Looking for an easy way to make extra money on the side? This guide will run through 30 different ways to make money in your spare time, both online and offline, while in the comfort of your own home.
So put the kettle on, get comfortable....and prepare to make yourself an amazing extra income.
1. Complete Surveys and Simple Tasks online: sites such as www.gifthulk.com are a great source of income. I fill in a 15 minute survey per day and make myself at least $55 (£35) a month. There are many other sites that offer similar ways to earn cash to PayPal and Amazon. Minimum cash out is $5 (which is 5000 HulkCoins). I can see this as an additional £420 annual income. For payment proof Click Here.
2. Usertesting: Website owners will pay you $10 (£6.50) a time to explore and review their websites, by doing simple tasks and answering related questions. There are plenty of websites to review, so the cash will keep on flowing. Your earnings will be sent to your PayPal a week after you earn them. You need to have a microphone, as you need to say you thoughts about the sites out loud and a screen recorded, so they can check you are following their instructions. Overall, a great source of income. Just sign up to www.usertesting.com to get started.
3. Blogging: If you have found yourself an interesting topic or written a story or reviews, then get yourself a blog. Sites like www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com and www.weebly.com allow you to set up your own free blog. If you have a popular blog, receiving a decent amount of daily views, you will be able to place ads on your blog, resulting in a small income. You can also sign up for affiliate schemes, such as Amazon Affiliates or Clickbank, then make a slice of the sales, when a product is sold via your blog. If you can get traffic, you can make great cash.
4. YouTube: Don't set your aims too high, you won't become an overnight PewDiePie, however, with an interesting video, you can earn yourself a very nice pay packet. The income will be based on how many views you get per video, as ads are played on your video - once it has been monitized. Figures are not particularly public, however, it is believed you can earn between $1-$5 (depending on audience and uploader) per 1000 viewers on your video. With the assumption PewDiePie has an average of 4 million views, you can assume he earns between $4,000 and $20,000 dollars per video. I wish you luck with this one!
5. Sell eBooks: If you have a talent for writing, whether about 'The Secret To Becoming a Millionaire Overnight' or 'How to Find Love', you could make a killing from selling your knowledge. If you make your book attractive to the average reader, with a catchy title, front cover and good reviews, you could be onto a best seller/money cow. Kindle Direct Publishing Platform allows you to sell your books to people. Amazon, will take part of your sales, but you can still make a couple of dollars per sale.
6. No-Risk Matched Betting: This involves taking advantage of the free offers offered betting sites , such as WilliamHill and PaddyPower, and matching them at a betting exchange. Basically you are betting for and against an outcome - eliminating the risk of losing your input - guaranteeing a win. This is not a gambling promotion, as bookies always have the best odds of taking your money - but it does allow you to exploit the loopholes created by the free bets offered. Matched Betting Explained.
7. Paid for being online: Qmee is a site which pays you (not much) to be online and click the occassional ad which pops up. This will be an add on to your browser. I personally had little success with this method and only racked up around £1.60 - which I then donated to charity. You may have more luck than me with the amount of ads offered - let me know. My favourite part is that there is no minimum cashout!
8. Enter Competitions: You can win large sums of cash, holidays, concert tickets and much, much more. The more competitions you enter, the more chance you have to win something. I personally have only won tickets to a Westlife concert (which I can safely say I did not want) and tickets to the Adulthood Premiere in London. No way of knowing what or if you will win, but there is only one way to find out! I found www.loquax.co.uk was a good way of finding competitions.
9. Paid to do tasks on your SmartPhone: Clic and Walk is an app which offers users cash for completing simple tasks. For example, on pancake day I had to take pictures of ingredients for the pancakes and various products I was going to eat with my pancake. This took me less than 5 minutes and I was paid £0.40. Tasks come about 4 times a week, but bearing in mind how easy the tasks are, in the 2 months I have been using the app, I have earned £29.40, which has all been paid to my PayPal. The money may not seem that impressive, but it all adds up and takes no effort at all to accumulate. This could net me £180 a year. For other SmartPhone Apps, look at these reviews on YouTube.
10. Selling on Ebay: If you have any items around the house which you no longer need, try selling them on Ebay. To get an idea how much they are worth, go onto www.ebay.com and type in the item you are trying to sell. When you click on 'completed listings', you can see the items which have been sold and see how much they sold for. If you have a knowledge of antiques and clothes, try looking through your local charity shops for any items you can sell on Ebay for a profit. With an eye for a bargain, you might find yourself making a decent profit (and you give money to charity in the process). For more tips on selling items on Ebay Click Here.
11. Writing Reviews: I had my first experience with www.ciao.co.uk today, which offers users the chance to review products they own and then be paid in cash, depending on the ratings the review receives. I have only just started using this service, so I will update this accordingly.
12. Sharing a link: Using the website http://fast2earn.com can earn you a small income dependent on how many people you can get to click on your link. With fast2earn, you can also then invest the money you make into shares available on their site, which can potentially make you more cash. Also, sites like AdFly and Shortest allow you to earn money every time someone clicks on your link. Not going to make you millions, put will make you a few extra coins.
13. Paid to open emails: You can earn a very small amount for opening emails (£0.01 per) with www.inboxpounds.co.uk. You will receive a £1 for singing up and there are many other opportunities for earning cash, such as surveys and downloading sponsored programs. Main problem with inboxpounds is that you need to have earned £20 before you can cash out. It personally took me around 4 weeks to have my first £20 cheque sent to me. Admitedly I barely put any effort into this site, however, I still find myself with an additional £240 a year.
14. Online Car Boot Sales: If you have a FaceBook account, search for an online car boot sale FaceBook group which is local to you - [your area] online car boot sale should suffice - and request to join (this should be free). You can then put up the items in your house you no longer want and the price you want. Other members of the group can then message you asking details - possibly bartering the price - then arranging to collect it from your house. I have been using my local group for a couple of weeks now and have sold many items for a good price.
15. Review music: If you like music, this may be a good use of spare time for you. People will pay a website such as www.slicethepie.com to feature their tracks and have them reviewed by members of the public. Then you, as a member of the public, will listen to their tracks and write a review. Simple. However, you will be lucky to get more than 10p per review and you have to listen to a whole 30 seconds of the track. You then have to write a decent sized review before it will allow you to submit it and move onto the next track. Call it 2 minutes per review, at 10p per review, you may get £3.00 an hour for tedious work. However, you get to chose what genres you review, so if you really enjoy music, this could be perfect for you. An hour of listening to music a day, could add up to £1,095 a year...seems a lot more appealing now.
16. Get a lodger: If you have a spare room in your abode, rent it out to someone. Santander claim you can earn up to £289 a month for allowing a stranger to live in your house. And with a new government scheme, there is no tax on the first £4,250 you take in. Please be careful with this - there are some strange people in this world - so make sure you do a background check before you let someone in....
17. Rent your driveway/parking space: With the site www.parkonmydrive.com you can chose the price you want to charge and the hours your space will be free, then allow people who need a parking space in your area to pay you for use of your space. This only works for people who live in or near a city, or busy area, as it is likely that a free space can be found elsewhere in less busy areas. If you have a space in central London for example, you could find yourself earning an additional £6,000 a year - with no work.
18. Affiliate Marketing: If you have a lot of friends on FaceBook, a lot of Twitter followers or a website with high traffic - then affiliate marketing could be a great earner for you. With resources like Clickbank and Amazon Affiliate Program, you make money from other peoples products. If someone buys a product through Clickbank via your link, you will receive a percentage of the sales (quite high percentage) and the same with Amazon (for 5% of the sale). For a beginners guide to Affiliate Marketing Click Here or for an experienced Affiliate Marketer Click Here for a great program to aid your success.
19: Paid to type: If you are a competent keyboard user and need something to do in your spare time - consider joining Click Worker. With this site you can be paid to write content, perform data entry and search the web. You must pass the test before you will be given any paid work and the work you perform must receive a rating of 90% plus if you are to be paid. The payment depends on the volume/difficulty of the work, ranging from £2-5 per task.
20. Paid to attend clinical/medical trials: These can vary from testing products to having your sleeping pattern studied. If you are comfortable with this idea, then search google or browse the paper to find out when and where trials will be taking place. Recently NASA has been paying individuals $18,000 (£11,600) to stay in bed for 70 days straight. Personally, not my cup of tea...
21. Sell the things you make: With Etsy you can make a virtual store, without leaving your home, which can be viewed by thousands of potential customers. If you are making a decent and desired homemade product, keeping the quality high and the prices fair, you could make a nice amount of cash. Etsy will take a cut of your income, but only when you sell your items. So give it a try. Make your own business selling your own items.
22. Work for Lionbridge: You can work a minimum or 10 hours and a maximum of 20 hours per week helping to improve companies search engine results. This can be in the form of using apps, gathering data and checking for certain search engine results. They often have openings and take in 150 people at a time, however, they usually look for people with degrees. Also, the tasks can be very boring, so not for the easily distracted. You can earn between £140 and £280 a month depending on the hours worked.
23. Earn money by doing internet research: Companies such as 63336 are on the lookout for paid researchers. You will receive a question from a customer, and it is then your job to find the answer to that question and reply to them with said answer. You will have to pass a test to get a job and maintain a high standard of answers to continue being paid. Most answers are rewarded with a 40p payment. Assuming you were answering non stop for an hour and that all questions required 2 minutes to research and reply, you could earn £12 an hour. However, they amount you make depends on the amount of questions you are asked and the time it takes you to reply.
Work on the remaining 7 ways to make money from home will continue tomorrow.
