Starting A Side-Hustle: 15+ Ideas To Make Extra Money On The Side

 

 

 

 

The side-hustle culture is well and truly here to stay, and perhaps you’ve noticed and would love to get in on the action, but haven’t got a clue where to even start?

I can help you here!

Getting Started

What Do You Want The Money For?

The question to start with though is:

“Why?”

Making extra money from a side-hustle is great, but if you don’t have some clear direction and an aim for it, you might not be motivated to do what it takes to follow through on the side-hustle… they take work and effort!

So make sure your “why” is a good one.

Take Action

Pick something that appeals to you and learn all you can about it, but don’t do this at the expense of taking the steps involved to make it work.

Taking action is actually the most important step in all of this.

Keep A Record Of Your Earnings

Tracking the money coming into your life is a really great way to encourage more in. Tracking all abundance using a notebook or a spreadsheet will go a long way to demonstrating all your hard work paying off.

There are apps like earnr that can help you with this.

Be Aware Of Tax

Make sure you know when you’ll need to start paying tax for all your extra-income. In the UK, there is a £1000 limit before you need to declare it to the HMRC, and this is higher for renting out a room in your home. Hopefully you’ll want to go beyond this level though, so swot up on what you need to do.

At the very least, have a separate account to manage side-hustle money (which includes materials and software you might need to buy) to keep things organised.

Do your research

Before you jump headfirst into anything, do your research. This is especially true if you decide to go for matched betting or multi-level marketing. There can be some expensive mistakes with these methods, so talk to others who have gone before you to make sure you actually make money, not lose it.

Make sure you’re not getting into trouble with work

Believe it or not, some companies frown upon you having a side-hustle and there have been cases where people have been dismissed from their work because of it. If you’re doing anything on the side, check with your employer first to make sure you’re not breaching any rules of your contract.

Don’t Give Up!

Side-hustles take work, so if you’re doesn’t work at first try, don’t give up. Often the most successful are the ones who have been going the longest.

So now that’s done, let’s get on with the side-hustle ideas!

#1 Sell Your Clutter

As the saying goes – “one woman’s trash, is another woman’s treasure” (or something like that), and this is becoming increasingly true with the explosion of online selling platforms. If you use sites such as eBay, Shpock, Vinted, Depop and Facebook Marketplace, then selling stuff becomes a doddle.

If you have a variety of thing cluttering up your house, there will definitely be a platform you can use.

This is a list or places I found just by doing a simple google search in the UK, its by no means exhaustive, and I’m sure you’ll have you own that you’ll use.

CDs, DVDs, Games

MusicMagpie

Ziffit

Books

Amazon

WeBuyBooks.co.uk

Pretty much anything

GumTree

Secondhand Furniture

Facebook Marketplace

Antiques

sellingantiques.co.uk

Cars

WeBuyAnyCar.com

Baby Stuff

Mum2mummarket.co.uk

Little Pickles Markets

Clothes

Vinted

Shpock

Depop

What If I have Nothing To Sell?

You can make selling a regular side-hustle by offering to sell other people’s clutter for a fee, or searching carboot sales for items that you can resell on. It takes time to build up your inventory, but if you do this regularly it can be a nice earner!

Difficulty Rating: Easy-Medium (depends on how much you can find to sell, and you’ll spend lots of time listing things)

#2 Make Money from Your Photos

The internet is filled with images, and a lot of the free ones are recycled over and over. You can upload your photos for free to pages like pixabay.com or pexels.com, but this post is about making extra money, so I found a great site that has summarised 10 platforms you could use to get PAID for the pictures sitting around doing nothing.

Beware though, there will be specific requirements to ensure that the photos are top quality for their customers, so can mean you go through a lot of rejections before they’re accepted, but this could be a great side-hustle for someone with an eye for a good pic.

If you’re handy with a camera, you could also sell banks of photos on platforms like fiverr. I’ve even seen people who sell membership subscriptions for new monthly stock photos. It’s a clever use of your talents!

Difficulty Rating: Medium (depends how good you are at taking photos!)

#3 Snap Your Receipts

I was amazed at this one – making money from old receipts that I would have just chucked away! Yes, this is entirely possible. I use Shoppix; a free app you can download onto your phone. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t be retiring on the money you make from one of these – each receipt is worth around 3-5p, more if you “win” extra points or refer friends. The length of time it takes to build up a minimum to cash out (3,200 points=£5) will depend entirely on how long it takes you to build up receipts.

Difficulty Rating: Easy (but it won’t make loads of money on it’s own)

#4 Sell Your Hair

I contemplated this one once, but I wasn’t brave enough to do it. I was going to donate my hair to charity after a friend’s little sister did this with her own gorgeous long blonde hair. Selling obviously comes with a few set criteria, like, it has to be a certain length and in a good condition (without being over-treated for example).

If this sounds like something you would consider, perhaps try this company or do a google search like I did –  they offer to buy or donate your hair to charity. “New Year, New You” has suddenly taken on a whole different meaning!

Difficulty Rating: Easy (but not sustainable as a long-term money making solution!)

#5 Rent Out Stuff You Have Lying Around The House

There is a company called Fat Llama that allows you to turn spare belongings into cash by renting them out (fully insured) to other people when you’re not using them. They have taken the principle of Airbnb and applied it to pretty much anything. So now you can make money with items lying around your home from a camera to a cello!

It’s *free* to list on the site, but they take a commission when you make a successful rental. You can accept and decline requests to stay in complete control, and the money you earn is in your bank account 24 hours after the rental start date.

Difficulty Rating: Easy (but you need to be happy with renting out your stuff)

#6 Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is where you recommend products and services of companies that offer a small reward fee for each successful purchase made through your unique affiliate code.

If you turn your hand to blog or vlog writing, then you can take advantage of affiliate links. Amazon is one such example where you set up a link to a specific product you want to promote, and if people buy using your link, you make a little money, at NO extra cost to the person buying it.

I’ve read this book and it goes into lots of detail about how you can start this as a side-hustle (and yes, it’s an affiliate link – you can see how easy it is!). Of course, you still need people to actually “click” on your link, and this is the tricky bit.

By answering questions that people have with products that can help, you are more likely to be successful with this side-hustle. There are also a number of ways you could do it:

Start A Blog

This is how The Female Money Doctor started, and I have grown it to a 200+ resource hub to help people with their money. It has certainly been a labour of love, and I have a LOT more to learn about making it a success. But I’ve enjoyed writing it and watching it grow and develop as initially a side-hustle, and now a business that I aim to make a full-time career out of.

You’ll need to pick a domain name that suits the style of blog you want to write. Are you interested in cooking, or do you want to help people with parenting tips, or growing orchids? Whatever it is, make sure you’re happy to write about it, because it definitely helps to keep you motivated.

Check out this mini-course that teaches you how to build a wordpress one from scratch.

Start A YouTube Channel

If you don’t fancy blog-writing, you could start a YouTube channel and make videos that promote the things you have affiliate links for. There are all sorts of topics ranging from skin care, to sports, nutrition and computer technology.

Canva is also really handy software to help you edit your videos and make images from scratch. I hate editing videos, but this makes it easy to apply graphics and music which saves me loads of time!

Start A TikTok Account

The latest social media platform to gain huge popularity is TikTok. Videos of no more than 3 minutes can be used to promote products and services you believe in. People then click on your bio links to find out more. I warn you though, it’s not a platform that likes to be “sold” to, so increasingly, your videos have to be imaginitive, entertaining and informative rather than spammy or “salesy” – the same goes with all affiliate marketinng to be honest. No one likes a spammy-pammy!

Start a Podcast

A podcast can be on any topic you like, and is the audio-version of the youtube channel. With enough downloads, you can make money through advertising (allow advertisers to use your platform to sell products), or you can again take advantage of affiliate marketing by including links in the podcast show notes and referring to them during your show.

Platforms like anchor.fm can get you up and running with very limited tech know-how.

Difficulty Rating: Hard (it’s a slow burn, but the returns for your efforts can be huge)

#7 Rent Out A Room/Parking Space

Rent out a room in your house

If you have the space and you don’t mind sharing it, you can make as much as £7500 tax-free annually by letting out a room or two in your house. This side-hustle obviously isn’t for everyone, but if you could use some extra money to pay off the mortgage early or for that investment you’re interested in, it is definitely worth considering. Spareroom.co.uk is a good place to start looking for roomies.

Holiday/Tourist Rentals

Similar to running a B&B (but on a smaller scale), you can rent out a whole house or a single room on Airbnb. If you’re in a good location with attractive accommodation, people will come, and they will pay you well. This is perhaps an easier way of making money from your property by renting out space, because you can pick and choose when you do and don’t want to have guests, and you can even use a management service to take care of the whole thing, from creating a profile to cleaning your place before and after guests on your behalf. They do charge fees though, and some won’t cover your area, so find out first before you decide if they’re worth putting in place.

Rent out garage space

If you have a garage on your property and you don’t need to use it, you could rent it out as affordable storage space for people’s excess possessions or as a place where they can keep their vehicles and earn a few hundred to a few thousand pounds each year. Just bear in mind that it could affect your insurance, which you might have to update to protect you and your customers. Moneymagpie.com has an excellent resource on this for you.

Rent out your parking space

If you have a random space you could rent out for someone to park on, why not check out sites like YourParkingSpace.co.uk and earn some extra cash for it?

Offer your home up to film production companies

There are numerous film production companies and photographers who are always on the lookout for locations. It’s worth registering with them because you can earn several hundreds of pounds to several thousands of pounds depending on the job, how long it lasts and how inconvenienced you’ll be.

Me in Hobbiton!

Remember the Lord of the Rings Movies? The Hobbiton movie set was built on the Alexander Farm in Waikato, New Zealand. The set-directors thought the place would be perfect for the movie, so approached the farmer (who incidentally, was watching rugby at the time, and told them to come back after if was over!), and history was made. Go for a visit if you ever get the chance!

Of course, there’s no guarantee your home will ever be called upon in this way, but you have nothing to lose by registering your interest.

 

#8 Dropshipping

In this side-hustle idea you sell products online that you don’t need to store or make yourself. A company like Alibaba.com can help you by connecting you with wholesale suppliers in China. People you sell to can then buy a product (like a handbag) from your website or social media platform, and Alibaba lets your wholesale supplier know when someone has purchased. The wholesaler then ships the product for you. The part you play is leading people to the product to buy it.

There are lots of books and other online resources to help you learn how to do this.

Difficulty Rating: Hard (there’s a lot to learn, and not every product you sell will be successful. Plus you need to be careful about quality and expect that won’t always be perfect).

 

#9 Sell Your Expertise

No side-hustle post would be complete without including information products in it. We all have personal expertise in something, and if you can teach what you know, you can make a side-hustle out of it.

Courses

Platforms like Udemy are a font of knowledge for all sorts of things, including how to create an online course. There are free platforms out there to house your content, and you will need to learn how to market your course so people can find you. It’s not simply a case of “build it and they will come”. You need to know WHO you are selling to, WHAT problem are you solving for them, and if there is a market to sell to. Seeing lots of other courses on what you want to sell is handy because you know there is a market for it, but definitely don’t spend lots of time making a course before you know that it’s something people will buy.

New customer offer! Top courses from $13.99 when you first visit Udemy

Coaching/Consulting

You can sell your expertise by the hour or in packages of 3, 6 and 12-months. It depends on your expertise and how confident you are in asking for money for what you do. Like with courses, you need to know what you’re offering and who to. It always helps to have qualifications, especially as people are now becoming more savvy about wanting to know why you’re an expert in what you do, but life-experience is often the best reason for why you are an expert in what you have to offer! So don’t procratinate on starting until you are “good enough”… build that in as you go.

Books

Like with coaching and courses, you can write a book to teach what you do. Again, it’s not a case of “write it and it will be read”. There is a hefty amount of advertising that goes into promoting a book, and you’ll need to learn how to self-publish if a publisher isn’t keen to take you on at first.

Physical Products

Finally, you can create physcial products like planners, journals and templates to help people with anything from social media to money (like my healthy money planner), and organising weddings. Again, using tools like canva can be a great place to start, then you need to find a publishing company like Amazon KDP to sell it. Finally, you’ll need to market the product too, so it’s worth testing things out first before you fully commit to make sure that people will want to buy it.

Difficulty Rating: Hard (it’s a slow burn, there’s a lot of upfront involved, but there is great potential)

#10 Multi Level Marketing

This side-hustle often gets a bad reputation, and for good reason! I’ve included Multi Level Marketing in this list because it is often the side-hustle that women are targeted for… so I want you to be fully aware of the reality of this before you do anything.

MLM companies include (but are not limited to):

  • Herbalife
  • Arbonne
  • Stella&Dot
  • Younique
  • MONAT
  • Isagenix
  • Nu Skin
  • doTERRA
  • Acti-Labs
  • Utility Warehouse
  • Neal’s Yard
  • LuLaRoe
  • Amway
  • Usborne Books
  • It Works
  • Forever Living Products
  • Juice Plus
  • Tropic Skincare
  • Valentus

What is an MLM?

Multi-level marketing is where you become a franchisee of a company and sell products/services for them on their behalf. If it’s a product you know, like and trust, and you’re passionate about the business, then you could be really tempted to sign up to sell for them to make some extra cash. The content is effectively “done” for you so “all you need to do” is go out there and sell it.

Now while it might sound good, you do need to be aware of the down-sides (and there are many). Some MLM companies insist that you “buy in” a stock of prodcuts to sell and demonstrate to customers. This can be expensive, especially if you’re unable to sell enough to make up for what you purchased.

There are also numerous examples of pushy sales tactics and bullying that goes on in MLM circles. Of course, this is not the same for all MLMs. I have plenty of friends who love working with theirs and they get a lot out of their social circles.

And then finally, will you actually make money? Lots of studies have shown that MLMs don’t make people money, and most lose money. Now, this isn’t the same for all MLMs, and there are people who do make money, but do your research first.

Where can I find honest reviews?

This website is really good at breaking down the best questions to ask before joining any kind of MLM. After exploring this, you may not want to go anywhere near MLM businesses, but if you choose to, make sure you know all the facts and speak to others who have done similar things to get a sense of how it works.

Difficulty Rating: Hard (it’s another slow burn, and you really have to LOVE what you’re selling and most people end up quitting before they make any money… so it could end up LOSING you money)

#11 Matched Betting

Matched betting is a side-hustle that is basically taking advantage of the endless offers you see with bookies such as ‘Bet £10, get £20 free bet’. Using some very clever maths we can extract guaranteed profit from these offers and trust me, they are ENDLESS!. John from the money-making forum, The Money Shed, has made over £30,000 so far in the last few years doing it. He’s written a REALLY EASY TO FOLLOW one page tutorial that shows you how to do it.

Difficulty Rating: Medium (one word of warning though that if you have gambling tendencies then this isn’t for you. Matched Betting is RISK FREE because Math and nothing but Math is used to extract the free money. If you are going to have trouble sticking to John’s advice on this, then matched betting isn’t for you.)

#12 Smartphone Task Apps

Some of you may have heard of mystery shopping in the traditional sense but did you know there is money to be made from doing it on your smartphone?

Apps such as Roamler, BeMyEye, StreetSpotr and Field Agent all offer work that is basically ‘Go into a Tesco and take a photo of the Diet Coke Display’ and they pay £5+ a time! There are people on The Money Shed forum making over £1000 a month from this alone! The apps are available on both iOS and Android and are a fantastic source of income.

Difficulty Rating: Easy (but you have to do a lot to make decent enough amounts)

#13 Start An Etsy Store

If you do a search on etsy for “gift ideas”, you’ll find a whole host of options. Etsy is THE store for handmade gifts, so you can use this platform to sell all sorts of items from gifts boxes for new mums, to handmade jewellery and Christmas Tree toppers.

Over lockdown I saw an explosion in people offering all sorts of handmade gifts, so if you think you could offer something high quality and make a little extra money this way, go for it!

Difficulty Rating: Medium-Hard (you will still need to let people know that your products are available AND make them to a good standard)

#14 Delivery Services & Taxi Driving

Companies like Amazon and Uber are always on the the look out for people who can add to their growing work-force. If you have a mode of transport, you can deliver parcels, pizza and even people (assuming your transport is a car of course!). Make sure you do all the right checks with your insurance company though, because you’ll be using your car for business purposes rather than solely personal use.

Difficulty Rating: Easy (but you need to make sure you do all the right insurance changes)

#15 Dog Walking, Babysitting, Tutoring, Cake Making, Car washing

Finally in my long list of side-hustles, you could turn your hand to some of the more traditional types of side-jobs. I remember watching an episode of “Rich-House, Poor-House” and the couple who were rich living on the poor couple’s income decided to turn their hand to doing odd-jobs for the local community to make a little extra money.

If you are really stuck for ideas, why not reach out to your neighbours and ask them if they need any help with something? Car washing? Walking the dog? Making a cake for their kid’s birthday? Obviously, if you’re going to make this a bigger venture, you will need to make sure you do things to an excellent standard for people, but why can’t you offer to help others for a little bit of extra cash?

Difficulty Rating: Easy (but you have to have the courage to ask others for work)

Final Thoughts

There are so many ideas for side-hustles out there, this post only skims the surface! Please let me know what you’ve tried, or what you fancy trying in the comments below. I’d also love to know your ideas for making money on the side that haven’t been included in this post!

I have a free Facebook Group community you can join if you need inspiration, motivation, and general support around your finances.

Until next time,

 

 

 

P.S. If you enjoyed this, why not try:

 

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