A number of stock trading apps have sprung up over the last few years and competition between them is fierce. In an effort to attract customers Freetrade and Trading 212 offer free shares when you sign up using a referral link and make a small deposit. These free shares can be worth up to £200. You can cash out as soon as you receive your free share and pocket it’s value, plus whatever you deposited! You can then make even more money by referring your friends. As long as they sign up using your referral link they’ll receive a free share and you’ll get one too! To find out how to get Freetrade and Trading 212 free shares follow the instructions below:

Trading 212 Free Shares

Free share link: Trading 212 free share link*
Deposit amount: £1
Value of free share: Up to £100

To make sure your free share has tracked I’d recommend using the link above on a desktop laptop or PC. I’ve heard reports of people not receiving their free shares when signing up on mobile devices so to be on the safe side it’s best to do it via desktop. You should see a banner at the top of the page that says, “You were invited to Trading 212 Invest. Get a free share worth up to £100. Open an account now! The promotion is valid only for Invest and ISA accounts and does not apply for CFD accounts.” All you need to do is sign up, deposit £1 into an Invest or ISA account and you should receive your free share within 3 business days. You’ll then be able to refer your friends and earn more free shares!

Freetrade Free Shares

Free share link: Freetrade free share link*
Deposit amount: £1
Value of free share: £3 – £200

Freetrade works in a very similar way and offers a free share worth between £3 and £200 if you sign up using a referral link. The free share link above should bring you to a page that says, “Enter your email to create your Freetrade account and be eligible to get a free share worth between £3 and £200.” Once you’ve confirmed your email address and signed up you can deposit £1. You’ll also need to fill out a W-8BEN form to be eligible to receive US shares. Once you’ve completed these steps you should receive your free share in 7-10 days.

If you’re looking for more ways to make money online check out the money section of my blog for some more ideas.

July has been the most successful extra income month since I began tracking in March! If you’re new to my content I set monthly goals over on my Instagram. I then publish exactly how I make extra money online. July’s goal was to make £75 and my final total was £145! Here’s how I made it:

Surveys

Streetbees – £6.00
Referral code – 7946AT
July was another fairly quiet month for surveys. I did a couple about what I feed my dog and the treats I give her so managed a small payment. The total I’ve made on Streetbees now stands at £37.60.

Voxpopme – £10.43
Referral reward – *If you sign up using my Voxpopme referral link we’ll both get £1 when your first response is approved!
In July I got a nice little payment for recording my responses to questions on Voxpopme. I’ve gotten used to being on camera now and I find these 60 second clips really easy to do. The payments per survey can be pretty small (I’ve had a few at 25p) but they seem to mount up quickly.

GfK – £1.00
I won a £1 Amazon voucher when taking part in GfK MediaView surveys in July. I signed up, downloaded the app and quickly rated the TV programmes I watched the previous day every evening. It only takes a minute as I don’t watch a lot of terrestrial TV and I get entered into giveaways which happen every week.

Total – £17.43

If you’d like to know more about the best paid survey apps take a look at this blog post where I talk about my top 6.

Receipt Scanning

SnapMyEats – £10.00
I had a really good month with SnapMyEats in July. You simply scan your food and drink receipts and earn a £1 reward credit for every 3 valid receipts you submit per month. If you submit the maximum 15 valid receipts in a month you earn £5.

Shoppix – £5.00
Shoppix allows you to earn tokens for scanning receipts, doing surveys and occasionally rating your experiences of certain shops. You can also earn scratchcards which reveal if you’ve won a prize or not.

ZipZero – £6.00
By scanning your receipts in ZipZero you can earn 1% of the value of your purchases. The payments are sent to your utility bills (electricity, gas, water, internet, phone bill and council tax) and I use mine towards my gas and electricity bill.

HuYu – £5.00
HuYu has been a bit of a slow burner but in July I cashed out my first £5 Amazon voucher. You earn points for scanning receipts from certain shops and completing surveys.

Total – £26.00

Cashback

TopCashback* – £2.53
I always use cashback sites when shopping online and have also been taking part in TopCashback’s summer treats giveaway and have won a couple of small cash prizes.

Quidco* – £5.30
I made a couple of purchases through Quidco and earned some cashback in July. I suggest always comparing cashback rates on Quidco and TopCashback before deciding which site to purchase through.

Total – £7.83

Free Spins

Coral – £13.11
Coral are still running a promotion called The Rewards Grabber where you can win free spins and more on their casino games. You use the grabber to select a symbol and reveal if you’ve won a reward. I seem to be getting less lucky as the weeks go on but I’ve still been logging in every day and have had a few small wins.

William Hill – £0.60
William Hill are running a similar promotion called Bonus Explorer. For this you collect symbols to win free spins and other prizes. Again I feel like this promotion is getting worse the longer it continues and I didn’t win much in July.

Betfair – £0.06
Betfair have the odd promotion on and I take part whenever I see free spins appear in my account. I didn’t manage a big win but every penny counts!

Tombola– £20.20
I managed to get my hands on a free £5 voucher for Tombola and won £20.20 with free spins. I played Golden Gongs and upped the wager so the prize pot increased.

Total – £33.97

If you have any issues around gambling it may be best to avoid these types of promotions.

Second Hand Selling

eBay – £7.16
In July I sorted through our games collection and decided to list a couple on eBay. One of them sold so I made a small amount.

Total – £7.16

Blogging

Sponsored Posts – £53.10
Since returning to blogging I’ve managed to boost my domain authority back up to a point where I can take on paid work. In July I did my first sponsored post in a while working with a blogging agency. I’ll be writing a detailed post on how to make money blogging later this month.

Total – £53.10

Grand Total – £145.49

If you’re interested in finding more ways to make extra money online and you’d like to see how I did on previous months check out my June extra income blog, May extra income blog, April extra income blog and March extra income blog.

If you’ve found this post helpful and are thinking of trying any of these ways to make some extra income yourself please use my referral code or links when provided. These will often give you extra rewards to get you started and provide me with a small bonus for recommending you.

What is Financial Independence Retire Early?

FIRE or Financial Independence Retire Early is a financial movement that has been gaining momentum across the globe. Born from the US book Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, FIRE is a way to retire before the traditional age of 65.  The basic principle of FIRE is to save a high percentage of your income (typically 50-70%) and invest in low cost index funds. Once you hit a certain number (your FIRE number), you can live off the income from your savings and retire.

Which Are the Best FIRE Videos?

The FIRE community tend to be open about their journeys and the internet is full of blogs and videos about financial independence and retiring early. A lot of the content is US focused but their are people from the UK and Europe talking about FIRE. I’ve picked out 3 of my favourite Financial Independence Retire Early videos and 2 out of these 3 are by UK content creators. I hope they will give you an insight into FIRE and the people perusing it.

Our Rich Journey – See How You Can Retire Early – Simple Math of Early Retirement

Amon and Christina from Our Rich Journey achieved financial independence and retired early in 2019, at the age of 39. In 2018 they made this fantastic video that introduces the key concepts of FIRE. It gives an easy to understand explanation of the 4% rule and provides comparisons between a ‘normal’ family budget and a FIRE family budget. It also introduces the concepts of house hacking alongside budgeting, minimalism and choosing second hand cars.

View Our Rich Journey’s YouTube channel.

The Humble Penny – Why Your Savings Rate is Critical for Financial Independence UK

The Humble Penny is the UK blog I’ve seen talk about financial independence the most. Ken and Mary also run the Financial Joy Academy with a mission to help you remove your money stress and achieve financial independence. Ken’s video on why your savings rate is critical for financial independence lays out exactly why you should be tracking this metric. It also highlights the importance of increasing your savings rate vs earning a higher income.

View The Humble Penny’s YouTube channel.

MamaFurFur – How to Calculate Your Financial Freedom Exact Number

Jen from MamaFurFur has a fantastic YouTube channel filled with advice. Her aim is to help you master your money and learn how to become financially successful. Jen’s videos cover a range of topics on everything from budgeting to investing, with several videos about financial independence. Her video on how to calculate your financial independence number is especially useful. In it Jen gives you the step by step process you need to follow to calculate your own FIRE number. When I first researched FIRE this video helped me understand compound interest.

View MamaFurFur’s YouTube channel.

Want to know more about FIRE?

If you’re looking for more European FIRE content the website FIREhub.eu collates blog posts, podcasts and even events. Otherwise simply search FIRE on YouTube or Google and you’ll find a wealth of content.

Want to learn how to supplement your income so you can achieve financial independence faster? Check out the money section of my blog for some ideas.

*This is a sponsored post.

If you’re a talented designer there are a number of ways you could make passive income online. Tired of exchanging your time for money and creating designs for individual clients? Why not produce a design once, upload it to one or more of the sites suggested below and wait for the money to roll in? This way of working means you could receive unlimited income from just one design. It also allows you to work on the designs you want to work on, when you want to work on them. To find out how to achieve this level of flexibility let’s take a look at a range of passive income ideas for designers.

Create greetings card designs

Greetings card websites like thortful accept designs from absolutely anyone. It’s free to create an account and upload your designs plus you retain the copyright. Your creator name and bio are even printed on the back of each card that sells! You can create card designs for any occasion you can think of. The most popular categories are birthday, get well soon, friendship, sympathy, thank you, congratulations, new baby, wedding, anniversary, valentines, love, Christmas, New Year, good luck, Mother’s Day and thinking of you. For each sale you are paid around 10% of the sales value, which for a standard A5 card is around 30p.

Create t-shirt designs

If fashion design is more your thing, why not create t-shirt designs? You can then sell them through websites like Teepublic. Teepublic claim that their artists collect the highest earnings of any print-on-demand site at around $20 (roughly £15) per shirt. All you need to do is create your artwork, upload it digitally and choose which products you’d like your design to appear on. As well as t-shirts there are 74 other products including hoodies, sweatshirts, stickers, phone cases, mugs and notebooks.

Create business cards, leaflets and stationary

Are you skilled with Adobe InDesign? If so you could make passive income by turning your designs into editable templates that businesses can personalise and use for marketing. Simply upload your designs to Template Cloud and they will be sold on popular sites like printing.com. You set the price range for your products and are paid every time someone orders some printing using your template.

Publish an art book

Self-publishing has become increasingly popular among authors and artists alike. You can now create your own art book using a website like Blurb then self-publish it directly on Amazon. You can design the layout, choose the printing options and order a single book to proof. Then your books will be printed as and when they’re sold. This reduces up-front costs and means you don’t have to hold stock.

Create your own fonts

Typography is often forgotten about when it comes to creating passive income as a designer. However by creating your own fonts and selling them through websites like MyFonts you could make a significant income. If you think this is something you may be able to do be sure to take a look at each websites guidelines to ensure your font meets their requirements and will pass their quality control. You should consider creating your font in multiple styles including regular, bold, italic and bold-italic. It’s also worth trying to include as many characters as possible as those with more tend to sell more frequently. Normally sites that will sell your font won’t require exclusive rights but they may ask you to keep your price the same on every site you sell on so it’s worth double checking the contract so you’re absolutely clear.

Make use of design resources

When you’re creating designs to earn passive income you don’t always have to start from scratch. You can use svg images as the basis of your designs or to add the finishing touches. Alternatively, you could use stock photographs and layer text on top of the images, create illustrations by tracing the outlines of the photos main feature or manipulate the imagery. Don’t forget that a great font can really make a design. Often a slogan in a carefully selected font is all you need. Remember, you’ll need appropriate licences to use anything you haven’t created yourself commercially.

Combined these passive income ideas for designers could create a regular income and with some hard work you may even be able to replace your traditional 9-5 job. Be sure to check out the money section of this site for more ways to make extra money online.