What side hustles do you all do?

[dawngreen]

I am thinking of trying Match Betting my self. I don't want to spend all my time doing survey sites for a pittance.

It's a website with informative articles about a niche topic. I wrote the articles about 5 years ago although sometimes I add more when I feel like it. Then I set up adsense and use affiliate links through out the articles to link to items that are useful and on topic. The amount of money I make varies massively depending on the month. In Feb for instance quite a few of my articles were on the Google discover page which led to lots of hits so it was really quite lucrative. Also my topic is in the gardening sphere so I get a lot more hits in Spring/Summer than in Winter. It costs me €30 a year to keep my .com website address and that is the only cost associated with it.

It really isn't a quick money maker though, you have to wait patiently to rank on Google, you have to write high quality articles to be approved by adsense and it can be a lot of work to set up. Like I said though now that it is set up I can just leave it alone and I get pay outs from Adsense and Amazon every month.

Also just to add you do need to be knowledgeable on a niche topic, something broad like 'beauty' or 'fashion' it would be really difficult to rank on Google so you need a topic that doesn't have already have too much written about it so you will rank on the first page when someone searches for that topic.

Thanks @SpryAmberSeal

I write freelance for an online magazine. Not a big side hustle - I write between 4-8 articles a year.

I'd love to help people with budgets, cashflow forecasts and streamlining their finances, i absolutely love doing this. I don't see how it could be monetized though.

Is that very time consuming?
What exactly do you have to do?

@NobbyNobbs not time consuming at all. I've joined numerous companies to maximise the invites I get to jobs, and the likelihood of me qualifying. So on average I get about 6 invites daily to jobs, with a minimal incentive of about £50. I only ever apply for what looks interesting/fun to me or what has a high incentive. To apply takes less than a minute, and you just have to wait for then to get back to you. For example, I did one over the month of December where I tested a consumable item they sent me daily for 4 weeks and had to complete a daily 1 minute survey about my thoughts on the item (how it made me feel etc), and was paid £800 which was great for helping reimburse my Christmas spends. I did another one very recently where I tested a game and was able to bring my DS14 to test it with me we were at the location for 1hour and paid £130 between us, DS was well chuffed with his half of the money and later spent it on buying himself a playstation game🤣. Over the last couple of years I've done looooads of these focus groups, and made a fair bit of money. You just gotta regularly respond to your daily emails invites. A point of joining many companies is because some don't like to give you a job if you have done one with them in the last 3 months. So ive got a personal system of rotation that i stay mindful of.

How do you sign up to the focus groups, @MamaMode ?

What focus group did you join @NobbyNobbs ?

I got the list of focus groups I'm joined to from the Martin Lewis website some years back, so you could Google 'Martin Lewis focus group list' or just Google 'focus group companys', and then sign up via the websites.

As a start for those interested, two of the companies I'm signed up to are:

• Ipsos
• Focus4people

www.moneysavingexpert.com/team-blog/2020/02/how-to-earn-cash-from-market-research/

This is the link I initially found the list. I since met people at the focus groups who have shared other companies they are joined to, allowing me to sign up to more

@MamaMode
Are these generally online sessions or in person? Thanks

@AnonyLonnymouse They can be either online or in-person, but you when you receive the email invite, it will specify which, so your able to decide whether or not it's convenient before expressing interest. Once you've joined a company, you can also apply directly on their website for some jobs

To add, having read the link I can see there’s a bit of a mix - but I wondered if you can share any your experiences about when and how you do it? For example, is there much on during school hours?

Apologies, we just cross-posted.

Yes I've done many in person focus groups during school hours (on the two days I don't work) or evenings if I know a family member is able to watch the kids. When you respond to the invite email, you usually have to fill out a brief questionnaire to make sure you fit that criteria. Within the questionnaire it asks about your availability. Usually there will be a list of days/times and you can select the ones that convenient for you. It's the same with the online focus groups regarding availability. The longer winded studies that can last a few days up to a month are usually tasks that can be done online in your own time within a given timescale, or if your testing a product it is again usually according to the companies specifications but in your own time.

@AnonyLonnymouse an example of one invite email I received earlier

'Martin Lewis focus group list' https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/team-blog/2020/02/how-to-earn-cash-from-market-research/

it’s possibly not for me but here is the list

Matched betting could probably bag a quick £1000 in 3 weeks if you sign up to about 40 bookie offers. With most of them that'll be your lot, but some will give further offers (called reload offers) such as "Bet £5 get £5 free bet" or "Money back if your horse comes 2,3,4th up to £10). This might make you another £100 to £150 a month, depends on how quick you get gubbed or stake restricted. If you're quick you can sometimes make a few quid doing arbitrage betting but you'll soon get subbed doing that.

Am hoping that with Cheltenham, Grand National and Euro 2024 coming up there'll be a few reload offers out there, especially at weekends. Personally I like doing the football bet-builders as a bit of free fun. I've never been so invested in the number of corner kicks and yellow cards!

I understand that years ago the offers were much better and genuinely lumpy sums could be made, but I'll have to defer to others to confirm if that was the case....

Side hustle is a fancy flowery term for "my employer doesn't pay me enough to live on, so I have to I have to do a second job to make ends meet"

How did we end up here?

Sad for the state of society

Jobs are good if you have one, and if they pay good even better!

Not really in my case, as my side hustle is creative; it's something I would do even if I weren't being paid for it. Being able to make a very nice income from it is a bonus.

I think you've got a point @SwordToFlamethrower - people now think that in work benefits and having to have a side hustle are completely normal.

Not really in my case, as my side hustle is creative; it's something I would do even if I weren't being paid for it. Being able to make a very nice income from it is a bonus

Me too. It's actually something I've always wanted to try but probably couldn't make a full-time living from.

Just one point for people to look at, today and last week I saw two employment contracts for completely different people which both ban this so if you have a full time PAYE job do read every word of it before starting. I think those clauses are very unfair but mostly they are lawful.

Before I set up on my own as a solicitor, I was making extra money from marking law exam papers and writing legal articles and also did some paid legal talks. We also had 2 flats we let out but sold those at a loss.

Since working for myself as a lawyer in a sense it is series of things I do - advising clients if first but over the years at one point I was giving 70 full day courses on law in UK and abroad every year which was very tiring but useful extra money .
I also publish some legal journals most of which I write and where subscribers pay me.
I also do a lot of editing/legal writing work for some publishers - I signed 4 contracts today with one for example.

Not recently but in the past our house was on the books of film location companies - the fortnight we were paid £10,000 (before 40%+ income tax came off it of course) I thought that was brilliant but just about no one ever hired the house again so that was a one off flash in the pan.