
Idea: Use one of the many online book publishing sites to write a children’s book about your own child and their blankie, imaginary friend or stuffie. Have your child choose the conflict and the resolution to ensure so that it retains the authentic ‘written by a child’ feel. Have your images scanned at print shop where they will have excellent scanners and good prices.
Where to sell: Many of the online publishing tools have their own sales avenues that you can use. You can also print them off and hit the local bookstores and libraries to market your book through live readings.
After you read this post be sure to download our free FAM-Preneur Business Plan Guide to get your kids started on their own business.
4) Art:
If writing isn’t for you, but you are still highly artistic, then consider co-creating artwork. One of my favourite art collections I’ve ever seen was a collection where an artist took their child’s scribbles and turned them into amazingly detailed surrealistic art pieces. You can sell originals and prints either in a gallery, local coffee shop or online. Make them into postcards or gift cards. Add them to clothing or bags. You will need to work hard to market your creations but the process would be highly rewarding.
Idea: With your child, choose a great colour palette to use for the paintings/water colours. Buy several canvases and take turns starting and finishing drawings/paintings. Be sure to follow regular rules of art including good use of negative space, complementary colours and movement to create compelling points of focus.
Where to sell: Put together an art show at your local gallery or cafe and invite the neighbourhood to attend. You can also create a video style advertisement and have a popular blog site run a media campaign. Sell prints of all your work and take note of which of the works is most popular for more printings.
5) Blogging:
Blogging could be an excellent way for you and your children to explore, research and write about the things that you enjoy. Allow your children to help with the branding process (picking colours, names, etc). While you construct the website, you can either work this out together or your children can get started on researching and finding blog post topics to consider. Then begins the writing. This won’t make you money fast but if you can climb to the top of the blog pile you can make a little to a lot of passive income.
Idea: Make a blog about teaches kids how to get their parents to play with them. It can have articles written by you that use science and logic to convince grown ups to play. It should also have articles written by your kids teaching them how to use persuasion techniques and provide ideas on how to entice their parent to play.
What to sell: You can use traffic to make money on advertising or generate money from affiliate sales. We have tons of resources on how to start a blog, including a free course which you can get HERE
6) Youtube Channel:
Do you and/or your child feel at home in front of camera? Whether you’re the class clown, a constant entertainer or just a show off, starting a youtube channel could be the perfect fit. There are a ton of family channels out there who do all kinds of video styles. Some families just play games together, others go on big adventures and still others put on ‘shows’. You could also just act as the cameraman, editor and marketer for your kid’s show if they are the entertainer.
Idea: Set up a video camera and microphone system in your car and with your children participate in overacted sing alongs to popular songs on the radio. Try to decide on some fun and repeatable signature endings that will act as your hook and keep people watching to the end.
How to make money: Youtube will pay you once you reach a certain number of subscribers. This could certainly take a while so be patient and work on gathering more subscribers all the time.
7) Restoration Sales:
There are plenty of people who love to find antiques, go to auctions or garage sales or thrift store goods/furniture and restore furniture for resale. If you have children that enjoy projects like painting or helping to fix things, then this could be perfect. Be careful when removing old paint, ensuring that you and your children use all the protections necessary to protect yourselves from lead paint, fumes and chemicals.
Idea: Focus on creating furniture for children’s rooms. Choose popular kids shows to provide the inspiration for the pieces. Painting furniture to resemble items or symbols from Spongebob Squarepants, Comic Characters and Disney.
Where to sell: Sell the furniture online, at children’s festivals, conventions, and by commision after you’ve established a reputation.
8) Provide a Service:
Perhaps you’d prefer a hands on approach to work? Gardening could be a great choice as kids can handle most of the weeding with the right direction. Don’t want the hassle or responsibility of owning your own pet, perhaps you could start a dog walking service? Anything that you and your children can do together can be turned into a service so long as it’s something people generally dislike doing or need help with as they age.
Idea: Start a neighborhood baked good delivery service. Choose items that you and your children can make in large batches and bake a ton of free samples. Go door to door and let your neighbors sample the products before leaving them with an order sheet. Follow up the next day to collect the order forms and grow your business from there. Take Cory Nieves for example, he started Mr. Cory’s Cookies and became a millionaire
9: Put on an Event
Whether you charge for entry or make buying things a key element of your event be sure there is a way to monetize it. Find something that you and your child will actually enjoy. Perhaps a children’s festival with bouncy castles, magicians and fair games. Whatever it is keep it small and low key as large events take enormous amounts of planning and expenses.
Idea: Put on a grandmother/mother/daughter tea party with tea and cookies on private property you can get permission to use. You can make it a regular event targeting friends and family but be sure to keep it small unless you want to get into event planning. Perhaps you can team up with a small charity.
How to sell: Sell tickets to friends and family for the event to pay for the things you need and keep the remaining money.
The key to involving your children is to strike a balance between using the experience as a learning opportunity and capitalizing on the advantages of the partnership. Be sure to involve them heavily in the planning stage as this is when it is both easiest to involve them and when they can learn the most about running a business. Remember to make them the face of the company because people enjoy rewarding kids for having an entrepreneurial spirit. You will find more support involving them in the marketing aspect of you company. Want to read about our favourite KIDPreneurs? Check out our article: Be Inspired by These Top KidPreneurs & Encourage Your Own KidPreneurs
