Your dog could get paid hundreds as a furrfluencer

Reading Time: 2 mins

Got a dog? Why not get that little pooch a job that could really up the doggy snack game.

One of the UK’s leading marketplaces for holiday rentals, Snaptrip.com, is recruiting two dogs to travel across the UK with their owners as Furrfluencers.

The Job

The Furrfluences will be required to review 10-holiday properties over 12 months. They must judge each one on the following criteria: dog enjoyment, dog practicality, access to local walks and dog-friendly establishments like pubs and garden space.

The job role will include the Furrfluencer’s owner taking stylish photographs of the pooch enjoying itself at each property. Also, the local area. Then they must write a 500 word minimum, honest review detailing their experience. SnapTrip will upload this to its site.

Skills

Snaptrip.com is looking to recruit one young dog and one older dog, so that the property reviews are an accurate representation of all dogs and their experiences.

The company hopes the Furrfluencer review system will act as a benchmark for dog-friendly properties on its site, and help customers better pick a holiday rental that fits their own and their furry friend’s needs.

Requirements

Must be comfortable travelling

Must be either 6 months to 3 years old or 4 years to 10 years old

Must be in good health

Must be comfortable in front of the camera and photogenic

Must have an eye for detail and impeccable taste

A word from the Snaptrip founder

Matt Fox, CEO and co-founder of Snaptrip.com, said,

“We have over 30,000 dog-friendly cottages, and we thought who better to review these places than the animals who are going to be enjoying them! Many dog-owners pick accommodation based on whether they think it’s suitable for their pet, so we think a potential Furrfluencer review system will be really helpful to our customers.

“Whether they want a chilled countryside retreat for their aging labrador, or an active fun-packed break for their bouncy cockapoo, Snaptrip.com customers will be able to read an actual dog’s experience of a holiday rental to decide whether it’s the perfect place for them and their pet.”

Apply Now

The post Your dog could get paid hundreds as a furrfluencer appeared first on MoneyMagpie.

Get Paid to Taste Test Garlic Bread

Reading Time: 1 min

Okay, this is another dream job opportunity especially for those who love themselves a nice loaf of garlicky goodness…

The Job

Domino’s Australia has just put out an advertisement for this truly key role. They are looking for a chief garlic bread taste tester. In their own words:

‘You butter believe it! We’re looking for someone a little bit crunchy, but mostly warm and soft on the inside, to help taste test our World-Famous Garlic Breads at Domino’s Headquarters in Brisbane.’

Okay sounds good so far! So it’s a one day role, but because the pay is $30 an hour for the day, over the whole shift that means a cheeky $225. Not bad for a day of bread eating…

Ideal candidate

• Never met a carb they didn’t like
• Does not identify as a vampire
• Understands the perfect ‘crunch to softness’ ratio
• Is passionate about food, innovation and having fun.

Skills

Experience and qualifications:

• Minimum of 5 years’ experience in garlic bread consumption
• Has a detailed understanding of the pizza and garlic bread relationship
• Has working taste buds
• Has burned their fingers at least once not being able to wait for the garlic bread to cool down
• Has a history of reviewing other people’s food choices (solicited and/or unsolicited).

Pay and perks

You’ll take home $30 an hour. But the real bonus is that if you don’t live in Brisbane you’ll get return domestic flights if successful applicant is not within driving distance of Brisbane and one night’s accommodation if same day return flight is not available.

How to apply

Complete the survey and tell them in 200 words OR in a 30 second video why you are the perfect candidate for the job.

Applications close Monday 7th October. You can apply by clicking the button below:

Apply Now

The post Get Paid to Taste Test Garlic Bread appeared first on MoneyMagpie.

You Can’t Actually Start a Business for Free

If you have dreams of entrepreneurship, don’t quit your day job just yet. As lovely as it would be, you can’t start a business for...

The post You Can’t Actually Start a Business for Free appeared first on SavingAdvice.com Blog.

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WordPress vs. Duda: Which platform offers more value to design agencies?

If you’re just setting up your web design agency, you have to make the difficult choice about which platform to work on. It’s relatively easy to switch platforms at the beginning, but once you’ve set up all your workflows and permissions and invested time creating custom templates and themes, moving to a different platform isn’t so simple.

There are a lot of features to consider when you’re picking a web design platform, including collaboration and multi-site management tools, the range of themes available, and SEO power. You might also want bonus features like white-label options and built-in site performance optimization.

You can’t ignore WordPress, as it’s one of the biggest names in web platforms. It’s the CMS of choice for 33.9% of all the world’s websites, including big names like New York Post, TED and Airstream.

But Duda gives WordPress a run for its money. It’s an all-in-one web hosting, collaboration, development and design platform that was built especially to address the needs of web design teams, and it was chosen as PCMag’s Editors’ Choice website builder of 2019.

To help make your decision easier, we put WordPress and Duda through a head-to-head comparison, to discover which offers more value for web design agencies.

1. Intuitive user interface

Both WordPress and Duda score highly. The two platforms offer an intuitive editing dashboard that’s easy to use without compromising on powerful content creation and web design capabilities.

Image source: https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/gutenberg-replace-page-builders/

While Duda might have had the edge before WordPress rolled out its Gutenberg editor last year, WordPress now offers native drag-and-drop page building, so usability-wise, I’d say the two are pretty comparable.

2. Collaboration tools

When you’re running a web design agency, you need more than one person to be able to work on the same website at the same time.

With WordPress, this is tricky. WordPress does have five different levels of user permissions, but the access rules can’t be adjusted according to your agency’s needs. Since only Administrators can change code and install or delete plugins, you’d need to make everyone an Administrator to permit them to change the layout, or themes of the website, which defeats the whole point of user permissions.

With Duda, you can fine-tune user permissions so that colleagues can work side by side on the same section without treading on each other’s toes. You can even give client-side team members access to certain content editing rights and not others, for example.

Duda also offers easy “website comments” messaging threads pinned to specific design elements so that you don’t lose track of your discussions or forget assigned tasks. This makes it easy to discuss what color a CTA button should be, or get a client’s opinion about the font for banner text, without having to conduct the conversation on a separate channel.

3. SEO optimization

No matter what type of site you’re building, you need to include full SEO optimization. As a CMS, WordPress shines when it comes to SEO. There are numerous plugins that do a great job of simplifying many aspects of SEO for WordPress sites, including meta data, site maps and server caching.

And even without plugins, WordPress was built with SEO in mind, and it’s also easy enough to the platform’s native “permalinks” settings to create optimized URLs.

But for the most part, WordPress is a bit of an SEO blank canvas. If you choose a poorly coded theme or a slow hosting service for it, for example, then you could be harming your own efforts.

Duda takes SEO to a new level, with several impressive technical onsite optimization capabilities built in to help you and your clients rank high in the organic search results. Mobile-friendliness and site speed are paramount to Duda, both of which are key factors in Google’s ranking algorithms.

Here are some of the game-changing SEO solutions that come baked in to every Duda-powered website:

• Hosting built on top of Amazon’s best-in-class AWS platform
• Image size and file type optimization
• SSL certificates enabling HTTPS connections
• Lazy loading of style sheets and images
• CDN for large media files

It’s true that all of these capabilities can be unlocked on WordPress as well. But that requires a lot of configuration and sourcing from expensive multiple third-party vendors. With Duda, it all comes built in.

4. Range of themes

WordPress is justly famous for offering thousands of different themes and templates, making it easy to find an appropriate theme for every client.

The Envato Elements marketplace alone, just one digital goods site for buying and selling design files, lists nearly 1000 WordPress themes.

That said, because it’s an open-source platform, not every WordPress theme reaches the same high standards. Some of them aren’t compatible with certain plugins, or have serious security vulnerabilities, and many look very similar to each other.

Duda offers serious competition in the form of three whole libraries of content templates, themes, widgets, and other design elements that help speed up the web design process.

What’s more, you can create your own custom templates and save them in the Duda library, so that other designers on your team can quickly pull them out and apply them to a new site.

You can even aggregate old content to your new themes without entering the drag-and-drop editor, since Duda’s “connected data” capabilities make headless, API-driven website creation simple and scalable.

5. Content collection tools

Duda outstrips WordPress by a long way here. WordPress doesn’t offer any tools to streamline and speed up the often time-consuming process of content collection, but Duda has plenty.

Duda automates the task of scraping data from your client’s existing digital presences, and also provides an automated “Collect from Client” form to request the data and assets you need to complete your work, importing them directly into your account’s libraries.

What’s more, thanks to Duda’s specialized user permissions, you can safely invite your client to add content directly to the site, without risking them accessing and potentially altering sensitive areas of code or design.

6. Multi-site management capabilities

Even if your web design agency starts off small, you’ll quickly find yourself designing and maintaining dozens of client sites. WordPress offers WordPress Multisite to help you manage them all. It permits you to install and manage themes and plugins, grant permissions, and accept software updates across multiple WordPress sites.

The drawback is that it only works on a very high level. It’s basically made for brands that manage multiple publications as part of a network – not for agencies that manage multiple properties on behalf of unrelated businesses.

With WordPress Multisite (WPMS), you have to implement changes to all sites at once; you can’t change one site at a time. It also doesn’t enable content creation through the multi-site dashboard. To input or alter content, you’ll have to log in to each site separately, then log out and log in to the next site, and so forth.

In contrast, Duda has a true multi-site management dashboard that allows you to make changes to the content, design, or code of each site individually from within the dashboard.

It saves you time logging in and out of multiple sites, and improves your project management and ability to keep track of changes across numerous sites.

7. White label option

When you use WordPress to build a client site, what you get is a site built on the WordPress brand. There’s no white label option, unless you want to invest in having a coder replace all traces of WordPress branding from the backend.

But even that strategy could be a major mistake, since you’d have to repeat the process every time there’s a new version of the WordPress source code released, or you’d risk getting your clients’ sites hacked.

Duda, on the other hand, offers a white label version for you to use with your own agency branding, as well as an open API. This helps you look more professional and assists you in associating your agency with a sense of value in your clients’ minds.

You can also use the API to create fully self-service website building platforms for your clients to use on their own. This is exactly what top hosting platforms like Checkdomain and 1&1 Ionos have done.

The verdict: Duda wins for web design agencies

WordPress has many positive features that make it an ideal platform for individuals setting up a business, blog, or eCommerce site – including an outstanding user interface, massive libraries of plugins and templates, and top SEO tools. However, the accessibility and simplicity that make it well suited for individuals make it a runner-up for web design agencies.

Duda offers a unified, all-in-one solution with stand-out functionalities like content collection automation, in-platform communication, and user permissions that you can fine-tune according to your agency’s needs. When you add cutting-edge capabilities like a multi-site management dashboard and white-label versions, it makes it every web design agency’s first choice.

The post WordPress vs. Duda: Which platform offers more value to design agencies? appeared first on Zac Johnson.

App Marketing Tips and Appstore Optimization for 2019

The Internet is a wonderfully powerful, empowering and varied place. As the shift moves more and more away from the desktop computer experience and toward mobile devices — indeed, mobile devices account for more than half of all website traffic worldwide as of 2017 — the user experience is simultaneously shifting far more toward the mobile app environment too. More and more users are performing more and more of their online tasks within apps than they are using a mobile browser.

This is hardly a new trend, nor should it come as any sort of surprise to anyone with online content of practically any kind. What is surprisingly, though, is how little attention is being paid to optimizing app marketing strategies relative to efforts being put forth for non-app initiatives, like traditional search engine optimization. It’s one thing to develop and publish a great mobile app that delivers a terrific user experience while simultaneously achieving your business goals. It’s another thing altogether to make sure that mobile app gets noticed, downloaded, and actually used on a regular basis.

What can you do to boost those download and monthly active user (MAU) counts? Here are some tips to get you started.

Be Prompt With Review Replies

In the current age of social media and online interaction, it’s more important than ever for brands to really connect with their users. It’s not enough to simply put your product out there. You need to interact with your fans and followers in an organic and natural way. Users are much more inclined to demonstrate brand loyalty toward companies that show they really care. This includes responding to comments on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, but it’s even more important within the ecosystems of the app stores themselves.

With both the App Store for Apple devices and the Google Play Store for Android devices, user reviews really drive the visibility of your app, as well as the initial impressions that prospective users may have of your app. Put yourself in the shoes of a typical user. Let’s say you see a couple of seemingly similar apps. One has only a handful of reviews and most of them are in the 3 star range. The other has hundreds or thousands of reviews, most of which are 4 stars and above. Which app are you more inclined to install? The answer is obvious.

One area that many companies overlook, however, is responding to the reviews they receive within these app stores. As users are able to change their ratings and update their reviews after the fact, addressing any concerns or criticisms can sway the tide in your favor. By utilizing a tool like Appfollow, the support team of a company can promptly respond to any and all reviews that they receive. This is a terrific opportunity to guide users in how to use the app effectively before they consider going to your competitors.

Responding to reviews within the app stores is especially important in the early days of launch, because new users will only see negative reviews and problems when they tap to see your app’s page. You want to encourage and entice those glowing reviews early and often, and using a tool like Appfollow to monitor them through Slack, Discord or email makes the whole process much more efficient.

Prioritize Your Engagement

What if you don’t have the time or resources to respond to every review your app receives in a timely manner? This is where a more advanced technique called semantic analysis can come into play. In effect, you’re able to quickly detect issues that lead to user dissatisfaction, poor ratings, and uninstalls.

These are the engagements that you really need to prioritize, because they are the ones that — left unattended — can really drag down your business.

Semantic analysis looks at positive versus negative sentiments based on emotional tone, for example. It can also fetch out topics and bugs, so you can more easily identify the most pressing issues. A wordcloud functions in a similar kind of way, and a feelings chart can help to visualize topics and questions that your customers are talking about. Are they making feature requests? Or are more users discussing issues with recent app updates?

Target Your Specific Category

Focus on your strengths. It’s a common mantra that you’ll hear across the business world and into the realm of personal development too. This is also true when it comes to marketing and optimizing your mobile app. The paradox is that the more specific you can get with what your app is and who it is for, the better chance you’ll have for attracting a larger number of engaged users who actually love your product. You can’t be all things to all people; rather, the riches are in the niches.

In this way, when deciding on any marketing efforts or strategies for your app, zero in your ideal demographic and really focus on becoming the number one app in your specific category, rather than trying to hit the list of top apps overall. Understandably, you may want some help and guidance along the way. Leveraging the app marketing services of a company like PreApps is a good way to go here. They’ll work to “get your app promoted to millions of targeted users.”

One especially effective tactic they use is the creation of a “high-quality and memorable demo video to share your app’s uniqueness.” Screenshots are great, but having a punchy video can make all the difference in the world.

Optimize Your App Listing

When it comes to traditional search engine optimization (SEO), we pay attention to a number of factors like inbound links and latent semantic indexing. App store optimization (ASO) functions in much the same way, as you’ll want to optimize the keywords not only in your app’s description, but even in the app name itself. RankMyApp can help with this method of growing organic traffic toward your app.

For instance, while you may have already done some research on the keywords you want to include in your app’s name, these can shift over time. The RankMyApp algorithm can monitor these keywords and suggest new ones, ensuring that your app’s title is always optimized for the best possible ranking. Similarly, you can track the keywords being used by competing apps, and look into any features that you may need to improve in your own app.

Be Seen and Get Downloaded

Just as there are many moving pieces to having any sort of online property, the same is very much true with mobile apps too. That being said, it doesn’t matter how great your app might be or how effective your monetization model might be if no one is actually downloading and using your app in the first place.

App marketing is both an art and a science, so you’ll need to have the right tools for the job. Above all else, recognize that users are real people, and as such, your marketing strategy needs to focus on that person-to-person interaction. Listen and respond to feedback in as timely and as accurate a manner as possible. Because the users will always be the lifeblood of your app.

The post App Marketing Tips and Appstore Optimization for 2019 appeared first on Zac Johnson.

How to earn a fortune if you are a student

Reading Time: 4 mins

Student life is expensive. We all know this, but how many people actually do something about it? If you’re a student, you’ve probably noticed that some manage their finances much better than others. They run errands and take part-time jobs that don’t hurt their academic performance, pay off their student loans faster, and some even make a fortune while still in school.

There’s no reason why this can’t be you. There are plenty of things you can do on the side while studying to obtain your degree. They don’t even have to be fixed part-jobs that take half of your day. When I was in college, I paid off my student loans and made a really good living by working as a writing helper. If you’re interested in starting something like this, you should take a look at my list of ideas.

 

1. Fill Surveys

Yes, you can actually earn some money by telling people what you think. If you’re an open person, this is a really fun task for you. There are websites online that ask people to fill out surveys. In return, they’ll pay you money and give you gift cards. You don’t even have to leave your room and you’ll be able to make as much money as you’re willing to work.

 

2. Dog-Sitting

Do you love animals? If you do, then I have the perfect job for you – dog sitting. You can either work as a dog walker or even take people’s pets at home with you while they’re busy or on vacation. Some people will even ask you to go at their home to watch their dogs. All you have to do is visit some online sites, perhaps write an ad, or even staple some flyers on utility poles in your neighborhood.

 

3. Sell Your Textbooks

All that note-taking can finally be put to actual, financial use. Not everyone loves to take notes and many students would actually pay for ready notes. When the year is over and you no longer need your notes, put them up online for others to buy them. You can actually profit a lot from selling textbooks, especially if you’re good at taking notes about your subjects and writing assignment tasks.

 

4. Become a Tutor

You don’t have to leave campus to earn a lot of money. If you’re a good student, you should consider becoming a tutor. You’ll get paid to help others master the material, while at the same time, boosting your knowledge. It’s a win-win, really!

 

5. Blogging

Today’s modern technology opens up plenty of new opportunities for you to make a fortune. Websites are one such opportunity. If you’re good at writing things, you can use this and become an independent, free essay writer. Write posts regularly and publish them on your own blog. If you’re dedicated to this, you can make thousands from blogging, selling websites and posting ads on your blogs.

Even if you don’t have the skills to write on your own, you can hire someone to do this for you until you build your blog from the ground up. The site Edubirdie provides writing services in the UK and you can get really affordable rates for your blog’s content. When the time comes, you’ll turn that blog into a really profitable investment.

 

6. Virtual Employee

Virtual employment will give you all the flexibility you need to balance your studies and personal life. You can go online and look for jobs like a virtual recruiter, assistant, or transcriber. Plenty of people look for such helpers and lucky for you, they require little or no prior experience.

 

7. Freelancer

Freelancers must start from scratch but once they make it, they can earn a fortune just by sitting in front of their laptop. In fact, people nowadays quit their regular office job to work as full-time freelancers. This is the perfect time for you to start working on your freelance career as a writer, editor, copywriter, translator, transcriber, data entry specialist – or anything else you’d like to do. You can post your resume on sites like Upwork or work for the writing company EduBirdie and help other students with their essays.

Who knows – maybe when you finally get your degree, you can turn this into a high-paying, full-time job?

 

8. Help around the Neighborhood

If you set up fliers that offer your assistance to people in your area, you might get plenty of calls to do some small errands. You’d be surprised how many people need some help at home or in their garden, or even to get their groceries. The pay is really good, especially if you’re doing the things they ask well. You might be called for something as simple as installing a faucet to something like taking a person’s pet to the vet. There are even apps that let you see such requests in your area, such as TaskRabbit, Instacart, and Postmates.

Did you find something you’d like to do? Feel free to try all these things. All you can get from it is some money and, when you find something you like doing, you can truly make a fortune even before graduating.

 

Author’s Bio:

Rey Cambpell is a financial advisor who works for small businesses and newbie entrepreneurs. He creates business plans and guides people into making the right business decisions. This makes him a great career advice expert.

The post How to earn a fortune if you are a student appeared first on MoneyMagpie.

Online Freelance Writing: Make £100+ An Hour Writing for a Living

Reading Time: 11 mins

Online freelance writing is a great way to earn additional or full-time income, and you don’t even need to leave your home to do it.

There are countless opportunities out there, you can work as little or as much as you want and you can make in excess of £100,000 a year if you follow the right advice and work hard.

You don’t necessarily need previous experience as long as you have some natural writing talent. You just need to work hard, remain professional and be willing to test yourself. There are also a few things you need to know before you begin.

• What is Freelance Writing?
• What Are Freelancing Platforms?
• What Do You Need to Get Started?
• What Will it Cost Me?
• What Can I Earn?
• Getting Started on Upwork
• Setting up Your Profile
• Portfolio
• Finding Jobs
• Staying Employed
• Long-Term Clients and Long Term Success
• Alternative Income Streams

 

What is Freelance Writing?

Simply put, a freelance writer is someone who writes for money but isn’t tied to a single organisation. A freelance writer offers his or her services to anyone who needs a job done, getting paid for that job and then moving onto the next one.

It’s often said that freelancers are their own boss and that no one dictates what they do. This is true, to an extent. But freelancers actually have many different bosses. And they need to meet deadlines and to work to specifications just like any other employee.

A freelance writer can be tasked with completing a number of jobs. The most common job is simple content writing. There are are over a billion websites out there and they all need content. A freelance writer is often the one tasked with creating that content.

 

Other jobs include:

• Novel Writing: Personal memoirs, fiction/non-fiction for publishers.
• Script Writing: Everything from TV pilots and film scripts, to commercials and animations.
• Marketing: Press releases, brand stories, slogans.
• Academic Writing: Essays, academic non-fiction.
• Technical Writing: Instruction manuals, guides and how-to’s.
• Legal Writing: Terms and Conditions. Privacy Policies.
• Editing/Proofreading: Correcting all of the above.
• Critiquing: Providing advice on personal projects (novels, short stories).
• Consulting: Providing guidance on publishing, writing, SEO and more.

 

What Are Freelancing Platforms?

When it comes to the concept of “online freelancing”, it all revolves around something known as a “freelancing platform”. This is a essentially service that acts as a bridge between the client and the freelancer. These sites include Upwork, Guru and Freelancer, but not all should be judged equally as many are a waste of time.

You can use a freelancing platform to showcase your abilities like you would on a CV, and you can also use them to find and complete jobs.

Clients post job availabilities, writers apply to these, and the clients interview them. All of this is done through the platform, including the interview itself. And when the writer is hired, the platform continues to act as an intermediary.

If the freelancer and client agree a fee of $100, then the client must pay that $100 upfront. The platform will then hold that money in an Escrow account, sitting on it until the job is finished. Upon release, the platform takes a small cut and the writer gets the rest.

 

What Do You Need to Get Started?

There is very little you need to get started as an online writer (apart from talent that is!). Basically you need:

• Computer: You don’t need anything flash. If it connects to the internet, it’s good enough.
• Word Processor: Clients will usually expect to receive work in .doc or .docx form. However, most word processors can convert, so you don’t need MS Word. There are free alternatives out there.
• Planner: When the jobs roll in, it’s easy to lose track. So, make sure you stay organized.
• Bank Account/PayPal: You will need a bank account for Upwork to pay you, or sometimes a PayPal account to receive payments.
• Skype: Many clients will want to connect with you via Skype or over the phone.

You’re also going to need to sign up to Upwork. There are other freelancing platforms out there, but this is the biggest, the best and it’s where most of the work is.

 

What Will it Cost Me?

Upwork uses a system of ‘Connects’, which you need to apply for jobs. The more you charge, the harder it will be to find work and the more Connects you will use.

Upwork now charges a small fee of $0.15 for each Connect, so it may be necessary to spend a little money before you secure a job. If you have a good CV and offer an attractive service, you should hopefully land a paid gig without spending more than a dollar or two.

Upwork also takes a cut of your earnings (from each client) based on the following sliding scale.

• First $500: 20%
• $500 to $10,000: 10%
• Over $10,000: 5%

This may sound like a lot. But they put you in contact with the client, they ensure the working relationship is safe and they act as a mediator if there is an issue.

They also take care of the web hosting and, as Upwork is a trusted platform, it gets a lot of traffic from potential clients. So, it’s a small price to pay.

 

What Can I Earn?

As a freelance writer on Upwork, you can expect to earn a maximum of $100 an hour for contracts paid by the hour (consultants and grant writers can earn more). However, many contracts are paid on a fixed price and if you work quickly, this can increase to $300 an hour.

The rates vary quite widely on Upwork, so take a look at what others are charging and set your price on the lower end as you get started. As you start writing on more complex topics and get a feel for the market, you can adjust your rates accordingly.

Remember it makes sense to base your price on the competition, not on your speed.

If you’re a mediocre writer but you’re also very slow, that doesn’t mean you should charge 3x the going rate just to make a decent hourly wage.

As with anything, you should soon speed up as you get used to the work, and can decide after a few jobs if this is something you want to seriously pursue.

  

Getting Started on Upwork

There are many freelancing platforms out there, but none come close to Upwork. It’s bigger (which means more projects), it’s easier to use and there are more benefits for both the client and the freelancer.

It also has its flaws, but it used to have many more and they are steadily being ironed out.

There are millions of clients on Upwork posting hundreds of jobs every single day. Of course, there are also millions of freelancers competing for the same job as you. Any given project will have in excess of 20 applications and some have over 100.

But with a good profile, a good work ethic, some proven credentials and a little talent, you can go a long way.

The ability to work hard counts for a lot on this site. If you can regularly meet deadlines, always hit targets and respond to client messages within 24 hours, then you’re already performing a step above most of the other freelancers on the site.

A great tip is to log on during normal business hours and bid on the most recent job postings. Jobs on the second page likely already have many bidders, so the chance of landing the gig is lower the older it is.

If you’re something of a night owl, you can also log on during US business hours (New York is five hours behind the UK, Los Angeles eight hours). Many clients on Upwork are based in America, so you may find lots of new jobs appearing from around 5pm or later in the UK.

 

Setting up Your Profile

The first thing you need to do is setup your profile. Use a picture that shows your face, and make sure it’s professional.

Create a profile description of between 2 and 4 paragraphs and make sure it’s flawless. You will be expected to edit your own work, so any mistakes here will put a client off. Ideally, have a trusted friend give it a once over for any remaining errors!

You’ll want to fill every section of the profile, but need to focus more on some than others. For your work history, omit anything that’s irrelevant (whether it’s a GCSE in geography or a managerial role at McDonald’s) and focus purely on creative endeavours.

If you lack experience, spice things up, be vague, but tell the truth. If you have self-published an eBook, written an article for a print magazine and achieved a degree, then your experience can include:

• Published Author
• Worked for a major national news outlet
• Achieved a degree in my chosen field

It doesn’t matter if that book failed, that magazine “article” was actually a reader’s letter and that degree was in Sports Science. What matters is that you have something that catches the eye.

 

Portfolio

Your portfolio needs to be visual. You’ll be prompted to upload documents and writing samples, but no one pays attention to these. In fact, if a client wants to read a sample they will expect you to send them one during the interview.

Instead, post images that represent your work. They can be covers of books, comics or anthologies you wrote/edited, stills of videos that you scripted; marketing posters you helped to compose; and even screenshots of websites you wrote for.

You should also include a single document of your best written work. Use samples from fiction, non-fiction, scripts, website content and marketing. Paste them all into a single document and use headers to describe each of them (for example, “a marketing piece written for a leading UK beverage company”).

Most clients assume that writers can only write in certain genres or niches. This way you can prove otherwise.

Also, see our article on how to make money writing short stories here

 

Finding Jobs

In this industry you live or die based on your previous success. Your references might not count for much in an office job, but as a freelancer they’re what separates those who scrape by on minimum wage from those who earn a six-figure salary.

In the beginning, a single piece of bad feedback could end you, so you need to make sure you only work with clients who have a track record of leaving good feedback.

Using the options on the left of the Upwork search, narrow the results down to include the following:

• Experience Level: Expert—At “Intermediate”, clients will expect to pay no more than $20 an hour; at “Entry Level” you’ll be lucky if you make $5.

• Client History: 10+ Hires—Nine out of ten clients posting a job for the first time will disappear before hiring anyone. And even if they remain, they don’t have enough of a history for you to trust them.

• Client Info: Payment Verified—Only those with a track record of paying freelancers will be shown.

• Budget Price: $100 to $100k—This helps to weed out the clients who expect the earth for $0.50 an hour.

Once you find a job that suits, you need to check the feedback of each client before you apply. The trick is not to look at the feedback that others have left them, but at the feedback that they have left others.

You don’t care if freelancers think they are a little slow, incomprehensible or annoying, just that they have a tendency to leave 5-star feedback.

Do what you can to keep your average rating high and be prepared to give a refund if you receive poor feedback (a refund will delete the feedback). This should hopefully be very minimal, but will protect your high feedback rating.

Find out how to make money copywriting here

 

Staying Employed

Freelancing will open a lot of doors. It will introduce you to publishers, publicists, web-masters and business owners. If you stay connected to all of these, using social media to keep them close, then a simple job could lead to something massive.

Work will dry up on occasion, but the good thing is that this rarely happens once you have an established profile. Until you get to that point, here’s what you can do to keep the work coming:

• Ask: If a client promised more work that they didn’t deliver on, just ask them about it. If a client who gave you a lot of work in the past suddenly stops messaging you, email them. I like to give them a friendly nudge in the form of a catch-up message, following it up with a simple, “If you need anything done, you know where to find me”. You’d be surprised at how often this works.
• Focus on one Site: It seems counterintuitive, but if you focus on one platform you’ll have more work. The effort you put into a single platform shows, and this is what prospective clients want to see. If it isn’t working, don’t go elsewhere, just double your efforts where you are.
• Keep Applying: It doesn’t matter how many projects you have right now, you should always find time to send more proposals, apply for more jobs and sit through more interviews. You might be busy now, but soon you’ll meet those deadlines and collect your money, and then you’ll realize you have nothing else to do.
• Get Rated: Do what you can to become a part of the Top Rated and Pro programs on Upwork. These will boost your invites significantly and in most cases, you just need a few good marks on your profile to join.
• Lower Your Rates: If you’re struggling to find work, reduce your rates slightly to get the ball rolling again. It’s better for work at a reduced rate than not to work at all. You can always kick that project to the curb when a better one comes along (just make sure you finish it first).

 

Long-Term Clients and Long Term Success

Not only will a good client continue to provide, but they’ll introduce you to other clients and open many doors.

Whether you work on a platform like Upwork, or you do all of the legwork yourself, keep the following in mind:

1. Always go out of your way for a client you respect. Never take liberties and apologize profusely if you make a mistake.
2. Always be prepared to strike a deal. Offer cheaper rates for bulk jobs in the hope they will increase your workload.
3. If you haven’t heard anything for a few weeks, send a message to enquire if they have anything available. In a competitive marketplace, freelancers can be forgotten.
4. Give them advice. You’re the expert here, so if you notice an area of their site that could be improved or added to, tell them. They’ll appreciate it and you’ll get more work.

 

Alternative Income Streams

The work isn’t always going to be there. It’s important to keep trying, because it’ll get easier. But there are also other ways you can make money.

So, if you have the time but you don’t have the jobs, and if you’ve done all you can in terms of applying and being interviewed, you can try some of the following:

• Search “write for us”: More and more web-masters are turning to sites like Upwork to source content, but there are still sites that wait for the content to come to them. These sites typically pay well, and if you Google the phrase “Write for Us”, you shouldn’t have an issue finding them.
• Websites/Blogs: If you don’t know anything about SEO now, you will after a few months. You can use this knowledge to establish your own content websites and earn ad income on the side.
• Flipping Sites: Flippa is basically eBay for websites. You can buy and sell all kinds of blogs, high-profile domains and established online businesses. You can buy poor-quality sites, rewrite the content, do some more and sell them on. It’s just like Homes Under The Hammer—if you have the capital and you can cut costs by doing the work yourself, you’ll turn a profit.
• Contribute: Contributors to sites like Huff Post do not get paid. However, they are allowed to write what they want (within reason) which gives them an opportunity to embed links in their articles. There are countless clients on Upwork seeking freelancers who can get a single link on Huff Post. If you’re a contributor to this site, you can get anywhere from $200 to $500 for that link, and you only need to write a short article in order to post it. Forbes pays even more and works in much the same way.

See how you can make quick cash and win prizes by writing letters to magazines here

 

The post Online Freelance Writing: Make £100+ An Hour Writing for a Living appeared first on MoneyMagpie.

Make Money from Homemade Beauty Treatments

Reading Time: 11 mins

Homemade beauty treatments are very much in demand right now. And the good news is you can monetise this trend. If you need a bit of extra cash and love being crafty, why not try your hand at whisking together some bath salts or sugar scrubs? You can make money selling organic, 100% natural cosmetics people will love.

Of course, it may take some practice. But once you’ve perfected your craft, you can sell your homemade beauty treatments at a local jumble sale or a product party you host. Alternatively, you can also give them away as presents so you don’t have to spend money buying gifts. Homemade presents are generally considered to be more thoughtful so it’s a win-win.

Tell us about your hits and misses in the comments section below too!

• The ingredients you need to get started
• The recipes for success – from body scrubs to soap bags
• How to maximise your profits
• Safety first

 

Why create homemade beauty treatments?

It’s good business. For instance, things like bath salts and sugar scrubs can easily sell in shops for anything between £5 to £15 (or even more for certain brands). The reality is that they’re so simple and cheap to produce that you can make an easy profit selling them as gifts.

Most – if not all – of the ingredients can be bought in the supermarket. If you can’t find something in your local store, though, there’re loads of websites where you can get hold of the missing items.

Add a little panache in presentation and people will be tempted. Also, you can make bespoke packs, cater for people with allergies, produce vegan-friendly cosmetics and work on your own signature products that aren’t available elsewhere. The possibilities are endless.

This flexibility beats the high street hands down. In fact, you can probably charge much less than the high street equivalents, but still make a healthy profit.

Once you’re confident you can make good handmade beauty treatments, you can start hosting product parties for friends and family, and make some real cash from your hobby.

Get started

The first thing you’ll need to start making homemade beauty treatments is ingredients. Some of the things included in the recipes below may seem incredibly obscure. But don’t let that put you off. They’re actually very easy to get hold of and are much cheaper than you might expect.

Here’re the main ingredients:

• Plant fats/butters: These are the solid fats extracted from certain tropical plants. You’ll need them for products such as body bars and melts; they’re also used for moisturisers and creams. For instance, some commonly used ones are cocoa butter, shea butter, coconut butter and mango butter.

• Plant oils: Very common in beauty products. Plant oils consist of liquid fats extracted from certain plants. The cold-pressed varieties are especially good for your skin. You can use them to dilute essential oils or blend them with the solid butters to make creams and moisturisers, for instance. A few of the most popular ones are almond oil, apricot oil, avocado oil, sunflower oil and jojoba oil.

• Macerated oils: They may sound a little obscure but they’re basically plant oils with medicinal herbs and scented flowers steeped in them. You can actually make these at home. Most widely used macerated oils are calendula oil, rose oil, carrot oil and monoi de tahiti, for example.

• Essential oils: You’ll often see these as key ingredients in many beauty products. These oils are concentrated aromatic essences distilled from certain plants. Some of the most commonly used ones are rose (for rejuvenating mature skin), lavender (for cleansing and healing), rosemary (for hair care) and chamomile (for soothing skin), for instance.

Some additional ingredients which you can use to personalise your products are:

• Flower waters/distillates – used in deodorants, facial toners and as the watery part of moisturiser.
• Herbs/flowers – the ‘active ingredient’ which can be used whole, ground down or infused.
• Kitchen edibles – food that can be used in your beauty products (for example oats, beans, yoghurt, fruit, sea salt etc).

Where to shop

To start with, try sites like Baldwins and Sheabuttercottage where you can buy ingredients at reasonable prices. Another good site is Aromantic if you’re after herbs and flowers.

Lots of the ingredients you may want to try in your homemade beauty treatments are things you’ll have lying around in your kitchen cupboards or that you can find in the wild (like lavender). Start at home first, take a look at what you could use. Alternatively, a quick trip down to the supermarket will sort you out for other bits and bobs.

what will you need to make homemade beauty treatments?

Let’s talk equipment. You should actually have most of what you’ll need for making your homemade beauty treatments at home. To get started with potion-making, you’ll typically need the same bits and pieces as for cooking. So, generally speaking, apart from some of the more exotic ingredients, you may already be well-equipped for making your own unique holistic products!

Here’re some of the items you will need to make your lotions and potions:

• Heatproof bowls
• Mini whisks
• Stirrers (chopsticks will do)
• Cheese grater (for grating lemons or cocoa butter)
• Sieve (for straining macerated oils)
• Soap moulds (ice cube trays work well for melts and mini cake tins are good for massage bars)
• Pestle and mortar
• Food processor (for body butters and moisturisers)
• Coffee grinder (for grinding herbs and flowers)

 

Presentation Tips for homemade beauty treatments

Making your homemade beauty treatments is a great start. Only if they sell will you be making profit, though. While it’s key your products are good, selling is often not about how great something is, but how well you present it. Get creative with your bottles and gift wrapping. That way, your products will look more attractive and sell better.

Bear in mind that this doesn’t necessarily mean a big spend for new bottles and lots of cellophane wrap. Start by reusing any bottles and jars that you’ve got lying around at home. They’re perfectly fine to use as long as you prep them. Firstly, wash your jars in hot, soapy water, then rinse in cold water and finally place somewhere warm until they’re bone dry.

Glass is the best material for your lotions as it won’t taint the product and it’s readily available around your house. If you need more, try collecting old bottles and jars from friends and family to reuse. Another idea is to start hoarding them wherever you go. For example, hotels will often save you the mini jam jars they use at breakfasts, which are great for lip balm pots. You can also try getting free samples from the perfume counters in department stores. And don’t forget to try your local supermarket. See if you like some of the little presentation bottles that olive oils, vinegar or mini products come in, for example.

For scrubs and face masks why not try recycled jam jars. To make them look nice, cover the lid with scraps of fabric such as recycled old clothing or table cloths and string. Simply blob a little bit of glue in the middle of the lid and use a piece of fabric big enough to come down over the sides. Next, tie and string with a tag on top of the fabric around the neck of the jar and voila, you’ve got a pretty container for your homemade beauty treatments.

Alternatively, you could buy cheap jars. You’ll find a lot of unique ones on eBay, for example. The site is full of glass jars with crock lids or glass clamp jars to keep your homemade beauty treatments safely stored. So have a browse and find what’s best for your products.

If you do want to invest in some new presentation vials, Colouredbottles is a great site. It sells pretty glass bottles and jars in bulk. Although if you just want to start off with a few items, you can buy them from their eBay site.

And finally, gather old bits of material. Some of your products will only need a little spare fabric rather than jars. For example, scraps of old cloth can be sewn up into simple drawstring bags, making cheap and pretty packaging for bath melts, massage bars and bath salts.

Make homemade beauty treatments gift sets

Your beauty products can also make a wonderful gift. It’s actually very cheap to get some gift sets together to sell. For instance, you can arrange a jar of hand scrub, some hand balm and a nail brush inside a cheap terracotta flower-pot for a gorgeous gardener’s gift set. Or why not try making a selection of herbal bath tea blends (dried herbs and flowers in mini muslin bags) and arrange them inside a second-hand teapot. All you need is a little imagination.

And remember: if all does go wrong, a bit of clever marketing a la l’Oreal can fix everything. For example, most mixtures can be re-melted and remade with an adjustment of solids and liquids, so when it comes to consistency you’ve always got a second chance.

Sometimes your carefully crafted homemade beauty treatments may just seem unfixable. If that’s the case, just rename them cunningly:

• A too-liquid moisturiser becomes a lotion
• A too-hard face-cream becomes a lip-balm
• A very hard moisturizer is a bath melt
• A very stiff face scrub becomes fragrant bathing grains

 

A few ground rules

1. Never eat or drink your potions, even though they may look tasty!
2. Make sure your hands are dry before using the potions as water can encourage bacterial contamination.
3. Always store the potions and ingredients in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight.
4. Make sure all your equipment is squeaky clean before you make your potions.
5. Never use a bit of water to get out the remaining bit of products at the bottom of the bottle.
6. If you’re pregnant, make sure you’ve consulted the NHS website to check your potions are safe. Alternatively, look for info on the Aromatherapy Council’s website.
7. There’re no 100% natural preservatives which work as well as the chemical ones. For this reason, ensure you store your homemade beauty treatments in accordance with the instructions on each recipe. And if in doubt, chuck it out.
8. Remember to always do a patch test before you use any lotions, just in case you’re allergic.
9. If you do want to go into business selling beauty products, it’s essential that you do your research. That’s because you may find that you require insurance and safety testing.

All the recipes shared below are from The Holistic Beauty Book by Star Khechara published by Green Books.

The book contains over 100 natural recipes for gorgeous, healthy skin so you can get creating your own homemade beauty treatments right now. You can pick up a copy on Amazon here.

 

Vanilla Spice Scrub

Shelf-life: 3 months

Skin types: suitable for all

Ingredients

• 300g white granulated sugar
• Half a bottle of vanilla essence
• 100-200ml unrefined sunflower oil
• 2 tsp of nutmeg powder
• 2 tsp of cinnamon powder

How to make

1. Mix the sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon in a bowl
2. Add the oil and vanilla essence while stirring until a thick paste is achieved. If the mixture is too stiff, add a little more oil
3. Store in a jar (Kilner jars look pretty)

How to use

Dampen skin and massage gently into skin. Rinse off thoroughly.

 

After eight(ish) chocolate mint scrub

For a slightly more exotic scrub, try the after-eight(ish) chocolate mint scrub. You can buy most of the ingredients you’ll need at the supermarket. For virgin coconut oil, go to Sheabuttercottage.

Shelf-life: 3 months

Skin types: suitable for all

Ingredients

• 50g fair-trade/organic dark brown sugar
• 30g organic or raw cocoa powder
• 50g dried peppermint (or several opened-up peppermint tea bags)
• 100-150ml virgin coconut oil/butter

How to make

1. Mix the sugar, cocoa powder and dried peppermint in a bowl
2. Gradually add the oil while stirring until you have a thick paste
3. Store in a jar

How to use

Massage the chocolatey mixture gently all over damp skin. Then rinse off thoroughly.

 

Oaty Goodness

Another cheap-to-make beauty product is a ‘soap bag’. One of the key ingredients is vegetable or olive oil soap, if you prefer. You can get these from your local health store and they can cost less than £1.

Shelf-life: 3 months

Skin types: suitable for all, especially sensitive skin

Ingredients

• 50g fine oatmeal
• 50g grated pure vegetable soap
• Your choice of herb or flower. The recipe suggests 50g of dried lavender but you can use ground rose petals or ground orange peel, or an exotic blend of your own!

How to make

1. Grate the soap
2. Grind the lavender using the coffee grinder
3. Then mix up all three ingredients in the bowl
4. Cut a circle of muslin about the size of a large saucer
5. Place a heap of mixture in the middle
6. Gather the muslin together like a little sack containing the blend
7. Tie it up tightly with string or raffia
8. Store the ready-made bags in a large glass jar

How to use

Use in the shower and soak the little bag under the warm water. Soon enough it should start to feel squishy and soapy. Use the bag like a bar of soap. You’ll find the muslin will exfoliate your skin while the oats soothe and the soap cleans. Because the soap is ‘diluted’ with other ingredients, it’s not so drying to the skin.

 

Honey & Oat Cheatin’ Soap

Another vegetable or olive oil soap based homemade beauty treatment that you can make cheaply – and sell for a good profit – is soap. To make soap from scratch, you’ll need to use a really strong chemical (sodium hydroxide), which can burn skin really badly. The following recipe calls for making a new and customised soap from melting down an existing one instead.

Shelf-life: 6 months

Skin types: suitable for all

Ingredients

• 200g plain vegetable soap (i.e. the plain olive oil soap you can find in health food shops)
• 100ml water or herbal tea (cold)
• 30g medium oatmeal
• 1 tablespoon runny honey
• Variation: Vegans can still make this soap – just leave out the honey and add your favourite plant oil instead for a silky soap.

How to make

1. To start, grate your soap very finely
2. Next, place in a bowl with the water and set aside for a couple of hours, stirring now and again. Then, place the bowl of soap and water on top of pan of simmering water
3. Add more water if necessary
4. Keep the heat as low as possible so that the soap melts very slowly
5. Stir gently until it’s a stringy gloop (could take up to an hour)
6. Once smooth and molten, add the honey and oatmeal
7. Stir in quickly. Then pour into your moulds straight away
8. Leave the soaps to set for 24 hours
9. Once set, tip the soaps out of the moulds and put on a wire rack to dry out
10. Finally, remember to turn over every couple of days and the soap should be ready to use in 2-4 weeks

How to use

Use with water like everyday soap and remember to rinse well.

 

Herbal bath bag

And finally a herbal bath bag. It’s a great alternative to soap and this recipe below uses only two ingredients (or three, if you like) which cuts down on cost.

Shelf-life: 3 months as a dry mix

Skin types: suitable for all, especially those suffering with eczema

Ingredients

• 50g organic fine oatmeal (or oatmeal and ground almond blend)
• 50g dried organic lavender

How to make

1. Start by grinding half of the lavender in a coffee grinder, leaving the rest whole

2. Mix all the ingredients together

3. Tie up in a muslin circle with raffia to make a little sack

4. You can make several of these up at once and store them in a glass jar

How to use

Add to warm bath and use the oaty bag like soap. Once it’s wet, it’ll feel a bit slimy – that’s the soothing oat milk coming out. You’ll find that it really does clean effectively but won’t dry your skin like soap and it’s very healing for dry sensitive skin and eczema. Remember to use a bag once only.

We got all these great tips and recipes from The Holistic Beauty Book by Star Khechara published by Green Books. It covers over 100 natural recipes for gorgeous, healthy skin so you can start creating your own treatments right now. Pick up a copy for just £12.95 on Amazon.

The post Make Money from Homemade Beauty Treatments appeared first on MoneyMagpie.

44 ways to make extra money

Reading Time: 19 mins

Looking for easy ways to make money on the side? We’ve got lots of ways to make extra money online and offline. Some are easier than others but we’re always finding new ways so keep checking back!

If you’re not already a subscriber, sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest updates and check out our popular money-making articles 10 easy ways to make quick cash, Benefits for over 60s and Online surveys: easy cash for your opinions.

 

• Make extra money from your stuff
• Make money just by being you!!
• Make extra money online
• Make money having fun
• Get creative
• Earn cash helping others
• Make money part time

 

Make Extra Money from your stuff

1.make extra money from your driveway

If you don’t use your garage or driveway you could rent it out for money – particularly if you are in London or another parking-unfriendly city. Just register with a site like JustPark, put your postcode in and wait for desperate would-be parkers to contact you.

For more details read our full article on making money renting out your driveway or garage.

 

 

2. Rent our your spare room

If you’ve got an empty bedroom, why not take in a lodger? You can earn up to £4,250 tax-free income on your spare room, and with a summer of sport including Wimbledon and The Ashes coming up, there’s never been a better time to advertise your room. Check out roomgo to advertise your room for free.

If you don’t like the idea of someone staying in your home long-term, just rent it out for a few days or weeks at a time through Airbnb or HomeAway. It can make you more money in the long-run too.

For more information read our article on renting a room for tax free cash.

 

3. sell your personalised number plate

Seriously, it’s amazing how much money these are going for now. If you have a number plate with ‘MAGIC’ or ‘LOONY’ or even ‘GR8 GAL’ or similar you could be really surprised how much it would sell for now. In fact the reg F1 went on sale last year for £15,000,000!

There are regular auctions going on where you can sell your number plate or buy others as an investment to sell for profit later. Contact the DVLA for more information or check out our article all about it here.

 

4. Sell unwanted DVDs and CDs

Make some extra money selling your old, unwanted DVDs, CDs, games, books and tickets on websites like Ziffit, Amazon.co.uk, eBay and MusicMagpie. In fact, why not de-clutter your whole house and sell everything you no longer need?!

For more information read our full article on making money selling old books, CDs, DVDs and video games.

 

5. sell your designer clothes

Have you got a few nice bits and pieces in your wardrobe? Or perhaps you’ve got some fun items from your gran or your auntie that could class as ‘vintage’ now.

There’s a HUGE market for vintage clothes – designer or not – and if any of your bits have a bit of a label (Chloe, Hermes, Lauren) then you could really make some cash, probably at a local auction.

But if you’re just good at picking up items that are probably 1980’s or older at jumble sales and car boots, you could make some good money selling them on.

See how you can make money from vintage clothing and accessories here. 

 

6. Make money recycling your gadgets

Recycle your gadgets for cash. It’s quick, FREE and could make you over £200. From mobile phones to cameras, games consoles and more, by recycling your gadgets you can make a mint and help the environment.

If it’s a mobile phone you’d like to recycle use the MoneyMagpie phone recycling tool. Just click on the make of your phone and we’ll show you which recycling company will give you the most for it. Do it now!

See more ways to make money by recycling your gadgets here

 

7. Make £100 a month with ads on your car

OK, if we’re being honest, not everyone can get this. The companies that put ads on people’s cars for money have very specific ideas of who they want.

However, if you have a decent car, drive a lot and you don’t mind having Vimto or Heineken or something splashed across your bonnet, then this can be a lovely way of making money without effort at all. Full insurance is provided against any damage to the paintwork of your vehicle caused by the advert’s placement, so you don’t even need to worry if something does happen.

See our article here on how to make money with ads on your car for the links to companies that do it and how best to apply.

 

make money just by being you!

8. be a model – whatever you look like!

You…yes you!…could be a model and make money for standing around! It really is living the dream.

Take a look at our article here on how to become a model, whatever you look like. In fact, if you look really odd you could make good money through the Ugly Models Agency. Seriously. Take a look.

 

9. Have your true story published

Sell true-life stories to newspapers and magazines can be fairly lucrative, you can earn between £200 and £2,000 depending on the story. Take a Break magazine offers up to £1,000 for sensational stories, so if you’ve got something to say don’t hold back!

Check out our full article on how to sell your story.

 

10. Take part in clinical trials

Did you know you can make up to £4,000 taking part in clinical trials? Volunteering for clinical trials doesn’t have to involve taking risky drugs. Many trials are perfectly safe – some are simply sleep studies or psychological tests. The exact nature of the trial (along with any possible risk of side effects) will be clearly explained so you can make an informed decision.

If you’re in any doubt about any aspect of the trial, ask. If you’re still not convinced, don’t sign up for anything you’re not happy with – risking your health or your peace of mind for a bit of extra money isn’t worth it. See GPGP.net, Trials4us and GlaxoSmithKlein to find trials in your area, and check out The British Medical Association for more information on clinical trials.

For more information read our full article on making money taking part in clinical trials. 

 

11. get paid for your opinion

Online surveys are a great way to make some extra money or store vouchers. Never pay to join an online survey site and set up a separate email account so your personal one doesn’t get flooded with spam.

Survey sites we recommend include:

• Swagbucks
• Nielsen Online Panel
• InboxPounds
• Toluna
• The OpinionPanel Community
• LifePoints

For more information take a look at our article on online surveys. 

 

12. Review products for money

There are companies out there that will pay you to review products including all sorts of cosmetics.

To find out about these opportunities, sign up to our freebies and competition newsletter and get freebies delivered to your inbox every week.

 

13. get into Mystery shopping for freebies and cash

Mystery shopping is a fun way to earn some extra money while shopping, or testing services at local restaurants and pubs. Sounds like a dream job! TNS is looking for new shoppers nationwide to assess a variety of different businesses such as shops and restaurants. Read our essential article about mystery shopping for more useful links and information.

Download our FREE eBook on how to make money and get freebies through mystery shopping here

14. Be a life model

If you’re comfortable with nudity, you could make extra money as a life model. Pay depends on where you are in the country, but you could earn between £8 and £10 an hour. Take a look at our article on how to make money as a life model for details of how to get started.

 

 Make Extra money online

15. make money just for downloading an app

If you like to earn for downloading apps check out Nielsen Online Panel. You won’t get paid for downloading it, but you will be automatically entered into a prize draw to win up to £30,000 – so there’s potential to make a LOT of money doing nothing.

 

16. make money shopping

Basically, by joining a cashback site, you’ll get a bit of money back on everything you buy.

All you have to do is sign-up (absolutely free) and shop through the cashback site’s portal. It’s exactly the same as online shopping any other way, but they’ll be able to track where you make your purchase so both they and you can get paid for it.

Two of our favourite cashback sites are TopCashBack and Quidco , both of which are absolutely free to join.

You really are getting money just for shopping as normal – why wouldn’t you sign up?

 

17. make money being on Twitter

OK, so just joining Twitter won’t make you a millionaire – but it is a fantastic, quick paced forum for picking up little extra  jobs to make extra money on the side. Try @extrapeopleltd who tweet ads for lookalikes and extras or go to TwitJobSearch, type in what work you want to do and see how many tweets pop up!

Read our 5 ways to make money using Twitter.

 

18. make £700 in a free, easy online competition

Have you heard of the Pick My Postcode? It’s an entirely free (and very easy) competition site. They give away at least £700 a day to people who have a winning postcode. All you have to do is sign up for free putting in just your email address and postcode. Then you check back each day to see if your postcode has won. You get 24 hours to claim your cash so you need to look every day. Easy – sign up here!

 

19. Make extra money blogging

There are occasionally websites seeking bloggers to write daily posts, reviews and adding links. It won’t pay really well but it can be a useful little earner for little effort – particularly if you already enjoy writing your own blog. Check on Gumtree under both the part-time work and the media, design and creative tabs.

For more information read our full article on how to make money blogging.

 

make money having fun

20. Get paid to party

Become a consultant for The Body Shop. The Body Shop recruits people to sell their products at special beauty parties in people’s homes. If the party goes well, you could earn over £100 in just one evening as well as receive lots of beauty products for free. What’s more, as you get to decide when you want to host these evenings, you can work as little or often as you like.

 

21. get friends into clubs

Like clubbing? Do you have lots of friends? Make extra money by bringing them into clubs. Go to Velvet PR for free. Tell them where you live and they’ll let you know which clubs need promoting.

To find out more, read our article on becoming a club promoter. 

 

21. Get paid to buy alcohol

Yes really!

If you are 18 or 19 years old and looking for a well-paid part-time job – this is it.

How about getting paid to go to the pub?  Plus you get to keep the drink!

All you have to do is have a valid passport or driving licence and right to work in the UK. Head to Serve Legal to find out more.

 

22. be Festival staff

Festaff supplies casual staff for over a dozen music festivals in the UK including Bestival, Creamfields, Wickerman, Camp Bestival, Isle of Wight Festival, Sonispshere, Rockness and Beachdown. This work is seasonal, they’re always recruiting, so if you fancy going to a festival next year for free, and make some extra money as well, keep an eye on Festaff for recruitment opportunities. Pay is minimum wage – but you do get free entrance to the festival and camp facilities.

If you like the idea of free festival tickets then read our full article.

 

23. get paid to be a friend!

Yes, this is an actual thing. There are businesses out there that will charge people to have a friend. Ever thought of that?

As you can see in this article, there is quite a thriving business in the States where people pay someone to be their ‘mate’ and go hang out together.

You can do it in this country too – there’s nothing to stop you copying their idea and doing it here. Maybe you could add in extras like organising trips to shows or galleries. You could even have two or more ‘friends’ coming out with you at a time – you make money from all of them and they get the added bonus of meeting other people.

24.be a film extra

Want to be in a movie with your favourite celebrity? Always thought it would be fun to see your face on the big screen? Acting extras are ordinary people that are essential to setting up scenes in films or television shows. You can earn £65 for 9 hours of work, with a £20 bonus… not to mention the bragging rights if you are in the same shot, even momentarily, with lead actors. The Acting Website offers loads of information on how to become an extra, and you can see a directory of extra’s agents on UK Screen.

Take a look at our article on how to become a TV or film extra for more information.

 

25. Get paid to review music

If you’re a music fan you can turn your passion into extra money, sign up to the unique Slicethepie website for free and become a scout. This basically involves getting paid to listen to the music of unsigned bands from all over the world and review it. Obviously, your reviews have to be competent and fairly well informed, but need only be a few sentences long.

Initially you won’t make much, but as you get a better scout rating (i.e. the more reviews you make, and the more they agree with the majority of reviewers) you can make more and more.

Read more about it in our article on how to make money by listening to music.

 

26. Be a pedicab driver

Driving a pedicab/bug/rickshaw is a great way to stay in shape, meet loads of people, offer emission free transport to London’s visitors and make yourself some extra money. The Bugbugs Community offers training with an accredited National Cycling Certificate awarded. The cost of training is £50, with a £100 deposit required for the duration of your employment, you keep everything you earn, so the harder you work, the more you make.

To find hundreds of job opportunities, as well as all the best offers and discounts for students, check out Studentbeans.com.

 

27. make money with video games

Yes, believe it or not, you can actually make money by playing video games!

There are various ways to do it, including being a reviewer (some experienced reviewers make serious money by videoing themselves playing the games and commenting on them) and writing guides to video games.

Of course, the ultimate is to actually design a game yourself that gets made and sold worldwide. We can’t all do that but if you’re a mad-keen gamer you’re in a good position to create a winner!

See how you can make money as a video gamer here.

 

28. get paid to test food – including chocolate!

It must be the best job in the world…to get paid to eat chocolate all day!

Admittedly food testers have to test all sorts of foods, including dog-food in some cases (!) but it’s not a bad way to earn a crust.

See here how to make money as a food tester.

 

 Get creative

29. Sell your photos

You don’t have to be a pro to sell your photos. Nor do you need to albums full of dramatic shots. If you have a library of decent, ordinary digital snaps just sitting in folders they could be making you extra money. Online agencies like 123RF, Fotolia and Picture Nation may be interested in buying them from you. You’ll get a royalty fee each time one of your pictures sells. You may be surprised at how many websites and businesses will be interested in using your pics – and are willing to pay for the privilege.

Read our full article making money by selling your photos.

 

30. make and Sell cards

To make a bit of extra money on the side you could start up your own card business. Starting up your own business sounds like a lot of work, but with Phoenix Trading it doesn’t have to be. To start off you simply order an Introductory Pack, which contains an application form which you then fill in and return along with your first order for cards.

Read our full article on making money writing greeting card messages for more ways to make money from cards.

 

29. make cakes and sweets and sell them

The beautiful thing about earning by baking is that it’s straightforward and flexible. It isn’t something that you necessarily have to do on a regular basis – if you’re a little short of cash one week, it’s easy enough to hunt down your next local car boot sale and get baking. All you’ll really need is to have a good few recipes under your belt and a reasonable idea of what people would buy.

You don’t have to be qualified for this, but there are hundreds of baking/cake decorating courses you can go on which are likely to benefit the quality of your products.

For more info on selling your own cakes and sweets read our article.

 

31. Create web pages

One of the most popular sites in the US is Squidoo. It is a site where people create a lens (their own webpage) on their favourite topic. The site then makes money from advertisers and links. It then pays 5% of its profits to charity, retains 45% to cover its admin costs, which leaves 50% of the profits for the writer or the charity of their choice. So get started writing about any of your favourite topics, it is free to set up and you can start earning some royalties.

 

32. Write travel guides

Get paid to write travel guides at SimonSeeks. They are looking for intelligent, well-written and grammatically correct guides of holiday destinations. Register and upload your guide, await approval from the site’s editorial team, and get paid based on its popularity.

 

33. Write a story

If you’re a budding writer, you could try your hand at writing a short story for Clonepod for a bit of extra money. Clonepod produce science fiction and fantasy podcasts from work its users send in. They’ll pay you $25 through PayPal for a 2,000 word story that they like, and they don’t ask for any rights to the work at all – which is great if you want to try selling the story over and over again. Go to the Clonepod website to find out more.

 

34. Become a voice-over artist

Do family and friends comment on how you never shut up? Now you can earn extra money and put your voice to good use. Subscribe with Voices.com, upload a sample of your voice and quickly and easily apply for voice-over jobs. (You may find that you get head hunted if you have a distinctive voice!). If you are successful you can earn up to £50 an hour!

 

Earn extra money helping others

35. Host and teach foreign students

Can you teach English language? If you have time on your hands and a spare room, you could host a foreign student in your own home and earn extra money giving them tuition. To host and teach English in your home visit the InTuition Languages website or give them a call on 020 7739 4411. You could also rent your spare room out to a foreign student and get a bit of culture at the same time as extra money. For more useful information have a look at our article on hosting foreign students.

Read our full article on making money by hosting foreign students.

 

36. get into childminding

This is a great way for mums to make money while looking after their own kids.

It used to be that you had to charge a set amount for the children and babies you cared for, but now the market has opened up and you can charge whatever parents in your area will pay.

There are checks that your local Council will do and there’s an application process you have to go through, but we explain all that in our article here all about how to make money as a childminder.

Check out our articles for more information childminding.

 

37. Become a personal tutor

If you’re a graduate, and eligible to work in the UK you could earn extra money as a home tutor for a range of subjects and levels, usually on a one-to-one basis at the clients’ home. See London’s Learning website for details on tutoring in London or agencies like Personal Tutors for more information on nationwide tutoring.

For more information on who to contact and how much you could earn, have a look at our article on earning money as a tutor.

 

38. Become a dog walker

If you’d like to combine your love of the outdoors and animals then dog walking can be a great way to earn some extra money too! Earnings range from £6 to £10 per half hour. Register your self as a dog walking company at Petpals. For more information read our article on how to make money from dog walking.

 

39. Earn money for yourself and for charity

Become a charity fundraiser and do your bit for good causes whilst you earn! Charities are constantly on the lookout for people to stand on the street and persuade passers-by to pay monthly amounts to their cause. You can earn between £8.50 and £11 an hour, on average, and the work is flexible. It involves being outside and meeting people, of course, but you could get a lot of abuse from pedestrians. There are several commercial organisations that run campaigns but they keep a percentage of the money raised. Better to work direct for the charity if you would like to do this. Just a few of the organisations looking for fundraisers directly are Shelter and Concern.

 

40. Make money referring friends

There are more and more companies offering to pay you to refer your friends. The website Refermehappy has a load of companies that do it, and you can join as either a ‘referrer’ or a ‘friend’ and you both get a referral bonus from the company. Plus, we’ve got loads more companies to look out for in our article on referring friends.

Companies that pay you to refer include:

• Quidco – £2.50 cashback every time a friend joins up
• Virgin Media – £50 off for you and the person you refer
• TopCashBack – Up to £15 cashback for referring a friend
• RAC – £25 M&S voucher for recommending a friend
• Plusnet – Save money on your monthly bill for recommending a friend
• Groupon – £6 every time you refer a friend
• Cineworld Unlimited – You’ll both get one month free unlimited membership

 

 

Make money in your own time

41. Become a ‘virtual assistant’

If you’ve got secretarial experience, you could work for small businesses – from the comfort of your own home! Experienced virtual assistants charge up to £25 an hour, visit societyofvirtualassistants.co.uk.

For more information read out popular article on making money as a virtual assistant.

 

42. Get paid to iron

By doing other people’s washing and ironing you can make cash when it suits you, whilst catching up with the EastEnders omnibus! Bring in customers by putting an advert in the local paper, handing out leaflets in your local area or, for more professional advice, check out Mark & Sue’s Ironing Service. If you want to start up your own ironing service business you can buy a starter kit for £175 (which includes your own website, flyers, business cards, and the like). This is quite a comprehensive kit but you could probably do it cheaper yourself – see our article on how to make money by running an ironing service.

43. write letters to magazines

 

Did you know that a lot of magazines pay money – or give gifts – for ‘readers’ letters’? The thing is, they don’t get many so the field is wide open for you to make some easy money by writing friendly – or funny – letters.

See our article here about writing letters for magazines. Some of them pay £200 for a good letter or photograph!

44. make money asking questions

If you’re friendly and like to work flexible hours, being a market researcher can be a great way to pull in the extra cash.

As you can see in our article here about being a market researcher, there are various ways you can do it.

You can do market research on the phone, knocking on your neighbours’ doors, sopping people in the streets or visiting people in your locality after setting up an appointment with them.

You get paid either an hourly rate or a job rate. It’s good for mums, students or anyone who wants work that will fit around their lives.

 

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More great reading

• 10 easy ways to make quick cash
• Online surveys: easy cash for paid surveys
• Benefits for over 60s
• Make money from misery: selling your story and more
• Get paid to deliver
• Mystery shopping
• Make money as a life model
• Make money by listening to music
• Make money being a film or TV extra
• Rent a room for tax-free cash
• Make money childminding
• Make up to £80 an hour as a private tutor
• Make £60 an hour by dog walking
• Get your friends to make you money

Let us know any of your tips and secrets on ways to make money by commenting below!

The post 44 ways to make extra money appeared first on MoneyMagpie.