Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Best money making websites
Carl Brennand
3rd Feb 2020
Want to know the quickest, easiest, and most lucrative ways to earn some money with money making websites? You’re not alone. Our readers often ask us “How do I make money online?”
Well, here’s our lowdown on how to make money online and the best websites for doing just that – plus tips to help you get the most out of them.
- Make money by selling your stuff
- Get free stuff
- Do free competitions to win big money
- Earn by referring
- Make money online
- Rent, sell and make
- Get your driving and shopping paid for
- Get extra cash
- …and yet more ideas…
make money bySelling your stuff
ZIFFIT
Make money by recycling your CDs, DVDs, books and games through Ziffit.co.uk. It’s a simple site with an easy-to-use app.
All you do is download the app to your phone and hover it over the barcode of the items you want to sell.
You will be told immediately how much you can get from each item. Then package up the ones you want to sell, print off the Freepost label and send them in the post. If your package is large, they will arrange a free courier service to collect.
You will be paid by cheque, via PayPal, with an instant cash voucher or straight into your bank account.
Find out to make even more money selling your gadgets and gizmos here.
Get free stuff
Sign up to our freebies newsletter to get freebies delivered to your invoice every week.
We have loads of different freebies for you to choose from each week.
do free Competitions to win big money
moneymagpie competitions
Make sure you are signed up to the free weekly MoneyMagpie newsletter as we have an excellent competition every week that is entirely free to enter.
Also follow us on Twitter, on Facebook and on Pinterest to take part in our monthly social media comps. We have fab prizes like dashcams, supermarket vouchers, food hampers, and furniture among other goodies.
We’ve found loads of competitions for you to enter in our Online Competitions article, too.
PICK MY postcode lottery
Another really excellent competition site, which is totally free to enter is the Pick My Postcode Lottery.
You could win over £800 a day here, just by checking the site.
All you have to do is sign up with your email address and postcode and let the site do the rest.
It’s so easy as you can see here.
Here’s what Jasmine has to say about making money from competitions…
earn by referring
Make money from your mates
Get £6 Groupon credit every time you refer a friend to Groupon.
Once you’ve signed up to a fun discount site Groupon – for free – you can recommend as many friends as you like, for a £6 Groupon voucher for each one who does.
Make Money on Money Making Websites
online surveys
This is a sporadic and relatively small income but, if you’re on the computer anyway, you might as well make a few quid while you’re there. It’s a great way to make quick cash from the comfort of your computer but make sure you NEVER pay to join a site or reveal your credit card details.
Complete online surveys for money
Here are our favourite paid survey sites. They’re completely free and have received a big thumbs-up from many of you. For maximum earnings why not set up a separate email account (so your personal one doesn’t get flooded with survey-related emails) and then register for free to all of them?
- Toluna – convert points you earn into Amazon vouchers
- Inbox Pounds – get paid £1 just for signing up
- Life Points – pays $10 for every 1,000 points earned, get 10 Life Points just for signing up
- Panelbase – earn between 25p and £10 per survey
- The Opinion Panel – an opinion site for people aged 13–30 exclusively, get £10 just for signing up!
- Swagbucks – earn points and redeem them for gift cards
- Prolific – get paid to participate in academic research, they ask researchers to reward participants with $6.50 an hour
If you like the sound of online paid surveys, make sure you check out our full article on how to make money from online surveys.
Get paid to listen to music
If you love your music, sign up to Slicethepie for free and get paid to listen and review music by unsigned bands.
This isn’t a particularly big money earner as you’ll only get a few pence per review at the beginning, but as you get a better ‘scout rating’ there is potential to make more and more money.
Not only is it a good way to make a few extra quid but you could get to hear the next big thing before anyone else.
Read all about it in our article here
Review products before they hit the streets
Want your chance to influence which products make the shelves? Pinecone Research rewards you for testing tomorrow’s products, today!
Become an influencer and redeem the points you earn from each study in exchange for cash or prizes.
Rent, sell and make
recycle your mobile phone
Never throw away old mobile phones. Recycle them instead for easy money.
First off, use the MoneyMagpie Phone Recycling Tool here to get the best deal.
Even if it’s an old battered one that hasn’t worked for years you could get a few quid. Manufacturers want the chip and other electronic bits inside it to use in other machines.
Rent out your space for cash
Got a spare room you don’t use? Or, if you really need the cash, could you move out of your bedroom and sleep in the sitting room to free it up to rent out?
You can make up to £7,500 tax free from renting a room each year. Find out more in our Rent a Room scheme guide here.
Justpark – rent your drive for cash
Use your drive or your garage to make money for you.
JustPark covers the whole UK and you can put your space on the site for anyone coming to your area to park in…for cash!
Sign up your space here and see just how many people will pay you to park!
Etsy – Get creative and sell your wares online
If you love to get creative and make jewellery or arts and crafts, Etsy is the place to go.
This American website is designed exclusively for buying and selling handmade goods so you’re more likely to have success here than somewhere like eBay.
Register your username (which is also your shop name so choose carefully!) for a basic buyer’s account – then upgrade to a seller’s account. There is a fee of £0.15 per item listed but this covers the item for four months and includes the option of five photos to show off your wares. When you sell an item there’s a 4% final value charge.
Sell your books
Sort out your shelves and sell some of those books you have lying around. Sites such as WeBuyBooks even collect the haul for free. Making selling the books and getting the cash a very simple process.
Sell your photos
If you’re handy with a camera, can design a nice logo or fancy yourself as a writer, then you may be able to make some cash selling your stuff online. There are plenty of sites selling content to websites and they’re always in need of contributors.
Companies such as BigStockPhoto, Dreamstime and Shutterstock concentrate on photography. Upload your images and get paid every time they are used. Others, such as Digital Point offer content writing jobs. For a wider range of freelance opportunities you can look at UpWork.
do focus groups
Get cash in hand and free food and drink by taking part in focus groups in your area.
There are a few agencies that need opinionated people to say what they think about products and services. Sarosresearch operates in major cities in the UK. They need people of all ages and sometimes need people who own particular things (like certain types of car) or have a particular physical problem or disability.
You can expect to make between £40-100 cash per session (usually a couple of hours) and sometimes more.
Get your shopping paid for
Cashback Shopper – Money for shopping (and get £5 for just signing up!)
Some sites like Cashback Shopper list retailers they have deals with – when you click through the retailer gives money to the cashback site, which then gives you money.
Get extra cash
Turn2Us.org.uk – See if you’re entitled to free money!
Use the Turn2Us benefits checker which works out whether you’re eligible for any benefits. All you have to do is enter some details such as how much you earn, your council tax rate and any savings you have.
The calculator covers all of the major benefits including Universal Credit and it subsidiary benefits like Working Tax Credit, Council Tax, Housing Benefit, Pension Credit and Child Tax Credit. Benefits rules change all the time so there’s a good chance that even if you weren’t eligible a few years ago, you could be now.
According to Turn2Us, there’s more than £10 billion worth of tax credits and benefits in the UK going unclaimed. So check out our article on claiming what’s rightfully yours.
Mylostaccount.org.uk– find money in dormant bank accounts
This is a free online service that will search through bank and building society records for you to see if you have any money lying around in a forgotten account.
Official figures state that up to £850 million of our own money is lying in inactive current, savings and building society accounts, so it’s definitely worth checking.
Always give as many details as possible, including maiden names and previous addresses in order to increase your chances of finding a lost account.
Find out more ways to find secret money you didn’t know about here
..and yet more ideas…
If you like the online money makers we’ve featured here, you’ll love our fab article 10 easy ways to make quick cash.
It’s got speedy, simple and effective ways to make money – take a look yourself to see why it’s our most popular article!
Ebay have just changed their rules so that lots of items have to be offered ‘post free’.Most of my items are VHS tapes,which you can buy at car boots and charity shops for a few pence,and add the fact that I am charged 10p for each listing,when I incorporate the P&P charges on to my selling price I am left will little chance of a sale.In fact, if I re-list my items on expiry, I actually make a loss.I am now looking for a site to sell my goods where the seller is treated more fairly.
dose any one know where i can be paid to view trailers
I have been with Toluna for months and find them a complete waste of time. I have never got anything out of them and I am fed up getting half way through a survey to be told it is either full up or they don’t need any more responses from people in my ‘group’ – whatever that is. It can take up a lot of time and, for me, has given me absolutely nothing in return. You end up giving a lot of very personal information out which I’m sure is of value to marketeers but in my opinion Toluna… Read more »
I have found toluna to be very good, I have earned a total of £90 with them, great if you want to get dvds from hmv for answering some questions! 😀
I totally agree, I dont know what has happened to this site it used to be one of the best. I have had nothing but problems with them since around August last year. I currently have around 109,000 points which I have been trying to claim my rewards, their website won’t let me claim them and when I contact them to ask why, I either get no reply or they are ‘looking in to it’ and this has been going on months. I feel cheated at the moment as I have put my valuable time and effort into completing their… Read more »
Trying to find info. regarding cut price avon cosmetics
I got stung with re-occuring charges from a website claiming to help make you money just like Maddy. Be careful with these websites cause they tell you are getting a free cd all you have to do is pay postage but word it in such a way that you are entering a monthly scheme that you have to pay £50-£100 per month.
If anyone has good proven money making schemes I would be interested in trying. Have tried many but non successful so far.
I have just been made redundant and am now looking for ways to earn a living. I do not know what to do as times are hard. I would like to do market research can any one tell me which is the best earner.
Many thanks Paul
Rob, I saw that and did the gullible thing of signing up and paying the $1+ fee on my credit card – nearly 3 weeks later got a CD entitled e-millionaire, with two American geeks talking about making money I think – to be honest lost interest cos their voices were monotonous and don’t think they were really telling you anything useful, or direct about making money – and then found a charge from them on my next credit card statement for about £31.00 – then they tried it the next month, but my card company rang me about it,… Read more »
Don’t give your credit card details – I got stung by that. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is a scam.
can anyone tell me if this money making scheme that google is always advertising is ligit or not, sounds too good to be true to be paid sinply for copying and pasting http addresses for them, but i suppose someone has to help them build up their directories?!! a few of the advertisers for it want me to pay $0.99 for shipping of the information/starter kit by credit card, not happy about that?! advice would be appreciated
Hi, This site is brills. I will be looking at some of these sites. I have been selling on ebay, but recently haven’t been successful especially with charges. Will now try greenmetropolis.com and hope I am luckier. Didn’t realise there was so many different sites.
Check out the above site. I am also trying the internet marketing thingy, getting there slowly. For the above site I got a free website, free domaain name of my choice and paid for hosting. You get video tutorials to help you.
Donald