Five Great Ideas and contact information for Income

1. Wreaths of Maine: www.wreathsofmaine.com 

This company works with homeschooling families to let kids earn cash for Christmas. Kids can start selling wreaths as early as October and earn about $4.00 a wreath. The kids are not responsible for delivering the wreaths just getting the order. Kids learn a lot about submitting information properly, sending in orders on time etc.

2. Tutoring: IF you have a  strength in some subject, or enough experience to justify charging money for helping students, then this is a fairly convenient and useful job. When I started tutoring We were living in an apartment so I willingly went to student’s homes. Later when we had kids I had the students Come to our home. My children were not very disruptive and Dad was home for the evening appointments. Originally I was able to get going because a friend was a counselor at a high school and he gave my name out. Later I placed an ad in a local paper as well as dropping off flyers at the local high schools. NowAdays you cannot count on high schools leaving the flyers out at the counseling room and so it is harder getting information to the students. I have developed a  simple website through www.godaddy.com and posted on some local internet Information boards. My website is www.willistutoring.com for and idea. I have also had business cards and simple brochures created through www.vistaprint.com  The fee for tutoring is a local based as well as degree based. I have a degree in Math with Secondary certification so I charge 30.00 per hour. We are quite rural here and there is less focus on higher education so less demand for tutoring. However with the plethora of National Chain tutoring services there is a demand for one on one tutoring.  You can call local tutoring centers and ask what they charge before you set your fees.

3. Flower Delivery You will need to contact several local florists well before (Say 3 weeks or so) a major holiday to see if they will need drivers. They will want a background check and forms filled out. Make sure you know the general layout of the cities but the florists should provide you with directions (if they do not I would try another company), IT is very helpful to have a cell phone. The companies pay anywhere from 7.00 a delivery on up. So with an efficient route you could easily make $28 and hour. WE made on average about 21 an hour. You do not get paid if you do not make the delivery so be serious about finding a neighbor with whom to leave the flowers.  For this job I was responsible for driving the vehicle while the kids delivered and navigated. Then they split the non-gas earnings. They had quite a bit of fun. We still get called for holidays by our local company and depending on the kids finances we  will work some of the days.

4. Seasonal Fairs: This can be a family or teen experience. Different parts of the country have local long term fairs. Our renaissance fair runs nine weeks. Our eldest wanted to work there for years. Finally at age 14 he brought a resume into his favorite store before the fair ended. He asked about a job for next year. Sure enough he was hired and has worked there several years now. Eldest Daughter also dropped off a resume at age 14 to a different store She too was able to work for the 9 weeks. The job takes up their weekends but does pay about 70.00 a day. Generally they get bonuses on bigger weekends. It is a fun job for several weeks.

5. Phone book Delivery:  Dad found a job in the regular paper classifieds for phone book delivery. WE were assigned a certain area of say 1,000 homes We would deliver them then return for more books. We were paid about .17 per book so a few hours of work earned us 80 -100 dollars. We split the area up and used wagons etc.  to deliver the books.

This article is written by Clare Willis, owner of

www.MyHomeCottageBiz.com A website dedicated providing Supplemental Income Ideas for families. this article is available for reprinting.