Including a step-by-step guide on how to start making money online
Making money online is a great way to either top-up your current income or work from home. If it’s always been your dream to make money online then this is the post for you. We walk you through all the dos and don’t of what you need to remember and expect when it comes from earning money online.
Even if you just want to make money in your spare time, following money-making tips like these, as well as taking advice and guidance from other successful entrepreneurs like Chance Welton, can really make a difference when first starting out.
We’ve included everything from the kinds of jobs you can do online to make money to spare time money makers that really can boost your income.
If you are looking for more ways to make money online then have a look at:
17 Ways to Make Money Online in the UK
Make Money With These Best Paid Survey Sites
31 Work From Home Jobs for Mums
Money making online for beginners
If you’ve never made money online before then it can seem rather daunting. You may not know where to start or how to get your foot in the door, so to speak.
We started making money online over six-years ago and have learned all the pitfalls of making money online.
As a beginner, start by deciding how you want to make money.
Do you just want to increase your current income? Do you want to go fully self-employed? Research both aspects tax-wise as any income you earn over £1000 has to be declared to HMRC.
If you want to boost your income then jump to your section on earning money online as these give you three quick ways to start boosting your income from your sofa.
If you’ve decided to go self-employed or freelance then please on.
Our best tip is to watch out for the tricksters. If a job sounds too good to be true then it normally is. You shouldn’t have to pay for work. They pay you!
Also, trust your instincts. They are normally right!
Earning money online
We’ve put these three in order of how time-consuming they are. All three will earn you money but they all need a bit of time.
These are the three side hustles that we started with as a beginner. Start at the top and work your way down as you feel more confident.
Cashback sites
Weirdly, not many of us use cashback sites, which is strange, as you can earn money back from just buying your normal day-to-day items. From grocery shopping to insurance to household bills!
Search for what you need and buy it through a cashback site and you’ll get back a percentage of what you spend.
Our favourite cashback sites are:
OhMyDosh – OhMyDosh is an easy to use cashback site that’s free to use. It’s not like a normal cashback site though. OhMyDosh gives you loads of ways you can make money including:
The refer a friend scheme. Refer your friends to OhMyDosh and earn yourself £5 for every sign up and your friend £1.
Competitions: Enter them for free and receive money.
Shop through them to earn the bigger rewards.
The best thing about OhMyDosh is that you only need to make £10 to “dosh out” and they pay out through your bank or through PayPal.
Join Oh My Dosh for free here and have £1 added to your account.
Quidco is a great way to save money. We’ve saved over £200 in the last few months and their site is really easy to use.
Use our link here and get a £10 cashback bonus when you make your first purchase on Quidco.
It’s free to join Quidco and they have access to over 4,000 retailers, and a lot of these are big household names.
As soon as you hit the threshold, cash it out. You never know what’s around the corner.
Online surveys
A handy little earner that you can do on your laptop while watching TV. You won’t necessarily make bundles of cash, but for just 20 minutes or so work, you could make a few pounds.
These are the one’s I’ve used before but there are plenty floating about that payout in either vouchers or cold hard cash. Our favourites are:
OhMyDosh
OhMyDosh* is a survey site and cashback site combined. You can make money by answering their surveys which then goes into your account as credit. When you have reached the limit you can cash out!
Surveys can range from anything from watching videos to answering questions about what you last brought online.
Join OhMyDosh for free here and have £1 added to your account.*
Swagbucks
We love Swagbucks! There are loads of tasks available and you can earn money from answering questions or watching videos. The surveys are short so you can do them on the move pretty easy. Payout is via PayPal or Amazon gift card.
These surveys are so easy to do and they tell you how long they will take too.
YouGov
YouGov is a great place to answer questions on today’s problems. The surveys normally involve your view on large companies, the government or your local council. You only need 50 points to cash out which is £50.
They are really interesting surveys to complete and they do email you every time they have one to complete.
Use our link here to sign up free to YouGov*
Matched Betting
Matched betting is a completely legal, tried, and tested way to make money online while you’re at home. It basically turns the tables on the bookmakers, to give you their free bet offers, so you can’t lose.
If you’re doing it correctly, you will never lose any money, but you do need to take your time and be really careful to avoid any mistakes. Using a company like Profit Accumulator means that you don’t have to work out the odds or be worried that you’re doing it all wrong.
Make sure you understand fully before you deposit any money. Follow our guide here to make your first £20 matched bet.
Read more about how matched betting works here
This is why we use Profit Accumulator when we are matched betting
Making money online as a job
If you decide to go freelance or self-employed then you will need a few extra things. For a start, you’ll need to advertise your services.
We started as a virtual assistant and freelance writer. Advertising on Facebook and on the content mill websites was how we landed our first client. It isn’t quick and gaining work like this is normally low paid.
Don’t just start doing one either as it can take a while to build up. Use any cross-over skills you have to really impress your clients so they keep coming back to you.
Remember to keep track of all the money you earn and spend as you will need this for self-assessment when the time comes.
We’ve added our top 5 money-making freelance gigs here that are great for beginners in the online world.
Blogging
Blogging can be a great hobby, but also a very good way to earn money and go places with your family that you’ve never even dreamed of before.
You need to find a topic that you are passionate about. Don’t worry if you don’t enjoy writing, you can vlog on YouTube or even just start with a Facebook page.
The good thing about blogging is that you can start for free and earn money in a load of different ways like advertising, through sponsored posts (this is where a brand asks a blogger to write about their branded products), affiliates (where someone buys something after a blogger has written about them), products and courses.
You can start a blog really quickly and easily but will need a domain name, host and website which you can sort yourself quickly. We use WordPress to build Savings 4 Savvy Mums and TSO Host for our domain name. They also offer to host too and with our code S4SM10%OFF, you can get 10% off.
Don’t forget to sign up to an email marketing provider. Many offer you a free service till you hit a certain amount of subscribers. This is a great way to keep all your readers involved in what you’re working on. We use Mailerlite as they offer great customer service and are very easy to use!
You can also read about how we set up our blog here, which also gives you a step-by-step account.
To really start making money with blogging we would suggest you have:
A domain name
This is your www. name that people will search for. Try and think of a name that matches your business or that you think your customers will be searching for. Have a look on social media and Google to check that no one else has it. You can check and purchase domains easily using a site like TSO, who we buy ALL our domains from.
If you use our link here to TSO and buy a domain then you can get 10% off using our code S4SM10%OFF
Web hosting
These are the people that will host your website on their server. You want a company you can trust. We’ve used many over the years but TSO Host are a good place to start when you need your online store hosting*. You get 10% with TSO Host by using our code S4SM10%OFF.
A website
We use WordPress because it’s the easiest platform to use and gives you total freedom. There are so many YouTube videos on how to start out if you are unsure but just pick and theme and get playing with it.
Social media
Set up Facebook, Twitter and Instagram first then think if you need Pinterest and Snap Chat.
Email campaign provider
This is a great way to keep your customers involved with what’s going on and to let them know of any new services or products you are selling. Set it up early even if you don’t plan to email anyone. We use Mailerlite as they have great customer service and easy-to-build email templates. (Remember to check the ISO website for GDPR guidelines.)
Then depending on which business below you decide to do will come with a few more costs.
If you are new to blogging then have a look at our Blogging Toolkit. It’s packed full of all the vital things you need to start blogging and making money.
It includes:
Everything you need to start your blogging journey in the right way!
This has 15 value-packed templates which includes:
- SEO Checklist
- SEO Cheatsheet
- 100 Blog Post Ideas
- Blog Post Title Ideas
- Blog Post Creation Checklist
- Weekly Content Planner (Excel)
- Income Tracker (Excel)
- Accounts Spreadsheet (Excel)
- Invoice Template (Word)
- Affiliates Spreadsheet (Excel)
- Blog Stats Spreadsheet (Excel)
- Blog Post Analysis (Excel)
- Lead Magnet Ideas
- 17 Must Have Post Ideas
- How to Jump Start Your Mailing List Booklet
Buy our Blogging Toolkit here and let it help you start getting more people reading your blog.
Virtual assistant
A virtual assistant is someone who works from home, who can perform all the nitty-gritty admin jobs that a client needs remotely.
This could be any admin task and is normally a high-paying job with no experience needed. You could be doing anything from scheduling social media to creating marketing images to just answering emails or amending spreadsheets.
A Virtual Assistant is useful for any size business, and as someone who’s worked both sides, as an employer and employee, most Virtual Assistants are very flexible and work on an hour-by-hour payment basis.
You don’t have to have any secretarial experience, as many Virtual Assistants specialize in something. Have you got marketing experience? Social media knowledge? Are you organized? Most Virtual Assistants can earn up to £25 an hour.
It’s really simple to become a Virtual Assistant, and set up takes about half an hour.
My 5 top tips for setting up as a Virtual Assistant are:
Set up a Facebook page and ask everyone and anyone you’ve worked with to leave you a 5-star review. It is mega cringe, but it’s those reviews that will give you a leg up and give you something to link to when a client asks for references.
Set up a separate email address so you can track potential clients emails quickly.
Shout about your business to everyone and share it in all the Facebook groups, especially in Facebay and business groups.
Set up a spreadsheet divided by month with the client name on the top and the number of hours you do every day. That way when it comes to invoicing you can just copy and paste the information over.
Have an invoice spreadsheet ready for when you declare. It can be as simple as date, client name and the amount so when you need to declare, you have a final amount without having to find all last years invoices.
Read more about how to set up a virtual assistance business here
You can also grab our Virtual Assistant Toolkit which includes:
This value-pack includes:
A list of VA essential tools
Invoice template (Word)
Time Card spreadsheet (Excel with pre-made formulas)
Invoice spreadsheet (Excel with pre-made formulas)
Blog post promotion spreadsheet (Excel)
Engagement questions for most niches (Excel)
Facebook schedule (Excel)
The Virtual Assistant Essential Tool Kit can help you land your first client, and keep you on track for when it’s time to invoice.
So what are you waiting for?
Take the plunge and watch how you spend less time invoicing and more time getting clients.
£4.99Add to cart
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you sell something on behalf of someone else and get a commission. You advertise someone else’s products and services and when someone buys, you receive a small percentage.
There’s a lot of affiliate programs out there, so whatever you’re interested in, you’ll be able to find a scheme for it. It does take a while to build but affiliate marketing is a great passive income earner meaning you only have to set it up once and you’ll keep receiving income.
Remember to research the rules on declaring the links.
Our top five affiliates who are great to work with and we trust are:
Profit Accumulator*: A odds matcher and tracker
Bulb*: They help people to save money on their energy bills
Emma Drew’s Turn Your Dream into Money*: A blogging course to get you up and running.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping is a great way of earning money on eBay or Amazon without having your own products. You sell other peoples products but for a mark-up so you make a profit.
A great example of this on the high street are stores like Argos and John Lewis who sell other brands.
To get started in dropshipping and to be successful, you’ll need:
A tracking program that tells eBay when the product is in stock or out of stock. We use Hustle Got Real that pulls our listings if they suddenly go out of stock*. They track major UK brands so you don’t have to. Hustle Got Real takes away all the pain of dropshipping and pretty much manages the listings themselves.
An eBay or Amazon Store. We started on eBay just as a private seller. It currently costs 36p to insert a listing so make sure you work out when it’s cheaper to switch to a store.
Time. Again this isn’t a get rich quick scheme but is a great way to make money as a passive income. You need to be on your eBay or Amazon store every day even if you only list one product. They reward you for being active!
If you are looking into getting into dropshipping then read our complete guide here.
Related Posts:
- 101 Genuine Work From Home Jobs in the UK
- 37 Home Based Jobs You Can Do While Working From Home
- How to Sell Online: This is the 2021 Guide to Selling Online
Freelance writing
The internet needs writers and you could be paid to be one of them. Anything goes from game scriptwriters to e-book writers to academic writing.
Many companies pay per word or per article, and pay will depend on your experience and writing abilities.
There’s companies out there that will help you find work as well, but do take a commission on what you earn.
These are sites like:
People Per Hour
Upwork
Fiverr
You can also find work on local Facebay or Gumtree sites, and while they might not be the best paid, it means you can build up a portfolio for yourself to show other clients.
Laura x
If you enjoyed this post and would like some more money making ideas from home, including ways to freelance, start a blog or even earn from your phone, then head over to my making money section here on Savings 4 Savvy Mums where you’ll find over 30 money making posts dedicated to helping you earn more from home and become more financially stable as a family. There’s also tips in my Money Saving Mums Facebook group. You could also pop over and follow my money making Pinterest boards for lots more ways you can earn money from home; Money Making Mums and Working from Home Jobs for Mums.
What the * means
If a link has an * by it, then this means it is an affiliate link and helps S4SM stay free for all. If you use the link, it may mean that we receive a very small payment. It will not cost you anymore that it would normally.
You shouldn’t notice any difference and the link will never negatively impact the product. The items we write about are NEVER dictated by these links. We aim to look at all products on the market. If it isn’t possible to get an affiliate link, then the link, or product is still included in the same way, just with a non-paying link.