It’s always good to make a little extra money, and that couldn’t be truer than it is today. Whether you’re a full-time employee or a student looking to make a little extra income, now is the time to find a side hustle that works for you.
The best side hustles in the UK include opportunities that fit into your schedule. From babysitting to being a ghostwriter, your best side hustle will be specific to you, whatever your situation.
By the time you’re done with this article, you’ll be well on your way to figuring out which side hustle will work for you. Financial independence is right around the corner with these best ways to earn a side income in the UK!
The Best Side Hustles in the UK: An Overview
There are hundreds of possible side hustles you can choose from. However, some will be easier to begin than others, and some will have a higher earning potential than others. Here’s an overview before we get into the details on each of these side-income options.
- Pet-sitting
- Babysitting
- Dog walking
- Blogging
- Tutoring
- Selling handmade items
- Reselling items
- Ghostwriting
- Testing apps and taking surveys
- House cleaning/Housekeeping
Honorable mention: Airbnb your home
Whether you’re trying to make ends meet or you want a little bit of extra money; there’s a side-hustle out there for you! Now that you’ve seen the list of the top 10 best side hustles in the UK, let’s look at each of them closer.
1. Become a Pet-Sitter
Everyone loves their pets. That means that when people have to leave their homes for a holiday or business trip, the idea of their poor pets being left home alone can sometimes be enough to make them want to cancel. That’s where pet sitters come in handy.
If you like animals, this is the best side-hustle for you. This side hustle is wonderful because it gives you more freedom than others can. Plus, the average UK pet sitter makes about £10 per hour.
You can offer to pet-sit while people are at work, essentially becoming a nanny for someone’s furry friend, or you can pet-sit overnight. You get to decide if you’d prefer to work out of your own home or if you’d prefer going to the homes of the people hiring you. You can even decide what pets you’re comfortable pet-sitting.
Depending on which method you choose, you can choose to charge per hour, per day, or per pet, which gives you a lot of room to figure out how to best charge for your services. During busy seasons when people tend to travel more, you can potentially make an extra £1,000 or more per month just working part-time, especially if you live in a city.
2. Babysit When You Can
If pet sitting isn’t for you, or if you are looking for more consistent earnings, then babysitting might be the best side hustle option you should consider. This job has endless potential and you can fit it around any schedule.
If you find you tend to have hours of free time during the workweek, that’s not a problem. Gone are the days of the stay-at-home parent being the norm.
Today, many households have parents who work full-time and cannot take care of their children all day, every day. These families may not need a full-time nanny, especially if their children are school-aged, but they may need someone to watch them for a few hours a day or a few days a week.
Alternatively, if you only have a few weekends per month free to dedicate to a side hustle, that likely won’t be a problem either. Plenty of parents are kept from going out because they don’t know who will watch their children. That’s where you come in if you decide to become a babysitter to make a little extra money.
For this job, you’ll likely want to charge hourly, with additional costs depending on how many children you’re looking after and when you’ll be watching them. Even working solely on weekend evenings has the opportunity to earn you hundreds worth of extra income per month.
3. Walk Dogs in Your Free Time
If you’re a dog person and love being active, there’s no better side hustle than dog walking. You’ll get paid to spend time walking in the park with man’s best friend, and you’ll get your daily workout in as well.
Dog walking is a great side-hustle to pick up if you live in a large city where people may not have yards large enough to let their dogs run around in. You’ll be charging per day with a side hustle, most likely, and possibly per dog if you are hired by a client who has more than one pet for you to take out.
Once again, this side-hustle lets you have some flexibility in your earning potential. For example, once you get to know the dogs you’re walking, you can determine if they’re social enough to get along with other dogs. That way, you can walk multiple clients’ pets at once. Considering there are people who do this job for a full-time living, doing this side-hustle has the potential to earn you hundreds or thousands per month if you want it to.
4. Start a Blog
Blogging has become a popular pastime over the past decades. While initially, it started as a sort of online journal, it’s quickly become a full-fledged market of its own.
You can find blogs on any subject under the sun, from parenting to travel. There are even entire blogs dedicated to specific television shows. If you have something you’re interested in, or you just feel like you have a lot of interesting things to say, then blogging might be the side hustle for you to try.
Unlike some of the other side hustles on this list, blogging won’t be a guaranteed money-making practice. You’ll have to build an audience in order to make an income since bloggers receive money through advertisements or sponsored posts, etc.
However, if you’re determined and you love blogging, then it could be worth it for you to dedicate the time to building your blog so you can start earning. Initially, you’ll likely make a few hundred pounds of extra income per month at most. You can potentially build this income stream up substantially with hard work.
5. Become a Tutor
If you are a good student or have a lot of knowledge on a particular subject or topic, consider tutoring to make extra money. Tutors can make thousands per month, particularly during the school year when students might be struggling to understand their work. You don’t have to be a certified teacher, and as long as you show results, you can teach in any subject you have knowledge of.
The best part is that people will look for tutors in every subject imaginable. Some subjects, for example, biology or Spanish, might have more demand because more students are struggling with them. However, that also means there are likely many other tutors out there in those subjects, so you’ll have to price yourself more competitively to get clients.
On the other hand, if you have knowledge about a more obscure topic, you might not get as many students, but you’ll likely be able to charge a bit more.
This side hustle is also great because you can decide where you want to work. You can work out of your home, go to your students, tutor remotely via a web camera, or even meet somewhere like a park or public library. No matter what or where you decide to teach, tutoring is absolutely one of the best side hustles you can choose.
6. Sell Handmade Goods
If you like making things, then consider selling your crafts as a side hustle. Whether you make jewelry, clothing, or other pieces of art or decor, there’s a market out there for you.
Years ago, if you wanted to sell your handmade items, you needed to tour different fairs and markets to get people to see them, or you had to find a shop willing to sell your goods on consignment. Now there are websites and apps like Etsy, Instagram, or even Amazon where you can sell your homemade items to people all over the world.
This side hustle isn’t guaranteed to make a lot of money quickly because you have to build a following and learn to market yourself. However, with word-of-mouth and some determination, there’s no reason why you can’t add a few hundred or even thousands of pounds to your monthly income by making and selling handmade goods.
This stream of income gives you the freedom of where you work and how you price your goods. You can create your art while watching television, and you can sell at whatever price you think is fair.
7. Resell Items
If you like the idea of selling things online, but you don’t want to dedicate the time and effort to making things yourself, you can resell items instead. This side-hustle is one you can start right away. You simply have to see if there’s anything in your home that you’d like to sell and list it on different resell sites.
If you enjoy the process and don’t mind hunting for items with a good resale value, you can start building your stock by visiting second-hand shops and markets. Some people turn their resell side-hustles into full-time businesses. With any luck, you shouldn’t have any trouble earning some extra income with this method.
8. Try Out Ghostwriting
If you love writing, but you’ve never been able to figure out how to make any income from it, then you have to look into ghostwriting. As a ghostwriter, you’ll be writing anonymously for other people, which means you might have the opportunity to write about any topic you can think of.
The ghostwriting market can be competitive, however. There are a lot of writers out there, so you’ll have to make sure you have a rich portfolio of writing samples you can send to clients when you apply for jobs.
Ghostwriting can be inconsistent work, but you can easily start building a client base once you start making a name for yourself. Once you’ve become established as a ghostwriter, then this job might be one of the side hustles with the most freedom. You can decide what jobs you accept and you can write from anywhere.
9. Test Apps and Take Surveys
If you’re trying to earn a little extra income, but you don’t have much free time available in your schedule, then consider looking into taking surveys or doing app testing for a little extra money. There are multiple websites where you can offer to take surveys regarding upcoming products or market research. The same idea goes for apps that might need testers while they’re in their final stages before being released to the public.
These sites usually won’t earn you too much money, typically at most £100-£200 a month, and it can take some time to qualify for surveys. However, if you have free time and want a way to earn a little extra money while riding the train or sitting in bed, this is a good option for you!
10. Become a House Cleaner and Housekeeper
If you’re one of the lucky people who enjoy cleaning, then you can capitalize on that trait and turn it into a side hustle. Many people are too busy to clean their homes or just put it off because they don’t enjoy it. Becoming a housecleaner is mutually beneficial for this reason.
You get to earn a little extra money, and your clients get to have a clean home. You can market yourself for certain types of cleaning or chores, or you can be more general. For example, you might offer to do laundry, take care of people’s houseplants, or offer complete house cleaning.
Whatever you prefer, there’s a market for you, and people will be happy to pay to have someone else clean their homes. There’s no reason you can’t make thousands of pounds in extra income each month.
Honorable Mention: Become an Airbnb Host
This side hustle might be a little less obvious for some people, but it has the potential to earn you a lot of money- especially if you live in a city that sees a lot of tourists.
If you can stay with someone, consider putting your home on a site like Airbnb a few days per month. You’ll be able to make some extra income without much effort on your part.
This might not be a very fruitful source of income if you live in a small town, but for people who live in tourist areas, you’ll have a nearly guaranteed stream of passive income all year.
Conclusion
There are so many side hustles to choose from, making it seem impossible to narrow it down to just one. However, don’t get overwhelmed! Look at this article as a list of opportunities at your fingertips and you can be on your way to financial independence.
If you’re a university student home for the summer, you can check out our list of the best summer side hustles to get you started as well. Or, you can tackle some of the highest paying side hustles around (or even test out your online side hustle skills) instead.
Over time, you may be able to scale your side hustle to help you become financially independent without a full-time job! Whatever the case, we’ll be here to help you climb your financial mountain.
Keep climbing, FinBase.
