This guide presents 8 self-employed business ideas for stay-at-home moms who want to earn money in their spare time. It shows how moms can start budget-friendly ventures for under £100 and build a successful business from the comfort of their own homes.
Can domestic mothers start a business from home on a low budget? Absolutely! In 2025, it is easier than ever for stay-at-home moms to pursue unique self-employed businesses in their free time. Stay-at-home moms typically spend their time caring for their children and doing household chores. Many such women in the UK dream of earning money without having to leave their children and homes unattended.
The Entrepreneur Economy Report shows that 58% of women in the UK are struggling to grow their business. But this is not something to be demotivated by, as women contribute £122 billion in annual revenue to the Entrepreneur Economy, according to IFA Magazine. We have prepared a detailed list of eight profitable self-employment ideas for stay-at-home moms under £100. Whether you’re a skilled professional or open to learn, these creative self-employment opportunities are designed for every mom.
Summary Insights:
- Several women quit their jobs and businesses to spend time with their children and gradually lose their skills and interest in returning to work.
- The online self-employment ideas we have listed in this guide all require less than £100 to start and have the potential to become passive income streams.
- Self-employed businesses or services that handle a client’s personal data require you to be registered with the ICO.
- You’ll need a decent laptop and a reliable internet connection to work in all of these business ideas.
Why Self-Employment Works for Stay-at-Home Moms?
No better opportunity suits a non-working mom’s schedule than to become a mompreneur. It offers a wide range of benefits:
- Flexibility and Control: The greatest benefit of a home-based business is that moms can define their own working hours.
- Scalability: Low-cost small business ideas for self-employment can grow organically into full-scale companies.
- Work-life Balance: Working from home allows mompreneurs to balance ‘work time’ and ‘family time ideally.’
- Career Continuity: Self-employment offers a way for stay-at-home moms to stay active in their careers. Especially for women in highly skilled professions who may have left traditional roles to take on family responsibilities.
- Financial Control & Independence: Moms are independent to work, with no boss to report to and no office to commute to. They also have full control over their income potential.
Let’s explore eight ideas you can start under £100 that prioritise zero inventory and maximum flexibility.
8 Must-Try Self-Employed Business Ideas Under £100
With so many platforms and tools now available, stay-at-home moms can turn any skill or hobby into a business. You can offer your writing or marketing skills as a paid service, start an online clothing brand, or work on service-based projects locally.
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Sell Digital Products (Printables, Templates, eBooks)
Start-up Cost: 0 to £30 (Platform listing fees / Editing tools trials)
The eLearning industry currently has a market size of USD 352.98 billion in 2025. Instinct Co UK.
As the trend of eLearning and digital products is growing every year, there’s no better opportunity for stay-at-home moms. You can even explore niches where there’s high student demand, such as creating study guides or collaborating with a UK-based assignment writing service to design eBook templates. You just have to make these resources once, and they can be sold repeatedly to generate a steady income.
How to Get Started:
- Choose a niche for your eBooks or digital publications that you are most comfortable writing in.
- Create engaging eBook and template designs using Canva’s free trial. You can buy a monthly subscription if needed.
- Start by listing 3 to 5 products on platforms like Etsy, eBay, or Amazon that charge little to no initial costs.
- Promote the business on social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
- Start with less and gradually expand your product range as sales begin to flow.
Expert Tip: Start with a single product type, like eBooks, and measure their success. If one works well, go for the other types.
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Become a Virtual Assistant & Administrative Services Provider
Start-up Cost: £0 (Clients will provide the major paid tools required for the job)
Companies of all sizes need virtual assistants to manage their administrative tasks. Stay-at-home moms with field-relevant skills or strong organisational and communication skills can secure a virtual assistant role.
How to Get Started:
- Create your profile on a professional job platform like LinkedIn.
- List down your VA skills on the profile for recruiters to see: email marketing, admin, social media scheduling, and customer support.
- Create accounts on freelance platforms like Upwork and PeoplePerHour, and pitch your services to relevant job postings from global businesses. You can also join VA Facebook groups to increase your opportunities.
- Create realistic packages and set modest hourly rates to ensure transparency and fairness.
Expert Tip: Choose a niche you are comfortable with and specialise in it. Clients will pay more to a master of one trade than to a jack of all trades.
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Launch a Blog or Become a Content Creator
Start-up Cost: £50 to £80 (Domain name / Yearly hosting)
Starting a blog and content creation are the most common ideas among stay-at-home moms. The primary reason moms are inclined toward them is that they’re accessible. You won’t earn instantly from blogging, but once you’re settled with a consistent organic traffic, your blog will become a strong passive stream.
How to Get Started:
- Choose a niche that you enjoy talking and writing about. If there’s none, you’re already an expert mother, so talk about that!
- Create a website on WordPress to post your blogs and promote them through your social media channels like Instagram and TikTok.
- Learn the essentials of SEO and apply them to your website to obtain organic traffic from Google.
- As you continue to grow and have a decent monthly traffic, monetise your website with Google AdSense and use affiliate links to start earning a respectable income.
Case Study Example
One of the best successful self-employed business examples is Not Another Mommy Blog. Alison Perry, a former freelance magazine editor, started the blog in 2011 during her maternity leave. Her goal was to talk about her new life as a mom and use her unique style to stand out from other lifestyle blogs. The blog has become Alison’s full-time job, as she now works with brands on sponsored content and influences affiliate marketing to make a decent living.
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Become a Freelance Content Writer
Start-up Cost: 0 to £50 (Portfolio website / Grammar tools)
If you have strong writing skills but are not comfortable sharing your private lifestyle with the world, the skill still won’t go to waste. You can write blog posts, website copies, product descriptions, and even eBooks for several businesses. Being a freelancer would allow you to manage your deadlines and family time on your own terms.
How to Get Started:
- Write at least three samples of your writing to showcase your unique style. Keep them in a documented format or publish them on your portfolio website for a professional presentation.
- Pitch your services to global blogs, brands, and companies that hire freelance writers.
- You can also find several freelance writing projects on platforms like Contently, Upwork, and LinkedIn.
- Offer modest rates initially and gradually increase them as you gain experience.
- If you’re good at academic writing, you can pitch assignment writing services in the UK to help students.
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Social Media Management for Local Businesses
Start-up Cost: £0 (Clients will pay for the analytics tools and Ads)
Several domestic moms spend their leisure time throughout the day scrolling social media like TikTok and Instagram. So why not get paid for something you already do on a regular basis? As a stay-at-home mother, you can reach out to local businesses and offer to manage their social media handles.
How to Get Started:
- Set up your social media handles, like Instagram and Facebook, to act as your portfolio and create a LinkedIn profile to showcase as your professional resume.
- Identify businesses in your area that have a poor social media presence and reach out to them directly, via email or on LinkedIn.
- Provide businesses with some actionable tips on what problems they’re facing and how you can help them improve their social media presence.
Expert Tip: Set up your business legally by registering with HRMC through the gov.uk website.
As your business grows, you should establish it as a recognised brand through digital marketing. Partnering with experts like Nestors Global can help you promote your services online and reach the right audience. Nestors Global offers comprehensive business solutions, such as SEO, social media management, and online branding. Each of these digital marketing services is designed to help small business owners and mompreneurs increase visibility and sales.
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Become an Online Tutor (Academic or Skill-Based)
Start-up Cost: £20 to £60 (Setup / Basic Marketing)
Did you know that the online tutoring market is the fastest-growing market in the education industry? This rapidly growing industry is expected to be worth more than $370 billion by 2026. Devlin Peck.
Several well-educated mothers, many with experience as teachers, decide to stay at home to care for their children. Online tutoring is the ideal path for such enthusiastic and ‘made to be a teacher’ moms. Even mothers with a weak academic background can become online tutors. You can give hobby classes like cooking, music, or DIY tips to earn a decent amount.
How to Get Started:
- Decide and revise your academic subject, or the skill you want to teach online.
- Register yourself on UK online tutoring platforms like Tutor.com, Preply, and Wyzant. You can also make your own website or social media handles and offer classes through direct video calls.
- Since you have the independence, create personalised lesson plans that encourage students to learn more and better.
- You can offer free 10-15-minute sessions with the students and their guardians to ensure professionalism and that everyone is on the same page.
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Start a Dropshipping Business – Sell Unique Products
Start-up Cost: £80 to £100 (Shopify / Dropshipping suppliers / Ads)
Are you a mother who wants to work, but is too busy handling children and multiple household chores? There’s a way for you to earn a hefty amount of money while taking care of the children, managing the home, or even while sleeping. Dropshipping allows you to sell products online without maintaining inventory or providing delivery.
You need to have a unique product idea, target the right market, and do correct marketing to achieve success in a drop shipping business.
How to get started:
- Choose a niche with a steady demand, or a product that is still unique in a certain market.
- Make your online store on a platform like Shopify and connect it with dropshipping suppliers like DSers or AutoDS.
- Write engaging and SEO optimised website content and product descriptions. Mention if you’re offering any branded packaging with the products.
- Create social media handles for your brand and test run initial ads to see what works best.
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Simple Remote Bookkeeping or Data Entry
Start-up Cost: £50 to £60 (ICO Registration / Online certification course)
Mothers usually have a keen eye for little details and record-keeping, so why not turn that affinity into a business? Similar to becoming a virtual assistant, stay-at-home moms can also offer their B2B bookkeeping service to businesses. You don’t need any prior skills to learn bookkeeping, just an online certification, and you’re ready to handle the monthly finance and information systems for businesses.
How to get started:
- While you can learn spreadsheet and bookkeeping software like Xero through YouTube, taking an online certification course will verify your skills.
- Register yourself with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as you will be handling the personal data of clients.
- Choose the niche that you enjoy working in and reach out to small businesses, influencers, and content creators in that domain.
- Create a portfolio website as you continue to gain more projects. This will help you scale your business to a higher level, enabling you to offer bookkeeping services to larger businesses.
Conclusion
The idea of work from home isn’t just about earning some extra pennies for moms, but goes beyond. It gives stay-at-home moms a way to create something that is theirs while being present for the family. The best thing about these eight trending self-employed business ideas is that they all cost you less than £100. So whether your idea is a success or not, you will surely develop a skill and gain knowledge of how businesses work online.
If you’re a stay-at-home mom looking to earn money in your free time, we have provided a detailed guide to follow. Build up the motivation, get your support system behind you, and try the home-based self-employed ideas that suit you best. Be consistent with the work, creative with your marketing, and disciplined in your approach, and you will definitely scale your small investment to a steady income stream.
Frequently Asked Questions for Self-Employment Ideas 2025
What skills are most profitable for self-employed mompreneurs?
Skills in web and software development indeed have a higher earning potential, but the ultimate success and profitability depend heavily on an individual’s discipline. We have listed the best self-employed business ideas UK for stay-at-home moms, all of which can be turned into full-time businesses with consistency and discipline.
What are the tax implications for self-employed side income?
The UK government has made it easy for anyone who works side hustles to know and manage their taxes. Use the HMRC online tool to check the taxes you must pay for any work that’s not coming from your registered employer.