When I first started researching how to make money online, a lot of the resources I found were aimed at Americans.
Some online side hustles work from anywhere in the world, but I was frustrated to find a lot of sites that weren’t available to us over in the UK.
To save you the same frustrations, I’ve put together this list of the best ways to make money online in the UK.
What’s more, all of these side hustles have been personally tested by me or by other UK bloggers and friends of mine, so you can be sure these are legit ways to make money from home on our side of the pond.
Whether you want to make extra money for Christmas, save for a holiday, pay down debt or even start a new work-from-home career, I hope one of these options will help you make real money online.
Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links. That means that if you buy something from a site I’ve recommended, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Enjoy your extra cash!
Best ways to make money online in the UK
Matched betting
I want to start with this one because it’s possibly the only way to make money online that is exclusive to us in the UK!
If you haven’t heard of matched betting before, don’t panic – despite the name, it’s not gambling.
Matched betting is a legal and tax-free way to make extra cash from home by learning how to use the bookies’ free bets.
It sounds too good to be true, and to be honest it did take me a while to get my head around it, but it quickly became one of my favourite side hustles!
In a nutshell, matched betting works because you always place two bets: one for a specific result, and one against that result.
You use online calculators which tell you exactly how much to bet and where.
Since you’re placing these two calculated bets at the same time, they cancel each other out, so you don’t lose money.
Then, when you add free bets into the equation, you make profit every time.
It takes a while to learn, but once it clicks, it seriously feels like you’ve just turned on the free money tap!
The money I made matched betting has been life-changing for me, and I truly believe it’s one of the best ways to earn money online UK residents have available to us.
Oh, and because the money technically counts as ‘gambling wins’, you don’t have to declare it or pay tax on it in the UK! (Proof from HMRC.)
If you want to know more about matched betting, you can see my other posts here:
- Matched Betting for Dummies: Your Questions Answered!
- How to Make Money Betting Online – WITHOUT Gambling
- My First Month of Matched Betting
- Side Hustle Milestone: My First £1,000 From Matched Betting
- Thinking of Starting Matched Betting? Here’s What You Need to Know
- Matched Betting – The Best Work From Home Job for Busy Parents
How much can you make matched betting?
When I was matched betting regularly, I was easily making around £200-£300 a month in just a few hours each week matched betting.
In my best month, I made nearly £600. The more time you spend, the more you can earn.
(Full disclosure: I put my own matched betting on hold recently when I was preparing to apply for a mortgage because I didn’t want betting transactions on my bank statements. Something to keep in mind.)
There are always lots of offers available, and to some extent it is seasonal. For example, you can really cash in during the big horse racing festivals like Cheltenham!
On the Outplayed (previously Profit Accumulator) forums I have seen some serious matched betters who claim to make up to £2,000 each month, although I think these are exceptional cases.
However, it’s pretty achievable to make around £200 a month in a few hours here and there, even around a day job.
Recommended resources
Outplayed is an invaluable resource for me and I would not try matched betting without it.
As well as step-by-step training and customer support, it gives you access to the calculators and software needed to show you exactly how much to bet in each place so you don’t lose money. And it also has a match finder tool that saves you hours comparing the odds across different websites.
Outplayed membership is only available to residents of the UK and Ireland, and you must be 18 or over.
Please note that although matched betting is not gambling, it does involve using betting websites so it is not recommended for anyone which a history of gambling problems or addiction.
Blogging
Disclaimer: blogging is NOT a quick and easy way to make extra cash. Anyone who promises you can make money in your first month is likely misleading you.
I have been blogging for about three years now. It took me about eight months to get to the stage where I was consistently making income every month (about £100-£200 per month at first).
After about a year and a half, I was making over £1,000 a month from blogging part time around my day job.
By two years, I was making enough to quit my job and work online full time.
Three years in, I find my income is variable but I make between £3000 and £6000 every month. And I had a baby this year, and only work part time now 🙂
For me, the best thing about blogging is how flexible it is. You don’t have any clients, bosses or deadlines – it’s just you and your laptop! You choose when and where to work.
Read more about my blogging journey here:
How I Became a Full Time Blogger in Under Two Years
Wondering how bloggers actually make money? I wrote about the four easiest ways here:
How to Actually Make Money With Your Blog
So is blogging a good way to make money online in the UK? Well, since blogging is an online business, you can do it from anywhere in the world and speak to any audience in the world.
But if you’re based in the UK, you have a great opportunity to niche down and target UK readers.
The UK has a lively blogging community but there are not as many big bloggers as in the US and there is less competition.
A lot of my posts which are focused on the UK market are doing really well in Google rankings because of this.
How much can you make blogging in the UK?
Be prepared to put in a lot of work upfront before you see any money – this isn’t a get rich quick scheme!
But after a year or so, you could be making £1,000-£2,000 each month. Some top bloggers earn tens of thousands.
Personally, I make much more money now than I did in my previous job, and I work far fewer hours, too. So it’s a win for me 🙂
I know several other full time, very successful bloggers in the UK writing on topics such as personal finance, food, travel and parenting. So I would say blogging is a very viable way to make money online in the UK, whether you’re looking for a creative side hustle or a new career.
Recommended resources
I have a free, detailed step-by-step guide to starting a blog here: How to Start a Blog to Make Money
Once you’ve got set up, you might want to take a blogging course to talk you through the next steps.
Emma Drew’s course Turn Your Dreams into Money is written by a successful UK blogger and addresses things such as legal disclosures, which can be different in the UK from the US.
The Pinterest course Pinteresting Strategies helped take my blog traffic from 10k to 39k page views in one month and it only cost $32 – hands down the best blogging resource I’ve ever bought!
Teach English online
As a native English speaker, you already have one fantastic skill which is highly in demand all over the world.
Many companies are looking for native speakers to teach English to students abroad.
You can do this over Skype, so it’s completely online – all you need is a computer with a webcam and mic, and a quiet room.
Many companies don’t even require a teaching qualification, although most do request a bachelor’s degree in any subject.
Being British can be an additional advantage, as many students or companies request a British accent.
If you’re an English speaker wondering how to make money on the internet without any start up costs or major time investments, this might be the money making solution for you.
Unlike blogging or affiliate marketing (which require time to build your business), you can start earning straight away.
This is one side hustle I haven’t tried myself yet, but it is next on my list, especially since I used to work as a ESL teacher in ‘real life’ and it was a lot of fun!
Related post: 29 Legit Online Jobs For Students To Earn Money At Home
How much can you make teaching English online?
This depends on the company you sign up with, and your level of experience.
If you have a minimum 40 hour TEFL certificate (you can take this online cheaply), and/or you have some teaching experience, you can expect to earn more. This could be around £12/hour with a company that provides pre-prepared lesson materials. If you find your own private students and offer bespoke lessons, this could rise to as much as £20 per hour -although there is more work involved with this route.
If you don’t have a teaching qualification, try iTalki. This is an online language teaching portal where you can set your own rates. As an unqualified teacher, you can offer informal conversation sessions for around £8-£10. You essentially just get paid to chat!
Experienced teachers can charge even more on iTalki, but it’s up to you to prepare the lessons and provide your own materials.
Not bad for a fun and easy job you can do from the sofa!
Recommended resources
There are lots of companies looking for online English teachers but here are a few to get started with:
EF (Education First)currently not hiring- iTalki
- Lingoda
- DaDaABC
- Voxy
Check the list at the bottom of this post for more.
Design T-shirts
This is one of my own current side hustles. I LOVE it because after some initial work, it generates passive income every month!
I design T-shirts to sell on Merch By Amazon. You literally just upload the design, and Amazon handles the selling, printing, packing and delivery.
It’s an incredible business that’s almost completely hands free.
Merch By Amazon is the best way to sell T-shirts online because you can tap into Amazon’s massive customer base. There is a waiting list to join, but no worries – you can use this smart workaround while you’re waiting.
There are also dozens of other platforms where you can sell your designs, such as Printful.
The Merch platform is run by the US Amazon, but you can become a designer from any country in the world because it’s all completely online.
Last year, Merch expanded to the UK and German markets, but many international sellers have said their designs that are popular in the US don’t do so well in the UK.
I think this is a great time to get on board as a UK seller and take advantage of your cultural knowledge by making some shirts specifically for a British audience!
Merch are also regularly adding new products you can put your designs on, such as hoodies, vests and PopSockets.
No design skills? Don’t worry. Most of my shirts have simple text slogans only, and some of them do very well.
You can use free software such as Gimp or Canva to create your designs.
How much can you make selling on Merch?
As with many other online businesses like blogging, the sky’s the limit!
If you hit on a winning design – or better, several – you can sell thousands of units and make tens of thousands of pounds each month. No joke.
I personally make on average over $100 in recurring monthly passive income. I currently have 34 products live, and only about 5 of them regularly sell.
Also, I haven’t uploaded any new shirts since last December! So you can see the potential to scale up if I spend more time on it.
Here are my earnings over the last year on Merch:
Recommended resources
Get on the waiting list now with Merch By Amazon.
While you wait, you can get started on alternate print-on-demand platform Printful.
I love this podcast and this website (their free blog posts and paid software) to learn more about becoming successful on Merch.
Survey sites
Surveys are one of the most common ways to make money online. It’s how I got started making extra money myself.
However, when I first started looking for survey sites online, I was frustrated to find that a lot of them were only open to US residents.
I put together this list of the best survey sites available in the UK. Many of them will work from anywhere in the world, but rest assured that all will work in the UK.
Pro tip: my all time favourite survey site is Prolific Academic. It’s one of the only sites that never disqualifies you from surveys you’ve started, plus it’s the best paying!
How much can you make doing surveys?
Surveys famously don’t pay that well. Their main advantage is that you can fit them into your day and do as much or little as you like.
They can be great as a way to start making money online, especially if you don’t have much spare time at the moment, but if you are looking for a long term option I would recommend one of the other options on this list.
Expect to make up to £100 a month, depending on how much time you put in.
Recommended resources
If you’re new to survey sites, sign up with my favourites first:
See this post for lots more!
OhMyDosh!
OhMyDosh! is a UK money making website which is a GREAT way to make some extra cash online fast.
On OhMyDosh!, you earn mostly by doing special offers, such as signing up for free trials.
You can also earn from surveys, entering competitions, and cashback on your online shopping.
This is my top recommended money making site at the moment because it’s so easy and they pay out really fast!
You only need to earn a minimum of £10 to cash out (and you can do this in under half an hour!) and payments take about 3 days to clear.
This makes it even faster to reach the £10 threshold!
There is a ‘Lightening Payouts’ section you can focus on if you need money fast.
Many of the offers need you to spend something before you make more money back. Just keep a record of everything you sign up to, and make sure to cancel any free trials in time. There’s also a ‘no spend’ section if you want to avoid this!
How much can you make on OhMyDosh?
I signed up to OhMyDosh! last year, and I made £20.50 literally within 30 minutes of joining! I did pay £2.99 to sign up for some trials, so that leaves £17.51 profit.
Your rate of earning does go down a bit after you’ve done the most profitable offers first. But there are constantly new offers added, so this is an easy way to earn around £50 a month and score some great freebies too 🙂
Recommended resources
Read my full review here.
Cashback
Cashback is a site for making money online by doing offers, similar to OhMyDosh!
The difference is that you have to complete 15 offers before you can claim your money. This means it takes a lot longer to cash out, but once you get there, you have a nice big chunk of money coming your way.
My top tip for both sites is to use an old/separate email address for this kind of thing, as some of the offer partners will spam you a lot.
How much can you make on Cashback?
Cashback claim that the average member makes just over £150, and apparently the highest ever payout was over £400!
Cashback is the improved and rebranded version of a site called 20 Cogs. When I worked through 20 Cogs a couple of years ago I made a total profit of £111.95 (£134.93 minus £22.98 on sign ups etc) – but this was actually lower than average. A lot of the highest paying offers are for betting sites, but I couldn’t join as a new customer as I do matched betting. If you are open to betting offers you could make a lot more.
You can join Cashback even if you’ve already done 20 Cogs, and there are lots of fresh offers.
Cashback also offer a £5 signing bonus.
Recommended resources
Sign up for Cashback here and get a £5 bonus!
Read my 20 Cogs review here (pay attention to the tips and warnings – these apply equally for the new version Cashback).
Fulfillment by Amazon business
Fulfillment by Amazon (or FBA) is an awesome business model that makes it so easy to sell on Amazon for a profit.
With FBA, you send your products into the Amazon warehouse and let them handle packing, shipping and deliveries. All you have to do is source the products.
Amazon gets over 3 million visitors DAILY in the UK alone, so to be able to tap into this customer base is incredible!
Most FBA businesses use something called retail arbitrage. This simply means finding something for sale cheaply and reselling it for a higher price.
Many FBAers source products cheaply from China. You can even get in touch with a factory and have your own product made through a website like Alibaba.
This is such a profitable business model that UK blogger Paul from Mr Paul Blog was able to quit his job as cabin crew to work on FBA full time after just six months (turning over £50,000 selling on Amazon!)
Related post: 7 Ways to Make Money on Amazon
How much can you make with FBA?
FBA is a scalable business. You do need some money upfront to invest in this business model, and your profits will be dependent on that.
You will probably need to start small and reinvest your profits into the business as you grow, but it’s possible to earn a full-time income of several thousand a month once you get established.
Recommended resources
Jessica from The Selling Family was looking into how to make money from home after she was let go from her job, when she came across the idea of selling on Amazon.
She now makes a full time income from FBA, enough for her husband to quit his job too so they can both stay at home with their son. They have a free 7 day email course which will teach you:
- Why leveraging FBA is essential for Amazon sellers
- Which niche you should sell in
- Picking items to buy
- How to price your items
- How many items should you buy
- And more!
Jessica is US based but everything she teaches applies to UK sellers as well and it is the best introduction you’ll find to making money on Amazon.
>> Sign up for the free Amazon course here!
Search Engine Evaluation
Search engine evaluation is a little known work from home job available in the UK, and many other countries. The work involves assessing search engine results to help improve relevance. A similar job is social media evaluation.
Many people in the UK are successfully working online as search engine evaluators to make extra money from home. Search engine evaluators have to sign a confidentiality agreement so it’s difficult to say much about what the actual work involves, but have a search over on The Money Shed forums for some interesting discussions.
To get the job, you’ll have to pass an online test. Full details and training are given when you apply.
One advantage of this job is you can pick your hours and work around the school run or other commitments.
How much can you make as a search engine evaluator?
Search engine evaluators typically make £9-£10 per hour.
Recommended resources
There are two main companies offering search engine evaluation work in the UK. Check their sites for availability:
Pinterest affiliate marketing
Did you know you can get paid to pin on Pinterest?
Yes, this is a real thing! I used to do this side hustle myself and it made me over £100 each month. (I have dropped this now to concentrate on blogging since there are only so many hours in a day).
I made money on Pinterest by pinning affiliate links for cool products I love. That means, if somebody clicks on the pin I made with my special link and buys a product, I get paid a commission.
There are so many reasons why Pinterest affiliate marketing is an awesome side hustle.
For starters, it’s really fun! You can tailor it completely to your own interests and basically carry on pinning the same sort of thing you’ve always pinned on Pinterest.
Secondly, it’s completely flexible and you can work as much or little as you like. You do need to be consistent with daily pinning if you want to see growth, but you can do this in less than an hour each day.
Also, you can use schedulers like Tailwind to keep your account going even if you need some days off. This means eventually you can be making money in your sleep!
As with blogging, you can do this from anywhere in the world. You can choose to target a UK audience or keep it general. I mostly pinned products that are available globally and I found my audience was about 50/50 split between the UK and US.
Related post: 4 Fantastic Ways to Make Money on Pinterest
How much can you make pinning affiliate links?
After working on Pinterest affiliate marketing for about six months, I was making about £100-£150 each month with less than 30 minutes work per day.
As with blogging, it takes some time upfront to get your business going, but after a point it starts to snowball and takes much less time to maintain.
Plus, your affiliate pins carry on floating around out there for a while. So I still made money passively for a while even after I stopped actively working on it 🤑
I have heard that some other affiliate pinners in a group I’m in are earning over $1,000 each month and there was one person who earned $350 in a single day when she had an affiliate pin go viral! But as with most other side hustles, it takes a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck to see these numbers.
Recommended resources
I first got started with Pinterest affiliate marketing after taking this awesome course from Elise McDowell. I made money on my fourth day, and the course paid for itself in less than a month! You can also check out my review here.
I have also written my own tutorial on how to make money on Pinterest here.
Website testing
Did you know you can get paid simply to check out different websites and apps?
You don’t need any technical knowledge. The clients just want to know how their sites come across to an average user.
There are many companies such as Userlytics that pay for this kind of work. You will need to install a special software on your browser. The software records your screen and voice as you visit different websites and talk about your impressions of the site.
Tests are first come, first served, so this isn’t a full time job. But this is a fun little side hustle to earn some extra pocket money each month.
How much can you make testing websites?
Most sites pay around $10/£7 for a 20 minute test or $3 for a 5 minute test. It’s great money! Just keep in mind that you might only get a few tests a week.
I’ve found that most tests are available during UK working hours, so if you are at home during the day this might be a great opportunity for you.
Recommended resources
These sites are all hiring testers:
See here for more.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping is an exciting way to build an online shop without having to handle any inventory yourself!
To start a dropshipping business, you need to find products to sell and a supplier who’s open to dropshipping (most people find Chinese suppliers on Alibaba or Aliexpress).
You set up an online storefront for the products on Shopify or similar. When the orders come in, you ask the supplier to send the products directly to the customer.
A profitable business model with very low overheads, which you can do from anywhere in the world!
How much can you make dropshipping?
This is another business which can take time to get started but can potentially scale up into a full time income.
You will grow faster if you have some money to invest in paid traffic (for example, Facebook ads) to get visitors to your store faster.
Recommended resources
Matt from Secret Wealth Project has some great resources on dropshipping from a UK perspective and even has a free getting started series on YouTube. The Secret Wealth Project Facebook group is full of inspirational stories from people smashing it in the UK and worldwide!
Freelance writing
If you have a way with words, have you considered freelance writing as an online side hustle?
There is an endless supply of writing jobs online on sites such as Fiverr and People Per Hour. Work can range from writing blog posts, to technical writing, to ghost writing entire books.
This is another online job where being British can be an advantage because it puts you in a niche market. Many UK businesses need writers who are familiar with UK spelling and style.
If you find writing fun and you have good spelling and grammar (as well as organisation and time management skills!), freelance writing could be the best way to make money online for you.
How much can you make?
This will vary a lot depending on your specialism and clients.
So-called ‘content mills’ such as Textbroker UK are the easiest place to get started if you have zero experience, but they pay notoriously badly.
But if you can carve out a niche for yourself – especially in a specialised or technical topic such as IT, or sales copywriting – you can make upwards of £100 an article.
You’re also more likely to earn more if you pitch clients directly, rather than going through a freelance site.
Recommended resources
This is a really helpful and thorough guide to marketing yourself as a freelance writer.
And if you’re looking for inspiration on how to niche down, here’s a list of 200+ freelance writing niches.
How to make money online in the UK: pick one and get started!
As you can see, there are loads of different legit ways to make money online in the UK. Just because we want to make money in pounds, not dollars, doesn’t mean we have to miss out!
I hope that you’ll find something on this list to inspire you, whether you want to earn an extra £50 a month or find a whole new online job.
If I could give you one piece of advice from here, it’s to pick one of these options and commit! I’ve definitely been guilty of ‘shiny object syndrome’ myself – jumping from one exciting new business opportunity to the next, without giving myself time to really develop any of my ideas.
But when I’ve settled on one side hustle and committed just half an hour a day, or several hours once a week, for several weeks – that’s when I really started to see results.
Good luck and happy money making!
Let me know in the comments if you’ve tried any of these and have advice for our fellow money-making Brits 🙂
This post was first published on 24 April 2018 and was last updated on 5 December 2019.
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