How I made an extra £562 in October 2025
Introduction
I have been making extra money on the side of my 9-5 job since 2020 when I first realised that it was actually possible to increase my income without much work. Over those last 5 years, I have also been sharing exactly how I have been doing this to prove that it is possible and that almost anyone can replicate my process; and 1,000s of you have used the exact same methods to boost your income as well.
So without further ado, here is how I made an extra £562.00 in October 2025. Everything referenced in this post is accurate as at the time of writing but may have since changed.
The Bank Engine: £356.62
The Bank Engine, being this website and my various social media channels, continues to be the front-runner for my additional earnings month-after-month, and whilst my income and profits are down over the last few months this is expected and to be able to make more than £300 during a quiet month is beyond incredible so, as always, a huge thank you to everyone who supports The Bank Engine in any way.
October saw a mixture of recurring income streams, including Monzo referrals, Rakuten referrals, various cashback referrals, but was notably supported by the launch of the Suits Me referral offer paying new customers £12.50 for opening an account, and spending on the free card once. This generated new revenue of £137.50 during the month of October amounting to 11 x referrals. If you haven’t done this offer yet, they have just changed it and you can now receive either £10, £20 or £50 for doing the same thing! Full details here.
Additionally, recurring income from new Robinhood customers generated over £100 of free share revenue alongside a handful of Trading 212 referrals which are starting to appear again now that the main promotional offer has been withdrawn for all customers.
Excitingly, I believe that The Bank Engine continues to move forwards strongly and is now dominating key word searches ranking as the first result on Google for many income-generating terms.
As always, my full Profit and Loss report will be available on Instagram shortly should you wish to look at this - transparency is always my ultimate priority.
Bank Interest: £85.24
The extra income that most of us receive, continues to grow for me as a push more of my cash into savings as a result of a lot of upcoming, short-term goals, that I wish to hold cash for. This income largely still comes from my Cash Lifetime ISA but other avenues are growing.
Dividends: £44.01
Dividends are a share of the profits that companies choose to share with their investors, and whilst I do not prioritise investing in companies that pay dividends, the majority of my investments are in index funds which hold these companies. As such, I regularly do receive dividends alongside capital growth from my investment portfolio.
If you are new to investing, you can check at my free guide here.
Mystery Shopping: £34.95
My involvement with mystery shopping largely fell off a cliff over the Summer as I moved my interests elsewhere but as we head into the Winter, I am planning to turn this around as mystery shopping opportunities (and therefore, the cash available) usually increases in the run-up to Christmas.
I only made money from the Roamler app, which has been my biggest earner over the last 3-ish years, during October and these are the tasks I completed:
1 x Home Care Check at £15.00 (visit store, take photos of various areas and answer questions)
1 x Water Check & Fix at £10.00 (visit store, locate water products, record stock levels, pull stock forward and tidy)
1 x Home Care Check at £7.00 (visit store, take photos of various areas and answer questions)
1 x Product Check & Fix at £7.00 (visit store, locate 1 product, tidy fixture)
1 x Promo Check at £4.50 (visit store, locate various promo displays, take photos and answer questions)
I increased my efficiency whilst carrying out these tasks by completing three all at the same supermarket (£15 Home Care Check, £7 Product Check & £10 Water Check) whilst completing the other two on the same day at other stores, meaning my overall time input was lower at 1 hour and 5 minutes total, including travel time.
If you have not heard of mystery shopping before, I have written a completely free, no-frills guide on how it works - check it out here.
I also incurred £8.55 of mileage costs for visiting these stores.
Sign-up Offers: £12.50
At the beginning of October, I completed the Suits Me referral offer myself and received £12.50 into the account within a week.
Cashback: £10.99
I hate paying full price for things when there is a better alternative out there, and so I regularly use cashback apps and earn money back on spending most people won’t realise that you can…
Everup - Cashback on Groceries - £7.57 - Check it out here
I use this app to purchase gift cards for our groceries each week and pay with the gift card instead of my debit/credit card. Each time you purchase a gift card you receive cashback into your pot which you can then deduct from your next purchase. Typically, you can get 4-5% back on the UK’s largest supermarkets when you use this method and it’s completely free - I’ve earned £120 back from this app alone since the start of this year, just buying groceries for 2 people!
TopCashback - Bonus Cashback - £2.20 - Check it out here
This is the largest cashback site in the UK and they were offering a £2 bonus when you spend £10 at the end of October, I purchased a £10 supermarket gift card via TopGiftCards and instantly received 20p (2%) cashback + the £2 bonus which was in my bank account two days later.
JamDoughnut - General Cashback - £0.24 - Check it out here
This is not my favourite app anymore, but is exactly like Everup where you earn for buying gift cards. However, they have introduced raffles where you can gamble your cashback which is against my morals. However, I did (gratefully) receive referral rewards into the account during October and converted this into a gift card which gave me 24p cashback.
Suits Me - Supermarket cashback - £0.98 - Check out the referral offer here
I used the Suits Me card for general spending and when I shopped at Sainsbury’s / ASDA on the card I received cashback the following Friday just for using the card!
Market Research: £8.62
Askable - £5.00 - Check it out here
Askable is a great market research app that offers good studies which are generally well paid, however they can be tricky to get frequently. During October, I was accepted for a video survey on usability of an insurance website where I had to talk out loud about how I would carry out tasks on the site. This took approximately 15 minutes and I received £5 via PayPal.
Dscout - £3.62 / US$5 - Check it out here
Dscout is the only consistent market research app I have found, having given me a study every month since February this year so far. I was accepted for a video survey talking about car package options and my thoughts. This took approximately 10 minutes and I received £3.62 / US$5 via PayPal.
Google Rewards: £9.07
Google Rewards is an app that pays you for answering short surveys on a regular basis. These typically are linked to your Google history and therefore I will receive surveys on shops I have been to and asked if I made a purchase, if the store was accessible, etc. or based on Google searches I have made recently.
From the surveys, I made £6.88 during October and each one takes about 5-10 seconds.
You can also earn from taking photos of receipts, it will try to figure out if you visited a store based on location history and will ask you for a receipt, you will then get paid roughly 10-20p for each receipt. I earned £2.19 from the receipts element of this in October.
If you use an Android this can only be redeemed as Google Play credit, but simply set up a subscription to be paid via this (Disney+, Netflix, etc.) or can be paid via PayPal if on iOS but you will obviously earn more if on Android.