How To Boost Your Income – 5 More Ideas

Finances are at the top of most people’s agendas at the moment as energy prices rise and a war in Eastern Europe makes some products less available. It feels like we should be celebrating as Covid takes a back seat for a while, but suddenly our pockets are being emptied faster than we can fill them.

After my recent post about Side Hustle Suggestions, I was interested to read more about this subject and can see that so many people are in the same boat as me, trying to make ends meet. A lot of my friends ask me how to keep astride of finances and my simple answer always has to be ‘work harder and save like mad’. Passive incomes are great but they take time to build up. In the short term, the only real fix is to take on extra work.

So let me share with you five more possible ways to make a little extra income to help pay those horrible bills. I have tried to suggest work which anyone can access. Let me know what you think of my suggestions in the comments below.

5 More Side Hustles

1) Flexible deliveries

It is a fairly obvious fact that most people rely on deliveries these days. From all kinds of household products to fast food, we are becoming more used to using delivery firms to meet our daily needs. Many of these companies pay a fair wage to deliver at anti-social times, such as in the evening.

Some companies are keen to promote flexible working and will pay a little extra for delivery drivers who work at night. For example, Uber Eats, Just Eat and Deliveroo will enable you to earn a bit extra when you feel you have the time and energy. Some firms allow their customers to give tips too, which is a brilliant bonus.

2) Offer a room on Air BNB

Make a room available for short stay tenants. Having a room available for a guest can be a nice little revenue generator. You can choose when is a good time to make the room available and there are always people looking for somewhere to affordably stay. Every guest will provide a boost and you can withdraw your offer at any time or for an extended period.

3) Do paid surveys

Some people make a good income from completing paid surveys. You just need to look around online for websites that provide surveys that you can be compensated for.

I often use ‘Slicethepie.com’ which has loads of opportunities but it can take a while to build up enough funds to withdraw. If you have half an hour spare each day, you can soon become efficient at it and build up your trust rating, so as to earn more per survey.

I enjoy the bonus surveys that they offer and often make 20 cents for a quick music survey. This usually entails listening to one minute of a track and rating it, as well as writing a paragraph about it. It probably takes me three minutes max.

4) Sell products online

There are so many apps available which enable you to trade in old ‘stuff’ lying around your house. I use eBay to get rid of things I no longer want and always find it easy to use, with postage prices added to each item so you never lose out when going through the selling process.

You can take this one step further by making craft items which can then be sold either on eBay or directly through your own website or on Facebook marketplace. I do find that eBay has a quick turnover though, so you must make sure you get products posted out quickly, or customers complain and ask for part refunds.

5) Make an audio recording

I recently discovered the Amazon ACX service where you can sell your vocals to writers and publishers looking for people to read their audiobooks aloud. All you need to do is leave samples of your voice work and apply to be the reader for any books that take your fancy.

There are two ways to make money from this. Either you request a flat fee for the audio or wait for a share of the commission. I believe you can also ask for a smaller upfront payment and a share of commission as well.

Summary

I hope that you found some of my suggestions useful. Not everybody has time to go out and deliver goods but there should be an idea for everyone amongst my five fresh side hustle ideas. You can find even more useful ideas in this article about Making money while you sleep.

Personally, I have done so many different jobs over the years and have learned that you just have to do whatever is needed to keep the money flowing. Right now I am building up my blog, selling items on eBay and doing surveys.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article about boosting your income by taking on extra work. If you enjoyed this post, please consider following my blog for future similar content.

How To Start A Blog Easily

Although I have had a blog for two years, I didn’t start taking it seriously until two months ago. Up until that point I simply wrote a poem or a book review every now and again.

In May I decided that I wanted to properly become a blogger and so began researching how to set up my blog properly. I learned so much about some the important steps that you have to take when setting up the foundations. Here are some of the steps that I took to get going with my blog. You could call it a recipe for a good blog.

  1. Know your audience

    Yes I said know your audience rather than grow your audience as step number one. That’s because you need to make a decision about your niche. Now, for me it was easy as I always focused on things to do with reading but I also wanted to keep commenting on environmental issues too, as these are close to my heart.
    If you can have two subjects in your degree then why not for your blog? If my blog were a degree then the Major part would be in literature and the Minor bit would be about the environment. 3/4 of my posts are about reading after all, even though when I do write something eco-friendly, it carries a lot of weight for me.

  2. Use titles which are grabbing

    In the past I had written whatever I’d felt like writing with titles that were totally made up. However, when I started looking at other people’s blogs and doing some basic research, I realised that I needed to be more punchy.
    Readers like list articles where they are told five or ten ways to do something. They also like to be answering a specific question, such as ‘What kind of reader are you?’ One of the most popular blog types is the How To, which is what I am writing now.

  3. Traffic

    As this article is about the very first steps that you take, we have to consider how to get those initial followers and retain them. So, it is obvious that you must make sure to write a blog post at least once a week.
    Writing engaging material is important, of course. But you also need to get yourself into the blogging community.

    Start reading and commenting on other blogs and following them.

    It is not about making people follow you back but it is about essentially making friends and showing the community that you have arrived. Some wonderful bloggers will soon take an interest in your blog. You may build very useful relationships that can later lead to guest posting.

  4. Be known

    In order to be visible and to appear on search engines you need to know something about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). To be honest, I knew nothing at the start and had to watch several Youtube videos about this to establish a grounding.

    Key Words
    Much of this I will cover in a later blog post but initially the main thing to consider is Key Words. UberSuggest is an app which is free and can help you search useful Key words to use. It shows you how competitive they are. Just noticing trending hashtags can also be very useful.
    Crucially, after you have chosen a key word or two, you must then make sure you use them in three places. Include them in the post title, the body of your article and in the tags. Search engines look for them being replicated in those three places.

  5. Shout a little

    Everyone needs to start somewhere. A wonderful blog may go undiscovered if you don’t promote it properly.

    Twitter
    Twitter is one of the big platforms that allow you to promote a blog relatively easily. Jump on the daily threads which have hashtags such as #writerslift and #shameslessselfpromosunday as these are safe places to share your wares without charge.

    Instagram
    Add am image of your latest blog post onto your instagram story and make sure your readers know to check your link in bio.

  6. Get Pinterest

    I was late to the party with this one but now am really utilising Pinterest. It seems to be one of the best ways to drive traffic towards a blog post. Have a go at sharing one of your posts there. Try using the free app ‘Canva’ to design the picture and text.

    Pinterest is such a complicated search engine to use that I will write about it in more detail in a future post (once I am more secure with using it myself).

These were what I consider to be the most important starting points when setting up a blog. My own blog is still growing and I have much to do to improve it but have definitely loved every minute of it. Here is one of my recent eco-friendly posts: https://jamieadstories.blog/2021/07/07/how-eco-friendly-are-you/

Thank you for reading my article and if you found it useful, perhaps follow my blog for more of the same.

If you put some of yourself into your blog, it will be brilliant!