How To Earn Money While On Maternity Leave

Starting a family - or adding to your family - is a nerve-racking time for anybody. You’re bringing a brand new human into the world, and you’re responsible for keeping it happy and healthy, all while sleep-deprived and recovering from the often a physically and emotionally traumatising experience of childbirth.

Add to all that the financial pressures a new baby can exert on a household, and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s not worth having a baby at all.

There’s nothing we can do to ease the stress and exhaustion of having a newborn, but we might be able to help with the financial side of things. Starting a side hustle can allow you to top up your maternity pay, which you can do even without any money, and, hopefully, ease at least one of the many worries of new parents.

In this article, we’ve gathered together ideas for side hustles for new mums, that will fit around a packed and often erratic schedule, and hopefully make life just that little bit easier during the first months of your little one’s life.

Starting A Side Hustle While On Maternity Leave

So what exactly is a side hustle? Well, it’s usually thought of as any extra way of making money alongside your regular job - which, in this particular case, would be looking after your baby. It’s often in the form of self-employment, though not always, and the amounts you might make can vary wildly, from a few pounds a month to as much as a full time job!

Money’s tight for everyone these days, with the result that over two fifths (43%) of Brits have a side hustle, with the numbers highest in the younger generations - as many as 68% of Generation Z and 65% of Millennials make extra money from a side hustle. These dedicated hustlers are making fairly good money from their sidelines as well - an average of £900 per month, or £207 per week.

Source: Finder’s Side Hustle Statistics 2024

It’s no surprise that plenty of new mothers are keen to join this raft of side hustlers, especially when you take into account how low maternity pay can go. Many mothers end up taking the last portion of their maternity leave entirely unpaid, which can have a drastic impact on a household budget. A little extra cash coming in makes all the difference, and will hopefully allow you to get to the end of your maternity leave without stretching your financial reserves past breaking point.

It’s important to bear in mind that there are restrictions on what you can do to earn money while on maternity leave, though. You can’t work for your regular employer while on maternity leave, so picking up a few ad hoc hours at your regular job definitely isn’t an option. You might in theory be able to work for a second employer, but there are some relatively complex rules surrounding what you can do, so the very safest thing to do is self-employment.

You’ll need to double check your contract to make sure that your employer is happy for you to take on extra self-employed work but, so long as that’s the case, you’re free to work for yourself during maternity leave without it affecting your maternity pay. There are also tax considerations to think of - but we’ll go into those in more detail later on.

Can You Really Make Money While On Maternity Leave?

Yes, you can definitely make extra money while on maternity leave - but it might be quite hard work. Newborns vary enormously, and while some mothers get a comparatively easy ride (at least, as far as raising an infant can ever be ‘easy’), some are so exhausted just from keeping their baby and themselves alive that they don’t have enough energy even to think about money-making on the side.

If you’re currently planning for your maternity leave, it’s important to remember that there’s only so much planning you can do, and that you may not be able to manage anything else alongside looking after your baby. It’s definitely not a good idea to formulate a plan in advance that relies on additional income from a side hustle.

That said, there are a lot of different ways you can make some extra cash during your maternity leave, and many of them can be extremely flexible, allowing you to fit them in when you have enough time and energy. With the huge variety of options open to you, your chances of finding something that works for you are pretty good.

The Best Side Hustles To Start While On Maternity Leave

Not all side hustles are created equal, and that’s especially the case for something you’re trying to fit around 4am feeds and your forty-fifth load of laundry in a week. We’ve therefore focused on side hustles you can fit around your life and child, mostly remotely, that allow you to put as much or as little time into them as you have available.

Matched Betting

In our opinion, Matched Betting is one of the best side hustles out there for anyone, but especially for a new mum. It’s remote, doesn’t have a steep learning curve, and requires minimal investment to get started. It’s got quite a lot of fans on Mumsnet, so you might already know how it works, but if not, we’ll give you a quick rundown.

Most people assume that Matched Betting is a form of gambling, but that’s simply not the case. While you do place bets on betting sites, Matched Betting allows you to remove any element of risk, so long as you do it correctly. And although you might be worried that baby brain will hamper your efforts, our guides take you through it all step by step and help you avoid making any silly mistakes.

Matched Betting works by taking advantage of the offers and bonuses offered by bookmakers, designed to lure in new customers. By betting both for and against the outcome of an event, you’re able to turn a free bet into guaranteed profit.

Most offers run along the lines of ‘Bet £10 and get a £10 free bet’. By matching the first bet, you break even - and you’re then able to make a profit on the free bet.

On average, matched bettors make between £300 and £1000 a month - all entirely from home and whenever is convenient, though the more time and effort you put in, the more you can make. This means that, whenever you get a free moment - if you’ve finally managed to get your little one down for a nap, the washing machine is already running, and it isn’t time to start thinking about dinner yet - you can spend 15 minutes Matched Betting and make a little extra money to go towards the household budget.

Our detailed guide to Matched Betting takes you through everything you need to know - but if you’re keen to dive straight in, our free trial takes you step by step through how to make your first profits from Matched Betting.

Freelancing

Depending on your existing skills, freelancing may be an option that works well for you. There are quite a few freelancing side hustles out there that can work around a baby, but here are a few of the best possibilities:

• Copywriting. If you’ve got a way with words, or experience in marketing, your skills could be in high demand. It can take a little while to get going, though, so this may be a good side hustle to start building up before you go on maternity leave, so you’ve got the best chance of making reasonable money and don’t have to deal with the stress of launching a copywriting business alongside handling an infant.

• Audio transcription. This has been a popular side hustle for mums for a long time now, and with good reason. It doesn’t have a steep learning curve, can be done remotely, and can be done entirely on your own schedule. The main downside is the pay; it usually works out to around minimum wage, or sometimes even less, which isn’t much reward for your precious time.

• Editing or proofreading. Anyone with a keen eye for grammar can make some extra cash from freelance proofreading. If you sign up with an agency you can usually be guaranteed work, though the pay is somewhat less generous, or alternatively you can look for work on your own, perhaps using a freelancing site.

• Social media management. For anyone with a social media or marketing background, offering their services on a freelance basis can be the ideal way to top up their bank balance while on maternity leave. It’s worth bearing in mind that this usually represents an ongoing commitment, however, so you’d need to be confident that you’d have enough time to keep meeting your clients’ needs regardless of what else is going on at home.

Depending on your day job, you may be able to turn other skills into freelance work as well - just be careful not to over-commit yourself. Your most important task is to take care of your baby, and burning yourself out with work won’t do either of you any good.

Sites such as Upwork and Fiverr are a great place to start looking for freelance work, but you should also consider whether any of your existing network or local businesses might be in need of your services.

Crafting, cooking or baking

You’ll probably have to be doing some cooking or baking anyway, so if you enjoy it, why not scale things up? You can offer meal preparation services to your local community, or sell cakes and other bakes, using whatever free time you can find to make everything up.

Alternatively, if you’re already a hobbyist crafter, it’s an obvious step to start selling your creations. You can sell at local craft fairs but also start your own shop on Etsy to sell your work to a wider audience.

You’re not likely to make a fortune from either of these options, but it can be easier (and more fun!) to keep going when your side hustle is a hobby you enjoy. If nothing else, it’ll help to justify the cost of materials!

Renting out your car or driveway

If you’ve got extra space in your driveway (or, even better, a driveway you don’t use at all), renting it out is a no-brainer. If you’re in a particularly desirable location, such as the centre of a city, near a railway station, or near a major events location (e.g. a football stadium), you can often make quite significant amounts from renting out your driveway at next to no cost or inconvenience to you.

JustPark is one of the most popular options, with no upfront costs, just commission on your rental fees. ParkLet, meanwhile, is especially good for longer term rental, and there are a number of other parking rental services available as well.

On the other hand, if you’ve got a car you don’t use much, you could consider renting that out instead. This could be a good option specifically for your maternity leave, when a two car household might get by on one car quite easily, if you’re not having to do a daily commute.

There are a few different peer-to-peer car rental companies - three of the most popular in the UK being Hiyacar, Turo and Getaround - which all operate on fairly similar principles. Having signed up with one of them, you’ll be able to advertise your car and its availability, and the company in question will take a certain percentage of the rental fee as commission.

Insurance and breakdown coverage are usually either included with your membership or taken out of your commission, though this isn’t universal so do check the exact details when signing up.

Surveys, market research and focus groups

One of the most popular side hustles among stay at home parents is contributing to online surveys and market research. While the pay isn’t brilliant, there’s little that can match them for convenience (except perhaps Matched Betting). Often, a survey will take only a few minutes, so it’s dead easy to fit one in around other responsibilities.

Some of the most popular and best paying survey sites are Ipsos i-Say, Swagbucks and Prolific (though there is a waiting list to join Prolific), but there are lots of others out there too. Make sure to check external reviews of survey sites before signing up, however, and steer clear of any that charge you to register - the chances are, they won’t be reputable.

Market research and focus groups, meanwhile, are generally much better paid - although it’s also more difficult to participate frequently. There are a number of services you can sign up with as a participant, such as UserInterviews, AngelFish and Your Voice, and if you fit the parameters for a particular study you may receive an invitation to participate. Parents of young children are frequently in demand, which will boost your chances of being selected.

Depending on the study, you can be paid as much as £30 - £80 an hour - but market research companies are especially keen to find what they call ‘naïve’ participants, i.e. people who aren’t too accustomed to taking part in studies. This means you won’t be able to rely on this sort of study as a regular source of income, but it can be an incredibly useful top up every so often.

Babysitting

It’s possible that the very last thing you’d like to do is take on yet another child, even temporarily, and if so then babysitting definitely isn’t the side hustle for you. However, if you can contemplate looking after an additional child without seriously considering running away into the woods and never looking back, babysitting is a very logical option.

As a new mum, you’re likely to be in contact with lots of other parents with children of a similar age to your own. Leaving your baby with a stranger is, understandably, incredibly stressful for most parents, so if they know someone already, who also has their own child, they’re bound to feel more comfortable trusting them as a babysitter.

The benefits are obvious - you can take care of someone else’s child while also looking after your own, and you can do so from your own home. Childcare is one of the most expensive aspects of having kids nowadays, so while you won’t want to overcharge your friends, it’s fair to charge reasonable rates for your time. If you’ve got a large circle of mum friends, you could end up making a pretty good extra monthly rate from babysitting a few times a week.

Influencing or affiliate marketing

This particular side hustle is definitely not for everyone - but there’s no denying that chronicling the journey of motherhood on social media has become increasingly common in recent years. If you’re already an enthusiastic user of social media with a good number of followers, you could consider posting about the experience of motherhood online.

While there are privacy concerns, and a lot of mothers don’t like the idea of harnessing their baby for clout when they can’t consent, for a lot of people, seeing someone talking about the experience of child-raising can be a lifeline. Relatable content strikes a chord with millions of other new mothers, and by focusing on your own experience, rather than your baby’s image, you have the opportunity to make some extra money without compromising your child’s privacy.

If you do build a following online, you can monetise that further through affiliate marketing - most likely for brands that will appeal to other new mums.

Tax considerations

You may be allowed to work on a self-employed basis during your maternity leave, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about tax. On the bright side, when you start a side hustle, you get a tax-free threshold of £1000 each year - meaning that if you never have any success, you won’t have to worry.

Assuming you do enjoy profits over £1000, though, you’ll have to submit a self-assessment tax return and pay tax on your earnings, if you’re making above the personal tax allowance. You should therefore set aside some of your earnings as you make them, so you have enough available to pay your tax bill when you get it.

It’s worth noting that Matched Betting is tax-free, thanks to being classed as gambling for tax purposes. This means that if you decide to take up Matched Betting as a side hustle, you’ll be able to keep all your profits yourself, no matter how much you make.

Summary

If you’re hoping to top up your maternity pay with a side hustle, the good news is that you have plenty of options available to you. The downside is that most of them will take up some of your time and energy, which you’re already going to be running low on, but you can at least fit your side hustle in around your other commitments. Of course, if you decide to rent out your car or driveway, next to nothing will be needed from you once you’ve set yourself up on a rental service.

Whether you’re already on maternity leave and looking to top up your income straight away, or planning ahead, there’s bound to be a possibility that’ll work for you. Just don’t forget to make sure your contract permits you to take on self-employed work, and to set aside a portion of your profits to make sure you can afford to pay any tax you owe.