If you’re a student, then you must already know how difficult it is to make money as one. You have eight hours of school everyday, and some even have more than that because of extracurriculars, as the average student spends 5 hours per week participating in them. This means that the average student simply doesn’t have time to get a job and earn some money for themselves, and this is what leads many to start searching for side hustles for college students.
If you’re looking for ways to make some extra income as a college student, or even if you’re in high school or anyone really who’s looking for a side hustle, here are some overlooked side hustle ideas that are perfect for students.
Photography
This is one of the best side hustles for college students because it can be really lucrative and even turned into a full-time business. For college and high school students, this side hustle can be great because you can turn to taking graduation photos during graduation season towards April and May, which is usually a very busy time for photographers. You can actually charge each student anywhere from $50 to $100 for taking pictures of them in their cap and gown and you can do this with dozens of students. A good tip for graduation photography is to go to big schools and large college campuses during graduation season, because you might find more people willing to pay to have their pictures taken than you think.
If you don’t own a camera, or don’t know how to use one, don’t worry. There are solutions for these problems. Many people don’t know this, but a lot of college campuses have cameras that you can rent out for free, so you can literally rent out cameras without paying a penny and charge people to take pictures of them, you just need to check your university’s resource center page on its website, and ask to rent a camera. If you’re not good with a camera, then you can just take some time to learn, and you can find a lot of free resources and tutorials online that will help you learn, and photography is generally a great skill to have, so you won’t lose anything if you decided to get into it, even as a hobby.
Selling Notes
Some college students make good money selling practice tests and notes, and if you’re a studious person, you can make them and sell them for anything from $50 to $70 for the whole year’s worth of notes.
Some students are willing to pay for things like this because they might not be going to classes that much but they still need the notes and preps to pass the exams, so you can just go to class, take notes, and then try to sell those notes online, like in Facebook groups for students or any other types of groups that college students are in. This can be a great way to make money in college, especially since you’re already going to class and already taking notes, so you might as well try to make some money out of it.
This business can also be scaled up and you can make a lot of money from it. In fact, there’s a company that specializes in this in Penn State University, and it’s called LionTutors. LionTutors started with selling notes and exam preps, and now offers tutoring services both in person and online, and it grew to cover 25 classes of Penn State University’s classes.
Flipping Clothes
If you’re into fashion, then you can try going to thrift stores and search for specific items that sell well online. You might be surprised at how many designer items end up in thrift stores, which is why many influencers online make a lot of money from flipping clothes. In fact, there’s a guy called JV Ortiz makes $10,000 a month by flipping shoes online
Still, this can be challenging to get into as it’s very competitive, and many people now are signing up to Depop and eBay and trying to sell clothes there. Not only that, but there’s also the challenge of always having to do research and knowing which brands sell best and what people are searching for. Despite its challenges, flipping clothes might be a very good side hustle for students because you can do it at your own schedule, so you can do research on the days you have off from college, and then go search through thrift stores. You might get lucky and find an item that sells in the store for $10, and online for $300.
Landscaping
This side hustle isn’t for those who don’t want to get their hands dirty, and it’s basically doing landscaping. This can work well as a side hustle for you if you’re a highschooler or a college student because you can do this in the summer, or in your free time. Simple things like lawn care and landscaping can earn you quite a bit of money, but it’s extremely physically challenging work, so it’s not really for everyone. But if you choose to do it, you can scale it up and do it full-time, and a lot of successful entrepreneurs did that with their own landscaping businesses.
Washing Windows
Many people make some good extra cash by washing windows. You can promote your services to wash windows for big buildings like college campuses and hospitals, or even for houses in well-off neighborhoods, and charge $5 or $7 per window. Meaning, if a building has 100 windows, you’d make $500 just from freeing up your day and spending a few hours cleaning windows. You can do this during the summer or during the entire year, and the best part about this is that it won’t require a lot of initial investment, as you’ll only need to buy glass cleaning sprays and some sponges, towels, and a bucket, that can’t be more than $50.
If you decide to spend money on advertising for your services, you can print out a bunch of fliers and business cards and spread them around the neighborhood you want to work in, or you can advertise in Facebook Ads or Google Ads, which are great because they let you target the area you want to run ads for. But keep in mind that you can also advertise for free on neighborhood Facebook groups or just by going door to door and asking people if they’d like to have their windows cleaned.
Pet Sitting or House Sitting
A lot of people already know and talk about this side hustle, but it’s honestly one of the best side hustles for college students that it had to be mentioned. It is pretty much self explanatory. If you know someone that’s going out of town, talk to them and offer to take care of their house while they’re gone, or their pets if they have ones.
This is an extremely easy side hustle, as you’ll only need to do basic things like making sure the house stays clean and feeding and walking the pets. If you’re a student, you can spend your time house sitting or pet sitting studying anyways, so you won’t be wasting any time while you’re there. If you don’t know anyone personally that would want this service, you can go to websites like Rover.com or Taskrabbit, and you might be able to get hired from there.
The Bottom Line
There are many other side hustles you can do to earn some extra cash, but we tried to bring you some of the lesser known side hustles for college students, but anyone can also get started with them. All of these side hustles can be scaled up to full-time businesses, and some high school students even side hustle their way into making some of their college payments, so try to start a great side hustle and you’d definitely be surprised at how much money you can actually make.
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