How to Make Money

The secret to making money isn't working at a high-paying job, it’s finding creative solutions to people’s problems, and it doesn't take a fancy degree to do that. To get your creative juices flowing, check out these common and not-so-common ways of lining your pockets. Below that, you’ll also find more general financial advice as well as some money-making ideas for kids.

1. Buy underpriced used books. Outfit a phone or PDA (personal data assistant) with a scanner, scan the ISBN numbers of books at used bookstores and thrift shops, and compare the asking prices with what the books are selling for on a site like Amazon. Whenever you get a good hit (which won’t be often but, since the process is fast, won’t take long, either), buy the book and resell it online. Be discreet about this, as the store managers probably won’t like what you’re doing.

2.Bargain-hunt at yard and thrift sales. If you have a bit of knowledge in a particular area (ex. Taxco Mexican silver, action figures, classic National Geographics) or even just a good eye for quality, visit private sales early and often to find unexpected deals.

5 easy ways to make money quickly

Online surveys

An increasingly popular way for students to make money is to fill out online surveys in their spare time. Research companies are always recruiting new members to answer surveys and test new products.

For a few minutes of form filling, you can make a couple of quid which is paid as cash or in rewards. You can make up to £3 for some surveys!

A few good ones to try are: Toluna, Vivatic, The Opinion Panel, MySurvey, YouGov, Valued Opinions, Pinecone, iPoll, SurveyBods, Global Test Market, Hiving, PanelBase, YourWord, Harris Poll, IPSOS, New Vista.

Paid for searching the web

Interested in earning cash for doing what you already do online? This has to be one of the easiest methods of making money online without really any effort or change in your behavior.

This innovative idea by Qmee.com rewards you for searching in Google, Bing or Yahoo. You just install a simple add-on to your browser and when you conduct a search there may be a few sponsored results alongside your normal search.

Each Qmee result has a cash reward attached – if you are interested in it simply click on it and collect your reward.

The best thing is there is no minimum to cashout – our first one was just 72p wired to our Paypal account. You also have the option to donate it to charity.

Sign up now for free and start earning from your own searches! Click here to start.

Social Investment Networks

The historically hard-to-break world of investing in stock markets and currencies has been cracked wide open. Today there is no need to be a fat cat or fund the yachts of Wolf of Wall Street style stock brokers. You can do it all yourself with the help of free online market trading platforms.

Having spent many hours researching this new opportunity, I’ve been experimenting with eToro.com which has over 4 million users worldwide. It was recently featured in the BBC 2 documentary “Traders: Millions by the Minute” and the Financial Times.



One of the best things on eToro is the CopyTrader feature. This lets you literally see, follow and copy the investments of other top performing traders. There’s also lots of training material and videos to help you out, and it’s free to create an account and use.

Start trading with a reasonable deposit and learn the ropes slowly. I think $200 is a good amount to get the most out of the learning curve by trying out a few different markets. If nothing else you’ll learn a great deal about various investments and industries.

Warning: trading can be volatile and you can lose money, so don’t throw your life savings into it!

Mobile phone recycling

See how much you can get for your old mobile phone using our in-house mobile phone price comparison tool! Maybe ask your parents if they have any lying around too.

You can get some good money and help the environment by recycling mobile phones with certain companies listed on the comparison tool. Most phones are shipped off to Asia to be dismantled and we know of at least one student who received a £120 cheque in return.

‘Get Paid To’ sites

Similar to making money from online surveys, GPT sites reward you in cash and vouchers for completing various offers or activities online.

The most popular sites today are Toluna, Swagbucks.com, InboxPounds and PaidOffers.

Exciting update! We’ll soon be launching our own GPT service for our readers. Invites will be limited and UK only, please join our mailing list if you’re interested in hearing once it’s live: