University is a time in a person’s life when more often than not they find themselves short on both money and time. Is there a way of making a little cash on the side, without committing to part-time job? There is indeed, many in fact, and whilst that previous sentence did slightly seem as if I was alluding to drug-dealing, I certainly was not. No, the key to improving your financial situation is the internet.
In today’s world it isn’t the least bit surprising that the internet opens up numerous opportunities to make money; you might just need a little guidance towards how to go about it. This article will list, describe and explain a few popular ways for students to generate income online.
As a student being paid to write this article, I think it’s safe to say I have experience in this area. While I have tried several of the following methods, I cannot personally vouch for the effectiveness of all them, but they are strongly recommended by the student community in general.
Surveys
I thought I’d start off with an easy one. Market research is valuable to companies, which is the reason why several websites will pay you to take their surveys. Not a particularly good earner, the main of attraction of doing online surveys is that they are easy; you don’t have to be creative or think very hard. You just need to have an opinion.
You can easily search Google for “paid surveys” to find many websites offering paid opportunities. Just use caution as there are all kinds of scams revolving around this industry.
Writing
Think you can string together a few coherent sentences? You might want to try landing yourself a writing job. By this I don’t mean securing a book contract, (although if you’ve got the talent, go for it; write an ebook; hell, write a novel!) I mean content writing. Companies pay good money for people to write content for their websites. One particular area of content writing, Search Engine Optimisation, is high in demand. This involves using keywords a certain number of times to make the webpage more attractive to search engines. Writing can be lucrative, especially if you’re a quick thinker and/or typist.
Slightly more difficult to get into than taking surveys, there are quite a few places to find writing work. oDesk.com & Elance or just few resources helpful for finding all sorts of online work and could be the place for you to find your writing job. Further to this, if you have expertise or experience in a certain field, you may be able to sell articles about your passion on certain websites. You can just type into Google search box”where to sell articles” or “article buyers” and you’ll get the a list of websites to potentially make money with your articles.
Creativity
Always though your ingenious or artistic side has gone wholly undervalued? Well the good news is that you can use your hidden talents to support yourself financially. For example, gumroad is a website that allows you to sell things that you make over the internet. Whether you’re a would-be musician, poet, artist or any such creative type, you can have a try at selling your work on gumroad.
Do you think you have interesting thoughts? Interesting enough to be profitable? If you think so, consider starting a blog. Should your blog gain sufficient popularity, advertisement on your blog is another way on how to make money online and could produce a nice little bit of extra income.
Sell Your Things
It might sound a bit drastic, (and it could well be a little extreme if you started selling all your food and clothes and stuff) but selling some of your possessions is a nice way to bring in a bit of quick money. Of course, only sell things that you can bear to part with. Websites where you can sell things include eBay, Amazon and Gumtree. Another approach is to scour these sites looking for items you can buy low then sell high.
You never know, something that you bought long ago might be a valuable collectable now; after years of collecting dust.
Author: Jerry is an internet marketing professional who loves blogging about a variety of internet topics including email to sms communication.