Kids these days! Am I right?! My 2 year old knows how to use my Kindle to watch youtube videos, while my 5 year old son keeps wanting a cell phone and a laptop. I remember being happy with barbies and dressing up my cat when I was little. Times sure have changed. If you have a child that’s computer savvy and likes taking pics, you can get them on board to help with this way of earning. It’s a great way to learn how a business cooperates and helps to promote creative thinking and how to think outside the box. For me I hope that I can teach both my kids to think this way and inspire them to see other ways of living and ways to promote self reliance. This method of earning is one that I have done so many times I could do it in my sleep. I actually figured this out really because I got lazy about doing this the way I had been doing it, still earning money,but it was very time consuming. I thought to myself. What if there was a way to do the same thing, earn the same amount,but simplify and streamline the process. Here is what I did and why this works. I started selling on ebay in 2000. Ok, just say it, I’m old. I turned 38 this year, time flies. So anyhoo, I have learned so much from this website. I learned the value of my time, how to work smarter, not harder. How to take great pics (a picture is worth a thousand words right?) How to deal with customers, how to under promise and over deliver! How to print labels, pack and ship, how to mark up at least 40%..so many amazing things that have laid the foundation for the way I think today, independently. Yep, I’m a bit of a free spirit. oK maybe a little stubborn, but I like to think of it as determined. ;) So here’s the million dollar question for you? Do you have free 2-5 hours a week? If so read on. If not, this might not be for you and be sure to check out my other posts. So how can you make $100-$200 a week with only 1-2 hours of time? After all time is money right. It’s all about trading your time for money. But what if you could trade less of your time for more money, would you be in? Of course you would. Who wouldn’t? This is the simple process…. You will be selling…drum roll please…clothing lots!!!! What are clothing lots? Clothing lots are a group of clothes sold together. This is a time saver for so many reasons. #1 Less pictures to take and upload #2 Less listings to complete, this is a very tedious process for those of you that are new to this. #3 Less packages to ship #4 Less annoying emails, questions and customer service work involved. #5 One consistent product You have to first figure out how to get these clothes at the cheapest, most rock bottom price to maximize your return. Now some math, I know I hate math too, but this will be easy and lead you to a great profit so it’s worth it. Let’s look at selling baby clothes as an example, you can sell any you kind you want, kids, womens ofrmens, but this is just an example. Think about this. On ebay each piece of baby clothes goes for about .50- $1 in a lot so you need to find this stuff for .10-.25 a piece to make it worth your while. I find mine for around .10 a peice. If you have 100 pieces of name brand baby clothing for example you could fetch $100 for this lot. If you sell them for .50 each @ 100 pieces this lot is $50. Easy right? Here’s what a typical transaction looks like for me. 100 pieces $10.00 cost Sell for $100-$10.00=$90 profit minus ebay and paypal fees about $15 so I’m left with a $75 profit on one box..not too bad. Now if I sell two a week that’s an extra $150 $150 x 4=$600 extra income. You might have to sell between 4 lots a week to make it to $200. Which is totally reasonable. Only four boxes to pack and ship. And USPS comes and picks them up if you ship priority. So where do you find things this cheap? #1 Frequent rummage sales. I always look on craigslist. Either under garage sales or community. The best ones are church ones. I love bag days because you can get bags of clothing for $1 or $2 each. If you go on the last day, they just give you stuff a lot of the time because they want to pack up and go home. #2 Garage sales. These are probably one of the best places to buy used clothing since you can get things so cheap. If I see something in a box and I know I could re-sell the whole box I will just make an offer on the whole box instead of going through everything. I’ve gotten full boxes of name brand clothing it way for $15-20. The downside to this is most yard sales and garage sales happen on the weekend so you might have to give up a day each weekend or at least the morning. #3 Thrift stores. Most thrift stores have a discount day. Even goodwill has these days. Sign up for newsletters and sale alerts. A thrift store in my area has dime day once a week where everything downstairs is a dime, clothes, household items, shoes, kids clothing, tons of stuff. This place is a rare find and how I get most of my re-sell items. #4 Make thrift store owners you new BFF. Be friendly, ask questions. find out when the best stuff comes out. Ask what they do with stuff that doesn’t sell. They might either give it to you or give it to you for a huge discount. Let them know you are a re-seller and you are basically in the same business. It helps to network and connect with others in the same business. I have a good friend that owns one thrift store down the street from where I live, he basically let’s me have first dibbs on things that come in or he will hold something for me that he thinks I would be interested in. #5 Start with what you have. If you have kids I’m sure you have a bunch of stuff they outgrew just sitting around. Why not start with this as your foundation. Sell and now you have some money to use to buy some clothes for you next lot. A great way to start free! Now some tips. You need a scale (you can buy on…you guessed it ..ebay for about $15 free shipping) Use calculated shipping based on the persons location. Make sure to not over look the shipping. Since this is a large, heavy package going out, you need to calculate this right or you could lose your loot quickly. Make sure to inspect for rips and stains. Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t want to receive yourself. Always wash everything and dry with some good fabric softener. I always include a dryer sheet in the box so when the customer opens it everything smells fresh, I think customers really appreciate that because they know things are clean and read to wear. Go the extra mile. Include a little thank you note saying how you appreciate the business and how they are helping a stay at home mom. Make sure the pics look nice and everything is folded. Take several pics and highlight the main best items in some close ups. Natural lighting works best. If you can open a window and take in front of window this works great. LEt me point out. I haven’t done this consistently, i.e. each week for a month like this because I have had so many other things going on lately but I will try to do this for one month consistently and show you profit vs. costs and time etc. If you like this post. Please leave me comment and let me know. I plan on doing a lot more of these so stay turned. -helping moms build (real) multiple streams of income at home.

Hustling Housewife Series: #1 How to start a blog for profit So you want a home business or side hustle but don’t know where to start? Here’s the first step. Evaluate what you like and as well as what you are good at. You should start by asking yourself the following questions.... What do I enjoy doing? What would I do free? What do I do for fun in my spare time? What jobs have I had that I really enjoyed doing? When thinking about starting a side business or full time home business you need to think about these things because if you enjoy your work, it won’t feel like work. I love blogging and writing to me it’s fun. I find myself daydreaming about my next post or ebook. My passion is helping other moms create businesses and lay down a path to self suffecienty. So back to business… How to start a blog from scratch #1 Wordpress or blogspot? You need a platform. If you are a newbie blogger and have no technical or little technical experience I would recommend blogspot which is through Google. Blogspot is very easy to set up, if you already have a Google account you just have to go to settings to set up from there. Blogspot walks you through the process. You will be hosted through blogger so there is no fee…there is also no domain and the downside to this is less visibility, but even so it is a good choice to get started and get a feel for blogging and see if you like it before stepping up. Or you can jump right in head first and go with Wordpress, now for me personally, I started with blogspot and I think that is the best way to get a feel for blogging, others might disagree. Wordpress is a little more complex but you can customize themes and make your blog look a lot more polished and professional. There are free themes that look pretty nice and you can even add social media link on some. The coding and monetizing is more complex, I had to have someone help me with mine, not gonna lie. #2 You will need a niche. I started out with a coupon blog five years ago that has evolved to a money saving and home business, well business. It is still weird saying, business. Sorry about that. It’s weird when you take your blog, from blog to business. Again, think about what you enjoy. You don’t want to pick a subject that will be boring, for you or your readers. Here are some ideas Kids/family Fashion Technology Art Crafting/DIY Home Décor Organizing #3 Make Youtube your BFF. I seriously don’t know what I would have done without youtube. Youtube is an invaluable resource for setting up a blog for the first time. If you need help setting up your blog go here. I would also be happy to answer any questions you have. You can email me @ 530shasta@gmail.com #4 Start creating amazing content. Create catchy titles and try to think like the reader and don’t forget to use tags and keywords. Try to keep your content appealing to the eye to by adding amazing pics and make the pic PIN worthy as well, more on this later. #5 Consider buying a domain. I use godaddy for domains. You an do this later it doesn’t matter, but if you have an amazing website name that you are worried someone might take, snatch it up now. Sometimes godaddy has domains for .99 be sure to check out websites like retailmenot for coupon codes before checkout to save big. Once you have your domain you can re-route your blog to your new domain. Here’s an example. I just set up a wordpress site a while ago…bringingmomshome.wordpress.com (so this means it was free and hosted through wordpress) now I bought a domain the one I wanted was bringingmomshome.com was sold so I went with bringingmomshome.org so when you now type in bringingmomshome.wordpress.com it automatically is re-routed to the new website. You can check out my theme I’m using there too. This is a free theme and I have all my social media links #6 Show me the money! Ok, so at this point you are probably thinking so, how do I make money from my blog? This is where it gets a little tricky. Ok, so here’s the thing. I wouldn’t monetize your blog when you first start. The first thing you need to focus on is great content and driving traffic. Without traffic you won’t have visitors clicking on ads or buying products and without great content they won’t even come. You need to be able to reel them in! After you have been posting consistently for a few months at least a few times or more a week then think about putting up ads. If you have google blogspot. It’s relavily easy to set up one affiliate ad network and that is google adsense. Google picks the right ads for you. All you do is go to your google blog settings to set this up. Then look into other affiliate programs that would work for your website. I use Amazon Affiliates, adsense, zulily, ebay, avon (I sell it), etsy (I have a shop), and a few others. #7 Create other sources of income! Consider your blog a launching pad for other ventures. Most bloggers make most of their money from other resources and products like, books, ebooks, courses, newsletters, emails, products they created or sell and speaking or teaching gigs as well as things like web design and business consulting. #8 Don’t turn your back on social media! After your blog is all set up, take the time to make your social media accounts that are cohesive with your blog, as in the same name, I’m so guilty of this one, I got lazy with this and paid the price. It confuses visitors if you use a different social media account than your blog. Take the time to set this up and you won’t be disappointed. Also make it a personal experience, people love to read background stories about the blogger, don’t leave this out. Make your about me page engaging and your picture professional. #9 Focus on building your email list! You can use a free mail service like Mailchimp that helps you organize emails and bring in subscribers. This is super important and something that I learned the hard way, I learned a ton about blogging through trial and error from five years of blogging. If I only knew then what I know now. Oh well, passing on the info to help other moms so they won’t make the same mistakes I did. Hope these tips help get you started, more home business ideas and side hustles to come!