Unless you join the Navy or work for an airline, you will probably struggle to earn money while travelling.
Scrounging free flights and hotel stays is getting increasingly difficult in the post-lockdown, post-‘influencer’ world, and even professional travel writers now struggle to travel the world for free like they used to.
But there are still some ways to recoup the cost of your holiday, from renting out your home and driveway to looking after someone else’s pet while you sightsee.
Cut through the hype and discover what tips do and don’t work now, with our expert guide.
- Continue work while you’re away
- Earn money renting out your home while you’re away
- Rent out your drive
- Make money pet-sitting
- Sign up as a mystery diner for free holiday meals
- Make money selling your holiday pics
- Travel for free by becoming a ‘group leader’
- Earn cashback on your flight and hotel booking
Continue Work on Holiday
OK, OK, so being on holiday means taking annual leave or time away from your freelance job. But if you can negotiate working at least a couple of days a week remotely while you’re away, you won’t eat into your leave days or holiday fund quite so much. With remote work so common in a post-Covid world, it is easier than ever to negotiate a longer holiday overall, if you can arrange to work remotely a few days a week.
Speak to your boss about how you could work while you’re away, and make sure clear boundaries are set about when you are working and when you are on holiday. If you are travelling to a country that has an office for your company or clients, consider offering to spend a day carrying out in-person meetings (and some smooth-tongued employees can even use this to ask for expenses towards air travel and a hotel for a portion of the trip).
Freelancers can usually work from anywhere, which means it’s easy to up sticks for a week or two without dipping into your savings too much. Working a couple of hours a day ensures the income continues to roll in, but you can take advantage of doing it by a beach or in a beautiful historic city! And remember, if you can tie your travel to work somehow, such as a research trip, some of your expenses can be offset on your Self Assessment.
Earn Money Renting Out Your Home
Renting out your house out while you’re away is a simple – and pretty lucrative – way of recouping the cost of your holiday, especially if you live in a tourist hotspot.
Airbnb has obviously cornered the market in casual holiday lets, but there are a whole host of apps and websites out there that you can sign-up to, including Holiday Lettings, Vrbo, and Booking.com, all of which are quite easy to create and manage a listing on.
General rental sites like Spare Room or Monday to Friday are another good way of finding people who might want a full two weeks in a city, where, let’s face it, most Airbnb guests only want to stay for a day or three.
Which site is best?
Spare Room and Monday to Friday tenants are usually young adults or business people looking for a stopgap while they find more long-term accommodation. Sites like Booking.com and Air BnB let you list for short-term lets, which can give you more cash if you’re going away at a peak time.
There are just a few legalities to check before letting out your home, like whether you need to up your insurance. Airbnb, for instance, covers you for up to $1m in insurance, but your own home insurance provider may also need you to pay a small fee to include renters to your policy.
If you have a mortgage, you need to check if it’s okay with them too, as not all lenders allow you to offer your home out for short-term lets.
Home Swap
If you don’t want to rent out your home – or doing so would mean expensive changes to your insurance policy – you could consider a home swap with a friend or vetted person, instead. This is where you switch homes for the period of time: you live in their house, they live in yours. This was made popular with the Christmas film, The Holiday with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz. We can’t guarantee you’ll find the love of your life, but you might discover a cheap way to regularly visit a place that you love!
There are completely free home swap services, but going through an agency like HomeExchange with a small annual fee means you will have additional protection insurance and other support as part of your membership. Home swaps save you so much money on travel, it can be a way to explore the world on a limited budget – so paying an agency fee, where people are vetted to join, can be well worth it.
Rent Out Your Drive
If your mortgage broker doesn’t allow you to let you rent out your house, or maybe you just don’t fancy having someone else stay in your home while you’re not there, you could always rent out your empty driveway instead.
Having a car on your drive will also do more to keep away would-be burglars than that hall lamp on a time switch ever could! You can also make a fair whack by simply letting someone else park on your property for a week or two. Again, the amount you could earn depends on where you live – if you’re live in a big city or near a major sporting venue, like Wimbledon or Aintree where parking is a major problem during certain weeks of the year, your drive will obviously be more in-demand than if you live on Dartmoor.
There are loads of companies that specialise in driveway rentals, including JustPark.com, ParkOnMyDrive.com, Stashbee.com and YourParkingSpace.co.uk. You’ll also find people listings their driveways on Gumtree, Facebook and other less-specialist sites, so it’s worth checking on those too to see if you could earn more by advertising on one of them.
Setting up an account only takes a minute or so, and the sites then either take a small cut from you, the leaser, or, in the case of JustPark.com, add an extra commission on to bill which the person renting your drive pays.
How much can I charge to rent out my drive?
The three cities most in-demand by space-shy parkers are London, Edinburgh and Brighton, where parking near the centre typically goes from £15 a day (if you exclude the chancers charging £50+). Even in the suburbs, the going-rate starts from £10 a day in Brighton, rising the closer you live to bus routes.
It may not sound a huge amount, but added up over a fortnight, you could (conservatively) look to make between £70 and £135 renting out your parking space – and that’s assuming you list at the very bottom of the market. Most of those drives are not in the most in-demand parts of Brighton, like near the beach or station.
It’s a similar story with other touristy cities like York, where city centre parking has just rocketed in April 2025, to a whopping £4.85 an hour in city car parks (up from 80p an hour just a month before!).
Will I earn more in other cities?
If you’re lucky enough to live in central London, Edinburgh, or York, your drive will pay for more than a few Magnums. You can easily make £20+ a day for each parking space. If you’ve a double drive or double garage, you’re looking at £40+ a day – which adds up to £560 in revenue during your two-week trip away. Have space for three cars? You could earn £840 to put towards your spending money.
Obviously, you will need to check with your home insurance provider to ensure that renting out your driveway or garage doesn’t affect your policy, and any extra cash you make over £1000 in a year must be declared to HMRC on your tax return.
Can I Make Money Pet Sitting?
As well as renting out your own house/drive to make some money, you could try getting paid to stay in the place you’re staying – or, at the very least, stay there for free. Most people don’t pay for house sitting anymore – unless you’re required to also look after pets.
The obvious way to do this is by offering your services as a house sitter. Not everyone can get a house swap, such as those who rent their homes rather than own them, but you can still register on a house sitting site to stay in someone’s house for free.
There are a number of reasons why someone would want you to stay in their house rent-free.
An increasing number of people own more than one property or spend long periods of time away on business, and would rather pay someone to look after the place than risk being burgled.
Burglary rates are highest during holiday periods, which, let’s face it, is probably when you are looking for somewhere too. Hiring a house-sitter also makes financial sense for home owners with lots of valuable contents, like priceless art and memorabilia, so having you on-site could actually help lower their insurance premiums.
What does house-sitting involve?
House sitting is typically very easy. Your job is to keep things dust-free and tidy, perhaps keep on top of the garden and water any plants, and, of course, you may be required to look after a pet too.
There’s quite a demand for those who are good with dogs, cats and other animals, given many pet owners don’t want to send their pets to expensive kennels and catteries, so if you enjoy walking and grooming animals, and can be trusted to keep them alive for two weeks, you’ll be ideal.
Not all house-sitting companies pay, but you’ll save hundreds of pounds on hotels and B&B by taking on the roll of unpaid dog-walker/night-watchman when you’re not off exploring the local tourist sites.
How do I register?
Most the main house sitting websites charge would-be sitters a small fee to register on their site. HouseSittersUK, for instance, charges £29 a year for access to its portal, which, as its website points out is ‘a fraction of the price of a night’s hotel accommodation’. Once registered, you can then begin searching for home owners in the area you’re hoping to stay, and chat directly with them to negotiate what they want and need from you. If they pay, they will typically mention this in the advert, but you can always ask about any remunerations or expenses when you message them. If they’re asking you to look after pets or be mindful of particular errands that could cost money, make sure you have in writing that they will cover any expenses incurred (like dog food).
Can I house-sit in another country?
If you’re looking for accommodation abroad, MindMyHouse.com has listings across the US, Canada and Mexico, which account for over a third of all ads, as well as lots in the rest of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.
Again, you have to pay a small yearly membership fee of $29 (roughly £25) but there are lots of nice looking listings in exotic destinations. Of course, the home owners are generally looking for help on specific dates (usually when they themselves are going away), so if you’re looking to visit California, for example, it may make sense to look up who is listed in that destination – and when they are looking for house-sitters – and, organising your trip around that, rather than booking your flights first and then being disappointed when you discover there are no Californians looking for house-sitters the fortnight you’re going to be there.
Can I specify what I will and won’t do?
The interesting thing about this site is house sitters and home owners sign an agreement detailing exactly what is and isn’t included in the agreement, covering everything from payment (or otherwise) to the situation regarding utility bills, damages, and any chores/responsibilities. The contract also guarantees your stay, although each party can cancel the agreement up to seven days before you are due to arrive, so there’s always a chance you may have to find alternative accommodation if they cancel more than a week out.
Another popular site is Trustedhousesitters, however its joining fee is a lot more expensive, starting from £119 a year for a ‘basic’ membership. If you go down this route, it may not be a bad idea to upgrade to the £129 ‘standard sitter’ membership, which includes accidental and third party liability insurance, in case anything goes wrong during your stay. The premium membership of £249 is ideal for those wanting to house sit more than once a year (it’s still cheaper than a hotel!) as it includes sit cancellation cover.
If you apply for five house sits and aren’t successful with any of them, the standard and premium plan includes a refund on your membership cost.
Can I charge a fee to house sit?
Although payments are not the norm, you may be able to negotiate a small fee if there are pets to look after or any other additional tasks, so definitely give it a try if you feel you deserve a small daily amount.
One lady we know of at MoneyMagpie regularly makes £50 a day as a house-sitter. She only spends the evening and night in the house, before going to work the next day.
The reason for this high rate of pay is the fact that the owner of the house has seven dogs.
It would cost at least £10 per dog per day to put these dogs into kennels. By paying £50 to a house-sitter who knows the dogs, the owner saves £20 a day.
Generally, though, pay is minimal and starts at £10 a day. Some sitters ask for a food allowance of £10 a day, much like an employee can do when having to travel for their company. These sitters will often ask for 45p per mile for fuel, again much like employees get paid for using their private vehicle for work. Both of these payments are non-taxable, unlike any actual remunerations, which should be declared to the taxman if you meet the minimum threshold.
Another example of when a Magpie has been paid to house sit was when the person had a home business that required lots of sending and receiving parcels. They paid £10 a day to cover the trip to the post office, and to make sure the Magpie stayed at home during the set delivery times to take in parcels.
If you are more focused on earning money rather than just finding somewhere free to stay, you’re probably better looking at a specialised pet-sitting site, although you probably ought to be a real animal lover to bother applying to these. Most owners aren’t going to leave their beloved pooch with any Tom, Dick or Harry.
How do I become a pet-sitter?
The pet-sitting platform Rover doesn’t charge you to register and instead takes 15% of any money you make, much like Airbnb does. A lot of the sitters on its site are pros who either own boarding kennels and catteries, or run professional dog walkers services, and they obviously charge big bucks. That said, there are others who offer a more traditional house-sitting service, which is obviously preferred by many pet owners whose animals are too nervous or old to go to a kennel or cattery, so you might be able to undercut the pros, and net yourself a decent fee to help offset some of your other holiday costs. If you have a police DBS check and can get references from other pet owners attesting to your dog-whispering prowess, you’ll also seriously boost your chances of getting selected.
Again you’ll find listings across the UK on Rover, as well as in popular tourist destinations like the US, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway – where hotels are notoriously expensive.
If you plan to look after someone’s pet, you really ought to look into getting public liability cover, in case the dog bites someone while you’re out walking them, for instance. Many professional house-sitters take out public liability insurance even if they never look after pets. You never know what sort of any blow-back you might get from the home owner if things go wrong, so it’s always better to be safe than sued!
Get Free Meals and Hotel Stays as a Mystery Diner and Visitor
There are lots of agencies out there that employ people as mystery shoppers for hotels and restaurants. Some pay but most offer simply the expenses back of the meal or accommodation. They will often stipulate whether you need to order a particular thing, ask for help (such as ‘may I have an iron brought to my room?’ to test room service), and other such things. You will need to allocate some time to complete the tasks – but it will result in free stays and meals.
What will I have to do?
Typically, mystery diners are given a simple questionnaire to fill-in after their visit, asking them to rate how friendly the staff were, how clean and presentable the restaurant looked, and other perhaps brand-specific questions, like did the meal arrive within a certain time after ordering.
Lots of students and retired people do mystery shopping or mystery dining work as a part-time job, but if you’re really only interested in doing it every so often to cover those dinners away, you could try signing up for a site like MysteryDining.
While most people who use the app review restaurants in their local area, it let’s you update your preferences if you’re travelling, meaning you can select to review restaurants and hotels, for example, while you’re elsewhere in the UK. They even have some international partnerships, meaning you could eat for free while on holiday in parts of Europe, the Middle East and America.
Can I get paid for reviews?
MysteryDining doesn’t pay you for each review, but offers ’capped reimbursements’ – ie. money to pay for the meal or hotel room you’ve been asked to review. It works on a tiered system (with bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels, depending on how many reviews you’ve done). Not surprisingly, the best gigs, like hotel stays, spa visits, meals at high-end restaurants, and afternoon teas, are reserved for people with more experience – which you gain, initially, by reviewing a lot of ‘quick service’ eateries, like Pret A Manger.
If living it up for free isn’t enough, you can find paid gigs here, although they require a bit more commitment and effort, and, are frankly, more of a job than something you can just casually do while enjoying a much-needed break.
Make Money Selling Your Holiday Pics
If you’re travelling somewhere a bit unique or off the beaten track, however, and are a good amateur photographer with a DSLR camera, you might as well give it a go, as it’s surprising how few images the photo agencies have of vast swathes of Africa, for instance.
What sort of images will sell?
Obviously there’s very little demand for new images of Table Mountain or Kruger National Park. But you’d be surprised at just how few images there are of other relatively mainstream African destinations on most picture libraries.
For instance, if you type ‘fisherman + Gabon’, ‘hyenas + Namib-Naukluft National Park’ or the name of a beach in Zanzibar or Mozambique into a photo library search bar (like a picture editor looking to illustrate a story would do), very few images will likely come up.
Even if there are a few relevant images on the site, there’s a good chance those that those photos will already have been used by the picture editors at specialist publications (or even mainstream media houses), meaning your snap could be exactly what they’re looking for next time they search one of those terms.
If you’re going even further off the tourist trail to visit relatives in Nigeria, for example, then you could really clean up. You’d be shocked at how few good images there are of a country of 200 million people!
Where do I sign up?
There are lots of online agencies. Some popular sites include:
- Alamy
- Shutterstock
- Getty Images
- Adobe Stock
When you register your details, the site will usually ask you to send between five to 10 photos so it can test the quality and type of photos you send them. If your photos don’t conform to the site’s requirements, they will be rejected.
If this happens, don’t worry – just try again, taking their comments into consideration. Sometimes it may just be because they already have too many of the sort of photo you’re sending.
After your pictures have been checked and cleared you’ll be notified when they go live on the website, usually after about 24 hours.
Then there’s nothing to do after that except wait until people buy your photos. Once your account reaches a certain limit you can get your hands on the cash.
Legal issues to consider
There are a few legal issues to consider before you upload any pics on to a photo library. For instance, pictures of identifiable houses or models (any person who is in the photo) will in most cases need a release form. This is signed by the model or house owner to cite that their permission has been given for you to profit from their personal belongings. Each website has a release form for you to download if you need it.
You should also avoid taking pictures of car registration plates, company logos (these might be Registered Trade Marks) and anything that could be considered inflammatory (racist graffiti, for example). You need to check the laws of the country you are in to ascertain what you can and can’t take photos of in a public space, too.
Travel for Free by Being a ‘Group Leader’
A lot of travel companies offer a discount if a large group is booking together. These include major brands like Virgin Holidays and Eurostar, which will give large groups of 10 or more a 10% discount. The practice is also common among specialist tour ops that arrange skiing trips, walking holidays, biking tours, golf breaks and safaris. These specialists often allow the tour ‘leader’ or person who arranged the group booking to travel for free, as a thank you/incentive for organising the trip and to encourage them to arrange more in the future.
If you set up a group holiday for friends or family you could be rewarded for your effort by pocketing that discount yourself (agree it with your friends first of course).
Not only will the travelling be cheaper, you might then be eligible for cheaper entry into attractions, too. These may be museums, amusement parks etc. It’s essentially just another way of buying in bulk.
Earn Cashback on Flight and Hotel Bookings
The other easy way to make free money on your holiday is by paying for as much of your trip on a credit or debit card that pays you money back every time you spend. Even better if you can also purchase via a cashback site like Quidco or Topcashback, to stack the rewards.
A lot of bank cards are now de facto ‘reward cards’ that pay you every time you use your card to buy goods and services. Often this reward cash is a flat percentage rate, which you earn each time you use your card. Other banks may team up with specific companies, which often change on a monthly basis, and offer money back or extra money back each time you buy something with one of their partners that month.
Obviously, if you’re travelling abroad, the small fee you earn each time you spend will (usually) be offset by foreign transaction fees, but you could make a fair chunk of cheddar if you use a reward card to book flights, pay for a package holiday, or if you book hotels and other holiday essentials through a UK website before your trip begins.
Earn Avios points when you spend
An alternative to using cashback is to earn Avois or Virgin Reward points on your daily spending to save throughout the year, for discounted flight, airport lounge, and hotel costs. The British Airways credit card and Virgin Reward card offer these – but check out others like Amex Rewards as they may also be part of a points scheme.
You can often get extra bonuses too, such as a free companion voucher once you’ve earned a certain level of points – meaning you can take a friend or partner on your trip for free, too.
The post How to make money while you’re on holiday appeared first on MoneyMagpie.
