There are a wide variety of options available to stay at home moms. Many baby magazines and web sites list many options for work at home moms. Some of them are blatant traps (what company stuffs envelopes manually anymore?) to the downright useless (pay me for a list of companies who might hire you!) I will attempt to break down some of the better options and give you some ideas to go on.

The first thing to consider is buying and selling on Ebay. With a little trial and error, you can almost always find a desirable market to buy and sell in. For example, someone buys and old chair at a yard sale, cleans it up, and then is able to sell it for a slight profit on the same day. There’s good money to be made doing this! With free software, such as Gimp and Open office, there are minimal start-up costs. You can begin to estimate your potential profit margins by doing completed listings searches on things you might intend to sell.

There is also many jobs available working for places like medicare and medicaid that you can do at home, but beware to go through the actual agency and not some other company. You can check your state agencies website for more information. Also check your workforce center for at home jobs for state employment.

Their are a few work at home options that would allow you to turn your house into a call center. These range from the downright annoying telemarketer (forgive me if I hang up on you) to the answer center of a small company. The advantage of these is the pay is decent and it usually doesn’t require special skills or equipment. The down side is calls come in at random and you may be caught unable to handle a call.

Are you handy? Do you enjoy crafts? There’s money to be made selling your talent! Web sites such as 1and1.com and doteasy.com allow you to set up virtual stores which allow you to sell and profit from your crafts. These turn-key solutions will have your shop set up with just a point and a click. Ebay is a great barometer of how profitable crafts can be. Remember, you’ll need to reserve space in your home as a workshop!

For moms who are more technically inclined, consider being a freelance coder or graphic designer! Free sign-up at places such as webdesign123.com and php-freelancers.com open the doors to a wide variety of available projects which you’ll be able to start working on instantly. If you’ve never worked with any graphic design or programming systems, you can start learning for free at places webmonkey.com or weberdev.com just to get your feet wet. This is a quite a rewarding option.

So, you’ve got some leads but beware of the tantalizing offers that sound too good to be true. Some companies sound fantastic, but ultimately require a fee. Do not pay for your job leads! Most legitimate employment offers can be found for free. If you are tempted by an employment service, consider searching on Google to investigate what others have said about their service. Using the power of the web is the best way to avoid a scam.

So now you’ve got a nice list of things that moms can do at home to earn extra money. We’ve just covered a few, but they all make great use of your valuable time. Most importantly, these part-time projects allow you to set your own hours and break when necessary; if you don’t define limits, a home job can add more stress than freedom. Good luck and happy job hunting!