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5 ways of making extra money at home

15th March 2016 Print

It can be difficult to make your monthly salary stretch to cover all expenses and most of us are constantly looking for ways of getting more from our money - whether that be saving cash on our grocery shopping or switching energy provider. 

To help with managing our money better, this tool from PayPlan is useful as a quick online test to see how you control your finances. For ways of actually increasing your income, try these five methods...

Freelance writing 

If you have some expertise in a certain industry or subject and are good with words, then you could try your hand at freelance writing. It can feel like a difficult thing to get into but if you approach the right publications and sites you should be getting paid for your penmanship in no time. 

The Guardian recommends putting together some work for your portfolio, which can be sent to potential clients with your synopsis for an article they could use. Alternatively, there are numerous freelance websites out there that you can sign up to and bid for work; Freelancer or oDesk are good places to start. 

Arts and crafts 

Are you great at drawing? Or a dab hand with a sewing machine? Then selling your arts and crafts is a great way of earning some extra money at home. Sites such as Etsy allow you to sell your wares with a small fee and you can use social media to engage with people who like your work and learn what they want to buy. If you’re an artist or illustrator and aren’t sure how to go about reproducing your work for prints, this great blog post details how. 

Sell online 

Do you have a cupboard full of items you no longer want or use? Then it might be time to use that dusty old eBay account and get selling. The auction site features everything from wigs to taxidermy pigs so you’ll have no trouble finding a buyer – no matter how niche the item you’re selling is. Just be sure to take plenty of high quality photos, put together an informative listing and wait for the bids to roll in. 

Try out ‘comping’  

Comping is a fine art but one that could prove lucrative if you invest some time to entering numerous competitions and putting together clever answers or comments as your entry. You could win everything from £20k to a new car to a 5-star holiday in Mauritius! 

The Money Saving Expert website recommends setting up a dedicated email address for the task (to save yourself from dealing with spam emails in the account you use for everyday things), being picky about the competitions you enter, avoiding entering competitions more than once and consider entering post or phone competitions because these will have less entries. All you need is a laptop, Wi-Fi and a cuppa to get you going! 

Share your storage space 

Do you have a garage you barely use or a spare walk in cupboard that you don’t need? Then renting out storage space might be another means of income you could try from the comfort of your own home. Sign up to a site such as Storemates, where you can list your space for renters to use and earn some extra cash. 

Making extra money at home is relatively easy and might even allow you to reap the rewards from doing something you love! Try some of these tips out today and start topping up that bank balance.