Earning money from home is a great way of supplementing your existing income, or as a way to start a brand new career and be a full time freelancer. Earning money from home will let you be flexible with the times you work, which is amazing for people who are parents looking to work around school times. It’s also a way of getting a little bit of extra money, whether your regular income needs a boost to pay the bills this month, or if you’re looking to have a little bit extra cash to save up for something nice.
I want to share some ways you could make money from home and hope this article helps you! I’ve split it up into two sections. First, how to earn easy money from home with simple tasks such as matched betting, best paying surveys and switching services, and second, how to earn bigger amounts by reselling or starting a business from home.
Note: This article contains both paid links and affiliate links.
Earn Easy Money from Home by doing these simple tasks
My tip for all of these tasks is set up a dedicated email address. This not only allows you to easily filter and check your email relating to money making, but it also protects you from spam. These services can sometimes send unsolicited mail or you will get paid to sign up for newsletters and offers. That’s great, but you want to be able to switch off and keep your “work” separate from your personal life, so step one is create a free gmail or other email service so you can sign up without worry.
1. Matched Betting
I don’t advocate gambling, but matched betting is not gambling, because if you are doing it correctly, it is guaranteed to be risk free. Matched betting is about taking advantage of free bets and incentives offered by bookmakers and online websites. It’s then about using simple maths to calculate how you can turn a profit, rather than playing a game of chance. You do this by placing bets on two outcomes that guarantee a win for you either way, using the free incentives provided for signing up to a service.
The downside is you need to make accounts with many new services and you can usually only use each signup bonus once (always read the terms and conditions fully). To save you some time in having to research loads of different online bookmakers, check out these sign up offers which have already been collated for you.
2. Switch Banks or Energy Services
If you’re out of contract for your energy services then it’s time to do some price comparisons, because not only can you save money, but some services will give you a direct payment as incentive to switch. Bank accounts regularly offer sign up bonuses and you can switch bank account very easily online, including transferring all your direct debits automatically. It’s no longer any hassle at all to switch these kinds of services, so you should check regularly to see what’s on offer.
3. Online Surveys
Online surveys are the bread and butter of making money from home. There are dozens of online survey websites out there where you can earn anything from pennies to pounds for completing a single survey. The only one I personally continue to use on a regular basis is Prolific, which offers academic surveys (in comparison to commercial surveys). This has the extra bonus of them being varied, interesting and not about shopping – and you get to help researchers. It’s the best paid survey site I know and shows you how much the payment is in terms of “per hour”, so you can easily pick the best paying surveys for your time. I have no problem getting a payout of £20-30 a month with Prolific.
Other survey sites that I personally recommend and have had payouts from include Toluna, which has some very quick surveys and polls which can be done when you don’t have a lot of time, Swagbucks, which also has a lot of other options to earn (see below), and Qmee (which also offers free search rewards, see below).
There are lots more ways to get paid by doing surveys but those are the main ones I’ve personally used so far.
4. Get Paid to Watch Videos or Play Games
You can get paid to watch videos and play games with sites like Swagbucks. Swagbucks is a fun site that allows you to complete tasks for virtual cash, which you can then cash out with Paypal or gift cards. It’s massive in America, but is open worldwide and valid for the UK as well. This can be a bit more fun and interesting than doing surveys, as you’ll have YouTube videos, small games to play, polls to fill in and more. It’s not a massive payout, but it is an enjoyable way to make a small boost of £20-£25 a month pretty easily.
Another online earning site with fun tasks is Gift Hunter Club. The payout is in PayPal or Amazon gift vouchers. It’s paid in dollars, but PayPal will convert that to pounds for British participants, or your local currency wherever you are.
5. Get paid to google with Qmee
It’s as simple as the title says. You can earn around £5-10 a month from the addon Qmee, which works on Google, Chrome, eBay, Safari and other browsers as well. For heavy searchers, you could potentially earn up to £20 a month. Now whilst this isn’t a huge fee, you have to do nothing more than install the addon and then search google as you usually would. It’ll show some extra adverts alongside your usual results, but they’re really not invasive or inconvenient at all, so it’s just a passive money maker. There’s no minimum payout and you get your cash straight to PayPal rather than faffing around with vouchers.
6. Checking Cashback Sites and Apps for Deals
I use two cashback sites, Quidco and TopCashback. Both of these often have great deals for getting money back when you shop, but they also have offers that you can take advantage without spending at all, for example being paid to sign up to a free service or do a comparison. They’re making money off your data, so this is a good reminder to make sure you’ve set up a spare email account and only give companies data you’re comfortable with them having.
As you can see, I’ve definitely benefited from using these cashback services! If you use my Quidco Referral Link you’ll gain a bonus £10 once you earn your first £5.
My current Quidco Balance:
My current TopCashback Balance:
7. Get paid for Market Research
Did you know that you can get paid for your opinion and sharing your views? Check out these UK companies offering money for participating in market research projects.
Earn Big Money from Home by Starting a Business
1. Freelance Jobs from Home
The website I earn money from home freelance on is Upwork. Here you can bid on freelance projects of all types. I have also earned money from Fiverr. If you have marketable skills such as graphic design, proofreading, copywriting or coding, then you can successful find ways of selling those skills on these websites!
2. Start your own website or blog
I was earning money from Welsh Mum in the first year; I now have three other blogs all of which are profitable. Having a blog is a lot of work and it won’t pay off for quite some time, but it’s definitely worth considering. If you think you have something you could share, whether it’s writing, recipes, tips, photos or something else entirely then a domain, hosting and setup is a very small outlay for a business. I highly recommend WordPress to beginners and I’m incredibly happy with the service provided by my host, SiteGround. You’ll be surprised how cheap it is to get started and how much fun having your own website can be. No technical experience needed.
3. Sell your own product
If you can create something, you can sell it! From soap to flowers to sweet packages, to home made clothing, to wood working to art and design. I highly recommend Etsy as a platform for selling your creations, but Ebay, Amazon, Facebook and local classified ad sites such as Preloved and Gumtree are all options.
Alternatively, you can also explore home-based franchise opportunities that let you sell a brand’s products or services. Such as helping kids and teachers overcome mental and emotional challenges with NLP4Kids or organising logistics shipping services with World Options. Franchises can earn you significantly more than starting your own business presence. You can get started with the support of an established brand and use all their marketing and customer service templates to get from 0 to 100 in no time.
4. Resell on Ebay or Amazon
There’s also a big market for reselling. If you think you can pick something up cheap and flip it then get going. The costs are often inexpensive with getting started and you can source your products from charity shops, online market places, buy in bulk or broker deals with suppliers. You can send goods in to Amazon to be shipped out on Prime which is massively in demand these days. This method does require you to spend some money on the products in the first place, but is flexible to your budget and there’s plenty of money to be made.
5. Design T-Shirts, Mugs and other Products
Finally if you can try your hand at design then you might be on to big bucks. This doesn’t mean you need to be artistic, there are lots of slogan t-shirts and products out there that are doing amazing. Maybe you have a funny or accurate catchphrase that you think people would love to see on a tee? The joy with this is your only outlay initially is your time as you can sell your design through platforms like RedBubble, where they manufacture everything and pay you a cut of the profits. There’s zero risk. Once you have designs that are selling well, you can make a bigger profit by removing the middle man and printing them yourself.
Hopefully this has helped you think about ways you can earn money from home, whether you just want a little extra fun money from doing surveys or whether you want to start bossing it and work from home permanently with your own business. You should also look at ways you can save some money as well, as this will help your monthly budget go further.
Let me know in the comments if there are any other ways that you earn money from home. I’d love to hear from you.
