When working from home, you will often find that you’re getting a lot more time on your hands than usual, and you may be wondering what productive things you can do with that time. There are many different things you can do with your time, from improving your housekeeping and doing home improvements, to reconnecting with friends, but one of the most popular uses of this extra time is to keep yourself in work mode for that extra bit longer and find a way of making some extra money.

Additional income can have a transformative effect on your personal finances and monthly household budget. Consider someone who brings home £1,700 of salary per month, and has outgoings of £1,300, leaving £400 to save for a rainy day or invest in a portfolio for retirement. If that person could find an activity or hobby on the side which could bring home another £400 per month, then they could double the amount that they save. This is the powerful effect of incrementally increasing income while keeping outgoings constant.

Another way of reflecting on this is how this person spent most of their hours of each day generating the income which allowed them to save £400. And then with just a few more hours per month, they earned the second £400. The payoff from a second job is so powerful, particularly if you’re only managing to save a small sum (or none at all) each month.

We’ve put together a list of ideas for you to consider when looking at bolstering your income every month, and you may even earn the opportunity to pursue these ideas further, turning them into full-time ventures.

Drop-shipping

You may have heard this term around before, and if you’re unsure about what it is, we can explain it for you very simply. This is merely a way of selling products to customers without buying any inventory. In fact, you can do this all on your own without the need of being a large company or even a small business. The best business books confirm that the start-up costs are remarkably low which in turn reduces your risk. Essentially, you market products and receive orders from customers, and then you place your own wholesale orders from manufacturers at a cheaper cost, and then keep the profit you’ve made from your customers. There are pros and cons to drop shipping, as with anything and it’s important to do your research before going down this route. However, this could be a great choice for you, especially as a small side project.

Start Investing

If you’re looking to find ways of making some extra money as well as finding something productive to do with some of your savings, consider looking into investing in the stock market or even searching for the best cryptocurrencies to invest in. Learning how to trade on these markets can be incredibly beneficial to you and is a great way of saving your money with the chance of increasing it dramatically if your stocks rise in value. The world of investing may seem like a daunting one, and it can be, but it’s nowhere near as complicated as some may have you believe. In fact, with the advent of trading apps and the wealth of knowledge bases online, it’s easier than ever to get involved.

Sell unwanted items

While not a sustainable source of income, many of us have a huge number of items that we no longer want or need and getting rid of them can be a valuable use of your extra time. Selling these items via online marketplaces can be a great way of decluttering your home and making some extra cash on the side. If you’re not desperate to get rid of certain items though, don’t just give them away. A quick and cheap sale might seem like the best choice but hanging onto those items with a higher price tag will eventually see you making a but better sum, even if you have to wait around a bit longer. Besides, you’ll have the time to spend on replying to enquiries about those items anyway, so it’s worthwhile being patient.

Referrals

There are lots of services out there that have started offering incentives to those that refer friends and family to sign up. Not only do some provide you and those you encourage to join with discounts, but some also even pay you for your work. For example, Lebara mobile has a refer a friend feature which gives you the option to earn money from home by simply getting friends to sign up to one of their affordable SIM plans. Finding services like this, especially ones that you already use, can be a great way to gain monetary benefits as well as discounts for your friends and family. If you’re a particularly good salesperson, this could be an enjoyable extra task for your day but try to avoid annoying people with deals too much and target those referrals at people you genuinely believe would benefit from them.

Freelancing

If your contract allows for this, you could consider freelance work in your spare time, especially if it’s something you enjoy doing. For example, as a journalist, you may be permitted to write for non-journalism organisations such as doing commercial content writing for businesses or maybe even creating video content for social media. Many people work multiple jobs these days, and if you’re working part-time, you’re in an even better space to add more roles to your repertoire. The great thing here is that if things don’t go well in your job, you’ll have something with a foundation to build on and generate more work to make up for that lost income stream.

Blogging

If you’re a writer, there are not many reasons why you shouldn’t consider writing your own blog. Not only does this help you to hone your writing skills, but it can also be very lucrative if you know what you’re doing. Essentially, blogs can serve as the perfect marketing platform. As you build up your audience, you can market your blog to businesses who will then pay you to write blogs directly about their products or services, or to include links to their website to subtly influence readers to check them out. This is a very popular method of marketing for businesses today, and you could be taking advantage of that.

Become an influencer

Similarly, if you have a healthy social media following, or have the means of generating one, becoming an influencer can be very profitable too and doesn’t require a whole lot of effort. Businesses work with influential people on social media all the time to promote their products and services, for one main reason. If that person has ten thousand followers, and they showcase your product and direct people towards your business, you could in theory be gaining ten thousand new followers.

Of course, the chances are you’re only going to be getting a small percentage of their followers interested in your products, but even 5% of their followers account for five hundred new customers. This is probably one of the best marketing tools today, and you can see why you could get paid a significant amount for working with these businesses.