4 Ways to Make Extra Money as an Expat in Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Expats living in Plovdiv have many advantages. It is possible for expats to earn some extra income as a result of being able to speak English, low living costs, and minimal competition on many different markets. Listed below are some ideas to help you get started, but some of them require more work and patience than others while some of them do not. 

We're going to give you some ideas without going into too much detail to lay down the foundation in this article. Please feel free to comment if you need more information about some of them so we know we need to create a more detailed post in the near future. Here we go! These are four ways you can earn extra money as an expat in Plovdiv:

Teaching English (Private Lessons)

Making extra money this way is very popular not only in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, but all over the world where the native language is not English. There are schools in Bulgaria that offer English classes, but there is nothing like a private lesson from someone whose primary language is English. You can also arrange the teaching times yourself whenever it is convenient for you. It is possible to teach English to one student or multiple students depending on your schedule. Alternatively, if you don't want to teach at home, you can arrange the lessons through Zoom and other video tools. It is important to tell people about this service on your social media profiles, create posts about it or even create seperate social media accounts about your offerings, for instance on Instagram. To reach more people on social media, you must use the right local hashtags and share valuable content about your offerings on social media on a weekly basis. Because you are not looking to reach millions of users like commercial companies, finding 3-5 students should be relatively simple. 

Buying and Selling Antiques on the Internet

Yes, you read that correctly. You may have noticed how many antique shops surround the Old Town of Plovdiv. We don't mean those fancy shops with pretty displays that look very inviting from the outside. Those untidy little shops that look like a dumping ground for old stuff are what we are talking about. Here is where the treasure lies. They have an array of different things including clothes, house tools, and army equipments that are extremely valuable to collectors. The best part is that the prices are very unproperly marked up (undervalued). The reason for this is both that you pay in Bulgarian Levs and that re-selling side hustle culture hasn't yet developed in this country as it has in Western Europe and the U.S. 

There are obviously some basics you'll need to know about what sells and what doesn't. No worries, though, because technology can help you here. Since your starting selling point would be eBay in order to reach millions of people worldwide, all you have to do is take a picture of the items you see with Google Lens to identify them. If you find the item name, simply type it into eBay's search box and click on "sold items" to perform the search. By doing so, you will be able to see what people paid for this item in the past. If your purchase price is less than what they cost to buyers in the past, you just found a profitable asset. The next step would be to take a good picture of the product with a good description and list it on eBay. 

Providing Guided Cycling Tours

This is one of the most prominent tourist attractions exists in all capitals of Europe, but for some reason not in Plovdiv. You may agree that riding a bike with a guide is the best way to explore a city. Bike tours are fun, environmentally friendly, and affordable. It is important to remember that almost a million tourists visit Plovdiv annually because of its historical value and affordable price. Because nobody in Plovdiv provides that service yet, whoever jumps into it first will really reap the rewards. This service is available in major cities like Amsterdam, London, Paris, and Berlin; it costs at least 25 euros per person for a couple of hours tour. Once you have created the route for your tour, all that remains is to list this service on Air B&B, which most visitors use when they visit Plovdiv. Air B&B displays your services to those visitors all the time, so you will benefit from it as well. In case you do not know, Air B&B not only offers places to stay, but also experiences created by locals. 

At the beginning, you can start with as few as three bicycles (one for you and two for customers). During the long summer days, you can easily repeat this experience three times a day and make 250-300 leva a day. Don't have a bike? That's fine too. Plovdiv has a few places where you can rent bikes for a very low daily price. The business can even be started without owning any bikes. 

Your Home as a Dining Room 

This business is perfect for those who love to cook. You can start this delicious business immediately if you have a dining table that can accommodate at least four people. www.eatwith.com is a website that will help you get started. It is a platform for home chefs and others to meet and eat together. To begin with, you need to prepare a menu (starter, main, dessert). They then upload their best pictures to the website 'eatwith' along with a nice description. You can include as many food and drinks in your package as you like and wait for the orders to flow in. You may not have heard about it before, but trust us, it's a next-level dining experience, especially due to covid restrictions. More people are interested in these micro-private experiences than ever before. However, the reviews on the wbsite reveal the amount of money people are willing to pay for an experience of this kind. You can sharpen your cooking skills as well as meet a lot of new people from all over the world by doing this business.

Expats in Plovdiv can make extra money in a variety of ways. However, these aren't all of them. If there is enough interest, we'll post similar articles in the future. Feel free to comment below if you have any questions about those methods.