Fifteen ways to make money to fill your fridge: make £300/$500 per month

Editor’s note: This is the first of three articles on different ways to make money. Here we list fifteen different ways to earn enough to fill your fridge with food for a month. We’ve assumed that the average family can do this on about £300/$500 per month. Have a look at the list and feel free to add to it in the comments. Please share it with your friends if you think they could benefit from it.

I know. Some may think that this is being too generous.

One could fill their fridge with food for a month on much less than £300/$500. A friend of mine does; she feeds her family of three on about £20/$33 per week; now this is less than £100/$167 per month.

This takes ingenuity, organisation and time I don’t have; I suspect you may not have all these either. We spend about £300/$500 per month on food: we are two adults and a teenage boy. We often have our grown up sons around and we also like to cook for family and friends when I’m not travelling.

Let’s agree to be generous without being wasteful and assume that an average family needs £300/$500 to fill in their fridge with food for a month.

Now to the important part. Here are fifteen ways to make money to fill your fridge with food for a month.

1. Walk dogs for your neighbours. You can charge £5 per dog per walk. If you walk three dogs, once a day, five days a week in a month you will earn exactly £300.
2. Dog-sit for busy professionals. Dog sitting one dog can bring you as much as £18 per day. Assuming you sit a dog five days a week you can make £360 in a month.
3. Do gardening. Gardening is paid at about £10 per hour. Assuming that you do it for four hours twice a week, you can make £320 in a month. If you are really smart you’ll take the garden waste with you, compost it and sell to people who love their gardens. Remember that a business that creates value from waste is hard to fail?
4. Mend computers. Everyone uses computers; most people don’t understand how they work. If you are good with hardware and/or software you can spread the word and start a little business on the side. This one is hard to cost but if you are good you could easily make £300 per month.
5. Deal in electric kettles and toasters. We leave in times when most small electronics is not worth mending. The skill of doing it is going as well. Start collecting broken electric kettles and toasters, mend them and sell them at a garage sale (table top sale). Hard to cost but can fill the fridge and then some.
6. Become a general handy person. Most people don’t have the skills or the time to do minor work on their houses, cars and fences. You could earn enough to stock up the fridge by mastering some skill and spreading the word.
7. Clean houses. This is a trade with very bid turnover and if you are good cleaning it’s worth a go. Cleaning private houses you can make £10 – £12 per hour. Cleaning four hours per day, two days per week can bring you between £320 and £384 per month.
8. Do small household chores for older people. This is not like looking after old people but there comes a point where they need help with shopping, ironing, cleaning etc. You can probably reach some kind of regular arrangement where for £20 per week you can do certain chores. You can do more than one household.
9. Make cakes. This is a rare and valued skill. If you are good at that you can make cakes for occasions or even sell them to the local coffee bars; something that can fill more than your fridge.
10. Teach a musical instrument. You can earn about £30 per hour teaching music privately. If you teach only three hour per week this will bring you £360 per month.
11. Teach a school subject. Most middle class children in the UK are tutored. This means that there is quite a bit of work for tutors in the main subjects – maths, English and sciences. This is about £20 per hour (depending on qualifications, experience and success). Four hours per week can bring you £320.
12. Write a column for the local newspaper. This can pay well but needs experience, contacts and a bit of luck. It also needs you to be the kind of person that will pick up the phone and make some phone calls.
13. Edit overseas students’ essay. This can be very lucrative if you are a good editor. Editing a 2,000 word essay can earn you up to £80. This means that editing four essays per month will earn you £320.
14. Write for blogs and websites. There is a growing demand for copy writers, I believe, because of the move of commerce to the Internet. Even a starting writer can earn between £20 and £30 for a 600-700 words post (article).
15. Become a mystery shopper. This has always been shrouded with mystery for me (pun intended, of course) but I know people who made very decent side income doing it. You only have to enjoy shopping and have a bit of time.

Have you tried any of these ideas to make money? Do you know of other ideas to make £300/$500 per month? Please share these in the comments.

photo credit: bbum via photopin cc