25 Money Generating Ideas You Can Try Right Now

There is a big word about town, and that word is "Hustling", it makes me feel like I should be starring in a big Hollywood movie about getting the better of the system in some dramatic way with Christopher Walken being awesome in the background. See, I fooled you, you thought I couldn't do it, but, watch this! 

Side hustles are ways of generating an income, cash in your pocket, so that you are less dependent on a 9-5 as your only source of income. 

I came across this term as I am on maternity leave just now and looking for ways to increase my income. I have bills to pay, debts to clear, and am determined I am going to make a success of this thing called life so that my son gets the best starting chance he can.

Here's a list of money-generating, sorry, 'side-hustle' ideas. I'm working through some of them myself, and I'm learning along the way. The list contains links to sites, and affiliate links, which cost you nothing extra, but I may receive a small revenue from the company if you buy something from them. 

1. Get Creative

If you have a creative bone in your body, use your creativity to generate an income.  Get your talents out there into the world!  Bread, Jam, Knitting, Drawings, Wood Working, Jewellery ...

Can you knit or crochet? It was one of my ideas to crochet interesting unique things and sell them on Etsy but trying to learn to crochet almost led me to a nervous breakdown. I can't do it. It should be in my DNA as my mum is amazing at it, but no. Just no. No amount of Youtube guided videos have fixed this either.

2.  Sell Your Creative Products Online

There are a host of sites, like Etsy, RedBubble, Zazzle and more who will be able to sell what you create online. I've picked up my pencils and begun drawing again after many years, and I've uploaded my recent drawings onto Redbubble, where they are now available for sale as greetings cards, tote bags and more.  Redbubble take a hefty percentage of a sale, but its been good motivation for me seeing my drawings becoming products. To date I've sold six, that's right, six greetings cards. The way I see it, that's money in my pocket I didn't have before, but yes it would be nice if sales increased.

Build your own website using a free site like Weebly, where you can also incorporating an online store and keep more of the profit yourself.

3.  Sell Your Creative Products Locally

Get a table at your next local sale. There's craft fairs, indoor markets, coffee mornings, spaces in local shops and more to choose from.

Just this week I've asked a local printer to produce my gift cards and paperback fiction books for me to sell at the next Indoor Market. I'll be able to see if my drawings are popular. I'm taking a range of outgrown baby clothes to sell too, to make up my stall fee if nothing creative sells (though don't tell Tony Robbins I said that, if he asks, I am going to be a total success!)

4.  Advertise Your Services

Fiverr is a great place to start online, you can advertise what you do on there and though it starts at a fiver, that is the starting rate and you can charge more.

Facebook is another route, why not join some local 'groups' on there and tell people what you're about.

5. Change Your Way of Thinking About Money

This deserves a whole blog in itself, but to keep it short, I've been blown away by listening to Life Coaches like Tony Robbins and Brooke Castillo change my way of thinking about money. It no longer stresses me out, its a positive that helps me pay the bills, but worrying about it doesn't rule my life. You can hear them for free on Youtube, they also offer courses to really help in depth. I am always trying to manage my time effectively, so listen to them when I'm in the shower or driving.

6. Learn to Manage Your Time

Being Creative, setting up websites, selling things on ebay, it all takes time, and I hear you saying you don't have time for any of it.  In the words of Brooke Castillo, 'you do have time, you're just choosing to use it for other things'.  We all have the same 24 hours in a day.  Mine is pretty packed looking after my young son, but I've adapted, I take my ebay photos during his afternoon nap, I put things online as he's drifting off to sleep in the evening, and I write my blog in that last hour of my own awakeness before I turn in for the night. Like Tony Robbins, I could probably forgo sleep to get more hours in my day, but at the moment I choose not to. Have you got 15 minutes in your lunch break, each day? That makes over an hour a week you can free up to work on money generating ideas.

7. Have a Clear Out and Sell Your Stuff

Decluttering the house feels great, and no matter how many times I do it, the house still manages to amaze me with more stuff hidden away that I don't actually need anymore.

Having a clear out is really helped by changing the way I think about possessions, and not being sentimental over inanimate objects. One of our close friends lost every single thing he owned in a house fire, and it really brought home to me that possessions are not everything.

8. Car Boot Sales and Indoor Markets

Locally, sell your stuff at car boot sales, or indoor markets.  Take a float of change with you, and as long as you make your table money, usually about £6, the rest is in your pocket! Indoor markets are a winter car boot sale, without the weather. If there aren't any where you live, why not see if you or a group of friends can get one organised in a local hall?

9. Online Auctions - Ebay (of course)

Online, use a site like ebay to sell your items, though watch out for listing charges and postage charges.  I'm selling things on ebay at the moment, I've found the mobile phone app is much quicker than the normal site to upload items, and I also like it because it tallies up how much you have made in the last 60 days.  I also stick to using the Royal Mail Registered Post service, so that no unscrupulous dodgies can say they didn't receive the item and demand a refund when they have.  I have accidentally listed items as free postage by mistake in the past and made a loss.  You learn!  Try and get the photos of your items as good as you can, close up, with either a plain white or complimentary background.  I used to put long descriptions in my auctions, but as I'm uploading on my phone, usually with a baby in the other arm, I keep my item descriptions brief, and they are still selling.

10. Charity Shops instead of Brand New

When I was a little girl, my mum used to take me round charity shops and car boots sales, and when I reached the teenage years I began to hate it.  Now, I love it again. No one knows if what you're wearing is brand new or second hand. And I'm reminded of the Macklemore song 'Thrift Shop' 

"Limited edition, let's do some simple addition

Fifty dollars for a T-shirt, that's just some ignorant bxtch shxt

I call that getting swindled and pimped

I call that getting tricked by a business"

Don't get me wrong, I still buy brand new things now and again, but most of my current wardrobe that I'm wearing (and I'm in the process of ebaying the rest) has been worn by someone else, and washed and now worn by me. One of my small gripes about charity shops is when they charge extortionate prices for things they received as donations, and my reason for this is because I have actually seen local charity shops selling items at a higher price than the original shop they were sold in. Charity begins at home and should work both ways, helping the people shopping there as well as the charity group.

11. Arrange a clothes swap

If charity shopping isn't your thing, arrange a clothes swap party with your friends to revamp your wardrobe without busting out the credit card.

12. Write a Book

I've written two novels and two children's books, all of which I independently published and are available for sale on Amazon (thank you for supporting your living artist, dead ones don't need the money). Sales have been tricky and I'm currently spending a bit of time researching marketing techniques, as well as delving into the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook to see about the possibility of getting an agent.

13. Take an Evening College Course

I'm suggesting this as a way of increasing your skills, but its also a good way of meeting like-minded people. Some colleges offer financial help for studying. If travelling is an issue, consider Open-University courses, they have the benefit of being able to study in your own time. And support your local library, they are amazing resources, a world of books for free. That should be on my list too, don't buy books go to your library, a specially as my published books are in my local libraries, but I'm also trying to earn money through book sales, so ...

14. Start a Local Time Bank

These are a way of trading skills, where no money passes hands. So if you can offer up two hours a week ironing for someone, another person can trade two hours gardening, then a deal is done!

15. Food Shopping

My gran is great at this. She knows where sells the cheapest bread, where does the cheapest fabric softener and shops around to save pounds every shop. This takes a little longer until you get used to the shops and their offers, but its worth it. I'm saving about £4 on fabric softener, by shopping between stores, which at the moment goes on chocolate and cake, comfort food to keep me awake! I also check out the reduced section in the supermarkets. I chuck reduced loaves of bread and meats in the freezer for later. I tend to buy frozen vegetables rather than fresh where possible as its a far cheaper option - have you ever compared the price of fresh asparagus to frozen? There's no real difference in taste.
Could you organise a food swap? Would that work? Hmm...what about hosting dinner parties with a group of friends at a different house each week? Good way of socialising too.

16. Cook in Bulk

I make big batches of food and stick portions in the freezer. This has the bonus of saving me time cooking at a later date too. Though sometimes I make a big batch, freeze it, decide I never want to eat it again, clear it out of the freezer but leave one behind which I rediscover later thinking it will be something amazing to eat and then get so disappointed that it was that bad batch of rice with hot-chocolate-powder-trying-to-be-Heston-Blooming-doesn't-work-when-I-try-it-Hall. Do not serve such dishes at your Come-Dine-With-Me style dinner party. You will not score points.

17. Grow Your Own

If you have a space on your window sill or lucky enough to have a garden, grow your own. It's great watching seeds grow from scratch. Unless your plastic greenhouse from B&M blows away which has happened to me three times in total. Herbs! I have tasted nothing so great as a meal with herbs cut fresh from a plant at my back door and thrown into the cooking pot. Mint is one of the simplest to grow - keep it in a pot as it spreads like mad. I've also been successful with rosemary, and coriander which I bought in the reduced veg section in Asda as wilting fresh-herb-pots. Not so good with seeds I bought online as the labels faded and I don't know if I grew weeds or herbs and haven't dared add them to my cooking. I'm not the greatest gardener. As long as you know what your plant actually is, you can sell them too!

18. Get Some Chickens

Because we live in a rural area, I can suggest this as a money earner. Not so great if you're in the city where roosters get ASBOs for their noise. Hens eat food scraps and grain, and lay lots of eggs, and if they lay enough eggs you can sell them at the end of the road. So I heard. Our hens are a bunch of little freeloaders that don't lay any eggs at all, and are now in the class of really annoying pets that peck at your toes every time you step outside. Can't even kill them for a free roast dinner as we are too attached to them.

19. Get Some Bees

Honey is meant to be a brilliant money-earner. But given the success we've had with chickens there is a real probability that after a month of bee-keeping I'll probably be hospitalised, so while I know its a lovely romantic notion of earning money, I'm not going there.

20. Start a Blog

Yes, apparently it is easy to make money by blogging. The proof is in the pudding and here am I trying the very thing. Watch this space to see if it earns me more than 23 pence per week which has been the success so far. You earn money by 'affiliate linking', where you earn money if someone clicks a link then buys something, by allowing 'adverts' which you have to code into your articles, by 'sponsored posts' which I haven't tried yet, by selling products like 'e-books' on your site.

There are also opportunities to do freelance writing, content writing online, but I've not really tackled that recently. The last time I tried I was outbid on every article I applied to write for, and it put me off.

21. Start a Small Business

Locally, Business Gateway is offering us free training as to how to write Business Plans, how to manage finances and bookkeeping. Its a brilliant opportunity. Who knows, the entrepreneur idea in you might lead to great things. One of my ideas is to start a dog-walking side income which is flexible enough with my wee boy, and doesn't infringe on my main job. You could consider other things like child-minding (need to be certified), house-sitting, cleaning, cooking, taxi-driving ...

22. Rent a Space on Air B & B

If you have a room, a tree-house or an unusual space that you think people might pay to sleep in, use Air B & B to promote your space. I have spent a bit of time sprinting from my sleeping baby to a room, from the room to a waking baby and so on, and managed to turn a space into a rentable room. No one has booked it. But its there. You could also rent a room out in your home, but that's not suitable for us.

23. Sign up for Temp Work

Register with an agency, listing the hours you are prepared to work, what you are prepared to do and see if they have any work that is suitable for you.

24. Enter Competitions

I tried this for a while, trying the hashtags #winitwednesday #freebiefriday #giveaway and more on Twitter, trying the Prizefinder.com website, but felt that I wasn't getting anywhere and my time would be better served doing other things.

25. The Full Monty

There's lots of other ways to generate an income, and lose that reliance on your 9-5 as the only way of earning money in your life. And if you don't fancy any of them, there's always The Full Monty.