On January 1 I resolved that this was the year I would use the knowledge I’d accumulated over years of writing about personal finance to make some free cash. Six months on, I’ve made £3,066, without spending a penny of my own money.

I did this by taking up 26 offers and deals from banks, building societies and DIY investment platforms.

There are huge rewards to be snapped up from switching banks or opening new accounts. A range of ‘switching bonus’ offers have become available over the past six months, with high street banks offering as much as £300.

So far, I’ve opened ten different cash Isas and a similar number of savings and current accounts, joined six different share trading apps and even applied for a couple of credit cards.

Each time I opened something new I was awarded free shares or a cash gift just for signing up, and in many cases I was able to increase this by referring my husband and friends to do the same. This earned us both an extra cash bonus on top of the signing up incentive.

As the free money rolled in, I put it straight into my stocks and shares Isa and often closed the accounts immediately. In total, I made £2,785.57 and this has grown by a further £280.43 thanks to investment returns on the stock market.

All the offers I’ve used had one thing in common: my cash was never at risk at any point, and I haven’t had to compromise on the interest I was earning on it. Even better, almost all of my ‘winnings’ are tax free as they aren’t counted as income or interest earned from a bank.

While it didn’t cost me any money, I found you have to be willing to set 15 minutes aside each day to make sure you don’t miss out on any new deals.

You don’t need to be a financial expert to do it, but you will need to be organised because each offer requires you to jump through a large number of hoops, and despite the Current Account Switching Service’s claim that switching accounts is ‘simple, reliable and stress free’, my experience has been that you have to have a lot of patience to get the payoff.

So here’s exactly how I did it, what I learned along the way and how you can get started too.

Find an account to house your winnings

First, I wanted to have a bank account just to house my winnings so that I could track how much I had made – seeing the balance rise is motivating and encourages me to keep going.

I opted for one with online bank Monzo because it allowed me to invest £1 each time I transferred money into its stocks and shares Isa.

I started by opening a bank account with the company and received £10 for doing so via a referral code from a friend. I opened my account on my laptop within five minutes by inputting personal information, such as my passport details and my home address.

Then, I used my new log in to open a stocks and shares Isa with the bank and received another £10 for free as a welcome bonus.

By referring my husband to do the same, he and I received another £10 each. This gave me a £30 boost right from the off.

I made a pact with myself – whether the stock market is up or down, I would invest any money I made. Like many, I find investment painful when the market falls.

But psychologically, it’s easier to see my Isa go down when the balance hasn’t cost me anything, so this switching saga has made me braver.

So far, I’ve put money in when the stock markets tumbled due to the Iran conflict as well as at times when the stock market was riding high.

It’s all invested in Monzo’s ‘adventurous’ fund, which is a MyMap multi-asset fund with a 0.14 pc fee, meaning my money is invested in stocks and bonds from around the world. This has paid off – at the time of writing, my total pot is up 9.49 pc and has made £280.43 in investment growth.

With my core account set up, my next move was to find bank and investment apps offering easy bonuses.

My biggest win was with Interactive Investor, where I earned £400. I first got £200 for transferring my Self Invested Personal Pension from Hargreaves Lansdown, which I have had for a long time and was happy to move as the platform had recently upped its fees. I received another £200 by referring my husband for a savings account.

Aside from cash bonuses, I’ve also managed to bag free shares over the past six months. DIY investment platforms offer you a range of free shares when you open accounts and transfer money into them. By taking up these offers, I was given free shares in Rolls-Royce, Berkshire Hathaway and PayPal, all of which I immediately sold and added the profits to my Monzo fund.

While some offer a virtually instant payout, other deals will take some time, and you’ll need to jump through hoops. Usually, you’ll need to be a new customer to get the cash so not all deals will be suitable for everyone. Meanwhile, some deals will ask you to transfer a specific sum of money into your new account for a short amount of time, so for these you will need to have instant-access savings available. For example, when I opened an account with Monument, I had to transfer £10,000 to get the £30 bonus – but since the bonus was paid within 24 hours, I could soon pay the money back into my flexible Isa.

At times, the process has been stressful. Cashback sites have failed to track transactions, which usually happens because of privacy settings or ad blockers on a device or internet browser. I’ve also had to ask companies why they’ve forgotten to honour their own offers, but in the vast majority of cases, as long as you follow the instructions, the money comes in as expected. If it doesn’t, I found that an email to customer services sorts it out quickly.

Hunt for top deals

Finding deals takes a bit of research, but fortunately most of the work has been done for you by journalists and keen savers who post about their findings online.

You can find a list of the best bank accounts and signing bonuses on This is Money.

Social media sites, such as Reddit and Facebook, can also be useful sources of information.

Supersavers who are pouncing on referral codes and seek out all the sign-up deals often write about their findings.

They widely refer to the earnings as ‘beer money’ – a little bit extra to spend at the pub on a Friday night. You can visit the Beer Money UK community on Reddit, where posters put up the deals they’ve found each day.

You’ll also find tips on independent comparison website Scrimpr.

Keep a spreadsheet

Use a spreadsheet to help you keep track and mark every deal you’ve got in progress, the steps you need to follow, plus any dates when bonuses should become payable.

That way you won’t forget about any of the money you’re making or money that has been moved into any of these accounts to fulfil an offer.

The spreadsheet will also help you when you’re doing your tax return. Most referral bonuses and cashback does not need to be declared to the taxman, but certain items, such as the Nationwide Fairer Share bonus, are counted as bank interest and are part of your savings income, so it’s important to understand the tax treatment of each deal.

Set your goal and a time limit

Finding and chasing these deals takes a lot of organisation. You’ll need to open a large number of accounts, buy and sell individual shares and hand over referral codes to friends in the hope that they will do the same. You’ll also need to use cashback sites and wait for the offers you’ve signed up for to track.

My goal, when I started, was to make £10 a day and I don’t usually bother with deals that make less than £10 in profit. You might feel that £10 is too low to bother with and only look at deals that will make you £50 or more.

I decided early on that if I could make money at this rate on 15 minutes ‘work’ a day, it would be worth the extra effort – so I set this as my time limit.

I open up my ‘free money’ spreadsheet, check the progress of existing deals and transfer money and cancel subscriptions or accounts as needed before starting on the next deal on my list if I have time.

Most deals can be broken down into a series of small steps, from opening an account online, transferring a balance in or out, sharing a referral code or selling a share or fund, which keeps the 15-minute slot achievable.

Once a deal is complete, remember to cancel any memberships or products you aren’t going to use, to protect yourself from ongoing charges. Then start on the next deal.

I made sure to close accounts as I went, sometimes as soon as I extracted my new customer bonus, as in the case of JP Morgan Personal Investing, OakNorth, IG Index and Robin Hood.

Five easy offers to get started

Feeling overwhelmed? Start with my five top deals listed below. These are some of the easiest wins I’ve found this year.

Always read the small print before signing up for a deal to ensure that your cash is safe. Make sure the company is registered with the regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, and has Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) protection. With banks and building societies your money is protected up to £120,000 or £240,000 on joint accounts if the company were to collapse.

Switching banks repeatedly is not advisable if you are about to take out a mortgage or other loan, so those who want to bag similar bonuses to mine should bear that in mind because of the credit score.

Chase Bank

You can make £50 instantly by opening a bank account with Chase Bank. You will need a referral code from a friend. Referral codes are widely available on Reddit and other online communities if you don’t have a friend with a code. Each is single use. To be eligible for the free cash, you must transfer £1,000 into the account but there’s nothing to stop you taking it straight back out again.

Wait 30 days and you’ll have five referral codes of your own to share with your own friends so that they can do the same. You will make £50 each time they do. Use them all and you’ll be £300 richer in just over a month.

Trading 212

Join Trading 212 with a referral link (again widely available on Reddit and elsewhere if friends do not have them) and open an investment account to receive a free share worth up to £100 once you deposit £1 into the account.

Again, you can refer five friends and both you and your friend will receive a free share worth up to £100 when they open an account. Once you’ve received the share you can sell it in the app and withdraw the cash to put into your saving account.

Zopa

Challenger bank Zopa offers cashback on utility bills at 2 pc, and if you sign up for its Biscuit current account via a referral link you’ll also get £10.

Once you sign up, you’ll get ten referral codes of your own to persuade others to sign up for £10 each – meaning you can make up to £110.

I’ve kept Zopa open as the £300-a-month regular saver deal at 7.1 pc is an alluring choice at present, and I also funnel all our household bills through the account for the cashback.

Nationwide

Position yourself for next year’s Fairer Share from Nationwide by switching to a current account with the building society and placing £100 into one of its savings accounts.

Nationwide usually pays £100 a year into your account as a thank you for being a customer, as long as you fulfil the requirements in the first three months of 2027. You normally need to have at least £500 a month paid into your current account, as well as making at least three outward payments from it in two out of three consecutive months. Alternatively, you can pay nothing in, but make ten out payments in two of the three months.

The switch itself will net you £175 in cash assuming you are a new member, and you don’t have to switch your main current account, you can open one with another provider (or use the Chase one once you’ve done the referral deals) and switch that.

Santander Stocks and Shares Isa

Open a stocks and shares Isa at Santander via free cashback sites Topcashback or Quidco and receive £75 once you’ve left the money invested for three months.

To make the money you must invest £100 into a fund, but Santander has 850 funds on its platform so you could easily choose a cash-like fund, known as a ‘money market fund’, if you don’t want to risk your £100 in the stock market. These funds typically invest in government bonds set to pay out in the next few months, so the income they offer is quite secure.

To ensure you get the cashback, read the terms before opening the account, click through directly from the cashback site you choose and check that your account has ‘tracked’ your transaction – if it hasn’t you can make a claim on the cashback site to ensure you get your cash. This should show up when you log in to your account.

You usually have to wait a few months to get the money so this offer doesn’t lead to instant cash.

What money-making tricks work for you? moneymail@dailymail.co.uk