We all could do with some extra income every month, so supplementing income ideas will be useful to everyone, whether you are looking for online or real life work. I will show you suggestions for an increased income and I am sure there will be ideas that will resonate with you and your skills. Some suggestions may be for a few hundred a week, whereas others will create a full scale business.

The one common denominator with all the income ideas is that they all involve starting a new business with a website. Today’s world revolves around the internet, so to be able to maximise your chances of starting a successful business, you need to have an online presence in the form of a website.

If you want to jump straight in and start your website, click the image below.

Starting a website isn’t the complicated process it used to be so that is not a reason not to start your new business and gain that extra income. If your starting point is needing to know how to build that website, read my review of Wealthy Affiliate, or click the image above and go start building now. Wealthy Affiliate is a platform that will support you through that process so no need to get concerned about how you will manage.

Income Ideas

These suggestions are in no particular order but are a conglomeration of online and offline ideas. we all have skills, sometimes its not easy to recognise them, but I hope I can show you what you can really do !

Online Craft Seller

Are you creative? Do you have skills in the traditional arts of sewing/knitting/crochet? Do you work with resin? Or can you make soap? Handcrafted products are highly valued. I think that artisans frequently mis-price their products, feeling that because they are handmade their value is not great whereas those without the skills see it completely differently. Admittedly you will always get that one person who wants something for nothing… but they’re not your market.

So I make soap. I used to make designer cakes for Disney, but having moved to Spain so my son could fulfil his dream of being a professional tennis player, I could no longer make cakes and to be fair, after 25 years at it, I had done enough.

But I am a creative person, love various crafts from wood carving to crochet! So why soap? Well I had a website for triplets (I have older triplets) and I impart my knowledge to other parents with triplets and wanted to make something to sell on my site… baby soap! That’s how it started … but like everything, the and it snowballed into a side business. There were hoops to jump through as my main residence is the UK, so EU law to contend with. But I have it up and running now, small to start with but making money….

Selling your crafts is the focus. You can start small with a Facebook page or Ebay or Etsy, but pretty soon you will need to build a website. Whilst many people will go for Facebook, there comes a point with products, that the reader wants to be sent to the website to what else you are selling. Its your store front. So the website with Ecommerce (the facility to take payments online) is a priority.

I also love to blog and help you guys set up your businesses… but that’s another story……?

Become A Landlord

This isn’t as unreasonable as it sounds. Property is a very safe investment for your money, and choosing a place that is cheaper but in a location for vacations, weekends away, you open up the opportunity for either a short rental or longer rental. Looking at areas with cheaper houses that can be renovated and suitable for breaks… walking holidays from a cute cottage will be very popular. This sort of extra income definitely suits someone with little spare time but wanting to make extra funds work better for them.

My brother has two rentals in the same town where he lives, which makes it easier for maintenance. He’s pretty handy with the monkey wrench?. He runs them as longterm rentals and brings in a healthy income each month. Yes, it does involve a certain amount of legalities in the set up but once contracts are drawn, its smooth running.

E-Book Writing

We all seem to expect to get our purchases immediately, we have become a very impatient world but with the invention of the internet, it has made it ever more easy to achieve instantaneous delivery of egoods.

So if you love writing, consider writing an ebook. Ebooks are hugely popular due to the instant download. There are many devices to use these days, cellphone, tablet, laptop – kindle, Barnes&Noble Nook, Apple iBook, Kobo.

26 million ebooks were sold in 2017 and of those 129,600 were self published.

But what actually does self-published mean?

Self published – Also called author publishers are publishers that have published a book at their own expense and includes those doing it simply for family and friends, or for entrepreneurial reasons. This includes those ‘indie authors’ who choose to publish their books in different ways to suit the book style and authorpreneurs who make a living from self publishing. Clearly publishing and ebook is significantly less costly than actually publishing a hard copy of a book which I would not suggest you fund. If you want to think about writing an ebook some more, go over to my article on how to write an ebook for more information. I won’t reiterate here all the places to sell your ebook… read my article and it will tell you exactly what you need to do.

Launch An Online Store

‘Oooh’… I can hear you say…. on the face of it maybe this is something that sounds pretty tough… all that stock to store for fulfilment of your orders, the shipping issues, etc etc etc… Well there are various ways of managing these problems, without them causing you a headache.

The first step is to get your website up and running….there’s a theme running through this article.. .I think you can tell what it is… You need a website !

Once you have got that website, consider dropshipping… this does not involve you in holding any stock or having to ship any products. Its a straightforward system that works successfully, and if you want to read more about this go to my article on dropshipping.

For a particular style of dropshipping you could go across and read about Jungle Scout. They offer various tools for you to make a business through their dropshipping system, making the process easy to set up and start earning a decent income through Amazon products.

Otherwise the launch of a website for your business – as an affiliate marketer, which is where I started out with online work. Watch my video below to understand how affiliate marketing works.

If you would like to know more about Wealthy Affiliate to build your website, you can go to my quick review page to learn the essentials of the platform. Wealthy Affiliate Quick Review

E-Learning – Online Courses

This is something I have thought about and maybe I will start doing courses here to teach online marketing but for you, do you have a skill that would work well online?

Can you use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop? These are two complex tools to use, as I found when I learned how to use illustrator. Im still not that great at it but I can manage to do diagrams and drawings for here. I couldn’t do enough though to take business from Fiverr drawing designs.

But for those readers that have skills – teaching code, how to use python? Or do you have craft skills? I make soap and have thought about doing a course on that…. Can you strip an engine, make resin tables? There are tons of skills that we look to the internet to show us what to do.

Start a training course charging a small fee, nothing huge to start with, but building up your presence online, getting a following, and introducing more courses as you become more proficient and confident. Maybe you are a self esteem coach or parenting qualities? I have triplets so maybe I should do that ??But do you train at the gym? Follow a healthy diet? There are lots of courses out there showing us what to do but maybe yours will have a different angle? Appeal to your audience… create a great online course.

Free Time?

What do you do in your free time? Go to the gym/ go to the pub/ walk / visit the cinema ?

Anything you do in your free time can be expanded to create income for you. Doing something you enjoy whilst earning extra cash is the best of both worlds. I love quizzes, game shows and knowledge contests… If I had the time, I would love to run trivia nights at my local pub/cafe/wine bar. This could be something that you are good at, the ability to pitch the right questions for the right audience. Approach your local innkeepers, wine bar managers. They are always looking for different activities to encourage customers to their premises. Having a rota of venues where you can hold your trivia nights offering once a fortnight would bring in a comfortable income each month.

Trivia quiz nights work well as teams, bringing out people to an evening in the pub who might not otherwise be there spending money. Agreement with the pub or bar to include some bar food with the entry fee will leave a good profit for you.

Pre-requisites For A Good Trivia Quiz –

  • Find a good venue… some where with decent lighting, seating, areas that will be perfect for teams to crowd around.
  • Have a theme?…….consider the scope of your audience.
  • Make sure everyone knows the rules – no use of phones!
  • Get great questions and decide how the scores will be kept.
  • Do you need someone to be the voice of the evening or is that you?

Prizes for your trivia quiz night… consider free vouchers to various high street shops, online stores… there are so many places to tap for free gifts that can be used as prizes. As you grow you will be able to increase the value of them but start off small.

Animal Caretaker

Do you love dogs? or cats, tortoise…. goldfish…. Have you thought about the number of people in the USA that are pet owners? 180million dog and cat owners… Now of course you can’t tap into all of them. USA is a HUGE place even for someone like me from the UK where we are used to much smaller distances. Clearly you cant walk a dog in Montana when you live in Maryland….? but the point I’m making is that there is a huge market out there for an animal caretaker, beit dog walking through the day for those owners that work, grooming ( potentially possible from a mobile unit) and pet sitting for dog owners who have to work away. Have a look at www.rover.com

My sister in Mississippi frequently has to go away on business and can’t take Karma with her, so she gets in a dog sitter, who walks Karma, feeds him, keeps an eye on her house, and generally makes sure sweet Karmi is happy and content. It makes my sister calmer knowing that her baby is well looked after whilst she is away and means that she doesn’t have the hassle of taking Karma to a kennel where she might pick up a bug, but also the disruption to Karma’s life being cooped up in a kennel when she is not used to that.

Easy enough to start with dog walking, using a new website and local advertising and expanding from there. It may be that you will travel a little at first to get the customers but as you get known, you will find you are inundated with customers wanting a caring, thoughtful, reliable and adaptable animal caretaker.

Tour Guide

This is Portland Bill Lighthouse, UK

Do you live in a picturesque part of the country? Near any landmarks? These days it doesn’t have to be a capital city or some well known landmark, but areas that are visited by tourists, who would be grateful for a tour guide around the local area. Try visiting a few of the local places to discuss with the owners about the possibilities on doing guided tours. I live near Leeds Castle in the UK which is a beautiful moated castle with lots of history. Im no historian so this wouldn’t be something for me but I have been round it with a guide when my triplets were learning about Kings and Queens of England.

Market Research Tester

This is something we can all do without having any particular skills. It can be a little mundane, maybe a little boring sometimes. but lucrative for bringing in extra, reliable income and with quite a few consumer samples that may well be very interesting.

This is what ‘Entrepreneur.com‘ had to say about market research – ‘Launching a new product into the marketplace without conducting rigorous product testing market research is like “jumping off a cliff into the sea, blindfolded — unthinkable, life-threatening, treacherous and unnecessarily risky. Many new ideas and products are successful because their creators identified an unmet need in the market and verified the viability of that concept.”

So work that is always going to be necessary. They are always requiring feedback on their products or services and you get paid for your opinion. These might be in the form of website testing, game testing, focus groups or 1:1 interviews. You will be instrumental in developing the design of new products or services, as well as cash or gift vouchers as an incentive for taking part.

Search the web for consumer product testing and sign up. It might be a good idea to start with products that you have an interest in, if this is going to be an income earner, you need to have enthusiasm for your work. Take a look at iPoll and swaybacks to start with, this is simply market testing so may be a little monotonous, but it does say you can earn up to £300 a month.

Gardener

This is not something I would want to do, I value my nails too much, and to be totally honest I have a husband who does all that ! ? But if you have green fingers, enjoy being outdoors, whatever the weather, this could be the income you are looking for. This could take two forms -either you go and do work on someone else’s garden or you grow produce/plants to sell. This would not be something year long but a certain amount of time to plan the planting. But along with growing fruits, or plants, the opportunity to specialise in a particular plant/fruit product if you have the space in your garden. Surprising where you can fit a poly tunnel when you need to!

Growing specialist plants can be quite a lucrative business. I want a palm tree in my garden when I eventually return to the UK to remind me of my years in Spain. They will grow in the UK as we live in the south east so quite warm, but as you probably can imagine, they’re not cheap and not easy to find. Of course Im not suggesting you grow palms but what about succulents? These look amazing and I would have loads of them in my house. Im not great at watering plants so these look like ones that would suit me perfectly !

Summary

Whilst any of these suggestions could be done on an adhoc basis, with just local advertising, to be able to scale it up and make a decent income from any of them, as mentioned earlier, a website would be required so if you would like help in doing that, click on my link below and go check out Wealthy Affiliate, see what they can do for you, and I will be there to personally help you with getting yourself set up and starting to earn extra income. I have so many more ideas for supplementing income, so will be running a sequel to this article very soon with even more great ideas for earning an extra income.

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