How can you profit from the boom in child care services? Here are a few suggestions.

1. Provide Child Care from Your Home

Would you like to provide child care services from your own home? If so, here is some advice obtained from an experienced child care provider:

-There may be laws in your area that limit the number of children (other than your own) that you can care for from your home. It could be just five or six children.

-Don"t do half days. If someone drops their child off just for the morning and someone else drops their child off just for the afternoon, it still ties you down all day.

-If you"re going to be tied down all day, you might as well get paid for it. Charge for full days and full weeks.

-Keep in mind that with a limit to the number of children you can legally care for from your home, accepting a child just on Wednesdays will mean that you are not able to take another child from Monday to Friday (because then you"ll have one child too many on Wednesdays). This limits your income.

-Be extremely safety conscious. Children are precious.

-You really must love children to successfully provide child care services from your home.

-Structure and routine are very important. Keep to a schedule of regular nap and meal times for the children.

2. Provide Value-Added Child Care

You can add value to your home based child care services. In this way, you will be able to set yourself apart from your competition and charge higher fees.

If you live on a farm, you might offer horseback riding instruction.

Could you offer a sports camp, craft classes, music lessons, computer training or other activities for children?

3. Run a Home Based Child Care Referral Service

Another way to profit from the boom in child care services is to operate a child care referral service.

Advertise to find child care workers and babysitters. Screen and interview them. Then, provide parents with suitable matches for a fee.

These are just a few ways that you, too, can profit from running a home based child care business.