Dental school doesn’t leave a lot of time for work, but Emely Cepeda found the perfect side hustle to help her keep the lights on. Cepeda is a “Tasker,” who earns as much as $1,300 a month doing odd jobs on her own schedule through Taskrabbit. If you’re among the 68% of college students shouldering all or a portion of the cost of school yourself, you’d be wise to follow Cepeda’s lead and check out smart side hustles for college students.
Smart side hustles for college students
Smart side hustles for college students have several things in common. They are flexible enough to work around school. They pay enough to make the side gig worthwhile. And they hone your skills for both life and your future career.
Better yet, these side hustles are considered resume-boosters that increase your chance of getting a great job after graduation. And some can help boost your grades too.
What can you do? Here are smart side hustles for college students and the best online platforms to find them.
Take notes
Did you know you can get paid to take detailed class study notes? Generally speaking, you need to be a great student to qualify. But, assuming that’s not a problem, your first step is to check in with the “Disability Services” office at your school.
These departments typically pay students $100 or more per class/per semester to take clear notes that can be provided to students who need special accommodations. Typically, schools enlist just one student to take notes for any given class, so the slots available through your college are likely to fill up pretty quickly.
If there are no note-taking gigs offered through your college, you can also sell your notes to one of several online platforms that provide notes, tutoring, and study guides to students who are trying to get better grades. These sites include Study Soup, Nexus Notes and Stuvia.
Students say the ancillary benefit of taking notes for pay is you become laser focused on the class and are likely to get better grades.
Tutor
Tutoring is also a smart side hustle for college students, particularly now that most tutoring is done online. Tutors earn anywhere from $15 to $100 per hour, depending on the subject they teach and the online platform that they teach through.
The top tutoring platform on SideHusl.com is Wyzant — one of the largest tutoring platforms in the world. What makes this site stand out is that it gets millions of visitors — i.e. customers — each month and allows tutors to set their own rates and schedules.
Other good options:
Juni Learning hires college students to tutor in math and coding, paying $20 to $30 per hour. Varsity Tutors enlists tutors in a wide array of subjects, generally paying $15 to $27 per hour. TutorOcean, LessonFace, TutorMe and Lessons are also viable options, depending on what subjects you teach.
Take Tasks
Cepeda thinks the ideal side hustle is to sign up with Taskrabbit.
Taskrabbit is a marketplace where people needing in-person help can find assistance with everything from furniture assembly to cleaning; personal assisting to plumbing. Freelancers who sign up here create a profile and say what types of jobs they’re willing and able to do. They also set their own rates, which can vary by the type of task.
Cepeda joined the platform three years ago. At the time, she looked at a half-dozen different side hustles, including Instacart, DoorDash and GrubHub. But she didn’t like the idea of spending all day driving, while having little control over how much you earned. The fact that Taskrabbit allowed her to set her own rates and schedule suited her entrepreneurial spirit — and her heavy class load.
She says she earns anywhere from $200 to $1,300 a month, depending on how many hours she has to devote to work. She also likes the fact that she can communicate directly with clients, which helps when she needs to reschedule a job because of an issue at school.
“I’ve had months where I was too busy with school to work, and even though my pockets hurt, that was fine with them,” she says. “You can work all the time or not at all. You set your own priorities.”
Focus on your major
College students often take unpaid internships just to get experience working in their chosen field. But why not see if there’s a paying entry-level position instead? A variety of online platforms offer part-time and remote work in many of the most popular fields.
If you’re studying finance, for instance, you may be able to find temporary and part-time assignments through Robert Half.
Marketing, communications or English major? Sign up with writing and marketing platforms, such as Contently, Skyword, Cracked, Field Day and Oppizi.
Engineering? Try SMA Inc., which screens candidates for a wide array of engineering and contracting work through its “Talent on Demand” network. Although the bulk of the jobs require professional experience, a smattering are entry-level.
Education major? Consider Outschool, an online platform that lets you design and offer online classes in both academic and creative topics.
Your major isn’t listed here? Check out the SideHusl Quiz to find a gig that suits your interests and skills.
Donate platelets or plasma
If you have a spare hour or two, you can make $50 – $100 donating plasma or platelets through biomedical research facilities like Octapharma Plasma and Biomat.
Plasma, a yellowish liquid that’s mainly made up of water, contains antibodies that fight disease. So it’s used for cancer patients to help them fight off infections. Platelets, meanwhile, hold blood-clotting compounds that are needed to help people with traumatic injuries. Healthy bodies constantly produce more of these substances, so you lose nothing by donating. Meanwhile, the companies pay generously and will work around your schedule.
Is it uncomfortable? No more so than giving blood. You do need to tolerate having a needle in your arm. But, you’re otherwise lounging in a comfortable chair and able to watch movies or read during the hour-long process.
Your body quickly regenerates the lost platelet and plasma cells. So, while you can safely donate blood only every eight weeks, you can donate plasma up to two times a week. And you can donate platelets once a week. However, the FDA, which regulates medical products and procedures, limits donors to 24 plasma and/or platelet donations per year.
8/12/2024
Leave a Reply