What if I told you that you could be earning thousands by learning about passive income streams? This year we are exploring the best side hustles to help you earn money for a better financial future. Be sure to bookmark this page to learn ways I’m making extra money for my family.
Many years ago, I was featured on a couple of talk shows to chat about my experience with work-at-home scams. I just couldn’t believe my luck. This broke Midwest woman would be ON TV to teach others how to avoid scams.
Here’s the thing.
I thought that I was going to be the EXPERT.
When the segment began, I quickly realized that I was the work-at-home VICTIM instead.
I Want To Help You Because I Was Scammed
The truth was, I had been a victim of a work-at-home scam and I was really ashamed of it.
When I was a brand new mom , I desperately wanted to find a way to stay home with my kids. This desperation is why I signed up for a UPS & Federal Express refund software software program. With this purchase, I was promised dozens of dollars. I was so excited to get my business started and unlock this secret wealth with only $69 of software!
Frankly, I was surprised no one else had discovered it.
I was sold a software packaged that claimed to track packages to see if they were late for delivery or not.
Did you know that if a package arrives late for delivery, that you are entitled for a full refund?
According to the software company, many businesses send out large shipments, but don’t ever track their packages.
All I had to do was call, on behalf of my clientele, and they would receive a fifty percent refund.
The other fifty percent would go in your pocket for your good detective work.
Obviously, these people will agree to this because this is money that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Did you not know that you can make $50-75 an hour from the comfort of your own home just by tracking packages?
Doesn’t that sound wonderful?
First of all, neither Federal Express nor UPS is affiliated with any of these software programs.
Secondly, they also had every right to refuse the refund to you. After all, you were just a third-party who did not pay for the shipping in the first place.
UPS online tracking system can only be used by the sender of the package or by the recipient, making my software absolutely worthless.
This tracking software could not be for someone’s commercial gain unless UPS openly authorized it. To top it off, UPS prohibits any uses of automated software to access its online shipping-related systems.
Therefore, the software you would be using would be deemed illegal.
I had also been under the assumption that the company would provide a list of people to contact to make this magical money.
What they actually did was provide was a list of categories of businesses to target, like the health industry or retail.
Then, apparently, you just sit back and watch people chomping at the bit to get this amazing service.
Who in the world would ever give out any of this private tracking information on their packages to a complete stranger though?
The answer to that, of course, would be no one in their right mind.
This was my embarrassing story for the world and I’m so thankful I can tell a different one now.
Passive Income for Busy Moms Series
If you haven’t read my book, you might not be aware that our family became riddled with debt after the dot com bomb happened. My husband’s job loss found us deep in debt and struggling to even pay for our groceries. You can read a little more about our story in this feature in Redbook!
Financial struggles, honestly, ended up being the hardest and best thing that I could have been given.
Although being broke was so damn difficult it ended up strengthening our marriage and providing a new job for me.
During that challenging chapter, I tried so many crazy things to make our family money. In the true height of my hustling days, I filled out surveys, working to accumulate points through purchases, and even mystery shopped.
Now that we are in a much better place financially, I am looking ahead to new opportunities to save for our retirement. It is also why I’m, personally, taking a deep dive into wealth building.
What fun is it to do this alone when we could do this together though?
Of course, a savvier business woman would make you buy an online course or spend time writing a book. The thing is, I’m a big fan of the blog format and think this would be such a fun exploration.
If you are saving for retirement, not making enough working full-time, or just a single mom who is responsible for two incomes (NO BIGGIE! YEAH, RIGHT!)… I want to help you.
Please keep in mind, I plan to offer realistic strategies. As a working mom, I am already to capacity with how much I can take on my plate so I understand how important it is to not sacrifice a lot more time for money.
Whatever amount of money you are after, I am hoping to provide some new ways to make money for your family.
How Will the Passive Income for Busy Moms Series Work?
Each month I will share one way you can make money for your family through a variety of avenues. These posts will encourage you to explore creative ways to make money that you may not have thought of.
I will be signing up for these programs (or as much as we can that is applicable to our family) and sharing my results after one month.
If you are interested, you can sign up for these programs too and we can share how we all did in each segment.
NO PRESSURE THOUGH!
Here’s the thing… if there is one thing I have learned from making money through my blog, it is that you should NEVER put all your eggs in one basket.
I am using that same strategy this year to build passive wealth.
In a year, I will share how much I accumulated through these passive income streams and what I learned from the experience.
Is This Only for Blogging or Podcasting Moms?
No, this series is for everyone. I do plan to share though about how I make passive income through affiliate marketing and affiliate links in one post, for my blogging/podcast pals. I do personally know that blogging can be an incredible avenue to financial freedom. That is how we broke free from our debt-ridden lives.
I started my blog many years ago though and now it seems SO much harder to build a loyal audience. I am not saying that you can’t have instant blogging success, but I do think it takes time!
What Do I Get Out of It?
We have TWO teenagers that we hope to be able to help financially with some of their college expenses. We also are working hard to save for our own retirement and know that we need to learn new ways to save to reach those goals.
These blog posts are going to hold me accountable to try all avenues to wealth building and share this with you.
While extra money is incredible, I am even more thankful that we can spread the wealth around and bless others with it. We try to do as much as we can to assist others while still keeping our financial safety net in place.
As a blogger, I do make commissions if you sign up or purchase anything through my links. You don’t have to do that, but it won’t cost you anything to use them.
Although it might be taboo to talk about, running this website is a huge expense for our family. There are lots of expenses that go into website ownership: paying to mail newsletters, web hosting, graphic design tools, photography tools, courses, food/craft supplies, and social media scheduling tools… just to name a few!
Running this site (a gift- I promise I’m not complaining!) costs our family thousands and thousands of dollars every year.
Those commissions help this site to continue being a long term free resource to our readers.
Now that you know about the series, we will be jumping in with our first experiment together. I will keep the list of passive income stream opportunities below and the one month reflections will also be linked. Be sure to bookmark this page or subscribe to my newsletter to stay up-to-date with this experiment.
Passive Income For Mom Wealth Building Lessons & Results
This post contains affiliate links.
