The debacle known as Brexit is upon us. The British people have spoken – one way or another – and the will – of some of them – is about to be implemented. We will leave the EU – one day – perhaps.
When? God only knows!
Whatever side you are on in this debate, we don’t actually know when it will happen or what will happen.
The truth is, we have experts, and I do mean real experts who have a good understanding of history, who also know what strong indicators look like, and have a good idea of what will happen.
These experts tell us that it isn’t going to be good. The pound will go up and down like a pair of sex workers undercrackers and there is a big risk that a lot jobs could be lost.
When jobs are lost and your only source of income is gone, you will default on your rent or mortgage payments and that will lead to arrears. Those arrears then lead to possible court action with either bailiffs taking your goods or you being evicted from your home.
If you are the homeowner you run the risk of losing your house completely to the bank as a repossession. You could then become homeless, placed on the very long que of waiting for local housing, which is in very short supply.
If you have children then the local authorities have to house you but with such short supply of ideal social housing you could be housed in cramp local hotels or bedsits with no real means of cooking or fending for yourselves.
Not a situation you want to be in. Not one you want to put your kids through.
Whatever you think the fallout will be from Brexit, whether you think it is all scaremongering or you are actually worried that you could lose your job or will be down on your monthly income somehow, you need to address those concerns and have some kind of contingency plan in place.
The Government may not have such plans ready but you most certainly should.
You cannot control what happens on a national level but you can and should manage your own personal situation.
The average rent for a 2 bedroom house in England is between £500 (lower quarter of the market) to £820 (higher quarter of the market). London itself can see averages for 2 bedroom houses between £1250 and £1730 per month.
For those who own their home, the average mortgage repayment is £669 per month.
Obviously yours may be different.
So for this article we are going to work on trying to earn an extra £600 a month from home.
This is very doable. You set your own target based upon your own needs. What is important here is that you try and earn enough to cover your mortgage or rent. Keeping a roof over your head and your family fed is the most important thing.
Before we get started, there are 2 things you need to do:
1 Set a target and work at it. If your rent or mortgage is £600 then that is your monthly goal. Add some for food and utility bills if you wish. Decide what it is that you need that month, work out how you are going to get it and get started.
Keep working at it until you have the money each month. If one month you do not hit the goal then do not panic as that will lead to fear. Just keep working and hustling.
2 Fight fear. DO NOT allow fear to take hold. Once fear has a grip and is in your head, it will make trying to find the money you need a lot harder.
Fear destroys.
It serves no real purpose unless you are in a life and death situation. It causes the fight or flight response to kick in which is useful if your life is in any real danger, but that is not often the case in modern Britain.
It won’t be nice but even if the worse case scenario happens, you will be alive and there is help to be had. Fear of the unknown is not going to help anyone.
The future is created by your daily actions and so worrying about a future you do not yet know is not helping you. In fact, that will determine a bad future.
Fear creates negative actions like apathy and burying your head in the sand. Those actions determine your future.
Control your own future.
Do not allow fear to take hold. Take positive action instead.
Plan Your Brexit Proofing Business
Making £600 a month is made easier if you have a plan. Use science or mathematics to help you come up with a plan of attack.
For example. If you need £600, 6 items priced at £100 will generate your money goal. But items priced at £10 will need to have 60 sold to make your monthly target.
Which is the easiest to sell?
Which items are people more likely to buy?
What do people need?
What are people willing to spend money on?
What will keep selling month after month?
Ok so let’s get right into it. You need to make some money to Brexit proof your rent and mortgage repayments.
How To Make An Extra £600 Per Month From Home
1. Reselling.
For this we suggest using eBay.
You can use also Amazon as they have a cool system which allows people to sell items through them. You send in your items, list them and they fulfill the orders on your behalf but that will require some setting up.
Ebay on the other hand doesn’t. You can open up an account and start listing items to sell right away. Ebay is great, there is a cost to selling on eBay but there is a cost to everything.
Consider this cost the rent and business rates of running a business. It would cost you a lot more to rent a stall or a shop premises to sell from.
There are two ways of looking at selling on eBay, selling things people need or selling things that people want. During hard times a lot of people curb their spending and only buy the things they need.
Is it best to focus on selling only items which people need?
It might be….but on the other hand, not everyone will be struggling for money and those people will want to buy things that they want.
This means that you can sell items which most people do not need and still make a profit.
In fact you might make more money for less work. This will give you the opportunity to sell higher priced items.
For example, items priced at £150 means that you only need to sell 5 a month to make your money goal. Make it 6 to cover your costs and fees.
You only have 5 – 6 items which need processing for delivery.
However if you sell items at £20, you need to sell 30 items to hit your £600 target.
That is 30 items which require processing.
I have written as if the items sold at £20 or £150 were 100% profit. Unless you are going to make items using materials you have sourced for free, you will not be selling items that are just purely profit.
Items will have a purchase price, they virtually all do. So if the item you sell at £150 cost you £50 to buy (£100 on top of that is still a fantastic profit) you will need to sell more items.
It’s the same with products that you sell for £20, if you bought those for £5 each then you will need to sell more to hit your monthly target. The more you need to sell the harder it may be.
Please bear that in mind.
If you can, find a product or products which will sell well meaning that you have less work to do. It is better for the soul, when you are hitting your monthly target and not feeling burnt out or exhausted from overworking you will be motivated to carry on.
But, if you are unable to find products which command a higher price, stick with it as you can still do very well on eBay. The screenshots above show two resellers – myself being one of them – selling well over £2000 worth of items in a two month period. My mortgage has been covered for more than a few months giving us some breathing space.
Pictures from @hampshireresellers Instagram
In the screenshot above we can see how the Hampshire Resellers buy up cheap items from car boot sales, charity shops and house clearance stores which they then resell on eBay for profit.
Often for fantastic profits.
If you find products which people want and need then you can do really well with reselling.
It is one you should consider as it is very easy and free to get started. All eBay fees are collected after you have sold items. The only initial outlay is from sourcing the items to sell.
2. Writing
This is a great business to be in. It can be hugely profitable if done right.
There are so many different services that fall under the writing banner. Some that will pay you well for very little work – as long as you find the right clients that is.
Thanks to the internet you now have access to millions of people and literally hundreds of platforms where you can offer your writing services.
People use specialist sites like UpWork, Fiver, PeoplePerHour and social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn to find work.
Companies and website owners want writers to write emails, sales letters, website content, blog posts, transcribe audio records, books, video scripts and more.
All you need is a laptop and an internet connection.
You do not necessarily need to buy writing software like MS Word or Scrivener, you can use Google Docs – which I am using to write this – which is free and is available to anyone with a Google account.
Prices for written content varies incredibly from one person to another. It can depend on how good you are as a writer but mainly it depends on the kind of service you offer and the results you can get for your client.
Mike Shreeve is a copywriter who specialises in writing emails for clients. It takes him roughly 30 minutes to write an email for which he will charge upto $250 (£189 at time of writing) per email.
Big companies send emails each week, many send them daily. Mike can command thousands of dollars each month from the email writing he does.
How?
The emails he writes are designed to get people to buy products and services. His clients have huge email lists and they want them to buy. Mike’s emails turns email readers into customers.
One email for which he is paid a couple of hundred dollars could potentially make the client several thousand dollars in sales. It is a huge return on investment.
The clients who makes thousands of dollars in sales from those emails do not quibble at paying people like Mike hundreds of dollars for their writing.
They don’t care how long it took for the writing to be done. Whether it took 30 minutes or 2 hours, it is not important to the client. They are more concerned with the financial results the writing delivers.
Even if you just made a measly £10 per writing task, you could still put hundreds of pounds extra into your bank each month. £10 writing gigs are usually articles with no more than 500 words. They can be written in minutes. A proficient writer can knock out several small articles each day.
Why write when you can talk?
Mike Shreeve does a lot of his writing while walking in nature. He doesn’t always sit at a laptop and write, he often talks into his mobile phone and transcribes the recordings using Rev.com.
Google Docs has a very smart speak to text app. Simply open up a Google Doc, talk into the microphone and watch the words magically appear on the screen. These incredible tools mean that you can make money with writing when normally you wouldn’t be able to.
Imagine making money, writing articles while taking the dog for a walk and not actually doing any physical writing!
Cool right?
Writing is a great way to make extra money and people can make a lot of money from it. But unlike reselling which you could start today, it may take some time to find good paying clients.
But once you do, the rewards can be well worth it.
3. Make & Sell Things
There are so many things that people can make and sell from home.
From furniture made with discarded scaffold boards and pallets to ‘worry monsters’ made from leftover materials.
The hardest part is trying to discover what it is that you can make and sell which:
- Offers you the most profit.
- Is easy to make with a fast turnaround.
- Is made from easy to source materials.
- Cheap to make.
- A lot of people want to buy.
If and when the Brexit shit hits the fan, people may cut back on their spending and that means that a lot of non-essential spending may be stopped. (If they want to save money then it should!)
So it is important that what you make is still going to appeal to a lot of people.
Whatever financial situation people find themselves in, there will always be birthdays, Christmas and other events which require the giving of gifts and presents.
No one likes to be seen as struggling or having the reputation of being tight when it comes to giving gifts to close friends and family.
This means that if you were able to make items which were suitable for gifts and could be personalised, then you have a huge potential pool of buyers.
There are so many cool and wonderful things that you can make and sell for some extra pounds each month. With a little bit of imagination and work you could be well on your way to generating a nice Brexit proofing side hustle.
The hardest part is deciding what to make and then making a start.
4. Sports Trading & Researched Based Gambling
**Disclaimer: Only do this once you have done plenty of practice on paper and you know what to do. Only attempt this with money you can afford to lose. DO NOT do it with money you desperately need for food or rent.**
Sports trading is a great way to make a lot of money, I say trading, technically it is classed as gambling yet at the same time it is not.
It is a different thing entirely.
Gambling is when you place a bet hoping that a specific result will happen… and then you leave it. At best it is an informed guess.
Sports trading is research focused.
Trades are placed ONLY when certain criteria is met which points at a possible result happening.
Sports traders do not just throw £50 on Liverpool to win against Barcelona in the Champions League just because they themselves are a Liverpool fan.
No, a sports trader would place a trade against their own team if the criteria pointed to them losing.
And it is not necessarily the final result they are waiting for that is important. It can be the short term result which really matters.
It Can All Be Over In Nine Minutes Flat.
For example: only a small percentage of football games result in there being a goal scored in the first 10 minutes. It is somewhere like 85% or higher of games do not have a goal scored in those first 10 minutes.
With that in mind, a football trader would compare the match odds between the two teams. Using several websites they would study the two teams recent past performance, specifically their goal scoring.
They would see if the two teams are scoring a lot of goals and if they had recently scored goals within the first 10 minutes of a game.
If they were happy with their research and that the markets had the right odds and liquidity (money in the markets) the sports trader would place their bet, often for a considerable amount of money.
They would sit and wait and watch the clock count down until 9 minutes had elapsed. Once the clock hit 9 minutes, they would then trade out.
If their research was good and no surprise goals had occurred, and there had been the expected move in the odds then the sports trader would cash out and walk away with a nice lump sum of money for very little work.
Sports traders can easily earn a days or even a weeks wages from just one football match. Professional sports traders can earn thousands of pounds each month using websites like BetFair.
BetFair is a betting exchange and not a bookmakers. They allow people to bet with each other. A user can place both a back bet and a lay bet which a general offline book makers never did. It is a middleman service which takes a cut from all transactions.
TAX FREE Winnings
The money generated from sports trading is generally TAX FREE. Because sports trading uses gambling sites and requires people to place bets it is classed as gambling and is exempt from TAX.
Unless it becomes your main source of income. (Typical TAX office, changing the rules when it suits them!)
If you do it while having a main source of income like working a job then your winnings are TAX free.
Profits are made by riding the odds. A professional sports trader will place large sums of money in a specific market and wait for the odds to change generating a profit which they lock in when they cash out.
BetFair has a lot of different markets and so a person can trade across a whole range of outcomes. If two teams were meeting up and they were of equal quality, and their recent games ended with no more than 2 goals scored by either team, a sports trader could trade using the Under/Over markets. As long as the odds were right.
For example: two teams are meeting, neither have played in a game which has had more than 2 goals scored in the last 5 matches. A sports trader may look at placing trades in the Under 2.5 Goals market.
If two teams meeting up had a recent match history where the majority of their games ended with 2 goals or more, a seasoned sports trader may consider using the Over 1.5 Goals market – as long as the odds were in their favour.
A sports trader would trade out after a set time and walk away with whatever profit he or she is left with. They DO NOT wait for the game to finish as that is not trading, that is gambling.
If a trader is forced to sit out a game then the game has gone against them. An unexpected goal has been scored and they have had to place trades in other markets to ensure that they do not lose their money and finish with either a small profit or break even.
This is called a trade recovery, and it is not for the fainthearted.
Having to place many bets in order to recover your money requires a lot of money in your BetFair account.
A trader set to lose £200 could end up using several thousand pounds placed across a lot of different markets, all counteracting each other out so when the final whistle is blown, they end up not losing a penny. They may even make a small profit.
It is a very nervous situation to be in and an unseasoned trader may require a clean set of pants after their first trade recovery!
If you fancy trying your hand at generating TAX Free money using sports trading then please practice and learn as much as you can before you start using real money.
If you want to earn TAX free money but do something less risky than full on sports trading, you may want to try match betting or follow a tipster services.
5. Teach Something You Know Or Can Do
Teaching can be very lucrative. Depending on what you are teaching, you can be paid very well for one on one lessons or you can teach several people all at the same time and charge a little less.
You only need to have 5 people paying you £20 a lesson to be making an extra £100. A lesson can be as short or as long as you want it to be. Most lessons are between 30 minutes to an hour. It wouldn’t be too hard to do more than 1 lesson a week.
Today, we have access to the internet allowing us to be able to teach people in varying numbers using many different platforms and tools.
Tools such as Skype and Google Hangouts will allow us to teach face to face with one or several people while platforms like Patreon or a personal website allows people to share articles and content which can only be viewed by people who have paid.
Webinars and live streaming lessons are very popular today and there are many great webinar platforms that you can use to host your own online classes.
With webinar software and Google Hangout live streaming via YouTube (This one is free!) you can reach several hundred people at one time.
If teaching online is not for you, you could teach one on one at your home, or you could hire a small room to do several people.
So if you were to do 2 lessons a week with 5 paying customers per lesson paying £20 each, you could earn £800 extra per month.
The sums add up. Finding the people to teach is going to be the hardest part. But there are millions of people who speak English and have access to the internet. It is very possible to find enough people who want to learn what you can teach them and pay you for it.
If you do not fancy going live there is another way of teaching and that is to create an online course.
Create Your Own Online Course
Record a series of videos and create some written content to accompany the videos and host them on your own website or a platform like Patreon.
Further Reading: Make Money With Patreon.com. Turn Your Creative Spirit Into Pounds
Charge people a one off fee to access your course or a smaller monthly fee for access to an ongoing membership website.
Patreon will allow you to set different tiers so that you can offer more or less for various prices.
Creating your own your own online course and membership website is not as hard as you may think. It is quite easy. The tools we have to hand today puts us in a position our parents never had.
I created my own course and you can read more about that here: The Viral Code.
My course The Viral Code teaches people how easy it is to build a profitable website. John and I worked on a few profitable websites and developed a lot of new skills along the way.
These skills allowed me to create a profitable online course.
You will have something that you can teach, there is something that you know and can do which other people would want to learn.
So what can you teach?
Grab a pen and some paper and write down a list of the skills and knowledge that you know possess. There is a chance that there is something in that list which you could teach people for a fee.
Subjects often taught on and offline are:
- How to play an instrument such as a guitar or the piano.
- Singing.
- Music production and engineering.
- Speak a different language.
- Computer coding, languages and sciences.
- Building trades.
- Writing, creative writing, copy writing.
- Psychology.
- Sciences.
- Sports.
- Yoga and Tai Chi.
- Meditation.
- Exercise.
- Weight loss.
- Life coaching and motivation.
- Wood working.
- and many many more… way too many to list here!
So there you have it. 5 ways that you can Brexit proof your mortgage or rent repayments.
Sometimes saving money is harder than actually making more and with the tools and technology we have today, making money is a lot easier than it ever has been.
If you want to learn how to make money, save money and generally manage your money better as well as join a growing community of fellow Smashers with the opportunity to enter competitions and challenges with prizes then join the SmarterCash forum here: (Coming Soon)
