College can be quite an expensive affair sometimes with all night parties to submitting hundreds upon hundred pages of printed assignment work. Regardless of how much of a miser you are, there are bound to be days in college when you are broke and don’t have money for a proper meal (that’s when you start going to the college mess). The only salvation would be then your parents remitting that monthly or weekly allowance.
But this need not be the case, that too especially in the modern world. Nowadays, college students are engaged in working online, in their spare time, to earn some extra money. This tendency has been largely facilitated and nourished by the digital revolution especially the development of Internet. The Internet acts as a middle-man between those who want to work and those who wants work done. The following are the top 10 ultimate online job opportunities that college students may engage in to earn that extra dime:
10 Ultimate Online Job Opportunities For College Students To Earn Extra Dime
Table of Contents
1. Content Writing
Content Writing, by far, is the top job a college student may do. Content writing refers to writing articles, essays and the like, to the employer based on the topics that are given. These topics may range from a very simple topic such as writing about Top 10 cricket batsmen of all time, to explaining Astro-Physics in 250 words. These articles when written properly can earn you good money from the employer.
The articles once written and handed over to the employer will be used for the purpose of being displayed in the employer’s blog or for some other purpose and becomes the exclusive content of the author without any room for claiming ownership over it unless expressly stated. Review writing, writing research papers, writing theses etc are other forms of content writing avenues for a person to earn money. There are many platforms that offer freelancing opportunities for those who want to pursue a content writing job, such as Upwork, Freelancer.com etc
2. Photography, Sketching and More
Photography and Sketching, among other things, apart from being your passion and your favourite hobby can also prove to be a perfect avenue of earning money online. There are many market places online that allows for the sale of photographs, sketches and the like such as Shutterstock or Mojarto.
The process of earning money through this is quite simple. Firstly a photo has to be captured or a sketch drawn and then has to be uploaded to the market place (website). These photos will be seen by all those who log into purchase them and interested parties will offer to buy them which you can accept or decline. The major drawback to earn money through this is the amount of time it will take for a person to get established and get recognized.
The customers that frequent these sites rely upon pros who have great ratings and huge recognition. Thereby the newbies will find it intensely difficult to hold up with them. Hence the photo or sketch may remain unsold for a long period of time or the first few works will have to be sold at low prices. However once recognized it is surely one of the easiest methods to earn good easy money.
3. YouTube Channel
YouTube channel as most of us know is a person’s personal space carved out in YouTube for expressing his views and for channelling his content to a multitude of people. This personal space can, however, be also used to earn money. The requirement to earn good money is only that you should have a good subscriber base. A good audience for your content will help you earn money out of your YouTube fairly easily. This requires persistent hard work with regards to the content being uploaded and the way in which audience are attracted.
After ensuring a strong audience base you can enable the option of monetizing your videos. This option will be there on the monetization tab where you have to check the option “Monetize with Ads” and then from Video Manager tab you can monetize the videos that you want. After monetizing, to earn the money Google Ad sense has to be activated and a account has to be created and the money from the monetized video will come to the designated account.
4. Virtual Assistant
Another efficient means of earning money in your spare time is by being a virtual assistant. Virtual Assistant also known as a VA, is a person who provides specialized administrative, technical or expert service remotely without being physically in the office with the client. The transactions between the VA and the client takes place entirely through the Internet where data regarding the project or task is sent to and fro.
The methods of assistance can be through video based programs such as Skype or can also be through traditional conventional Fax and Email etc. The VA is expected by the client to sort out the fine aspects of the job so assigned with great care and dedication. The jobs delegated might include as simple as finding a basic legal authority on the Internet or all out legal research to completely develop a client’s case.
This method of earning money takes a little more extra effort than most of the other methods mentioned. But this can be used to harness a lot of goodwill from many clients around the world and also pays the person very decently.
5. Customer Service Jobs
Working at call centres and other service centres have always been resorted to by college students to earn that extra pocket money. However in today’s world, it is no longer necessary for a person to physically go to a call centre and work there all night. It is possible for a customer service agent to be within the comfort of his home and still earn money.
This is possible as the calls by various customers get routed to the number that you designate for this purpose. So instead of the calls being picked up from a call centre telephone you can address the query straight from your phone. This is a very efficient method to earn money without having to spend entire nights at call centres.
The effort thus invested is slightly lesser than in the conventional customer service set up. However the amount of work to be handled will be just as voluminous. But the payment that a person receives is decent and this is thus a good means of earning through college.
6. Transcribing and Translation
Transcribing and Translating are very easy jobs that can be used to earn money quite easily. Transcribing involves converting audio content into text word by word. The audio that requires transcription will be sent to you by mail or some other sharing app such as Whatsapp etc. The person receiving the said assignment is expected to listen to every word and type it with appropriate pauses brought by appropriate punctuation.
This work might turn out to be very difficult to do when the audio is not coherent or clear. Under such cases the possibility of typing the content with minimal errors will be next to impossible.
Translation as a money making gig is apt for people very well versed with another language. The document so given by the employer might have to be translated from English to some language or vice versa, in most cases. This job apart from being a source of income can also be a good way of brushing up on some of your language skills. The remuneration is decent and is proportional to the amount of work that has to be invested.
7. Online Tutoring
Tutoring or providing tuition via Internet is quite an efficient manner of earning quick money. This job is apt and suitable for college students most of whom are very well capable of explaining concepts, theories and topics in a detailed and elaborate manner. The major pre-requisite of doing this job is having an account in one of the different tutoring platforms. These platforms acts as the intermediary between the student and the tutor.
Through these platforms the tutor and student will decide on a price for the tutoring services so provided and the services will be provided online through Skype and other such platforms. The benefit of engaging in tutoring is that it provides a great degree of autonomy to the tutor allowing him to chart out his own structure for imparting knowledge and this degree of autonomy is unavailable with any other kind of job mentioned in this list. This job however requires great patience, perseverance and also the inherent skill to teach what you have learnt.
8. Social Media Marketing and SEO
Social Media in today’s world plays a crucial role in the process of marketing. It is used to reach out to a large multitude of people and to provide these people with information regarding different products, services and about a business in general. This form of marketing can be done by people who knows how to navigate social media and has a good presence in various social media sites and this can be used to make good easy money just by promoting a brand.
The people taking up these jobs are assigned the task of promoting a particular brand and their progress is monitored by using various analytical tools and depending on their progress and achievement of milestones, they are paid. The marketing strategy also incorporates within it the element of customer research so that effective plans can be made by the firms to target the customers.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a related task to Social Media Marketing. It refers to the sum total of all factors involved in ensuring that your content gets displayed in the search results easily and more frequently and often. The methods to ensure this involves using proper keywords, ensuring proper indexing and has much technical nitty-gritties attached to it. This is one of the reasons why all employers are on the look-out for people who can manage to perform SEO.
9. Graphic Designing
The ability to manipulate images and videos and the creativity to create various animations, logos etc is quite a handy skill to have in today’s world. There are lots of customers throughout many platforms who require these services. These customers will provide the criterions to be followed and also sometimes the work to be edited such as images and videos. The job might involve only basic work to be done such as simple cropping or in most cases may involve adding filters, different backgrounds etc.
The other work usually given out in this field is making Logos, Brand designing etc. These logos are used by various companies for different purposes and are well paid for. Another category of jobs involve creating simple or complex animated videos according to employer specifications. All of these work are of a technical nature and may require quite some effort to be put in. But the remuneration for these jobs is high and more than decent.
10. Data Entry Clerk
Data Entry nowadays is something that many organisations including governmental agencies and business require. It is so because of the need for computerization and easy data management in today’s age of information. This data entry is a quite burdensome and difficult task to manage and usually is outsourced to Freelancers who are willing to take the time and effort to do it. Being a data entry clerk requires the freelancer to go through multiple images of various documents and convert the content in them into a digital format.
The Freelancer will have to manually type down all the content in these images word to word. It is essential that the speed at which the content is typed is high considering the amount of content that will have to be written. Hence even though this is a field offering opportunities to Freelancers it is a very tiring and monotonous process and requires a lot of effort. However the benefit lies in the fact that anyone capable of using a computer can do this without having to have any pre-requisite skill unlike the other jobs mentioned above.
