Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
10 ideas for couples to make money together
Kamal Khurana
26th Jan 2023
Want to save up for a holiday, a big party, or even a major life goal like a house deposit? Making money as a couple can be a fun way to spend time together whilst working toward a mutual goal. We’ve compiled a few ideas for couples to make money together.
While many of these could also work for singles, sharing the experience with your chosen person adds an extra measure of fun – and you never know, it could end up being very lucrative!
Take a look and tell us which ones you’ve tried or will be trying.
- Freebies for couples who love to be wined and dined
- Make money sharing your skills and passions
- Take a look at this hassle-free moneyspinner
- Commit to this money maker and it could really pay off
- Swap home and get a free holiday or house sitting
- Money maker for animal lovers
- Make money answering the phone
- Set up your own business
- Can you handle the heat?
- Collectors and makers
- Bonus: start a joint blog
1. Mystery shopping
If you can’t afford a night out or a hotel stay, mystery shopping could be a great money-making idea for you and your favourite person.
In most cases (not all) you won’t actually get paid, but will get to enjoy free meals in restaurants, stays in hotels, and drinks in bars.
Different mystery shopping companies will provide you with different assignments, depending on who their clients are. If you and your partner both sign-up to mystery shopping, you may get different assignments – which means double the freebies!
We can show you here how to get mystery shopping jobs and lots of freebies as a mystery shopper.
2. Make money tutoring
If you and your partner share the same skills or passions, how about teaching them to others and charging for your services?
Do you play a musical instrument? Or speak another language? Perhaps your talent lies in writing or pottery?
Whatever your skill is, you can make money from it by tutoring people or groups and charging by the hour. And if two of you take on different students or even siblings, you can make double the cash. There’s a very small outlay involved: you can tutor at home, or via Zoom; earning materials can be shared online and printers are affordable if you need to make hard copies; and you can have group classes which allow you to teach more pupils at once if it suits everyone.
One option could be to set up a small tutoring business, allowing you to work together on marketing and admin whilst taking on clients either separately or together.
Read our article to find out how to make as much as £80 an hour tutoring.
3. Make money renting
Do you and your partner have a spare room? If you do, why not turn it into a money-spinner by renting it out?
Going for short-term lets means you choose who stays and for how long, or if you want a longer-term flat or housemate you can go down the route of offering longer tenancies. Whatever you choose, this is a really is a good way to make money quite literally on your doorstep.
You can advertise your room for free on Easyroommate, Spareroom or Gumtree, or pay an estate agent to take care of everything for you. Take a look at our full article on renting out your room here.
Alternatively, if you’re in a desirable location why not consider renting out your space on Airbnb? Read our advice on renting to tourists here.
Keep in mind that if you like your privacy and can’t bear the idea of sharing your bathroom and/or kitchen with a stranger, this is probably not for you. However, there are many other ways to make money from renting without compromising on your privacy.
4. Make money setting up a B&B
Do you fancy the ultimate work-from-home job? Are you living in a popular area? Enjoy meeting lots of new people?
If yes, you might consider running a B&B. It’s a long term money-making scheme for those who are willing to make a real commitment and you need to be very well-prepared before you go into it – but get it right and you could be onto a serious earner.
You could make anything from a few hundred to a few thousand quid a month, depending on where you live and how many rooms you have.
It might seem like the dream, but running a B&B is hard work. It’ll take a lot of effort initially to get things going, so do consider it fully before you make any decisions. Doing it as a team will make it much easier, though! Take a look at our article on how to run a B&B here.
5. House-swapping for a free holiday or house-sitting
If you’re a couple wanting to explore the country (or world) together, house-swapping might be the thing for you – it’s a great way to get a cheap holiday or sustain longer-term travelling, whilst keeping your accommodation comfortable.
The major selling point of house-swapping is that the person you’re swapping with could live anywhere in the world, so while they’re heading to your pad in London or Edinburgh or Slough you could be flying out to their home in Australia, France, Italy, or the US.
Learn how to have a house swap holiday here.
If you want to make money, you could try house-sitting with your partner instead.
It isn’t a big money-maker- the pay is minimal and the work’s unlikely to be regular – but it’s a good way to earn a bit of money on the side and possibly have some fun whilst you’re at it.
Not all house-sitting agencies pay, so for regular work register with a reputable agency like Trustedhousesitters.
Learn more about making money house-sitting here.
6. Make money looking after pets
If you’re an animal-loving couple, pet-sitting can be an easy and fun way to make money – especially if you aren’t in a position to have pets of your own.
Pet-sitters look after people’s animals while they’re away from home. You will probably have to visit the house a couple of times a day, typically for between 30 minutes to an hour at a time, so you and your partner can alternate on shifts.
Pet-sitters usually charge per pet, per hour, but weekly rates or discounts for multiple pets can be put in place. Rates tend to range from around £6 per visit up to £15. If you can organise to look after multiple pets at different addresses throughout the day, you could start to earn good money regularly.
By simply signing up to a pet-sitting website, you can advertise your services to thousands of pet-owners a month. If you’re in the UK, why not try Pawshake, DogBuddy, or Barking Mad?
With furry friends just waiting for some love and attention, this is probably one of the most fun ideas for couples to make money together.
Take a look at our full guide to making money from pet sitting here.
7. Make money answering the phone
Did you know you can make money answering phones?
You can – options include taking customer orders, forwarding calls to business lines or taking messages, or organising appointments. Think of this as similar to the work that a Virtual Assistant (VA) might undertake.
If you’re going to be at home all day and able to take calls, then you’re well suited – but if you have to be out and about a lot, it’s not going to work for you. You need to be there to answer the calls that your clients can’t.
As a couple you can take it in turns to answer the phone and even give each other shifts so one person can pop out while the other stays in.
There’s an issue if you have small children or a dog, as you’ll need absolute silence when answering calls or you may seem unprofessional.
This money-maker is particularly well suited to retried couples who have a lot of spare time and not many commitments.
Having said that, you may still have more flexibility than you would in most full-time receptionist jobs. When the phone isn’t ringing, you’ll have time to get on with household chores or other projects.
Click here or all the ins-and-outs of making money from answering phones.
8. Set up your own cleaning business
Ever thought about becoming a cleaning double act?
People always need things cleaned and it can be a good way of making money in your spare time if you have flexible working hours or can give up weekends.
Setting up your own business as a cleaner can be a good extra revenue source, but with hard, high standards and a bit of luck you could see it become a full-time business.
You can both ask family and friends if they need a cleaner first. This way, you’ll both get a feel for the job and the standards people generally expect. (Spoiler alert: people usually have much higher standards of cleanliness if they are paying for it.) It will also help you with a recommendation or reference when you advertise to the public.
People tend to want their houses cleaned whilst they are working, so if you and your partner are available during office hours it will be handy and the most effective way to get lots of work. Consider cleaning offices as well as private homes.
9. Make money ironing
Do you and your partner spend lots of time in front of the telly?
If yes, why not start an ironing business from the comfort of your own home.
With two of you a big load can be done in half the time, and it can be a good money-maker (remember you’ll need two ironing boards and two irons).
There’s an extremely high demand for efficient and quality ironing services, so you will need to be able to iron to a high standard and have the essentials: a good iron and ironing board. You might also want to consider how you’ll keep garments in good shape when they’re returned to the customer: maybe consider plastic or reusable suit bags to banish crumples.
Click here for more tips on how to make money by running an ironing business.
10. Collecting/making and selling
At MoneyMagpie we’ve come up with loads of things you can collect and later sell on at a profit.
Items that you can collect to make money include antiques, clothes, Disney DVDs, vintage computers, comics, piggy banks, phones and loads more.
Whatever it is you want to collect, two people are definitely better than one when it comes to finding those rare collectibles that are hard to get hold of.
If collecting isn’t your thing but making or baking is, one partner can do all the handy work while the other markets and sells. One of you could be baking cakes or making jewellery, whilst the other is responsible for making sure the product reaches the right customers.
Bonus: Start a joint blog or youtube channel
We don’t include this among our main suggestions of ideas for couples to make money together, because it could take a while for a blog or YouTube channel to be lucrative.
But nonetheless, if you and your partner are great story-tellers who live an interesting life, pursue an unusual hobby or travel a lot, why not start telling other people about it online?
The benefits of blogging or vlogging as a couple are endless, as each of you can take responsibility for different aspects of the content, cutting the time you spend updating it in half.
Elizabeth and Raj from Awesome Wave are a great example of a couple who are making a name for themselves as collaborative travel bloggers.
Jack Morris from DoYouTravel and Lauren Bullen from Gypsea Lust, on the other hand, each run their own hugely successful blogs, but still get to travel and pursue their photography/writing/exploring hobbies together. With millions of followers each, Morris and Bullen have been paid up to £7,000 per sponsored Instagram post, which just shows you what can happen if you’ve got an eye for visuals and the drive stick to it.
Not sure where to start setting up a blog? Read our article about how to make money blogging.
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Useful ideas for making money as a couple.