From renting out your spare room to cashback on your bills: make money while you’re asleep

Just because you’re unconscious doesn’t mean you can’t bring in some extra cash.

Plenty of people up and down the country are having to get used to changes to their usual work routine, working from home rather than heading into the office due to the situation with Covid-19.

But how do you fancy making money while you aren’t even conscious?

That’s the opportunity being offered by interior firm Hilarys.co.uk, which is recruiting what it terms a ‘sleep executive’.

The firm is setting up a new control area in its offices in Nottingham, where the new hire will be kitted out in a sleep monitoring device and sent to get some shut eye. 

The lucky candidate will then be tested on the quality of their sleep in various conditions, including the use of blackout curtains, and different light and sound conditions.

And once they wake up, they’ll fill in a questionnaire so that they can feedback on their sleep.

What’s more, there’s some decent money on offer too, with a salary of £24,000 pro rata being paid to the sleep executive.

Now, I quite like the idea of knowing my bank balance is getting a boost while I’m enjoying a bit of shut-eye, though a trip to Nottingham on a somewhat regular basis to be observed catching my forty winks isn’t that practical an option.

But there are ways to build a passive income to go alongside your normal salary, so that you still bring cash in, even if you’re in the land of slumber.

Renting out your space

If you happen to have a bit of spare room inside or outside your property, then it’s relatively straightforward to turn it into an income stream.

For example, let’s say you have a driveway at the front of your home which you aren’t using. With the likes of JustPark and ParkOnMyDrive you can let that space out to other motorists.

Looking on JustPark, properties down the road for me are letting their spaces out for around £6 a day ‒ not exactly a life-changing sum, but it all adds up.

And if you live near a particularly in-demand area, like an airport or a sports stadium, then the sums you can charge become far more significant. We’ve written in the past about a lady renting out her space near Twickenham for £15 a day.

It doesn’t have to end with your parking space either. If you have a spare bedroom, you could let it out whether on a short-term basis through a site like Airbnb, or on a more long-term basis by taking in a lodger.

And even if you don’t fancy welcoming someone new into your home, you can still put that space to work by renting it out as storage, through the likes of Storemates and Stashbee. 

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Get paid for paying your bills

A very easy way to build a passive income is to ensure that you get paid for spending money as you usually do. 

There are plenty of different ways of doing this. For example, you can move your bank account to one which pays you cashback on your direct debits. 

These include the Santander 123 account, which pays 1% cashback on your water and Council Tax bills, 2% on energy bills (as well as life and home insurance premiums from Santander) and 3% on mobile, home phone, broadband and paid-TV deals.

Check out our guide to the best bank accounts for cashback.

On top of this, you can switch to using a cashback credit card to pay for your various expenditures and use a cashback site whenever spending online. 

Put your money to work

Finally, it’s worth reviewing exactly what you are doing with your savings and investments, and whether your money is really working hard enough.

It’s no secret that savings rates are laughable, and have been for some time. So if you want to actually get something back from that cash, you may need to explore other options, which could deliver something of an income.

This could include peer-to-peer or other alternative investments, or sticking to investing in firms that pay dividends.

Obviously, this is going to be riskier than a savings account (you may have noticed the huge falls in most stock markets recently), where the money is subject to some protection from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. 

If you’re going down the peer-to-peer route, it’s worth researching what protection is in place should borrowers fall behind on their loans, as many providers have a safety net which will ensure you don’t lose out. 

For more read What you need to know about peer-to-peer risk.