Are you looking to make some extra cash, but don’t know how to do it? You could have a potential moneymaker in your home; that is if you have a spare room. Here’s how you can make unused space in your dwelling bring in additional income:
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Offer it on Airbnb
You can rent the spare room in your house by signing up as an Airbnb host and offering the space for tourists or travelers. This is essentially making your extra room as a “home-stay” alternative to the usual hotel or motel. The way this works is by letting you post your room to rent on their site, and Airbnb takes a 3% commission out of every booking from hosts and commissions ranging from 6-12% from guests.
To get a better idea of how much your spare room can earn you, here is Airbnb pricing explained. Your Airbnb income will depend on how many nights you make the room available, the seasonality of bookings, and how competitively you price the room against other Airbnb hosts in your area.
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Rent it Out as Storage Space
If you prefer not to make any improvements in your spare room or bother with putting in new furnishings, or cleaning up after guests, rent the room out to people who need temporary storage for their stuff. All you have to do is empty out the room and do a bit of dusting, then list the space with storage space providers. You don’t have to pay any fees since the renter pays the commission to the space provider.
You have to specify for how long your space can be used, and coordinate with the owner of the stuff when they can go to retrieve their stuff. All in all, it’s an easy way to make an extra buck with very little effort.
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Accept a Lodger
You can also rent out your spare room to a lodger. A lodger isn’t quite a tenant, as the rental agreement between you and the lodger can be a temporary one and “intermittent” one — the lodger can be a person that needs to stay at a place closer to work only during weekdays. You can have extra cash and have the room empty and your complete privacy back on weekends. Apart from the extra income, another advantage of having a lodger and not a full-on tenant is that it’s easier to evict them under state laws if any problems arise.
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Rent it Out as a Film Set
If your spare room or even your entire home has a certain “appeal” and it catches the attention of a movie or TV location scout, you can earn a lot of money. Letting film crews use your room or even your home as a set is a great gig, since TV shows are willing to shell out $2000 a day or more, and big-budget movies will pay at least $10,000 per day of shooting.
The only drawbacks to this are you won’t be allowed to stick around while they’re filming, or you’ll have to get used to a lot of strangers coming and going from the early morning to the wee hours next day. But given that they’re willing to pay that much, they’ll pay to repair any damage, you might meet celebrities, and your room or home gets seen on TV or film, that’s not much of a downside.
When you need to make extra cash, you may have an extra money-earner if you have an unused room or space in your property. If you have one, think about renting it to tourists; someone who needs to be closer to work or store their belongings, or even to a TV or film location scout.
