The cost of living in the UK is going through the roof right now and we all need to be make more money.
Price Rises
You don’t have to search too long for a headline and some grim reading about how quickly fuel and food prices are going up. Inflation – that’s the term that we use to measure increase in prices – was 5.4% at the back end of 2021 and now in the last few days we have seen huge increases in the price of gas and oil along with food prices – shoving that figure even higher.
Huge pressure is being put on home budgets and there isn’t any sign this will end soon.
Interest rates have just gone up in an attempt to slow inflation, meaning many more households face mortgage payment increases to add to the fuel and food bills. On top of that we can all look forward to National Insurance contributions going up by one and a quarter pence in the pound in just a month or two.
It’s a fairly grim outlook.
Hard choices
Unfortunately and for many, that is going to mean cutting back on things that aren’t essential. For others who have already cut back as much as they can, it now means choosing between essentials.
That’s the situation, so what can we do about it?
What I’m hoping to do in this blog is to offer up some ideas about how you can increase your income and make more money to help battle these rising costs. I’m not talking about cutting back and frugal living, I’m talking about bringing more money in the door. I’m going to try to focus on things you can get moving on pretty quickly and that don’t cost a penny to get started.
So I’m not going to tell you to go and buy a house and rent it out. I’m not going to tell you to invest and live off the dividends, because right now, for today, that is no good. All those things can be great long term plans and brilliant if you are in a position to do that, but they aren’t going to help today.
Make more money
So let’s set a little expectation from the start here: we aren’t going to become millionaires overnight here. All the things I’m setting out in this video are things you can start today, with no experience, and no money. But unlike all the scammers who want you to buy something to achieve it and promise you the world, these are things you can start free of charge. You can begin to make a little bit of extra money with a little bit of time and some good old fashioned effort!
Side-hustles that just about everyone can get started on. The amount of money I’m talking about might cover a phone bill to begin with, or help with groceries or maybe let you keep that little weekend treat if it was being forced out of the budget.
It’s only the beginning
Once you get your foot in the door, then you can look to build on these processes and move on from there.
Of course, the nature of a side hustle is that the more time you spend building something for yourself and the more energy and effort you put in, the more you are going to see come back. The internet is awash with get rich quick schemes and brag posts, and that nonsense simply isn’t going to work. Nothing worth having comes easy, but hopefully with these suggestions you are going to see that extra income can start today, and is within everyone’s reach.
So, make today the day you start and while you can begin making more money immediately, let today be the day you took that first step to get you on the road to making extra income for a long time to come, so that in the future you don’t ever have to worry about rising prices again.
Research and feedback sites to help make more money
Companies need real life customer data. They want to understand how people use their products and websites and they will pay you for your feedback. There are lots of these websites available – I’ll leave a couple of the best ones in the footer below.
Respondent.io
Sites like respondent.io offer compensation from $5 right up to $300 or $400 on research sessions from 5 minutes right up to a couple of hours. Depending on your profession too, you can get verified and take on specific research about new products or giving your feedback on different ones. Very cool. So, there is a typically a screener first to see if you are suitable for the project you want to take on and if you are, the project is set up and away you go. Once complete payments normally take about 8-10 days to hit your account. Not bad.
And if you know other people that would like to take part in this sort of thing, then you can refer your friends. So not only will you be getting the income from completing these questionnaires but you can gain a little bit extra by getting your friends to sign up with your link. Everyone helping everyone.
Since all kinds of companies need all kinds of people with all kinds of interests from all around the world there are no shortage of projects to apply for.
User-testing.com
User-testing.com is another interesting one to help you make more money.
This one focusses on testing websites and basically speaking your mind as you use them. This one involves getting in front of the camera and while it can take a little practice to get comfortable chatting with a camera and airing your thoughts it pays pretty well and can be fun! You need to pass a small example test to get going – they want to understand that they can see and hear you clearly on your device, but apart from that it’s another one you can get moving on very quickly.
Affiliate marketing
We all have products we like to use.
We all have companies we like to talk about and recommend to friends.
We all have social media.
So here’s what to do. Stop using Facebook and Twitter and Instagram to post pictures of your dinner and start using it to make yourself some money. To do this, join an affiliate network like impact.com, browse their list of clients who are looking for people just like you to promote their products and start explaining the benefits of these products to your friends and family who might be interested.
Get your rewards
These products can can get you a little kickback when your friends and family sign up after you recommend them. Impact have affiliate partners with brands like Adidas, Hello Fresh, Revolut, the list goes on. All manner of companies in all sorts of sectors waiting to pay you to bring them customers.
And the way they pay can vary too. Some offer a once off reward and other share revenue, which means that the longer the customer you brought them remains a customer, the more you get paid.
So say you are a massive fan of Hello Fresh, for example. If you are on Facebook, perhaps a quick review of why it’s so good. Instagram? Some interesting pictures of you doing some cooking? Twitter? Share some links, look for topics discussing food and find a way to promote. There are people out there trying to find information about this brand, so write threads, get involved in some discussion about it, help people with their questions and show them why it is you feel so passionately about them. Most affiliate links will come with some kind of bonus for the new customer too to sweeten the deal for them. If you can find the right target audience you will find it’s easier to generate sales than you think, because that audience is already interested and ready to sign up.
Focus your affiliates
Now I’m not saying to push all kinds of products just because you can. Throwing out random, irrelevant affiliate links will never work. But start small. Pick something you are passionate for, that you could talk about freely – an area of your expertise of sorts.
If you have a banking app you use, for example, and think is good, tell your friends. Have you had a good experience with your broadband provider? Use the refer-a-friend scheme to tell your friends.
I have a video on my youtube channel about getting started with affiliate marketing which talks about some of the more longer term tips and tricks to make affiliate marketing a success. It’s about a year old so I will be updating that, soon hopefully, but the principles are sound. However to get started today, start small with you own local network and expand as you gain more experience.
Print on demand
Sticking a little bit with idea of repurposing your social media accounts from consuming to creating, how about creating tshirts and accessories based around current trends. What I’m talking about here is print on demand. Print-on-demand, or POD, is the a process where you work with a supplier of white-label products (like t-shirts, baseball hats, tote bags, mugs, etc) to customise those products and sell them on a per-order basis.
So you are maybe thinking, “well I don’t have a printer, i can’t buy a whole load of plain white tshirts in different sizes and hope someone orders something”. The best part about POD is that you hold zero stock. All you have to do is come up with an interesting design, upload it to various websites and let them do the rest. They make money by taking orders of your designs and selling tshirts all around the world. They give you a cut of that sale and that’s how you make the money.
I’m no Picasso
Being good at drawing or painting isn’t necessary either. Of course it helps if you have an eye for design but it’s not necessary. Take a look at these text based tshirts.
They have been created off the back of a current trend. Someone has jumped on a piece of news or something that’s going round social media and created something really quickly with just words and published up here to teespring.com. There are other sites like it, redbubble for example and they all make it really easy for you to upload your designs, set your own prices and start selling.Focus your affiliates
Of course, you need something to create your designs with – canva.com is one such online design tool. Again, entirely free, incredibly functional and comes with some presets that you can use to create great looking designs in a few minutes.
Promotion is important
Now again, you will need to promote your stuff, otherwise nobody will know it’s there. You might make one or two sales just from people browsing, but again, social media is the best way to do this in my opinion. Instagram might be a good option as you can post pictures of your designs. Consider setting up a dedicated account for this side-hustle. A catchy name, a fresh look, whatever you think is appropriate and start trawling the news for some crazy stories that you can use as inspiration for your T-shirts, mugs, bedsheets even! Facebook of course, will draw the eyeballs of everyone you are friends with and they might even share it for you too.
Of course making more money is no good if you don’t get into some good financial habits. It’s really important we behave frugally and always make our money work hard for us. If you are looking for some ways to cut down on your spending alongside making a bit more, maybe you can read this one next.