Making money while you’re a student is essential to succeeding at school while having a successful social life. Here are 10 ideas for jobs you can do while studying :
- Baby-sitting
- Become a delivery boy
- Work in a supermarket
- Distribute advertisements
- Start a blog
- Become a web editor
- Become a community manager
- Start a dropshipping business
- Work during the summer
- Give private lessons
1 - Baby-sitting
Babysitting is one of the first things students think about when they’re answering themselves “how to make money as a student ?”
It’s normal: who hasn’t heard friends of their parents talking about the complexity of finding a babysitter at the last minute? Many parents are looking for babysitters to look after their children while they work or go out for the evening.
How can you baby-sit when you are a student?
First of all, look around: your parents probably have acquaintances or friends who are looking for babysitters to look after their children during the week or at the weekend.
Alternatively, as a student you can register on babysitting websites to find clients: Yoopala, Yoopies, Nounouland…
Before offering your services, it is important to find out what the current rates are so that you can be sure that you are within the market price range: if you are too expensive, it will be difficult to find babysitters, and if you are not expensive enough, people might think that the quality of the service is not good enough.
Don’t forget: you are taking care of other people’s children, that is a big responsibility. So students need to show responsibility and punctuality to be considered good babysitters
If you prefer animals to children, become a pet-sitter! An increasingly common practice, pet-sitting is gaining in popularity and provides a service to many people. If you are an animal lover, it won’t even seem like a constraint for you.
2 - Becoming a deliveryman while studying
I can tell you about it with precision: I was a Deliveroo and then Uber Eats delivery driver for 2 years.
Becoming a delivery person on this type of platform has several advantages but also several disadvantages.
Advantages :
- Flexibility of time slots: you decide when your work starts and stops (you can work part-time or full-time)
- Higher pay than the minimum wage
You do sport at the same time (if you use a bike)
Disadvantages :
- No guarantee of salary if the activity slows down
- Need to open a self-employed status
- Dependent on weather conditions
Being a delivery driver during your studies is sometimes thankless but if you don’t mind the disadvantages then go for it, the free management of your schedule plus the attractive pay will be more than enough to satisfy you.
You can also choose a job as a delivery person on a permanent basis by applying to restaurant chains such as pizzerias or sushis.
3 - Working in a supermarket
Supermarkets are always looking for student workers to fill their part-time positions.
In France, most require students to be at least 16 years old. To apply for a job in a supermarket, you just have to go there or apply online via their website.
What kind of student job in a supermarket?
A student can do many different jobs in a supermarket:
- Cashier
- Shelf stocker (labelling products, displaying prices)
- Security guard
You can also be asked to clean the shop and help prepare online orders by doing the shopping directly from the supermarket.
Working in a supermarket is often a part-time job, but it is still an interesting and easy way to make a few hundred dollars and some money while you are a student.
4 - Distributing advertisements
If you live in a big city you will have no trouble finding a student job as a flyer distributor.
A lot of brands still use this type of service by recruiting people willing to distribute flyers in areas widely frequented by the population: subways, tramways, main squares, pedestrian streets…
It’s not necessarily a very fun job, many people refuse the flyers, if it’s raining you can’t necessarily take shelter, the weather can seem long… In short, there can be many constraints.
5 - Making money on the internet with a blog
It is not a reflex when you are a student but any young person can totally launch his website and make money with it.
How to make money with your website as a student?
There are many ways to make money with a website. The key is to know how to generate traffic.
Start by choosing a topic that you like, if you decide to start a blog, you need to be sure that you will be able to post regularly and write about topics that interest you.
Once you’ve chosen a theme, you’ll need to work on the acquisition channel(s) you’ve chosen: social networks, search engines (SEO), paid advertising (Facebook Ads, Google Ads), newsletters… The idea is to find a way to build an audience to generate visitors to your site.
Finally, once your website receives traffic, you will have to monetise it, i.e. transform its visits into dollars.
There are several options available to you: displaying advertisements (ads), affiliation, partnerships with brands… You are free to choose what suits you best.
I really like this new type of student job, because with a fully online job like this, time and geographical constraints are completely removed.
6 - Become a web editor
If you’re comfortable with languages, grammar, spelling and are naturally curious then web writing is probably a good way to make money as a student.
A web copywriter needs to write content, pages or blog posts, for a company with its own website. The latter decides to outsource the creation of its content and calls on writers (like you).
No need for a degree! Anyone, including students, can become a web editor and earn money as long as they meet the first conditions listed at the beginning of this paragraph.
The advantage of this job is multiple:
- It is online, so you don’t have to travel from home
- You are independent so you can set your own prices and earn more money
- The billing is flexible: bank transfer, paypal…
You can find assignments quite easily on online platforms like Malt, Fiverr, Codeur or redacteur.com.
7 - Become a community manager
Community management is an interesting way to make money as a student.
Maybe you think you don’t have the necessary qualifications but as a student (and therefore young) you are naturally qualified to manage a social network, you have the codes.
All you need to do is find a company that is willing to delegate the management of its account due to a lack of time or expertise on the subject, preferring to solicit the services of a student who is more familiar with these communication channels.
If you know the company and its sector well, you can also sell them advice on how to best communicate their brand and how to use a particular social network.
If you think you don’t have time for this type of student job, you should know that most community managers now plan and schedule the majority of their posts in advance using automation tools like Hootsuite.
8 - Setting up an e-commerce dropshipping business
There are many fantasies surrounding dropshipping, which was once sold as the ultimate way to make money from your couch: a student’s dream!
Building and running a dropshipping website is not as easy as it sounds, but if you put in a little time every week it could be a great way to make money as a student.
Dropshipping is about selling products without having any stock. Basically, you only take care of the visible part for the internet user: marketing, website, payment.
The products sold are not your own and that’s what dropshipping is all about: the order to the supplier is only placed once the sale has been made on your site, so you don’t incur any costs.
I’m talking about dropshipping for the sake of simplicity, but if you have the skills, or the means to manage a stock, you can very well develop a real e-commerce by selling your own products.
9 - Working during the summer
One way to avoid having to work throughout your school year and your studies is to make enough money during the summer!
Summer and summer holidays have several advantages for finding a job:
You can work much more than during the school year with your student job.
The supply of small jobs is much higher in companies
You can find much nicer jobs outside or near the sea
The weather conditions are largely favourable during the summer in France
Whatever job you will select as a student to earn money, summer is for me one of the best times to offer your services before the resumption of classes at your university campus (or at your college, or at your school).
Another advantage is that since you’ll be working during the summer, you’ll have less free time to spend all your money!
10 - Tutoring
This is one of the most well-known student jobs. Tutoring can be an easy way to make money for several reasons.
The clients are your campus mates or can be reached during breaks and you don’t need to invest any money. Tutoring is accessible to any student who performs better than the average student.
Private tuition pays well: about 20 dollars per hour of tuition, with several hours per week it becomes very easy to reach the amount of one SMIC per month.
Of course, the only condition is that you have to be good in at least one subject… If you don’t have better results than your classmates, private lessons will not be the solution.
11 - Bonus: what not to do to make money as a student
While there are many ways to make money as a student, there are also many things you should not do, unless you want to end up broke and not finish your studies.
Betting with sports betting
We all have a friend who is completely addicted to sports betting and has hopes of winning the jackpot.
While the luck may last for several months, it is almost impossible to make a lasting profit in the long run. Sports betting and the odds issued by bookmakers (online betting sites) are programmed to maximise the bookmaker’s chances of winning, not the player’s.
Sports betting causes players to suffer from an obvious psychological bias: bettors only talk about their winnings, never about their losses, which are much more numerous.
Take the test! Ask other students if they have made any profits or losses since they started betting.
Investing in volatile assets
One way not to make money while being a student: the stock market or cryptocurrencies.
Of course, these 2 markets are sound and can make money for any investor, but not for a student.
Why is this?
Because when you invest in risky assets like these, you should only invest what you are prepared to lose.
But a student looking for a job and a way to make money does not have a lot of dollars to lose.
Before entering these markets, it is a good idea to build up a safety net, so that you only invest the money you don’t need.
There are certainly other ways and ideas to generate a small income during your studies! But you’ll probably find one of these 10 effective techniques for earning money as a student.
Check out our other articles on the topic of saving money:
- The best books on financial education
- How to become rich with no money ?
- How to multiply your sources of income?
- How to leave the rat race?
- What book on entrepreneurship should you read?
