How I Made An Extra £195 in Side Hustle Income in July

Jessica Chatwin
Aug 7
6 min read

Updated: Sep 4

For years, I have experimented with different side hustles to earn some extra money on the side in my spare time. Over time, I have found ones that I like and that work for me, and found others that don't suit my lifestyle or weren't worth the time investment required.

The extra £194.93 that I made in July was comprised of some of my trusted favourites, and one new source of income - credit card cashback.

Below is a summary of my extra income for July 2025:

Method	Total
Reselling online	£163.47
Credit card cashback	£15
Surveys	£3.39
Bank interest	£12.85
Dividends	£0.22

Reselling

I started reselling on eBay back in 2018, so while I am not an expert by any means, I do consider myself fairly experienced. I have since expanded into copying listings across to Vinted, and more recently, Facebook Marketplace.

Here is a breakdown of the reselling total:

6 eBay orders, total: £57.14
2 Vinted sales, total: £20.80 (one order was a bundle)
2 Facebook Marketplace sales, total: £110
1 eBay order return requested, refund issued: £11
eBay postage total cost: £13.47

This months sales totals are net income, after any selling fees and postage costs. I promote all listings on eBay with a flexible marketing rate of between 8-13%. This helps to drive views and boost sales, but I then pay an additional fee as a percentage of the end sale total. On Vinted, I offer 30% if people buy more than one item in a bundle. This helps to drive more views on items, but also doesn't cost me much as the two items can be packaged in the same parcel, saving both time and money.

July's total was helped by two large sales through Facebook Marketplace - one of £40 and one of £70! Facebook Marketplace is a new platform for me, but has been ideal for bulkier or more valuable items that would require more expensive postage. I have sold two items for a total of £110 since listing the first item on 12th July! Excited to see the future sales that can come from this site.

The amount of time spent on this side hustle ranges quite significantly. I spent a decent amount of time on it this month as I took photos of quite a few new items to list, researched how much I could be uploading these new items for, then uploading these to Facebook Marketplace. I now have a collection of items to add to eBay and copy across to Vinted, but I find this process a little more time-consuming, so have saved it for a rainy day for now. This month comprised 10 orders, across different sites, and one refund. Each of these items needed to be found, packaged, and posted within around two days of the order. There is also the communication with customers, offering discounts and responding to offers and questions about items. In particular, the two Facebook Marketplace orders required more communication than the other orders as we had to organise collection of the items.

Credit card cashback

This source of income is much more passive, the most passive that income can be!

I recently opened and started using a new credit card which offers 2% cashback on spending up to a total of £15 per month. I made a conscious effort to use this new card to maximise the cashback allowance, setting it as my default card on Apple Pay. I booked a holiday this month and my spending was higher than average too, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had achieved the maximum cashback total.

I do try to remember to use cashback apps like Quidco and TopCashback to maximise cashback on everyday spending, but having cashback included automatically through the card ensures that you never recieve the order confirmation email and then remember that you should have put the order through Quidco - which definitely happens too often!

Surveys

This source of income looks very low, and it is, but this is one side hustle that I have played around with a lot over the years. Surveys and app rewards can be so time consuming, with little reward for the time invested.

I now pretty much exclusively use Google Rewards and Amazon Shopper Panel as survey apps for extra income. These offer good compensation for your time, with short surveys that do not lag or crash while completing them.

Google Rewards offers ad hoc surveys with a minium pay out of 8p per survey, which usually comprise only one question, but maximum around four or five questions, which are then compensated more generously. You can cash out the total to your bank account once your total earned is £2 or more. I reached £2.04 on my account balance this month, so cashed out this total. I only include cash outs in my monthly earning, not individual survey earnings as I cannot withdraw this.

Amazon Shopper Panel also offers ad hoc rewards, with higher pay outs averaging 45p per survey, again with around one to three questions. This is paid out at the end of each month to your Amazon account as vouchers. They also offer receipt scanning for extra rewards, but this scheme is currently not accepting new participants.

Bank interest

I have been using Zopa Bank for my savings for a couple of years now and have not encountered any problems at all. They offer competitive interest rates across a range of products, offering pots to split your savings across different goals, locked pots with a higher interest rate for goals that are further away, and ISA pots with a higher rate for long-term growth. I also use their access regular saver which offers 7.5% AER interest, with a maximum monthly contribution of £300, which I take full advantage of.

This total interest was split across multiple pots of savings that I keep within my Zopa account. This source of income will increase as I add more to my savings.

Dividends

This is another newer source of income. I have a small amount of money invested through Trading 212, mostly to explore how this platform works and what style of investing suits me.

I like to invest in dividend paying stocks as it is so satisfying to see the notification pop up every so often, even if it is a tiny amount! It helps to make me feel that I am making progress in learning about how investing works. I reinvest any dividends paid out to increase my total value invested.

Consistency is key, so this source of income will increase as I invest more over time.

Why side hustles matter to me

While July's extra income of £195 isn't life changing by any means, it is meaningful. It is extra money that can go straight towards achieving my long-term goals and increasing my financial flexibility. An extra couple of pounds each month also helps so much with mental wellbeing, offering a sense of control over finances that can feel so uncontrollable in our society of rising living costs and consumer culture.

Final thoughts

Everyone has different journeys, and not every side hustle will be a match to their personality and skills. I like to feel that my time is being spent wisely, hence my focus on low-effort passive methods, and more hands-on choice of reselling. It is definitely worth the time and effort to try new methods to see which ones fit with your lifestyle and time availability.

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