Being a student these days is no easy task, especially with regards to money.
Rising fees and a general increase in expenditure means that students, now more than ever, need to be more frugal and acquire more cash. Whether you’ve got special skills you can teach or an old box full of collectible Pokémon cards, there will be something on here for you...
A Job
This method was probably the first thing which jumped to mind for most people when they thought of getting more money. Good ol’ fashioned work is hard to beat, but with a few thousand people of the same age and similar skill sets as you in your university town or city, competition is tough to say the least. However, a polished CV and some charm will stand you in good stead for pinching the coveted jobs.
Be an Extra on TV
If you find yourself strapped for cash whilst at university you can always be one of those background characters on TV without any lines who blend into a homogenous blob of bodies. Using sites like Be On Screen, you can accrue the generous fee of £60-80, for your not so famous 15 mins. Given the fact that all you do is turn up, and more often than not sit around some C-List celebrities, nearly a hundred pounds isn’t bad at all.
Freelancing
Freelancing is an increasingly popular choice for university students looking for some money, due to the fact that most of the courses offered at uni gives them the requisite skills to generate some decent cash. Being able to write clearly and do some research (the premise for any humanities course) enables you to become a freelance writer, charging anywhere from a few quid all the way up to £40 for a well-structured short article. If writing isn’t your bag, there are tons of other options; coding, VAing (being a virtual assistant), proofreading, accountancy, translation and many many more. If you have a skill you think you can charge for, head over to Upwork.com to set up an account and start adding a few more coins to those empty coffers.
Sell Your Notes
This is for you worker bees who want to get a little something for all your hours in the library or at your desk. Using a site like Notesale, you can pop your Angevin Empire history notes up and charge a fee you feel fair. Obviously the more unique the notes, the more you can charge, but the less chance of someone buying them.
Become a Tutor
Another academically inspired money maker, becoming a tutor can be both extremely lucrative (some people charging over £30/hour) but extremely frustrating (tutoring kids can be quite vexing). If you are studying a core subject, the ones studied at school, you will find no end of kids at local schools with pushy parents willing to pay a premium for your years of rudimentary knowledge; for this type of tutoring look on FirstTutors. If kids are going to be too much trouble for what it’s worth and you’re good at your subject or have gotten past first year, try tutoring fellow uni students. For this you may need to do a bit more grunt work, i.e. flyering, advertising on Facebook groups or old fashioned lecture shout-outs.
Review Music for Money
What an age for the music addict! Websites like SliceThePie or MusicXray allow you to earn a small fee for reviewing music. As simple as it sounds, it doesn’t earn you very much, yet for relatively passive work it’s not bad. If you put a bit of effort in you will be able to add an extra £40 a month for just listening to music. Not bad aye?
YouTube
By now we all know and watch someone on YouTube earning some serious money for basically just living a nice life and putting some quality edits together. If you’ve got some people in mind as you read this, there is only one question; if they can do it why can’t you? If you feel at ease, and to be honest even if you don’t, flipping the camera on your phone and hitting that record button could be a substantial investment which you can reap the rewards of later on in life.
Recently the numbers being thrown around for 1000 views is between £1 and £5, meaning that if you get 50,000 views a month you’d be most likely taking around a £100 or up to £250. Some daily vloggers are getting 1 million views a day, which equates to between £11.7k and£187.4K a month. A month! So if you’ve got the stomach for it and feel you’ve got something to bring to the big YouTube table, give it a go.
If you’d like to find out more, here is a handy guide on how to make money on YouTube.
Mystery Shopping
Mystery shopping isn’t as seedy and odd as it sounds; it’s actually just a way companies get vetted if we’re being honest. The way it works is that you buy a product from a designated shop, you get a fee for this product and you get to keep it. This can be quite fun and financially rewarding, however, it’s not as easy as just point and buy, some actual work is required. Once your item/s is bought you fill out reports which have to be thorough and done well. The prices for a job can range between a few pounds all the way to over a hundred.
Check out Market Force for more info.
EBaying
EBay is not just for unwanted Christmas presents it’s actually a thriving business concept, prime for the taking for anyone who either has lots of unwanted stuff or is willing to find others unwanted stuff. For the uni student it could be a nice little side enterprise or a simply a way to de-clutter the attic. The choice of which one you choose is yours. This little guide will help you with whichever option you go for: Ebay Guide.
There you have it; ways for you young whipper-snappers to fill your pockets, or at least reduce the debt dent. If you don’t like the look of these options; take a look at these.