The broke college life can get old really fast. You can only tolerate walking around college with the same clothes weak in weak out and eating instant noodles for so long. We all need nice things. If you are tired of being broke in college, I have good news for you. There are decent side hustles for college students you can work on and earn good money starting as soon as today.

As with all things that are worthwhile, gaining traction in any of these side hustles for college students will require some level of self-discipline and dedication. The beauty of most of these side hustles is that you stand to lose nothing except your time. The upside can be tremendous, however. How much money you make will generally depend on how much of yourself you give to the projects.     

It goes without saying that you have to have above-average time management skills to succeed at these side hustles for college students and maintain good grades as well. Nonetheless, considering the fact that the average student wastes an inordinate amount of time every week on unproductive activities such as parties, watching sports, and browsing social media, finding time to work on your side hustle will not be an issue.

Below are some of the side hustles for college students you can start doing today to earn money while in college. I believe you can find at least two things on this list that fit your skills and interest. That said, if you want to make massive progress, you should concentrate your efforts and only work on one thing at any given time.

Tutoring High-School Students

You may have noticed that some college students tutor fellow college students on your campus. I am here to tell you that you can make much more money tutoring high school students than you can make tutoring college students.

Tutoring programs for high school students are more structured and organized. It also happens that the parents pay money for the programs directly. This is a big deal as it is easier to enforce attendance and payments when working directly with parents. Further, parents of high school students are more invested in seeing the grades of their children improve as the grades determine the kinds of colleges they can be accepted into.

Given the organized nature of high school tutoring programs, you can work with established organizations such as Kaplan. This ensures that you don’t have to deal with parents and other logistical issues. Your only job will be to show up and teach the classes you are assigned.

If you want to make more money, you can ditch the established organizations in favor or a smaller local operation. The best way to go about doing this is to partner with the smaller local operation by teaching a class they are currently not offering. By offering to teach such a class, you shall have created an entirely new revenue stream for them. This gives you greater leverage when negotiating what portion of the tuition fees they charge the students for the class get paid to you.

Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is one of the most accessible and flexible side hustles for college students today. Most college students have above-average writing skills and they can utilize these skills in varied ways to make money. Depending on your hobbies or academic major, you already have enough niche knowledge to write informative authority pieces readers will find valuable.

If you are an athlete, for instance, you can write on nutrition, exercise and fitness, self-development, mindset, and host of other topics that interest you. Students majoring in Accounts, Finance, or Economics can write on personal finance, business, investing, tax planning, stock trading, and other finance related topics. Every trade, hobby, and area of expertise has several blogs, websites, and magazines that are in need of new articles every month. You can be one of the people supplying the content.

So, where can you find people looking to hire writers? Finding people who can hire you is actually not a problem. There are several job boards on the internet today with thousands of new projects being posted every week. Some of the notable websites you can check out include Freelancer.com, UpWork, and Guru.com.

 

Starting an Online Business

The greatest opportunities for side hustles for college students can be found online. The internet has made taking part in commerce possible for pretty much any person with a laptop and an internet connection. The barriers to entry to most industries have been torn down. Even those who don’t have products to sell have the option of selling other people’s products. The interesting part is that in some instances, you don’t even have to ship the products yourself, you can just link to another online store from your website and collect a commission for each sale generated from your referrals.

If you don’t want to sell physical products, you can sell digital products. These can be software, ebooks, educational programs, apps, and subscriptions to forums, among others. If you are particularly good at a certain subject in school, you can record a series of videos and put together an online course. This gives you an opportunity to scale your tutoring services for a chance to make money while you sleep.

This website has several articles discussing various online business ideas a person can start for the price of a web hosting package. A great number of the ideas can serve as a reliable source of passive income. Passive income is real and is one of the most reliable side hustles for college students to pursue.

Sell Technical Skills Such as Graphic Design and Coding

If you are in college and you have a specialized skill that businesses can use, you can work on a project by project basis for various businesses without having to commit fulltime to one organization. This is the essence of freelancing and is one of the most convenient side hustles for college students you can do. Some of the skills you can sell include web development, app development, graphic design, technical writing, rendering, photoshop, and video editing, among others.

There are several avenues through which you can find clients. The old school way, which still works, is to walk into local businesses and sell them on your solutions as an independent contractor. If you are into web development, for instance, you can approach local businesses that have no website or those that have outdated or poorly designed websites and offer to build them new effective websites.

I say effectively because very few businesses will hire you if they can’t see how what you are offering will make them money. Whatever the service you want to offer, you have to take into account the needs and problems of the person you are approaching. Your pitch should include how your solution will help them achieve their goals faster or with less effort.

You can also find clients by making cold calls or emails. Further, the internet, when you consider websites such as UpWork and Thumbtack, makes it very easy to connect with qualified prospects looking to hire people with very specific skills. These sites have a constant stream of new projects and you can land one as easily as any other freelancer can. All you have to do is communicate to the prospects that you are capable of helping them meet their goals.

Drive an Uber or Lyft

As a side hustle for college students, driving an Uber or Lyft is very convenient as you can do it in the evenings after your classes or on the weekend. You can even study in the car as you wait for passengers.

There are no special requirements to be an Uber or Lyft driver. As long as you have a car in good condition, you are good to go. The rideshare community has a lot of valuable tools you can put to good use to supercharge your rideshare career. There are forums – some are city-specific – where drivers share ideas with other drivers and apps to easily access important services such as car rescue services.

If you hate the idea of dealing with passengers, Uber is expanding its service to include deliveries. Working for UberEats is a convenient side hustle for college students that won’t eat much into your study time if you manage your time well. You don’t even need a car to deliver food using UberEats. You can sign up for UberEats if you have a bike or scooter.

There are other great services besides UberEats that you sign up for if you want to deliver food and make money whenever you are free. Some of the services that are found in several cities include PostMates and DoorDash.

Maintain Businesses’ Social Media Accounts

Many business people don’t understand how they can take advantage of social media to promote their businesses. As a young person who uses social media every day, you probably already know how the social media streets work and the best ways to get attention.

Social media marketing is one of the fastest growing marketing channels. You can easily learn social media marketing and become good enough for local businesses to put you on retainer to optimize and maintain their social media accounts. Aside from Internet-based businesses, very few businesses take advantage of the powers of social media. You will be surprised at how many brick and mortar stores in your area have inactive social media accounts or no social media accounts at all.

If you can show these businesses that you can get the customers through social media, they will happily pay you to. You will definitely have to make them more money than they are paying you if you want the relationship to last.