Got a spare room? Use it to make some money

Part of making your money work for you is getting paid for something which you either already own or already do.  In this case, what I mean is why not rent out your room.  There are a few ways in which you can do this and it has become easier especially since the government allows you earn £4250 tax free from doing so.  Watch this space in future as there have been numerous petitions to up this limit to £7500 as we have a shortage of homes particularly in bigger cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham to name a few.  Renting out your spare room can be done on your terms and need not involve problems galore.  

1. For the non techi person it's easy to advertise in a local shop window or local newspaper.  If you have a University near by or (teaching) hospital, students and nurses are always looking for reasonable accommodation.  

2. Spareroom.co.uk is one of many websites where you can advertise your room.  You can add you listing in one of 2 ways, a paid listing (early bird) or a free listing.  The early bird listing allows your advert to be seen by anybody who has just registered to the site, otherwise only after 7 days will your listing be accessible to all.  You can specify the kind of person you want, male/female, age range, even sexual orientation if you happen to have a preference.  You can also specify if your room is only available Monday - Friday (which would allow your privacy on a weekend).  London in particular has an abundance of workers who need accommodation just for week days only, generally, commuting from their home is just too far everyday.

3. Another option, which in my opinion is the best, is Airbnb  Here, you post photos and description of your room and all of the facilities in your home which guests are allowed to use, i.e. wifi, washing machine, parking etc.  You also state what the price is per night (this you decide).  The wonderful thing about airbnb is that you decide who you want to invite into your home and how many nights you want to let your room out for.  You have a calendar which is accessed by only you and on there you can block out any dates that you have friends and family visiting or if you merely want some peace and quiet. You can also set a minimum requirement stay (or max for that matter) and can add a cleaning fee.  Host (that's you) service fees apply and is 3% of the cost of the reservation a guest makes.  That makes it £3 for every £100 of a reservation.  They will even send out a photographer to take some professional looking shots of your home and add them to a site for you all for free.  This is great not only because you don't have to do very much to set up your listing, but also so that potential guests can see that your property really does look like that and has been verified.

Want to make money for doing nothing (or at the very least not doing very much) then this is the way.  If you make less money than the threshold I mention before then it doesn't need to be claimed to the tax man either - bonus.