Work from home jobs for moms?

My wife is going to be taking off some time from her job for a baby, and we're talking about trying to find something she can do at home -- but not telemarketing -- to bring in a few extra hundred dollars a month while I'm going back to school.

Anyone ever heard of any ideas, or even executed one? It doesn't have to be intellectually stimulating, just mindless and for some sort of pay.

 

Run a brothel in your basement. The stimulation might not be intellectual.....

 

Damn. One post in, and all of my guns have been fired.

 

Answering service.

You take incoming calls from businesses that want a live person answering their phone calls but don't want to hire their own people.

 

That exists? Then what? You just forward it along to the right person or something?

That's interesting.

 

"Oscar! It's your mom!"

 

My maid died.

 

You'll have a script, depending on the business. My mom is an ad manager for a company that does it.

Their customers include doctors (the answerers are supposed to give the caller the option to either refer them to the on-call doctor as the local hospital or send it to their regular doctor's voice mail), the electric company (there's a computer database they enter outage reports into), and a few others.

 

Interesting. And it's not a scam? It's legit?

 

There are a number of organizations that sell stuff through house parties (think Tupperware, but updated). My sister has worked for a couple of them and really enjoyed it. The one she's working for now, which sells scrapbooking supplies, also gave her a Web site to sell the products. I don't know the particulars, but she's been fairly happy doing it.

 

Perfectly legit. It's an answering service. It's like outsourcing your receptionist.

 

I've done Tupperware, Pampered Chef and am currently selling Avon. Avon's really easy, and you can set up your own Web site.