16 Easiest Approaches to Make Money As a Student
In financial blogs and YouTube videos, everyone insinuated saving money or investing was so easy. So, my urges to invest and get rich quickly grew substantially. Who doesn’t want some quick money?
But where is the money to invest? While browsing regular Instagram, chances are that you will find at least one Warren Buffet quote regarding investment. These enticing quotes give you an anticipatory feeling like you’re just one step from earning your first billion. Reality is, you’ve yet to figure out how to make money as a student.
Over and over, you hear about teenagers becoming millionaires. A girl in your area bought a house; your neighbor's boy presented an expensive car to his father. But you're most likely far from creating such news. You do not necessarily have to be the next Warren Buffett or Elon Musk.
Maybe they figured out their earning path at an early age. That doesn't mean you need to do the exact same thing. Your best option would be to try out many things and then stick to the one successful track you enjoy.
To do that, you must know about all the potential opportunities to make money as a student. Maybe you have run out of ideas to try? To potentially help you find your direction, we have listed the best easy-to-start approaches to make money as a student (Besides a regular job).
16 Ideas to Potentially Make Money As a Student
There are countless blogs depicting hundreds of ways for college students to make money. Everyone is throwing their perspective out there. As we have also gone through the student phase, we know many of the potential paths to earn money. Not every money-making strategy will be appropriate for you. To make our first dime, we had to wait for ages. We tested multiple approaches, trying to figure out our first valid income source.
If you're smart enough, you can earn money online without any monetary investment.
1. Uber Driver
Earning $1000 extra income is a substantial amount for students. If you can start working as an Uber/Lyft driver, you might easily earn $1000 per month. The best part of being an Uber or ride-sharing driver is you don’t have to follow any time limitations. Whenever and wherever you want to start working, you can. There are no hard and fast rules. (Except for your student visa regulations).
On average, in Canada, you will earn $18 to $22 per hour. Now calculate the number of hours you need to work to earn your targeted extra monthly income. In the U.S., it's about $9 to $12 per hour, after all deductions.
Set your monthly routine based on the target plan so that you don’t have to miss any important events
2. Food Delivery
Another earning opportunity is as a food-delivery driver, like for 'Skip-the-Dishes'. Like an Uber driver, you don’t have to work under any hard and fast rules. Whenever you get free time, you can work. Of course, just like Uber, there are better times to work.
If you have important homework or semester finals, you can pause the food delivery service, as long as it is only your side hustle or means of earning a little extra.
A Skip-the-Dishes driver doesn't make an hourly wage. They get paid $4 to $7 per delivery, plus, hopefully, tips. So, there's a potential to make good money, but many factors come into play.
3. Social Media Manager
According to PayScale, a social media marketing assistant earns $15 per hour, on average. This is a decent job for a student. Even if they pay you less than this hourly rate, you might want to consider working in this field, because it’s scalable. You will gain an understanding of how marketing works, especially on social media platforms. There is nothing to lose. Rather, whatever you learn here, you can implement in a venture later on.
If it turns out that you enjoy marketing, you might decide to build a career from it starting as a marketing assistant. A marketing assistant typically helps with data collection and analysis for market research. The assistant often helps perform clerical duties for the rest of the marketing department.
4. Shopify
Shopify allows you to start a business without managing physical inventory. The primary idea is you just need to create your shop. Shopify has a friendly subscription model. Pick the basic one and develop your first shop based on your preferred product niche. I would recommend you to start small and pick a few products. Concentrate on marketing your products.
Whenever a consumer orders a product from the supplier, you get notified, and the product will be ready to ship to the buyer. You will be working as a middleman. It will take time to get the ball rolling, but once you’ve got some experience, you'll have endless scalability. Hundreds of students started this as a side hustle and later made it their primary living source.
5. Blogging
Blogging is one of the oldest and most basic ways to earn money on the internet. Fifteen years ago, people were earning money by blogging. In fifteen years, people will still be earning money by doing it. Whatever happens to the economy, blogging will always be there. With the rise of the internet, people have become impatient. They want everything 'NOW'. Whenever we want to know how to do something, we Google it. The search results are almost always a blogpost.
In the future, people will not suddenly stop searching for answers on the internet. Year after year, the trend has been increasing. The only issue with making money by blogging is time constraints. It takes a significant amount of time to get moderate traffic on your website. Without sufficient traffic, there is no hope to earn money. If you think you can start a blog this week and earn money the following week, get real.
Earning money through blogging is a long-term process. If you’re willing enough to invest 6-12 months into blogging regularly, you can consider this field. The scalability of blogging is infinite.
6. Content Writing
Another great earning opportunity for students is content writing. If you have the confidence that you can allure people through your words, then content writing is for you. Content marketing is the king of online marketing. It is like you don’t directly advertise a product or service. Rather you write a detailed description about any topic and create relevance to a particular product.
For example, you decide to write about the iPhone. So what you can do is write about the importance of a stellar mobile camera, seamless operating system, how important user-friendliness is and relate the iPhone indirectly to these features.
There is nothing to lose here if you start content writing at a lower rate. You can build a good career in content writing later. According to PayScale, the average salary of a content writer is around $50,000.
7. Writing Reviews
Whenever you decide to buy something, you search for it on Google and try to get an idea about the product. On Amazon or other eCommerce sites, we read reviews and decide to buy or not to buy, based on the product’s rating and reviews.
Have you ever bought a poorly rated product? Companies spend a lot of money on reviews. It’s because they want to improve their SEO(Search Engine Optimization), earn credibility, drive traffic and thereby increase their sales.
There are many platforms where you can choose to write reviews according to your preferences. Here below, you'll find a number of popular platforms to write reviews on and make money as a student:
Swagbucks
ReviewStream
UserTesting
Software Judge
InboxDollars
Vindale Research
Capterra
MindSwarms
Online Book Club
ApperWall
8. Rent Out Your Space Like Elon Musk
You may have heard of the business idea Elon Musk had when he was a student. In 1988, Musk left South Africa to attend Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. After spending two years in Ontario, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania on a scholarship. Musk and his roommate, Adeo Ressi, rented a large, relatively cheap frat house off-campus.
The roommates transformed the 10-bedroom home into a nightclub. You can use a similar approach. Or if you’re currently living in an apartment and have the extra room, you can rent out the extra room to earn money. For that, you need to rearrange your room with good furniture and other necessary stuff. You can use Airbnb or other popular room-sharing services.
Read this article to know how this person has lived almost free over the last ten years and created wealth using this strategy.
9. Answering on Quora
As a student, the chances are that you’re a frequent visitor to Quora. Whatever you want to know about, you will get an answer in Quora. Anytime you want, you may start answering questions on Quora. It’s one of the best options for students to earn money, while using social media. Pick an interesting topic, perhaps one you know something about.
If you’re a science enthusiast, you can create a Quora Space related to a science topic. After that, start answering questions related to the issue. Whenever you find related answers or interesting blogs or news, you can share it in the space. You need to enroll in the Quora Space Earning program first.
One thing you need to remember is that your earnings do not necessarily depend on followers and views. You may have substantial followers, but if hardly any of them click on your ads, then your earnings will not match your expectations. Your earningsdepend on the number of ad impressions and the click-through rate.
10. Writing in Medium
To earn through Medium, you have to sign up for the Medium Partner Program, also known as MPP. When you join it, you will become eligible to earn money from this platform. To join the Partner Program, go to the account settings page and click the Medium Partner Program. This will take you to a page explaining everything about the MPP.
Follow their instructions and you will be allowed to sign up for the program. Currently, Medium uses the Stripe platform to send you your earnings. It is worth mentioning that if you’re in a rush to start earning money immediately, Medium won’t be the solution for you. It takes time to get visitors and followers to earn a substantial amount of money.
11. Start a Dropshipping Business
We have already discussed the Shopify process to earn money. Shopify is not the only dropshipping platform. There are many well-established dropshipping platforms on the internet. Ten to 15 years ago, people couldn't have imagined a retail business without inventory. Right now, it can be seen happening all over the internet. People grab the idea of canceling out the inventory issue. All you need to find is the appropriate product to fit the market.
As a student, you can work with student-related items. Pick a few unique products and try to sell them through Facebook and Instagram advertising. Make sure your ad designs are compelling to the users and make a stellar landing page. Try sticking with this business. If you can excel in dropshipping during your student life, you have the chance to become an entrepreneur after you graduate.
12. Micro Investment in Trading Apps Like Robinhood
Previously, investing was a very rigorous process and students were hardly interested in the investment industry. But with the new apps and upgraded systems, micro-investments are experiencing unprecedented involvement by the younger generation.
Robinhood is a popular trading platform among students currently. Others are:
Charles Schwab
Acorns
Fidelity Investment
Betterment
SoFi
You can even start with just $100 to gather experience from these platforms.
If you’re serious about earning money, I would recommend you learning about investing. Being able to gather enough experience in investing, you won’t have to think about job security or other sources of income for long. It will become your full-time career.
13. Forex Market
Did you know that the Forex market, also known as the FX market, is bigger than the New York Stock Exchange, in terms of daily transactions? On average, more than $5 trillion are traded every day. By comparison, this volume exceeds global equities trading volumes by 25 times.
There are different kinds of FX trading, such as scalping, day trading, swing trading, and position trading. The earning margin is very low in the Forex market; therefore, it requires a lot of investment to earn significant amounts of money, since FX is an extremely competitive market. A tiny margin of error could cost you a huge chunk of your investment.
Forex trading requires you to have a greater understanding of economies, finance, politics, and other financial factors. Since all sorts of news can have a significant impact on the market, you have to become effective and efficient in capturing the market trends.
14. Freelancing Sites
Freelancing is one of the best options for students to earn money. Students have study pressures and they don’t have regularly available time to spend at a regular job. Being committed to a regular job timetable may cause them serious work-life imbalance. To escape from this dilemma, students can focus on freelancing. Whenever you get time, you can work as a freelancer.
There are very well-established freelance sites available on the internet, such as Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer. Go to one of them and sign up. Start selling your expertise. Whatever you know a lot about, you can sell it on these freelance sites. For example, you're an expert violin player. You can sell your expertise as a violin teacher in Upwork.
Make sure you put a reasonable hourly rate, when you begin, to entice new clients. When you become popular or get enough work, you can increase your hourly rate, little by little.
15. YouTube
We can’t ignore the significance of YouTube in our lives. Whenever we need help, either we Google it or search for it on YouTube. Say you want to buy a television so you browse through all of the television reviews. You want to buy your next phone, so you visit some of the well-known tech review channels. YouTube content creators have been earning millions of dollars per year just making content.
Don’t underestimate the effort it takes. It’s very easy to search a query then make a video with you reading about the topic, but it takes a whopping amount of homework to produce good content. You can start a YouTube channel about your favorite topic. It's wise to choose a niche about which you’re passionate.
16. Online Gaming
Live-stream gaming is the newest method for earning money online. As I’m not a big fan of online gaming, I found it a waste of time, but the people surrounding me are busy with online gaming. They’re not necessarily busy playing virtual games; they’re spending hour after hour watching other people play!
There is a new feature; making donations to the players. Money-making was never so easy. You’re playing games, people watch it and they give you money. Who ever thought this would be a reality?
Other potential money-making approaches:
Reviewer
Small tasks like homework
Tutor
Call pickups
Storyteller
Quiz creator
Writing an eBook
Blogging
Airtasker
Eye for Style
Hand Artist
T-shirt designer
Affiliate programs
Since you're reading this, you're actively looking for opportunities to earn money. The figuring-out process is the first step of your breakthrough. As a student, you will get regularly perplexed while investing your time and effort into any particular field. Friends, parties and hangouts are forever calling at your door, while money is at the opposite door. You decide which to choose.
By saying this, we don't advise you to avoid a social life. Rather , we recommend you maintain a balance by having a student, a professional and a social life. The earlier you start practicing, the better money manager you will become.
It's not rocket science to earn money. If you have a laptop and an internet connection, you can easily step into any field you like and start making money. Just stick to your preferred sector. Enjoy your efforts and be committed to them. The money will follow.
Canada Hey, we are a content team of Skipissues. We blog about anything or everything that students can benefit from.
You too can join us if you want to write about any student topics. Email us.
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