If you are a stay at home dad, you probably know that one or even two paychecks don’t go as far as they used to. If you could earn money online, you could create as many paychecks as you want. While you could start a business on no, or very little, start-up cash, it’s better to have some funding in place before you get going. With most budgets stretched so tight these days there’s not a lot of money left over to start a business.

There’s loads of ways for stay at home dads to make some extra cash on the web. The three most popular methods would be ebay, craigslist, and affiliate marketing, but there are other ways as well.

Freelance services are one of the simplest and cheapest ways to raise money for starting up a home business. You have lots of choices with freelance services which include using lance sites like elance.com, getafreelancer.com and guru.com. A few of these sites offer ‘introductory’ free memberships. Some are sites with a small membership fee charged to members who want to bid to do work, others have a free level of membership and then a premium level where most of the jobs are posted. All are marketplaces where you can sell or buy services.

If you use these freelance services check out the buyer’s references to see if they’ve paid on time or if there are any complaints. If at all possible get a partial payment in advance to protect yourself. A few, very few, buyers will contract for work and then not pay for it saying the work was substandard.

Spec products and services are another way to find money for starting a home business. Simply put, spec marketing is finding a product or service that a lot of people are interested in, doing some research and finding products or creating services to serve the market that is looking for it. Your job is to introduce the people interested in the product to the product and receive a commission for doing so.

Articles, reports and e-books are always sought after by Internet Marketing publishers who need subject matter, or ‘content,’ or products like software, to sell. There are lots of online forums, discussion boards, and websites to sell this content and products to people who are looking to buy it. Again check references. While most Internet marketers are honest and wouldn’t think of cheating you there are always the scammers lurking in the shadows.

EBay is another fast and easy way to raise money for starting a home business. Most people have around $1500.00 worth of valuable items around their own homes and in their garages, that they can sell to make a bit of cash.

Drop shipping is another way to make money on Ebay. The customer orders and pays for the product. You notify the dropshipper to ship to the customer and pay the dropshipper. There’s no inventory you have to worry about or shipping costs or problems.

If you’re a Dad looking to earn extra money for his family consider starting an online business.