Seventeen great ways to make a bit of extra cash

If you've got a bit of spare time, here are some very easy ways to pocket a bit of extra money.

It's easy to make a bit of quick extra cash. Here are 17 ideas to put more pounds in your pocket.

Switch your bank

A host of banks will pay you to take out one of their bank accounts. The biggest bank bribe you can get at the moment is £150 from Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank, but the likes of First Direct, Halifax and Co-operative Bank will all hand over at least £100.

Alternatively, snap up a current account that pays you cashback. Santander’s 123 Current Account pays up to 3% on certain direct debits, while Barclays Blue Rewards pays you £4 a month effectively just for having the account, with further cashback on top if you have other Barclays products.

Compare current accounts and see what you could get

Use a cashback website

With Christmas creeping closer, chances are you will be doing a fair bit of shopping online in the coming months. When you do, make sure you shop via a cashback website such as Quidco or TopCashback.

If you shop via one of their tracked links, you’ll get a percentage of what you spend back in the form of cashback. It’s essentially free money!

Use a cashback credit card

Whether you are shopping online or in person, if you use a cashback credit card you will get a percentage of the money you spend back in cold, hard cash.

For example, with the American Express Platinum Cashback Everyday credit card you earn 5% cashback in the first three months (capped at £100) followed by a tiered rate of up to 1.25% depending on how much you spend.

With both cashback cards and cashback websites, it’s important to keep in mind that the idea is to get money back for spending you were going to do anyway – don’t spend more than you can afford, simply so that you earn more cashback!

See how much you can earn from different cashback credit cards

Flog your old phone

Sitting on an old mobile handset that you don’t use anymore? Don’t leave it rotting at the back of the cupboard, flog it online!

You can sell it yourself on a site like eBay or Gumtree, or use one of the many mobile phone recycling sites to see who will pay you the most for your old phone. Just be sure to do some research on what previous users have got for their phones – unfortunately there are a number of unscrupulous sites that promise big payouts, then try to shortchange you once the phone has been sent.

Flog your old tablet

A number of these sites offer cash for old tablets too, so if your old iPad or Kindle is sitting unloved and unused, cash it in too!

Flog your old DVDs

A host of sites will pay you for your old DVDs, although the amounts are often paltry.

All you have to do is enter the barcode from your DVD on sites like MusicMagpie, Zapper and CeX, and the site will give you a price for your DVD. It's well worth comparing what you will get from a few different sites, as the values can vary significantly.

Sell at a car boot sale

You could enjoy a more significant return selling your old bits and bobs at a car boot sale.

You can find your local sale at carbootjunction.com. It's probably a good idea to go down to a sale first, to get an idea of where the best pitches are and pick up some tips on how best to flog your wares!

Direct selling

Alternatively, you could try direct selling for a firm like Avon, Usborne Books, or even Ann Summers.

A good place to find out which companies are worth looking into is the Direct Selling Association.

Search!

How often do you reckon you search for something on Google, Amazon, eBay or Yahoo? Most of us search on at least one of those sites fairly regularly.

But thanks to a site called Qmee you can get paid for those searches.

Just enter your search term as usual, and a Qmee result will appear alongside the normal search results. Click on the Qmee result and you’ll pocket a cash reward.

OK, so it’s only a few pennies a time, but it can quickly add up.

Have opinion, will travel…

Sign up to a market research firm and you’ll be sent invites to take part in all sorts of survey projects, with a cash incentive.

For example I’m registered with Focus4People, and in the last week have had invites to take part in surveys on fast food (£50 for two hours), website testing (£50 for one hour), small business payments (£75 for one hour) and shopping (£40 for 45 minutes)

The downside is that to take part you may need to travel, and slots are often during the day. But if that doesn’t bother you, it’s an easy way to make a little extra money.

…or stay at home…

If you don’t fancy having to travel in order to cash in on your views, then you can still make some cash – or at least vouchers – from answering surveys at home, though the amounts are a lot smaller.

Sites worth a look include Swagbucks, YouGov and i-Say.

…or just watch the telly

Even better, why not get paid to watch the telly? Thanks to TheViewers.co.uk you can make a few quid just for having an opinion about some TV shows.

This might mean giving feedback on what you've watched recently, reviewing a new show before it airs nationally, or helping develop ideas for new shows.

Rent out your driveway

Renting something out, whether it’s your spare room or your driveway, can be a lucrative way of topping up your income.

For example, if you have a driveway outside your home that you don’t always use, you could rent it out through a site like JustPark. Your driveway is more likely to be in demand if you live near a sports stadium, tourist spot, airport or train station.

For example, a number of homes near my local station rent out their driveway for anything from £2.50 up to £8.80 a day.

Rent out a room

Meanwhile, if you have a spare room, taking in a lodger could be seriously lucrative.

Thanks to the government’s Rent A Room scheme you can currently earn up to £4,250 in rental income free of tax, but from next April that is jumping to a whopping £7,500. That means a lodger paying up to £625 a month won’t cost you a penny in tax!

Just remember, you will need to speak to your home insurer first.

Sell yourself

No, not like that! But if you have a useful skill or two, why not make the most of them. For example, right now on PeoplePerHour.com, there are thousands of people adept at website design, image editing, writing and social media who are selling their services an hour at a time.  

If you are more useful with your hands – perhaps you are a dab hand with a paintbrush or a bit of carpentry – then why not stick an ad on a site like Gumtree or in your local newsagent?

Sell your health

You could also sign up for medical experiments. Don’t worry, they won’t (normally) see you turn into the Elephant Man, and you can make some serious money from it. For example, at Flu Camp you can get thousands for staying at the facility for a couple of weeks.

There are plenty of other medical trials that you can make some money from taking part in. Just be sure to do your research on the firm conducting the trials first!

Join the army

You could make a few quid by signing up with the Territorial Army. Not only do you benefit from the normal weekend training, there are trips abroad too. And you get paid for it.

Just be warned, there is a chance you will actually have to go into combat.

Make your money work harder: compare savings accounts