You’re in college and you’re looking to make some money on the side for college expenses, student loans or for personal use?
This article brings you 7 legit stay at home jobs for college students. Some are easy, some are hard but they all can bring in that extra cash you’re looking for.
If you set this up properly and work for it, you can even make a full-time income from these business ideas for college students I will share with you today.
The internet is full of income reports and testimonials of how college students are making $10k – $100k online from these home-based jobs I’m about to outline below.
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Start A Blog
Potential Monthly Revenue: $500 – $100k
I know for sure that students don’t have much to spend but if really want to make money in college, starting a blog is the best side hustle that requires a very little upfront cost.
If you choose to start a very basic blog, you’ll only have to invest in your domain name, hosting plan and blog theme which can cost you around $80 – $100 depending on the service providers’ costs.
Related Article: How Much Does It Cost To Start A Blog
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As a college student, you can choose to blog about anything in this world.
There are so many blogging niches you can choose to blog about and make lots of money.
The blog niche you will choose to write about will be a significant part of your blog’s success.
If you choose the right niche, one that you’re passionate about, I can guarantee you will be making money fast.
As a college student, I guess choosing a niche will be a little bit easier than anybody else wanting to start a blog.
For instance, if you’re studying Software Engineering or Graphic Design, you can write valuable content around those topics that can help other students.
Let’s say you want to blog about graphic design. As a graphic design student, you are probably a few tools for your school projects.
So, you would go about writing articles on graphic design tutorials and do affiliate marketing for the tools you’re using.
When another graphic design student clicks on your link to purchase that same tool that is essential in graphic design studies, you get paid a commission.
Another way to go about making money through your blog as a graphic designer for e.x is to create let’s say posters, tshirts with your own illustrations or graphic templates and sell them through your blog.
The different streams you can use to generate income from your blog is super vast. You just have to know how to make it work
One of the advantages of starting a blog as a college student is that you can build your audience super fast.
I’m sure you have lots of friends in your college and even though you’re not friends with the entire college, I’m sure if your content is amazing, a big percentage of your college will find value in your blog.
That’s how you can easily build your own community and make money through your blog while in college.
Build WordPress Sites
Potential Monthly Revenue: $500 – $3k
The second side hustle I have for you if you’re in college is to build WordPress sites for clients such as local businesses near you or for anyone in need of a new website.
Q1 is perfect for reaching out to people for web design needs as everyone wants to start something new and almost every business now requires an online presence.
Businesses are more and more conscious about getting online and you can benefit from this as a college student.
But hey I’m not talking about coding or web development but only customizing WordPress sites for customers.
This is you can proceed:
- Go to www.yelp.com
- Choose an industry (for e.x plumbing, car cleaning, restaurants etc…)
- Click on their website to see if it requires a revamping
- Call them or visit them to propose your services
It’s obvious that will want to see some previous work of yours but don’t be afraid to tell them you are in college searching for experience in the field. Be honest!
Don’t pretend you’re an expert when you’re not. You need to build trust for them to hire you right.
Now, if you’re conversant with customizing WordPress sites and already have done some past work, it’s time to build a small portfolio and set up an account on sites that hire people to do this kind of job.
Check out these sites:
You can get paid per hour on sites likes these and you can easily grow from there if you have a solid portfolio of work.
Of course, you won’t make millions your first month but it can really pay off.
Data Entry Jobs
Potential Monthly Revenue: $500 – $5k
Data entry jobs have like existed since forever and it will be here for a long time.
If you can do some light jobs such as data entry and make a few hundred dollars or more every month as a college student, I think it’s worth considering.
Normally data entry jobs are paid per hour. According to PayScale, data entry jobs can pay from $10 – $17 per hour. If you get to work 2-3 hours per day, you can easily make above $1k per month.
You can find companies looking for data entry operators on sites like:
When you’ve gained experience you can consider the much higher paid data entry jobs that can earn up to $5k+ per month.
Sell Photography
Potential Monthly Revenue: $100 – $500
Who doesn’t know how to take good pictures these days. With the revolution of smartphone cameras, almost every youngster has experience in photography.
Of course, for this, you will need either a decent camera with a good resolution or even a smartphone with good resolution also.
You may think “who will buy my photos online? Let me tell you that selling photography is very very lucrative.
This business model is called Stock Photos and has proven to extremely profitable.
You can choose to take photos of everything but what I would recommend is to choose a specific “niche” in this area so your photo sessions are geared towards this particular kind of photos.
For instance, you can take flat lay photos and do only this. People will know you for being a flat lay photo expert.
Or else you can choose to take photographs of packaging only or clothing only etc… You get my point!
You have two ways you can make the most of your photographs:
Bundle Sale
After you created a good library of photographs, you can create a bundle and sell let’s say, a pack of 20 high-quality photos for only $9.99.
Bundle deals are becoming more and more popular these days. There’s actually a controversy about this type of deal because some say it’s actually devaluating their hard work.
I won’t debate on this for now but I’m just showing an option how you can make quick cash online.
Extended License
You’ve probably never heard of this but in the online world when you sell digital products, you’re actually selling licenses to people to allow them to use your product.
If someone purchases one of your stock photos, he just can’t do whatever he wants to.
What I mean by this is when someone purchases a single photo for, let’s say, $5, he’s only allowed to use your photo for personal or commercial use.
If he wants to use your photograph in a manner where a monetary gain is derived, he will have to buy an Extended License which is usually 10 or 20 times the original price.
That’s where you can make lots of money selling stock photos.
You can offer extended licenses to customers which will allow them to resell the photos.
Of course, you can choose to offer only a simple license if you don’t want others to redistribute your photos.
You can check out these amazing stock photo websites:
Virtual Assistant Jobs
Potential Monthly Revenue: $1000 – $10k
The industry of virtual assistants is growing by leaps and bounds for a few years now and businesses are always on the lookout for virtual assistants who can help them grow their business.
A virtual assistant is basically someone who performs specific tasks for a company or for an individual business person.
More and more people are turning to be a virtual assistant as it has loads of perks such as:
- Working remotely from home
- Deciding on which industry to serve
- Controlling your pace of work
- Setting up your own rates/pricing
Moreover, there are plenty of VA jobs you can choose to do and I’ve put down a list of all the possibilities for you to make money as a virtual assistant while being at college.
Here’s the list:
- Customer support
- Processing online orders for eCommerce companies
- Website design
- WordPress maintenance
- Graphic Design
- Calendar management and travel arrangements
- Content creation for blogs
- Editing and proofreading
- Transcription
- Content research
- Keyword research
- Email management
- Bookkeeping
- Data entry
- Creating sales pages
- Managing product launches
- Email outreach
- Lead generation
- Editing videos
- Social media management
- Project management
- Community management
I guess it’s a fair list in which you can find something you can consider starting to be able to make money online from home as a college student.
Affiliate Marketing
Potential Monthly Revenue: $200 – $100k
I’m sure you’ve come across this word on the net. Frankly, this is one of the fastest ways to make money online fast if you know how to do it.
Affiliate marketing is essentially selling others’ products/services and each time someone buys a product or signs up for a service from your site, through an affiliate link, you immediately get a commission off of that purchase.
It works like that: you have a special link, which we call an affiliate link, that you insert on your website in a post or as a banner.
When someone clicks on that link and completes a purchase for that particular product, you receive a commission of x % of the cost.
The commission rate will depend on the companies and the types of products as well. Generally, the higher the products cost, the higher you’re like to get paid.
For e.x, amazon pays a mere 3% on toys but 8% on specific types of equipment.
Let’s do some maths.
You’re promoting a lawnmower costing $800 and you manage to get 25 persons to buy through your affiliate link, this will result in this:
8% x $800 = $64 x 25 = $1600
Almost two grand from one link only. I bet you can promote many more links on your website right? 😉
Imagine how much you can earn if you have a bunch of people buying from your affiliate links!
Dropshipping
Potential Monthly Revenue: $500 – $1M
Dropshipping is becoming more and more popular these days, especially in the US.
This is mainly setting up an online store without having a stock of products.
For e.x, I want to sell batteries for cars. I create an online store with a few types of these batteries.
When someone makes a purchase on my store, I then go to the wholesaler’s online store place the order and the shipping is done at their end. So I don’t have to touch any inventory!
This business model requires a little upfront investment mainly for your website and hosting because you won’t have to buy an initial stock of goods to start.
On the other hand, you’ll have to have a few hundred dollars for advertising purposes.
Without promoting your products, no one will purchase from you.
That’s where Facebook & Google Ads come into play.
Check out these awesome and successful college dropouts who are crushing the dropshipping business:
These guys are actually the “gurus” in Facebook ads and they have loads of content on YouTube that will teach how to do Facebook Ads.
I recommend you educate yourself first about Facebook Ads before starting your dropshipping business.
Luckily, the process involved in this type of business can be completely automated with the help of some amazing software, built especially for dropshippers, where you don’t have to manually place the order each time a sale comes in. Check out Oberlo.
If you can’t find anything that suits you in this list, you can check out another article I have on working from home ==> Click Here
I really hope you can find a suitable side hustle, among this list, that will help you make money while in college.
✅ Ready to make an income from home while in college? Our readers are loving the Work From Home Bundle.
