Who could do with some extra cash in their pocket?
I know I could.
We tend to live to our means, so anyone on an average income or even slightly above it will likely feel they don’t earn enough. It’s called ‘lifestyle creep’. As your income slowly improves, so do your outgoings.
If that sounds like you, then you need a side hustle.
The vast majority of us are employed so we can’t boost our income from our regular jobs. Asking for a pay rise won’t always work and even if it does, it won’t be substantial. Self-employed folk can always work longer days or weekends, but they might be limited by the nature of their work. For example, no one wants a plumber rattling their pipework at 10pm (unless that plumber is your significant other, perhaps!)
Innuendo aside, thinking of ways to earn extra money takes up a lot of brain space in Dads countrywide. There are loads of different side hustles you can do from home, but they all require different levels of time and commitment before they start to pay off.
I’ve tried my hand at loads of them – what do you think this blog is all about? – so I know a thing or two about which ones work and which are non-starters.
So if you’re busy but still want to find a way to earn extra cash from home, one of these should do the trick.
Matched Betting
This is my favourite option because the money comes quickly and literally anyone 18+ can do it.
The only downside to matched betting is that it will only work for a limited time.
Before I explain it, let me answer a few common questions:
- Is it illegal? No. The bookmakers don’t like it, but all they can do is limit your account if they suspect you of matched betting. There are ways to disguise what you are doing but it will take each bookie a while to work it out even without these disguises.
- Is it dangerous? No. You won’t lose money so long as you follow the rules, make bets at the odds you’re told, and check your stake amounts properly.
- Is it guaranteed? Yes. Only human error can make this go wrong. If you follow the instructions you are mathematically guaranteed a profit.
I understand the concept can be intimidating if you aren’t used to betting, but I promise you, this is safe to do. Try it with a small amount first if you are suspicious.
If you aren’t familiar with the concept, matched betting is when you use the free bet offers on bookmaker’s websites to back one outcome, then use a betting exchange like Smarkets or Betfair to back the opposite. Whatever happens, one of your bets will win, and because one side of the bet was made using a free bet, you make money.
They key is to choose bets that offer the most profit, but there are websites and tools to help you with that. They literally tell you what to do every step of the way. The best ones are subscription models, but they list all of the free bet offers available, they have tools which show you the best bets to make, how much to bet on either side, and on which websites. There are even video guides and tutorials so the service you pay for is great.
When I did this I think I paid the site £17.99 a month for a few months but I made over £600 from the bets. I could have continued and got more, but I was using it specifically to buy a new laptop, so stopped once I had what I needed. I used Profit Squirrel, but they aren’t in business anymore. The most popular option is OddsMonkey, but OutPlayed is another good option.
Eventually the new customer offers run out so the big money you can make in the early days won’t last forever. You can make at least £500 in your first month if not more, then you are left with reload offers (less generous offers for existing customers) which can net you anything from £100 to £300 a month. There are plenty of site like BettingSitesOffers that track these kinds of offers.
If the bookie suspects you of foul play they might limit your account. This is known as being ‘gubbed’, and makes matched betting pointless. You won’t be eligible for the offers anymore and will be limited to really small stakes which equal really small returns. So it’s a good short term money maker, but for something more consistent, read on.
Online Surveys
There are so many online survey sites out there, and they change all the time too, so I won’t recommend any specific companies.
Online surveys are a legitimate way to slowly build a nice pot of extra money though.
There are swathes of them that pay next to nothing, so to make this worthwhile you will need to do some research to see which sites are the most profitable at the time of your search.
The work itself – if you can call it work – is super simple. You will just be answering question, usually via multiple choice, yes/no, or by ranking likelihoods (Would you buy x,y,z if this made up situation occurred: Highly Likely, Likely, Neither Likely or Unlikely, Unlikely, Highly Unlikely).
I’m not a fan of survey sites because I find it difficult to get inspired by the paltry rewards on offer and I find the ‘work’ tedious. That’s not to say you will feel the same though.
I like my brain to be switched on at all times whether working or resting, but my other half is partial to zoning out and switching her brain off in the evening. If you are like her, online surveys won’t be too taxing at all.
Data Annotation
Paying $20 per hour, Data Annotation sounds great.
I say it ‘sounds’ great, because even though I signed up and passed the tests with flying colours, my account remained pending interminably. After looking online I found others in the same position, whereas some people were offered work almost immediately.
I have no idea how their system works, but once you’re in, you’re in, so it’s well worth having a go.
What you will be doing is helping AI to learn, by reading and analysing its answers to questions, ranking and feeding back on them, and things like that.
The test questions I completed didn’t require any specific technical knowledge, so don’t be put off if you aren’t a coder. It’s more about the ability to understand user prompts and AI answers, then clearly explain why they are good or bad. So reading comprehension and literacy.
Data Annotation aren’t the only company doing this, so there are plenty of others you could try.
Website Testing
Sites like UserTesting and UserLytics will pay you to test out their client’s websites and feed back on the experience.
I worked with Usertesting for a while after I moved to a new city and didn’t have any work. I only stopped because I didn’t need to do it anymore, but I really rated it at the time.
After completing the sign up process and being given some advice on how to conduct the tests, you are sent live tests to do. You won’t get as many to begin with, but as time goes on and you show you are reliable and good at the job, you will be sent more tests and better paid tests.
There are a lot of companies like this out there, and they all have their own way of working. Some ask their clients to rate the tester, others use their own internal ranking systems. Some have a set rate per test and others vary depending on the length and type.
You will need to download some software so they can record your voice and your screen (and sometimes your face, it depends who you work for), but it’s all safe and secure.
When I was ding it back in 2017 I was earning $10 (so about £7.50) per 20 minute test, which was paid into my Paypal account every week. Again, some pay bi monthly, some monthly, it just depends.
I would accept the job, then follow the tasks on the screen. These might ask me to go to the website and tell them what my first impression was. What does the business do? Who are their target customer? That sort of thing. Or they might ask me to navigate the sign up process, or find the terms and conditions.
As I was completing the task I would be speaking out loud to explain my thought process. So I might say “The sign up button is really clear in the top right so I had no problem finding that. I’m clicking it now and the form is easy to understand. I find the calendar for my date of birth a bit confusing though. How do I get to my birth year? I just tried clicking the year but it seems like I have to click back one year at a time. That can’t be right. Oh here we are. If I click this bit it gives me the option to jump back in decades. That wasn’t immediately obvious.”
…and so on.
UserLytics claim to pay between $5 and $90 per test, so the pricing will vary depending on the company you work with, but there’s no stopping you signing up with multiple. It’s a nice easy way to build up additional funds in your spare time and the barrier to entry is very low.
Boarding Cats and Dogs
People in the UK absolutely love pets. We also love holidays. This presents an opportunity for Dads looking for a side income.
You could set up as a boarding house for cats and dogs and anything else you think you could comfortably look after for a week or two alongside your children.
The great thing about this idea, especially if you already have pets, is that they don’t need masses of looking after. Cats do their own thing so long as you feed them, and dogs need exercise but then so do small kids. Take them both to the park at the same time.
You can make this fit in with your day to day schedule with very few changes, essentially earning money for nothing.
You can set your own prices, but a quick Google tells me boarding houses charge around £25-£30 per night for dogs, or between £15 and £20 to have them just for a day. They probably offer reduced rates for a longer stay, but as you can see, there is money to be made here.
To be clear, I’m not talking about pet sitting. That would require you to go to the pet owner’s home. Boarding is when the pet comes to stay with you.
You could even take in gerbils, hamsters, mice and rats, snakes – whatever you feel comfortable with and have room for.
Amazon FBA
FBA stands for ‘Fulfilled by Amazon’.
When you shop on the Amazon website, a lot of the products on there are sold by small businesses who have a fulfilment deal with Amazon. What they do, is pay Amazon a small amount to store their products in the Amazon warehouses and then deliver them when they are sold.
This means the person selling the product doesn’t ever have to handle it. They can have it shipped straight to a fulfilment centre, create the online listing, and wait for the items to sell.
This is not a quick or easy side hustle, but if you can find a good product and get it listed one the first page of results you can make good steady money.
You can also expand your store if you find more products that sell well, so slowly you can build a business from your phone or laptop.
The difficulty is finding the right product to sell, and to do this you not only need to do a lot of product research, but you also need to understand how Amazon lists products in different categories. You can get your product to number 1 if you pick the right product and category, and this will make it much more likely to sell.
If your product doesn’t sell, you still have to pay for the storage, so there is a level of risk here. You might eventually want to pay for advertising too, which will need to be factored in.
Still, if you have the time to research everything this is one of those side hustles that can end up earning you more than your job if it goes well.
Amazon KDP
Another Amazon acronym. KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing.
You create books online then upload them to Amazon, who print on demand and ship the product whenever someone buys it.
This is another one I tried for a while. I still get small deposits into my bank account every month or two when a few copies of one of my books get sold, and to be honest I think I could be making some decent money from it had I carried on.
A few ideas I tried that sold were:
- Christmas Colouring Books
- Vehicle Mileage Log Books
- Funeral Guest Books
- Themed Notebooks
- Diabetes Blood Sugar Log Book
Notice that none of these involve writing.
The ideas is to create an appealing cover that has internal pages that are either blank, repetitive, or very easy to create.
So long as you adhere to Amazon’s sizing guidelines you can use any software you like to create your covers. I used Canva a lot, but also others. There are even fairly cheap software programs developed specifically for KDP sellers which create the internal pages for you in just a few clicks.
I like this one because designing the covers and thinking up book types to try is enjoyable. Plus, once you get the hang of it you can create books really quickly, and that’s important because this is a side hustle where volume matters. The majority of your books will never sell a single copy. However, when one hits you can sell hundreds per month and generate a lot of income on a consistent basis.
Of course, you are not guaranteed any income from it, but it’s another that can end up paying more than your full time job once you get enough books on the market.
