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.
- Make up to £40 with a free trial
- Potential earnings of £500+ per month
- Personally tried and tested
- 150,000+ members
- 4.7 Trustpilot rating
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.
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.
- Make up to £40 with a free trial
- Potential earnings of £500+ per month
- Personally tried and tested
- 150,000+ members
- 4.7 Trustpilot rating
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 who has a history of gambling problems or addiction.
If you need support with gambling, please contact Gamcare for free.
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.
