Make Money With Your Home!

Make Money With Your Home – Five Ways

People are always looking for a way to make cash. They’ll start this side hustle or that or work a second or even third job. And if that’s what works for you, that’s great. You’ve heard of working from home, but did you know there are ways you can make money WITH your home?

That’s right. In this post we are going to discuss ways you can make money using your own home and property. This also includes a guest house if you’re blessed enough to have one of course. This is going to be a quick reference list with more in depth posts for each method coming soon!

Make money with these parts of your home:

A spare room or guest house
Your yard for use as a dog park
Your pool or other yard features for humans
Closets and storage areas
Every room of your house

*Disclaimer – before we go any further, you must check with your municipality/city to find out if you need extra insurance or licenses. You can also choose to consult your family attorney or insurance company to cover yourself and your property. The following methods are suggestions, but you will need to find out the legal way to go about everything.

Make Money with Your Home – Rent a Space

Whether it’s short term or long term rentals, renting out an unoccupied space in your home, on your property, or on an extra property can bring you substantial extra income each month!

Short Term

This is probably the first way people think of to make money with their homes. If you have a spare room, wing or you can rent it out to short term travelers. You can do this through Airbnb. Prepare the room so it is clean and accommodating, preferably has it’s own bathroom. Small touches like a coffee maker and some snacks give a friendly touch. While many may shy away from renting just a room in a house where someone else may be, many are open to this experience. You never know who you’ll get to meet.

You can also consider RVs and campsites to rent out dates that you aren’t using them yourself. There are some “wow” rentals available on Airbnb. These include yurts, tree houses, even tents. It’s about the ambiance. If you have a large enough property, you could consider something like this . Then others can enjoy your property like you do.

If you are in the position to have a guest house on your property or an extra property all together, you can make even more from short term renters. While you can become an Airbnb host with larger spaces like this, you can also sign up for Vrbo. With Vrbo the guest is guaranteed a whole house to themselves, instead of a shared space. Vrbo would be the better choice for a separate property all together.

Check out our starter guide for making money with Short Term Rentals!

Long Term

Unable to rent to short term travelers? Many communities and HOAs don’t allow this and will fine home owners. Consider long term renters. A traveling nurse, traveling professors, or just someone in need of somewhere to live, are all options for longer leases. You’ll have to check with your town/city and/or HOA to see what the minimum rental agreement is.

Roomate Agreement - Make Money with Your Home - Rent a house or room

We have friends in the military who are deployed overseas and rent their home out to cover the mortgage and HOA fees. They hope to return to their home once they’re done with their tour abroad, and this is a way to do it without having to pay mortgage plus rent. this also keeps their home from sitting empty for years possibly deteriorating or being open to possible squatters.

Our guide to Long Term Rentals is HERE!

Rent A Space – Extra Costs

There are a few more initial costs with these methods. These include having fresh furniture and bedding, adding a kitchenette in a space that doesn’t normally have one, paying cleaning and maintenance people, and any other requirements for your locality. If you’ve got a larger property and want to go for the “wow” rentals, you may need to actually build them, build an outhouse, run electricity and running water to the spot in addition to the building permits. But even with all of that, this can be very lucrative or just helpful to someone who needs that extra help with their income.

We’ll be discussing this more in depth in our post so you can make the best possible decision.

Make Money with Your Home – Rent Out Your Yard for Dogs

This one is for the dog owners. Did you know that if you have a sizable yard, you can join the website Sniffspot and make money renting out your yard?

In many cities or towns there are no parks for dogs. For those with fenced in yards, this isn’t an issue. Their dogs can run and play, have playdates, and relax in their safe backyard space. But for those in apartments or without a usable/safe/big enough yard, this proposes a problem.

Some dogs are also dog reactive or aggressive. This is a safety threat for both owners and dogs alike.

Your yard would need to be fenced in, large enough, have shade available via trees or patios, and you may need to check with your municipality to see if there are any licenses you need. They have a checklist to for possible hosts to get their yard Sniffspot ready.

Make Money with Your Home - Rent your yard as a dog park - dog playing with toy in yard

Some additional benefits you could provide are a kiddie pool in the summer, tennis balls, seating for owners, extra trees for shade, agility course items like ramps or a tire partially in the ground. Also good to have is a poop bag disposal system. This doesn’t have to be much more than like a trash can. Obviously the pet owners are expected to clean up after themselves. But they shouldn’t need to take their poop home too. No one wants to ride home in the car with that.

Renting your yard as a mini dog park earns you some extra money and makes dogs and their owners very happy! We discuss this more in depth in our full post: Rent Out Your Yard for Dogs!

Make Money with Your Home – Rent Out Your Pool and other Yard Features

Just like renting a room to travelers or your yard for dogs to run around, you can make money renting out your pool! That’s right, with the company Swimply, you can rent out your pool to those looking to get a break from the heat.

Swimply also has rentals for private tennis courts, pickle ball courts, and yards. The rates are hourly, and each home lists how many guests are allowed. This would be a great option for a party or get together for someone who doesn’t have a pool. The rental fee for Swimply is probably cheaper than renting a facility to hold your event. Plus the rental facility you’re looking at doesn’t have a pool.

There are some requirements on your end which will cost you a bit to start. While Swimply offers up to $2 million protection ($10k/claim) for you, you may want to consider upping some of your home insurance policies to protect your assets. Other costs include pool, yard and court maintenance, extra furniture, pool toys/floats, and outdoor furniture.

We are discussing this more in depth with some tips and tricks to make the most money possible in our Swimply focused post right here!

Make Money with Your Home – Clean Out Your House and Sell Your Stuff

Having a house full of stuff is like sitting on money. Not only are you wasting time (we all know time is money) when having to search through closets, basements, attics, and sheds to find items in a sea of stuff you never use, but that stuff you never use, can make you money.

Clean your house and sell the treasures you find!

Make room in your house and storage areas for stuff you actually need and use, and post the other items for sale! You can try to group some things by type to better your chances, you can crosspost between sale sites (but make sure to be on top of it for when the item sells), and if you can have yard/garage sales put items out for sale that haven’t sold in the online platforms after a while. Depending on the items you can sell with Facebook Marketplace, PoshMark, Ebay, Craigslist, and more! Different items tend to fare best on different sites.

Who knows what hidden treasures you’ll find!

We will discuss these sites more in depth in our post about making money from cleaning out and selling items from your home.

Make Money with Your Home – Stock Photos

This one is a bit more specialized.

Do you have an eye for design or photography? There are sites where you can sign up to sell your photos for others to use as stock photos. We use stock photos, with my membership to Canva, I have access of use of all their stock photos. These were taken by someone and acquired through another company or Canva itself.

While many earn from travel photos, you don’t really have to leave your home to start earning.

Take photos within your home to sell as stock photos.

Think of a beautifully designed section of your home, the way the sun hits a certain plant. Maybe your closet is aesthetically pleasing, or you have a bookshelf that is just the epitome of beauty. The inside of your Christmas tree, any other holiday or home decor up close in a way most people wouldn’t think to look at it, are just a few ideas.

Where can you sell? There are a multitude of sites, but to name a few we recommend Alamy, Etsy, and Zenfolio.

Which Method is for you?

So, we’ve given you a starting point. Are you comfortable renting out a room or space of your own to travelers? Maybe selling photos of beautiful parts of your home is more you. How about cleaning out your home and selling the hidden treasures you’ve forgotten about?

Which one is most appealing to you? Let us know in the comments which one you’ll be testing out to earn a little extra money this year!