Being a student often involves an off-beat and hectic timetable, making conventional, scheduled part-time work difficult to commit to. However, extra money is always welcome during university. You’re probably wondering how to make money as a student. Here are 10 easy ways to make money that are more flexible to fit around your university schedule.
Online Surveys
By far the easiest way to earn some extra income. There are a whole host of online survey sites that reward users for giving their opinions and experiences. Sites like onepoll, YouGov, and Lifepoints offer cash rewards, and there are many others that offer gift cards and prizes. You can take as many or as few surveys as you like, and only do them when you have the time.
‘Paid To’ Sites
A ‘Paid To’ site offers cash rewards for doing several different things including surveys, watching videos, or even playing games! The tasks can be done whenever and wherever you want, as long as you have an internet connection. There are many of these sites to choose from, with Swagbucks and InboxPounds being two of the most popular.
Freelancing
Freelancing is a flexible way to use any skills you have to make money. There are no contracted hours as in a part-time job, so you can work as much or as little as you can manage around your university life. Any skill can be turned into an income in freelancing, such as writing, music, graphic design, and programming. Some examples of freelancing platforms include Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, and Upwork. These make it significantly easier to land freelance jobs, rather than setting up your own site and marketing yourself.
Paid Searches
This option is great for students as it is a completely passive way to earn money. After linking your account to the service, or installing a browser plugin, you begin to make money just for doing your usual web browsing and clicking links that interest you. You can do this by joining Microsoft Rewards or using the Qmee plugin.
Clickworker
Similar to freelancing, Clickworker essentially crowdsources jobs to a number of people to complete a project for their clients. Some of the work includes data processing, text creation, translation, and AI teaching, but there is a wide variety of tasks, all online-based with a range of rewards for completing them. There is no commitment to hours per week, and there are constantly new jobs being posted, to you can be entirely flexible.
Tutoring
Tutoring sounds like it could be time-consuming, but becoming an online tutor allows you to set your own hours and availability. Almost anyone can become a tutor, and some sites like MyTutor ask for university students specifically. There isn’t a qualification needed for most tutoring services except for passion for your subject and the patience and enthusiasm needed to teach others. As well as MyTutor, Tutorful and FirstTutors are two other UK-based sites for tutors.
Paid Testing & Reviewing
Imagine posting a review for a product, app, or website and being paid for it. This is exactly what is on offer at sites like UserTesting and Slicethepie (these are fully or partially US-based but pay via PayPal and have worldwide contributors). Previously mentioned ‘Paid To’ sites also often include paid review sections.
Mystery Shopping
A ‘mystery shopper’ is somebody who reviews the quality of customer service of a business. This can be by physically going to a shop and making a purchase, using the company website, or calling the company with a query. Your feedback is then used to help businesses improve their operations, particularly in regards to customer service. Some popular UK-based mystery shopper sites include Grass Roots, Tern, and Retail Maxim.
Work as an Extra
If you don’t mind hanging around a film set for long stretches of time, then you can become an extra in the background of TV programmes and films. Anyone can do it, no acting experience is required. Using a casting agency to get extra work is probably the easiest way in. Uni-versal Extras is a company specifically created for students who want to earn extra money – if you’re a full-time student there’s no registration fee. Casting Collective and Ray Knight Casting are two other companies based in and around London.
Driving Gigs
A newer but well-established option is to be a delivery driver for apps like Deliveroo, Uber, and Amazon. If you have your own vehicle and are willing to use it for work, this could be an easy way to make more money on the side. Unlike a contracted part-time job, you can decide on your hours and tailor the job to fit around university.
Blogging
This takes more time and effort but people can and have made fulltime incomes on their blogs. If you are passionate about a subject, have a lot of knowledge to share, or just love writing, blogging could be for you. There are several hosting sites, like WordPress, to set up a free blog and immediately start writing. As traffic increases, money can be earned through tools like AdSense and sponsored posts. Another way to drive traffic and get your voice heard is to guest blog on already established sites or pitch articles to post on sites like Buzzfeed and Listverse.
…Or keep it old school
In our highly connected world, it’s become easier and easier to make money from a variety of sources without even leaving our homes. This has made it more feasible for university students to earn money flexibly around their studies. Of course, this doesn’t mean that more conventional methods of money making are off the table.
Part-time Job
Part-time hours at a shop or restaurant job can be negotiated to fit around your studies, particularly if you’re living in the university town as they’ll be used to students. Opportunities can be found by searching for specific businesses in your area, or on online job boards like StudentJob. There are also often local ads asking for things like babysitters and dog walkers on a part-time but longer-term basis – these can be found online at sites like Gumtree and Facebook.
Work at Your University
You may not even need to step off campus to find a more ‘traditional’ job. Most universities will have a student job shop where you can enquire about vacancies within the university for things like administration, Resident Assistant, and librarian jobs. An added bonus is that your employers will be very aware that you will have classes and studies to do, so may be more flexible regarding hours and more understanding overall.
Good luck
There are many ways to create new income sources, and people come up with new ideas every day. This list has been compiled to showcase easier, more convenient ways to make extra money while you’re at university. We hope it proves to be helpful for our readers.
