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!
doesn’t anybody know a decent site where you can make money on-line, or any other ideas, why not everybody put something in, any ideas and see if we can make something of it. Say, going to a car-boot and maybe selling anything you get on e bay. Any other suggestions. cheers Terry
Great idea Terry. That’s the point of our Money-making Forum http://forum.moneymagpie.com/. Do put this comment on that and let’s see what people come back with.
HI i wanted to thank you so much. i signed up to surveyhead and valued opinions last summer and to date i have made £154 on surveyhead as well as £120 on valued opinons. It has been a great help while i have been unemployed and i encourage everyone to sign up to these two sites. i have tried most of them and these are the two i made the most consistant money from. It does take alot of perseverance and some months can be very slow. but if you keep at it all adds up
I tried the survey website thing and after many a survey and a long time I ended up with a £5 voucher…..so not for me then. LOL
But my website business is totally free to join, you don’t have to play, but good commissions are paid for anyone you can get to play online.
1 person playing both the UK and Euro Lotto would pay you £8 per month in commission. 2 people = £16 etc.
Your only problem is finding cheap or free ways to promote.
Click my name for website link.
.
What is the name of the website?
Hello,
I like the sound of Zopa and SliceThePie so I plan on hopping over to your reviews about those two.
In terms of surveys, I find LightSpeedPanel’s gone downhill somewhat; rewards less per survey and the minimum payout has been increased from £1 to £3.
I’ve taken part in a Saros Research session before and really liked it. Market research/focus group sessions are way more enjoyable than online surveys – pity it doesn’t happen more frequently.
Right, I’m off to go read about Zopa and Slice. Thanks for the informative post.
Take care…
looking to create a money making website,
a better website where i can earn more money
How do you intend to make money from your own site Krishna.
For the best site that pays well for online surveys is yougov. It is run by the government and pays 50 p – £1 for each survey you are invited to, with some not paying a fee and instead giving you free prize draw entry. You receive a cheque once you reach £50 (or 5000 points as known on the site) and they do send you the money. It does take a while to get to the £50 but it all adds up! If you sign up to the site please do so throught this link as I get a… Read more »
It’s not run by the government, Michelle, it’s an ordinary company like the other survey companies. I agree, though, it’s a good one to try.
I have been with YouGov for about 8yrs now and have only ever had 1 payment of £50, it can take years to reach this amount. They do however send you plenty of surveys for a prize draw which I have never won.
yougov is not run by the government! The government don’t run commercial sites…It’s a commercial company who just use the name yougov because most of their surveys are based on politics, so don’t be misled… Re the whole market research thing – you’re more likely to qualify for surveys if you use the latest gizmos, because those are what companies want to know about. One good site is Pinecone. You don’t get many surveys but they pay £3 into Paypal, no messing about with points that restrict where you spend them, no minimum before paying out, and they don’t seem… Read more »
I can see that you are an expert at your field! I am launching a website soon, and your information will be very useful for me.. Thanks for all your help and wishing you all the success in your business.
Missing names are new vista alive and valued opinions
These two pay well. I think they belong to the same company
I personally found Panelbase an utter waste of time. I was ‘invited’ to take part in a total of 12 survey, only to be informed they were either full up (just after I had started them) or even I wasn’t suitable after giving info for around 5 minutes! I cancelled last week as it would take forever to reach £10 and basically not worth it.