When you’re pregnant and the doctor advises you to get as much ‘rest’ as possible, things can get rather boring very quickly, especially if that suggested ‘resting’ thing is reinforced by hubby who thinks being pregnant is some kind of condition. Anyway, that together with the fact that I’d been blogging for a while meant that I spent even more time looking for ideas and topics to discuss on my blog and just to look for some inspiration to keep pursuing the perfect balance in the lives of my family and I.

Little did I know that I’d be that much wiser to a business opportunity that’s been staring me in the face all this time and that’s how I came to making some good extra money on the side.

All I was doing really was searching for some discounts on a range of goods and services, from some tools I could use to streamline the functionality of my blog to baby goods and household accessories. Even the fashion world had me searching for some related discounts and the platform of choice was and still is Groupon.

It then struck me one day when I actually mentioned Groupon coupons to a friend and neighbour as the source for me being able to afford all these things that actually I could turn this into a business, and so I did just that. My friend wouldn’t hear any of it when I told her she should just visit the site herself to get some of these discounts. Instead, she said I should do it for her and could perhaps keep a good portion of the difference between the retail price of the goods she wanted me to source for her and discounted price.

It snowballed into something quite big and although I was only keeping about £2 from the difference and passing the rest of the discount on to my “clients”, it really added up to something quite substantial. I mean if you have every last member of your book club wanting to register their own domain name for example, the difference between the regular price and the savings you’d get via something like GoDaddy’s Groupon coupons page really adds up to something quite substantial.

I did after all have the time on my hands and I got really good at it hey — searching through all the discounts related to some of the products and services members of my network wanted.

I even booked a Valentine’s weekend retreat for another friend of mine and her husband on one occasion, with savings of a full 50% on the regular price for the hotel room so you can bet your bottom penny I pocketed more than just the odd £2 from the difference!

So I guess that’s one way someone who is looking to make some extra money on the side can go about it. You need to have some time on your hands though, but otherwise the principle to it is if you can save someone just a little bit of money on whatever they might want to buy, they’ll have no problem with the fact that you make a few pounds out of the deal as well. At the end of the day, they’re still saving on the regular retail price.