Is this the Best Way to Make Money Online in the UK?

This week we received an email from a reader that we’ll call Sarah, who said:

“I am a single mother and unfortunately out of work. It’s now got to the time where I’m really needing a source of income.

I’ve read on other websites that matched betting is the best way to earn money online in the UK, which is how I ended up finding Beating Betting.

The problem is I know nothing about betting or sport at all.

Will this still be the best way I can earn money from home, or would you advise looking to something else?”

Similar emails have been sent to us hundreds of times, so we thought it was time to put a post together looking at the key questions from this common email:

• Is matched betting the best online income method this year?
• Is it suitable for people that know nothing about sports or betting?
• Is is suitable for those that have other responsibilities; i.e. baby duties or study?
• What other good ways are there to earn money from home?

We answer all and more in this post, so keep reading to the end.

Is it the best way to earn money online this year?

Matched betting is something that we’ve been teaching on this site since the beginning of 2016, and ever since then we’ve been imploring people that need a bit of cash to give it a go.

Our stance has never changed:

If you’re looking to turn £100 into a few thousand pound, this is by far the best way to do so if you’re based in the UK.

Whilst it may appear slightly complex at first, it absolutely isn’t.

For many people, matched betting can provide a primary source of income for a year or two. It can provide an exceptional ‘side hustle’ or secondary income for a long period of time, boosting your income by a large tax-free amount.

However, it isn’t going to be something that gets you rich. It isn’t going to be something that makes you hundreds of thousands of pounds.

So, when you’re looking to make money online, it all depends on your goals that you’re associating with that. Are you looking to get rich? If so, this probably isn’t the method for you.

However, if you’re looking for the most effective way to earn up to a couple of thousand pounds extra each month, it is absolutely the best method; especially in terms of risk and reward, and for return on investment.

Is it suitable for people that don’t know about sports or betting?

Yes. Absolutely.

If you don’t know about sports, it’s potentially even more suitable for you.

This is because the whole system works on simple numbers and software; you don’t need to have opinions on different teams, and you won’t be tempted to gamble unnecessarily like some people do on their matched bets when they think a certain outcome is more likely to happen. The types that are prone to gambling instead of following the system generally don’t understand the reason the underlying maths works (because you are getting more value than if you were to gamble).

The fact that you have never placed a bet before can be learned and resolved with a few clicks of a button – literally!

Is it suitable for those with other responsibilities?

If you are a mother or father of a newborn baby, or if you’re a student, or if you work varying shift patterns, or anything similar to those things, the type of additional work you need is something that is entirely flexible.

That’s exactly what this offers.

You can place bets in the day time, in the evenings, at the weekend. You can place bets on football, horse racing, tennis; there are sports going on at all times and you can utilise whichever ones are most suitable for your schedule.

There aren’t many other opportunities out there that can be relatively lucrative and allow you to work your own hours, with no boss, and not be a dodgy online scam.

Alternative Online Money Making Methods

We believe that matched betting is the number one option for 99% of people in the UK, however, some people will be looking for alternative ideas.

The main reasons that people require an alternative are:

• They’ve already done matched betting for a number of years and now require something new
• They simply don’t like matched betting
• Their profit goals exceed £2,000 per month
• They’re not in the UK

Share Your Skills

If you have a skill (or if you don’t, learn one) then there’s a large chance that someone out there will pay you to make use of it.

It could be a practical skill such as making or creating something, or it could be something less tangible like consultancy in a wide variety of fields.

Now, we wouldn’t recommend studying a topic for a few days and then deciding to offer consultancy on it, but if you can spend enough time learning the ins and outs of a market or industry then chances are you’ll know more than the average person about that topic. Your knowledge could become valuable, meaning you can charge a fee for it.

There are many sites out there that allow you to sell your skills; sites like Fiverr, Upwork, etc.

However…

Aim higher.

You don’t have to start at the very bottom and try to work your way up when you’re the one in control.

Sure, sites like those listed above could be useful in reducing your risk and helping you to find clients a little easier to start with, but you should look to have your own website and build your own portfolio so that you take in a larger percentage of revenues and profits.

People will also be able to find your business, over time, if you’re getting your brand out there.

The investment needed and ongoing overheads are incredibly small for business setups like this, so the risk is really low. The main associated cost is your time.

Sell Your Work

Your skills don’t have to be used for creating things for other businesses; why not create things that are sold directly to customers?

There’s eBay, Amazon, Etsy and various other marketplaces that you can make use of if you want to immediately start selling products that you create.

Again, your ‘work’ may not necessarily be a tangible object that is used or displayed regularly; your skill could become the product.

This might sound confusing, but what if you wrote a book about your knowledge?

Or what if you created a course or tutorial that detailed your expertise?

Amazon is again an option for selling a book you create, then you have options like Udemy for creating and hosting courses you make.

Or, you could try to gain full control and create your own site – we’d recommend using WordPress (self-hosted version, requiring you to buy a domain and hosting) and we have absolutely no incentive to recommend this; we just love it for ease and ability to create the front for an online business in a day.

The trade off with creating your own site is that you’ll need a bit of money to invest up front (£100, typically, for a domain, hosting and a nice theme, with potential for extra investments if you require extremely specific add-ons), and with using an existing marketplace platform you don’t require this.

You’ll also have to work harder to be found upfront, but the pay-off down the road may be worth it.

Amazon FBA

Mentioning the online beast that is Amazon one last time here, ‘FBA’ – or Fulfilment by Amazon – allows you to sell products without having to worry about delivery or customer service.

FBA allows you to send all of your products to one of the internet giant’s many warehouses and they will take care of the rest for you.

This is different to listing your product on Amazon and fulfilling shipment and service for the order yourself, but will obviously have a fee associated with it too; is the trade-off in cost worth the trade-off in time? That’s something for you to work out, but many people find this to be a much less stressful option.

Affiliate Marketing

If you don’t want to create or buy your own products, you may find it profitable to recommend the products of other people.

Starting a review or tutorial website may be hard work, but you could find yourself earning a pretty penny without ever needing to invest in products yourself – although you may need to buy products to review. It’s rare that brand new websites will manage to get free products for an honest analysis.

If you join affiliate schemes – Amazon Associate‘s is extremely popular – you will be able to get a commission on referred customers.

Sometimes you may not even need a website; popular social media channels can also be successful affiliate channels.

Here are some other interesting ways to make money online from makeawebsitehub.com.

Wrapping Up

Above are four separate ideas, alongside matched betting, but the truth is that those three ideas could span into tens or even hundreds of other ideas with the potential to be extremely lucrative.

We don’t want to waste your time by recommending low quality, low return ideas like filling in online surveys for pocket change or reviewing online music for even less, just so that we can title this post as ’50 ideas…’ or ‘100 ideas…’ when in reality, the vast majority of them aren’t worth your time reading about, let alone trying out.

If we find other opportunities then we will add them to this post but in the mean time, try some of these out and if you have any questions or suggestions then let us know in the comments below!