124. 3 Real Ways To Earn From Home Without Losing Your Family Focus

Simple Business Models That Actually Work for Moms

Your home doesn’t need a hustle culture invasion to bring in extra income. This is a lighter, practical conversation that respects real motherhood, real energy limits, and a family-first set of priorities.

If you’ve been looking for work-from-home ideas that don’t make you less present, less patient, or constantly torn between your kids and your paycheck, this one is for you.

We walk through three side hustles we’ve actually seen work:

• Reselling on Poshmark — why it’s worth it beyond decluttering, how to approach listings, trends, quality items, photos, and keywords, and how it can become semi-passive once your inventory is organized
  👉 Sign up with my referral code: D_LAGRA
• Value-aligned affiliate marketing — how to do it the right way by choosing products you actually use and trust, and why recurring monthly commissions can create steady breathing room in your budget
  👉 Shop here: livegood.com/counterculturemama
  👉 Learn about the affiliate opportunity: livegoodtour.com/counterculturemama 
• Beginner-friendly design (Canva) — how simple graphic and web design skills can grow from occasional cash into ongoing freelance work, and even open unexpected career doors over time 

We also touch on using AI as a support tool for design feedback and website wording—without handing over the wheel.

If this episode helped you, subscribe, share it with a mom friend, and leave a review so more families can find practical ways to earn from home without sacrificing what matters most.

Want to add a new passive income stream to your business that aligns with your values of health, family, and conscious wealth? Click here.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Counterculture Mama podcast. I am your host, Danielle Venables, and today we are going to take it easy. I have been going pretty hard on theology, pretty hard on new age and universalism, and a lot of different spiritual and theological questions lately. And I'm just coming off of being sick, and I just needed something a little bit lighter, a little bit easier,

Resetting The Podcast Rhythm

SPEAKER_00 1:19

and also to bring things back into balance. Because if you have been following this podcast for a while, I always weave in, you know, motherhood and raising kids and also just purpose work for for mums. And I want to make sure that I stay true to that even while I am tackling some of the big spiritual topics a lot of the time. I want to kind of bring it back into balance today and just talk about work from home or like home business type ideas that can support busy moms that actually work, that can lead to plenty of other opportunities and unexpected opportunities. But this is a question I see a lot from especially Christian moms who, you know, want to be home, they want to homeschool their kids, they want to, you know, be present with the family and really orient themselves in that way. But they also don't want that to come at the expense of their husband

A Family-First View Of Work

SPEAKER_00 2:29

having to work all the time with no help on the financial side. You know, they still want to contribute something. And, you know, it really is modeled after the Proverbs 31 woman, right? Whose primary orientation is towards the home, but who also has her little side hustles and her little hobbies that, and I say little not to not to diminish, but little in terms of importance, in terms of priority, right? We're we're called as Christian women to orient ourselves to God first, husband second, children third, and so our primary orientation is around, you know, the family and the home, and then everything else comes after that. So when I say little, I don't mean that, oh, like women can only have like, you know, a cute little side hustle. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that in terms of the degree of importance in our lives, what we do to make money should feel little. It should feel like just a a side side hustle. It shouldn't feel like something that takes over your home, that takes over your ability to be present with your kids, that you know, makes you a less present or a less patient mother, right? Like it it should enhance. And that's that's my meaning of of the word little in this context. So I have done a number of different things. I if you followed me from like the very beginning, you know that I had like a new age business and was making some money that way through coaching and things like that. And I've kind of tried it all over the years and found different things. Some things work well, some things don't, some things bring in consistent money, sometimes some things bring in just good money, but not as consistently. And I want to just talk about like some of my favorite, like relatively easy. I'm not gonna say that it's like easy, like, oh, you just have to like wake up and do nothing, but I'll I'll talk to you about some of the different side hustles and things that really do work or that can lead to bigger opportunities if you take the time

Selling On Poshmark For Cash

SPEAKER_00 4:59

to hone those skills and you know offer services and things like that. So number one is selling on Poshmark. This one is such a simple thing. There are a couple of things to note about it, which I'll kind of talk about if if you're like, yeah, I could I could sell online. But basically, what Poshmark is is it's an online marketplace where people can shop your closet and you when they buy things, you package them up. Poshmark sends you a label, you just stick the label on and bring it to your post office, and when it gets delivered, the buyer, you know, looks it over, approves it, and then your earnings get released. And so that's a nice little way, especially with kids, or especially if you are anything like me, where it feels like your style just changes all the time, or you buy something thinking you're gonna wear it, and you just can't bring yourself to reach for it. You know, sometimes it's the feel of the material or whatever, like you're just like, no, I'm not gonna wear this. Having that platform to resell those things is great. And it's also something with kids. Like I said, they're you know growing and changing so quickly that they they wear clothes twice and then they're grown out of it. So you can list your kids' clothing, toys, you can list books, you can list household stuff, like literally anything on this platform, and it gives you an opportunity to sell it and make some money. So Poshmark is a super easy, super simple way to go. There are people who form entire businesses based on Poshmark, they'll go out thrifting, and you know, when they find things that are worth, you know, fifty, hundred, three hundred, five hundred dollars new, they'll, you know, buy it for ten, fifteen, twenty, five sometimes dollars and take it home, clean it up. Sometimes things need, you know, a little stain removal or a stitch here or there or whatever. And then they'll list it for sale on Poshmark and sell it that way. And so it's definitely a viable business option if you want to grow it that way, or if you just keep it a little bit smaller. I did find having around a hundred listings in your closet is kind of a sweet spot where you get a little bit more traffic and a little bit more going on with your closet, but that isn't necessarily a hard and fast rule. I would say number one is before you go thrifting, make sure you have a pulse for like what's selling, what's in style, or at the very least, pick out like a niche of like, you know, if you want to be selling like vintage treasures, or you know, it if you're gonna go thrift and curate something, make sure it's something that's gonna sell. Vintage does really well, whatever's in style at the moment, so paying attention to trends, and then also just you can never go wrong with good quality fabric blends. So, you know, cottons, linens, cashmere's, those kinds of things typically will sell better than your cheap polyester stuff. But curating a Poshmark closet, it just kind of sits there. People can shop, they can discover your your closet. It can be a little bit slow to start out, again, especially if your closet is really small or if you're not hitting the right brands, or you know, things like that. But it is definitely something that if you take really good photos of your items, really clear, well lit, obviously clean, desirable items, and pack your like title and description with a bunch of keywords for what people might be searching for to try to find that item. It can be a really good, viable, and like almost semi-passive. Like, of course, you have to, you know, list your stuff and you have to, you know, package it and ship it when it sells, but for the most part, it's a relatively passive thing once it's listed for sale, right? Like my Poshmark closet, things are just sitting in bins, and when they sell, they sell, and I, you know, send them off, and and that's kind of that. So it is a relatively passive stream of income. It can be as passive or as active as you want it to be. Some people are, you know, constantly shopping, constantly listing. They have thousands and thousands of things in their closets, and that's definitely an option as well. But like I said, I typically have like between 100 and 200 listings, and it brings in probably a few hundred bucks a month. Again, it's nothing crazy, but my stuff's been sitting in bins, and I'm still just kind of making passive money. So that is definitely a good one. You can sign up for Poshmark and use my referral code D underscore L-A-G-R-A. That is D underscore L-A-G-R-A, and you'll get a $15 credit, $10 in the US, $15 in Canada, to go towards your first purchase if you're new to Poshmark. So you kind of get that little perk as well as selling on there. The second one is affiliate marketing. This is hit and miss depending on the affiliate deal, right? Some you only get like five, ten, fifteen percent. Amazon, for example, is I think usually between five and twenty percent. But you can also find other companies that have a little bit more robust affiliate sales. What I like to look for and what I actually found was something that I not only

Affiliate Marketing That Pays Monthly

SPEAKER_00 11:19

make money off of like the initial purchase, but I make recurring monthly income as well. And so for the last year. Year? I think it's been a year, maybe it's been two years, I can't remember. But I've been with this company for a while, and they pay out every month as well as any new sales that I make. I get paid for those as well. So I've been making, you know, 150-200 bucks a month passively without advertising this, without selling anything. And that's been a really huge blessing. So, you know, that's and that comes in in US dollars. So I put that in my US savings account, and you know, I'm saving up for a trip to Dallas at this point. So I'm just kind of keeping all of that in US currency so that I can go and travel without having to pay the conversion because our Canadian dollar is pathetic right now. So that's been really beautiful. My advice with anything affiliate marketing is like make sure it's aligned, right? Make sure it aligns with your values, make sure that the company checks out, make sure that it's stuff that you actually use and actually like, right? We don't want to be selling people on things that we don't agree with, that we don't stand behind. So just making sure that you're doing those checks and you're not just like, oh yeah, there's an opportunity to make money and like jumping on the first thing you find, right? But the company that I am paired with, I will leave a link down in the description for you to check out. It is called LiveGood, and it has been phenomenal. It is all kinds of clean, high-quality, organic, health and wellness supplements. I buy it for my kids, I buy it for my husband. Obviously, I take things myself when I remember to take them. They also have skincare and they're working on like house cleaning and they've got a parasite cleanse and all kinds of different stuff. And so it's stuff that we use anyway. And what they do is instead of marking things up like crazy, they it's like a wholesale buyer's setup. So they you actually sell memberships to LiveGood, and uh they pay you every month on the membership. So think like Costco, how they can sell things for cheaper than any other store because they've got a whole bunch of members, they use that money from the membership to have the buying power to buy in bulk, and then they pass those savings along to their members. That's what LiveGood does in the health and wellness space, and they have been absolutely phenomenal to be an affiliate for. And again, like I haven't actively been promoting LiveGood in this is why I'm thinking it's closer to two years that I've been doing it. I would have to double check for sure, but I feel like it's been at least a year since I stopped even really talking about it or promoting anything about it, and I've still just been making residual income every month. So that's been really beautiful. It does take a bit of effort to get going, but also the earning potential with them is essentially limitless. Like if I had kept going with it and I hadn't just, you know, kind of shut down my entire business and stopped talking about anything at all, then I can only imagine where I would be as far as my like passive income checks. I know people who are making, you know, $10,000 a month passively. Is that everybody? Absolutely not, but even the few hundred extra, if you're making that completely passively, then that's a win, right? Because that's something that's not taking you away from your kids, it's not taking you away from your family, it's not dividing your loyalty between, okay, do I take care of the house? Do I make sure my husband is well taken care of? Do I, you know, or do I grow my business? It's like you have this opportunity to really just settle into this nice happy medium where things are kind of working for themselves. So that one's a huge blessing. The other thing is the owners of that company are Christian. So it makes you feel good. That again, like I said, you want to do the research, you want to make sure that the people running it are good people, that the company is following some sort of ethics code. And these ones definitely are, they definitely care. You're getting what what they say you're getting, they back everything up with third-party testing, integrity and transparency are like their number one values to make sure that you know you're they're doing things differently. And so that was really appealing to me right from the start, and it's continued to be a reason that I've continued to partner with them over the years because of that, because integrity matters, and being of service to people matters, and that's really like where their values are, is they really want to help people, both on the financial side as well as the health side, right? That's why they're making these supplements. So that is a great one. You can go to livegood.com slash counterculture mama, and you can find out more about that. If you want to find out how to become an affiliate, you can go to Livegoodtour.com slash counterculture mama. I'll put those links in the description below as well. But they are a really great thing that, like, honestly, even if you just use supplements, like it's worth partnering with them as an affiliate because inevitably you're gonna tell one of your mom friends about it, or you're gonna tell your own mom about it, or whatever. Everybody needs supplements, everybody takes supplements, so you know, being being partnered with them is really good opportunity, even if you're just you know making the odd little sale here and there, or just have a couple of people who have memberships through you. It's a really good opportunity to kind of share the love and pass on cost savings. Cause like I said, like they pass on the cost savings by buying in bulk. So you're actually saving people money over like the crappy stuff they would be buying on Amazon or at Walmart or anywhere else. And that's part of the reason that I need to blow up, you know, signed up on this because I've seen the third-party testing documents, I've seen the way this company operates, and you cannot get better quality supplements for a better price anywhere. Honestly, I I prefer them over the expensive like Paleo Valley and things like that. I prefer the protein powder that these guys sell over the Paleo Valley one. So, and it's half the price or less. So, last one that I wanted to talk about, and this one is something that I think anybody can do. I think it does take some practice. It does take maybe I I can only speak for myself because I'm not a very visually creative person. I'm not an artistic person, naturally, but this is something I've had a lot of success with. And this started when I had my business. I was just designing like my own website, doing my own graphics, you know, different things in Canva for my business. And it kind of evolved from there into something that I was doing for other people periodically, just to bring in little bits of cash here and there. And that is like sort of graphic design and web design services. Again, you have to start somewhere. You're not necessarily gonna be good right away. It might take a bit of time to hone some skills, but it is something that, you know, like I said, I started doing it for myself because I wasn't gonna pay someone to do all my graphics all the time. And then as

Freelance Design Skills With Canva

SPEAKER_00 20:02

I got better at that and started to get more compliments and stuff, then I did it for some other coaches, and then I started doing graphics and social media for my now boss. He would have me design like newspaper ads, and you know, I designed a water bottle label so he could get like, you know, custom water bottles made and all kinds of different stuff for his like political career. So I that actually is what crossed me into you know politics and working in government, but it all started with me just doing some freelance stuff for him and like building his website and building his blog, and you know, it it started with me just completely creating a brand mood board for him, and you know, that kind of evolved. I got the job, I was making about 15,000 a year completely remote doing this for him on a regular basis because he has regular like newspaper ads and stuff that would go out, and so that's kind of where it started, and then obviously he offered me the job in his office, and now I've been working in person, but that definitely added value. So when I did go to full-time, even that made me more valuable to him as far as salary negotiations and things like that. So it's just a really good skill to have, and all you really need is Canva. And you can kind of just play around with it, start to play with different textures, different ideas. You know, once you kind of get like a brand mood board going, then you have like certain colors that you uh pull from and different, like I said, textures and stuff, and you can, you know, play with transparency and just different things to make things kind of come together and and look good. Honestly, I draw a lot of inspiration just from what I see out there in the world, you know. Like I'll see a politician that has like a little quote thing and I'll be like, oh, I like the design of that. I wonder if I could modify that and you know, change it to to this or change it to fit, you know, Jordan's branding or whatever. And that's where like a lot of my things come in. You know, building templates, things like that. But that one has been really worthwhile for me because, like I said, it led to bigger and bigger opportunities over time. It went from just doing it for myself to Doing it for other coaches to then doing it on like a regular basis for a politician that then led to like my full-time job. So it's definitely something that if you get good in that space, like everybody should have a website, everybody should have a social media presence if they're like a public figure or anything like that. But every single business, especially, you know, should have a website, should have social media. So there's a big need for it. There's a big opportunity to get good at it, to do it well. And honestly, there's been the odd time where I've designed something and I've been like, ugh, there's just something's off. It's like I I've gone as far as I can, like creatively, I'm like spant. I'm like, I don't know, but I just don't quite like this enough yet. Like, I'm not, I haven't at that point of like, that's it, that's the one. And so I'll upload it into Chat GPT, be like, give me feedback on this design, and it'll sometimes, you know, suggest, oh, what if you move this over here or what if you whatever, and that'll help me finish the design. So I'm not encouraging to constantly be relying on Chat GPT, but at the same time, you know, if you're like this is just this is just not quite right, we have the tools and stuff available now, you know, even for website wording, things like that, where you can get a good foundational layout going with the help of AI, and then just finish it off and fine-tune it. And it still has that personal human touch because you're still the one doing it all, you're just almost using Chat GPT as like a business partner. So that is another one, and I know that might be controversial, people have all kinds of feelings about ChatGPT, but I'm gonna leave it at that. So, yeah, those are probably the best three side hustles that I have done in the last three to four years. Honestly, even since I started my business, like these have been the ones that have paid off the most, that have been the easiest, that have been the simplest to learn, that have, you know, grown my income in different ways and presented different opportunities as a result. And, you know, I've also done like some baking and things like that, but I have dogs, so I don't I don't sell that stuff, even though I've thought about it. You know, we've got chickens, so I sell some eggs every once in a while, but you know, five dollars for a thing of eggs, like really I don't have enough chickens to make millions on that. So yeah, there's all kinds of different stuff out there, but those are three super easy, basic ones that you can begin with, you can get good at, and you can really actually make some real money that's not a scam. And and set your family up to have a little bit of extra spending money, to have that extra vacation money, whatever it is that you're looking for. So

Wrap-Up And Where To Connect

SPEAKER_00 25:49

I hope that this was helpful. Be sure to check down in the description. I will have my Poshmark join code as well as the Live Good links down below. And if you have any questions about anything, feel free to reach out on social media. I'm not posting actively to Instagram anymore, but I am on Instagram. I still do see my messages there as well over on Facebook, so you can connect there. And that's all I've got for you this week. I hope you have a fantastic week ahead, and I will catch you in the next one.