It can be a challenge for students to make money while in college. So what are some of the ways college students can make 
money while in school?
Read on for a short list of typical, and atypical, jobs that students can pursue to make some extra dough while going to college.
Plus, I will point out a business that I wish I would have had available to me when I was a college student. A business that you can develop in your spare time that can turn into a passive income source.
How awesome would it be to graduate and not worry about getting a job. All because you spent your spare time developing your own business while going through college. This reminds me of a quote I recently was pondering.
“Do today what others will not do, so that tomorrow you will have what others will not have” – author unknown
OK, now on to the jobs…
Ways College Students Make Money
Part Time Jobs:
- waiter/waitress
- fast food industry
- deliver pizzas
- telemarketing
- campus jobs
- tutoring other students
- care provider, nursing assistant
Creative Part Time Jobs:
- selling your past papers/class notes
- donating blood or plasma
- baby/pet/house sitting
- laboratory guinea pig
- be the designated driver for your friends for 20 bucks
- filling out university research questionnaires
- type up your classmates papers “hit up your lazier friends”
- participate in psychology experiments
These temporary jobs will definitely fill your pockets with a little green.
But let’s discuss the online business that I mentioned earlier. It involves creating your own affiliate marketing niche website.
And if you work at this during your spare time, you could have an online business that produces you $2,000 to $10,000 per month by the time you graduate college. How awesome would that be? Let me show you how it works.
The Online Business Creation Process
College students are smart and have excellent computing skills these days. Many already know how to start a blog or website.
But it takes a bit more than that to make real money online.
It’s a cumulative process of learning to
- Find a Niche that intrigues you (something that solves everyday problems or intrigues an audience is best)
- Build a professional website
- write quality content
- market your website to produce monthly income.
The process really isn’t too difficult, especially if you break it down into daily tasks. This is where I would like to introduce you to a professional educational system called Wealthy Affiliate.
They have created two first class educational programs to teach website development, finding your niche, SEO techniques to get your site ranked and on page one of Google, writing content that converts into sales, all while providing a warm and inviting environment for new students to learn.
They have video style classrooms that can be taken at your leisure. You have step by step instructions to get things done on a daily basis. It’s no different than taking college classes, except it’s more interesting. Your building your own business at the same time as being creative and unique with your own online business.
This will ensure that you complete each step correctly so that you will achieve top Google rankings and not commit costly errors as you build your website/business.
Check out an example of a classroom sessions in the video below. You’ll get a better idea of the style and format that you can use to learn to create your own online business. Hit the link, it will take you to the classroom, then hit play again for the video.
Do I have Time to Start an Online Business While Going to College?
Well that depends on the amount of credits and classes you’re taking. You’ve got to have balance in life or your college education will suffer.
But let me ask you a couple of questions.
- Do you spend a couple hours per day on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram?
- Do you watch TV a couple hours a day?
If your answer is yes, then you have time. All you need is to set a specific amount of time per week and stick to it. I recommend at least dedicating 10 hours/week. Two hours a day for 5 days/week, or you could do it on the weekend.
Better yet, think of your time as an investment in your future. Once you have your website up and running, you will reap the rewards of an online income.
How much money does it take to start an online business?
Most businesses take a good amount of initial start-up capital to get going. But with an online business, this can be minimized. With Wealthy Affiliate, they have two options. A Free Membership that allows you to sit in on 10 introductory classes, put up 2 free websites, watch video Webinars, and attend training classrooms.
You don’t get all the convenience and benefits of a Premium Membership, but enough to get started.
The Premium Membership costs $47/month or you can do a yearly fee of $359 (a little bit under $30/month).
The chart below compares the two memberships and displays what they each offer. Take a look for further details.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average yearly costs for tuition, room & board in the 2012-2013 year was $19,344. When you compare this with the yearly Wealthy Affiliate fees of $359 dollars, it’s pretty much close to nothing for a proper education.
You might even be tempted to forget college and pursue Internet Marketing as a full time career. The information that Wealthy Affiliate teaches is at university level standards.
When you compare your college courses with what you can learn using the WA program, there’s no comparison. Spend 10 – 20 thousand dollars per year, or $359 dollars. Plus think of the amount of debt that most college students end up accumulating.
Is it starting to make sense?
What’s the Big Picture Here?
You’re going to college to find a career that you will enjoy and that will make you money. Why pay thousands of dollars, accumulate a ridiculous amount of debt, and spend 4-8 years of your life learning subjects that you most likely won’t apply in the real world.
At the same time, for a fraction of the money you’ll spend on college, you can take what you learn on a daily basis and build a business that will provide you with income for years to come.
Regardless of whatever field you study, there will be some aspect of your career that will involve the internet or an online presence in the future.
Learn these skills now and you will be way ahead of the game.
Take advantage of learning how to do online marketing, website development, and using your own critical thinking skills. All of these things will make you a more marketable young professional. And the cost is next to nothing when you compare it to a typical college education.
I graduated Colorado State University with a major in Occupational Therapy and a minor in Anatomy. I spent way over $50,000 on my education. Granted I have a good career, but I could have had so much more if I started learning these concepts at an earlier stage in life.
If you want to learn how to create your own online business through a professional educational platform, check out the most amazing online educational source out there.
Wealthy Affiliate provides a revolutionary online platform and community. Discover their innovative approach to building online wealth today. Anyone can do it, especially college students.
If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear them, so let me know what’s on your mind and I’ll get back to you right away.
Thanks,
Todd
photo credit: TexasEagle via photopin cc
Another cool related post: What is Making Money Online
If you use the Internet a lot, and you’re a college student, then odds are that you’re probably a good typist.
You can capitalize on this by creating a niche blog that your interested in. You can make money in a number of ways.
I know all this and do like your recommendation of Wealthy Affiliate. I just don’t have the time to write all the content. I can write some, but it takes time.
Besides Wealthy Affiliate’s training program, do you have any recommendation for pre-made niche sites or original content creators that could help this part of the process for me.
I’m in college now and so time is a bit limited, but I do want to learn this and think this will enhance my skills once I graduate college.
Thanks,
Ryan
Hi Ryan,
I hear you, it can be tough to juggle college while creating an online business.
I do have an excellent recommendation for you. Human Proof Designs has keyword packages, original content packages, and an entire service to create a niche website so you can start earning while in college.
You still need the SEO skills and know how to edit content, and for that you should get hooked up with Wealthy Affiliate.
I went to college for 7 years and spent over 50K, boy I could have done better going with Wealthy Affiliate’s college like education instead.
Cheers,
Todd
Now a days it is not hard to earn money online but we need some skills and hard work and also have to spend some time developing those skills. Not too different than going to college.
What I like about Wealthy Affiliate’s training center is that it’s online classroom structure and the amazing support. I have found this most helpful when creating my online business.
Really great post and for those college students who want to make extra money, start with a niche website based on something that you’re studying or interested in, then by the time you graduate, you’ll have an online business and not worry about getting a job.
Great points Rand, much appreciated. Those college students who want to check out the Wealthy Affiliate Memberships, there’s absolutely no risk to check them out for free.
Cheers,
Todd
Awesome article! I totally agree with the first step being a part-time job. When I was attending university I worked a part time job at the front desk and it certainly helped me make some walk around money that was steady. Also a lot of the time with these jobs you can make your own schedule.
Another thing I did where I made a surprising amount of money was just selling my used books and dvds and stuff online. Here is the link of the site I used if anyone is interested: wwwbonavendi.com its free and basically you could sell just about anything and it does a price comparison from different sites to show which will offer you the most money for your stuff.
I would also recommend being productive and joining a lot of extracurricular clubs and intramural sports if that is something you are into. I think in college you really find out how important it is to meet people and network, I made some money doing freelance work for a production company simply because I made friends with a guy whose dad owned the company. I would never have met him if I wasnt involved in a entrepreneurial club at my university. I would def recommend getting involved.
This article was great, if you take advantage of this stuff you will be fine! and have multiple means of income.
Cheers!
Some great suggestions Ryan, thanks for the feedback. Personally, if I was 20 y.o and just getting started with college and didn’t want to rack up the 100K college loan debt, I’d go with a niche online business.
This student at our online training program did this and he was able to pay off all his student loans in a year and by month 11, he was making over $4,300/mo. Not many college students can say that. Read his story right here in this post called How To Pay Off Your Student Loans.
Thanks,
Todd
Interesting ideas on how college students can make some extra cash. My friend started an online business in one of her college classes and then continued to build the site. Now she makes an average of about $50/day while going to school. It took her about a year, but well worth it.
Really good post, especially for college students interested in online business ideas.
That’s awesome to hear Anna. Tell you friend if she wants to accelerate her online business to head over to our training center and get connected.
She’d really benefit from all of Jay’s advanced webinars. There’s info on improving your SEO, rankings, ranking on Google, outsourcing. Plus the community support and SiteRubix website builder alone can drastically improve her site rankings.
Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated.
Todd
Nice ideas, Todd. I’ve a couple of suggestions as well.
Sounds good Jack. But I’ve already replied to another comment you left on our site about working freelance gigs. This is the same as just finding a job, you trade your time for money. Here, we teach people how to build online businesses, so that you eventually build a site that produces passive income that works for you.
To learn more, click here.
Thanks,
Todd
Hi Todd
I’m a full time college student and about 8 months ago I was reading this very post about finding work online as a college student.
I started Working with Wealthy Affiliate (based on your recommendation) part time while going to college. It was difficult I must admit, but now I’ve got my system down and I’ve got a cool niche site that sees about 5 – 7K in traffic and I make close to $70-$100/day as a college student.
There’s not many other college students who can say that. I still work part time with my online business while hitting the books for school and I’m able to manage it well. What’s better is I can see a progression of increased traffic as I continue to build my online business and I predict that by the time I graduate, I won’t even need to look for a job, my online business will be making me full time income, I’m predicting around $300-$400/day.
I want to thank you for referring me to Wealthy Affiliate, they are easily as high as caliber of an education as my college courses for less than $1 dollar/day. I bought the yearly membership.
Thanks again Todd, you’ve made all the difference in my college career and life career.
Nick
Hey Nick,
Thanks for coming back to my site and commenting on my Ways College Students Make Money article. I wish I had someone who had shown me Wealthy Affiliate when I was in college, but who knows if I would have had the courage to take it on like you did.
If there are any college students out there reading this post, this is a very powerful testimony to what you can do if you put your heart and energy into a real online business. And the cool thing is that you can do it in your spare time.
Hindsight is 20/20 but it takes a wise person to realize the bigger picture. Putting in the extra effort to have an online business that produces you part time income while going to college is great, but realizing that it can turn into a full time career that allows you to make more money than 90% of college grads, work from home or anywhere in the world, and one that grows as you continue to build it seems like common sense.
The question is, how many of you will take advantage of Nick’s story. For those of you that are motivated and hard workers, take the chance and learn the SEO/building website skills you need to succeed. Wealthy Affiliate helped Nick and myself make it in the online world, and they can help you too.
Check out my review of Wealthy Affiliate to see all that they offer and see if they’re right for you.
Thanks Nick and I wish you the best of luck in the future, something tells me that you won’t need it though.
Todd
Todd,
I must admit as attractive as all those part time jobs sounded, I would certainly be one of the guys that would really opt for earning online.
I appreciate how you discuss the balance between classes and the need for green as well.
Lets face it school is expensive, earning online really gives you a lot more control of your time than punching a clock.
Keep up the great work,
Gary
Absolutely Gary, plus as the students business grows, they could have an income producing website by the time they graduate from college. Wouldn’t that be a great way to start one’s professional career.
Thanks for your comment,
Todd
Really good article Todd, great idea for college students.
Great information for those interested in making some extra cash!
Hi Eric,
That’s what I was thinking too. Gosh, I wish I had access to Wealthy Affiliate when I was in college. Beats working in a part time job and the potential to create something real, that will grow with a person over time.
Cheers,
Todd