If you're searching for ways to make money online, you've
come to the right place. CashCrate has over 1.5 million members who are
doing just that, and in this guide we'll show you how you can start
making money online with CashCrate in just a few easy steps.
Free Offers -- Your Path to Cash
One of the easiest and most lucrative ways to make money online
with CashCrate is to complete the free offers found in the Members
Area. Free offers are typically short surveys, quizzes, website
registrations, and trial products. CashCrate has several hundred
different offers and paid surveys to choose from, ranging from $0.25 per offer all the way up to $50.00!
You'll notice that some offers are completely free, while others
require a credit card to complete. In the case of offers requiring a
credit card, the payout you receive is always greater than the cost to
you. For example, we may pay you $25 to try a product, but the product
requires a small sign-up or shipping handling fee of a few dollars. All
of these offers will still allow you to turn a tidy profit upon
completion.
Many new users prefer to start off with the 100% Free Offers, which
is what we usually recommend. These offers are great for beginners
because nothing is required other than a few minutes of your time. The
payouts on these offers are lower, but you're not paying a dime to
complete them and they'll get you use to the CashCrate system. After
you've started making money online with our free offers, you can always
move on to trial offers and dramatically increase your earnings.
Getting Your First Check
CashCrate sends out literally thousands of checks a month to users
just like you who spend time completing offers on CashCrate.com. How do
they do it? Well, they do offers! Your initial goal should be to meet
minimum payout, which is $20.00. Making $20.00 in free cash
is actually quite easy considering there are hundreds of offers
available, but here are a few tips to get you to your goal faster:
Complete Your Profile. Right after signing up, you’ll see a
message box that will allow you to complete your profile and earn $1.00
instantly. It takes just a couple of minutes, and you’ll have your
dollar in your account automatically. It’s guaranteed cash.
Do a Trial Offer. We have so many trial offers available that
they’re an extremely easy way to make money online. Plus, you’re bound
to find a product you’re interested. Between free music services, credit
report services, and all sorts of products, it’d be difficult not to
find something you like. Just doing one of these offers will often put
you at the minimum payout mark. Throw in some free offers, and your
check will be extra large.
Focus on the offers at the top of the list. Here’s a tip not many
people know. CashCrate has a special algorithm that automatically
selects the best offers and places them at the top of the list. There
are several factors that go into determining which offers are the
“best”, including payout, approval rate, and a variety of other factors.
But all you need to know is that these offers are great, so you can do
them in confidence!
Put these practical tips into practice and you’ll have a head start
over most new CashCrate members. Ready to make money online with
CashCrate.com? Sign-up now!
If you’d claimed it was possible for the average guy on the street to make
millions of dollars online just a decade ago, the chances are good
you’d have heard nothing but laughter in response. Today, though, there are
countless Internet millionaires who turned a great idea
into obscene profit, used the power of the web to promote their offline
business or simply worked their butt off to sell their skills online.
While it’s unlikely that you’ll ever earn enough to buy
your own private island, there’s nothing to stop you from using your skills
to make a comfortable living online. In fact, while the media
would have you believe that online success stories are limited to just a few
lucky, hard working people who stumbled on a great idea that went on to make
millions, the reality is that there are tens of thousands of people who make a
living exclusively online. Here are just ten ways you can join them.
How To Make Money Online
1. Sell Stock Photography
The
Internet has caused an explosion in the demand for stock photography. As the
number of media and commercial outlets has increased dramatically with the
growth of online media there’s an enormous need for high quality stock photos. Yuri Arcurs is the man everyone turns to for their
stock photo needs. As the world’s top selling stock photographer he sells an
image every 8 seconds, 24 hours a day (that works out to over 4 million images
each year). Arcurs makes millions of dollars each year simply by being the best
at what he does. There are lots of great photographers in the world and the
barrier to entry is as low as ownership of a camera, but Arcurs has managed to
build a reputation online for consistent, high quality and imaginative images.
If you’re a professional photographer (or even just a hobbyist) you should
consider the possibilities of selling stock images online.
2. Tweet For Sponsors
SponsoredTweets.com is an
online platform that allows you to make money on Twitter by
charging sponsors for communicating their advertising messages to your
followers. You set the amount you want to get paid for every tweet you make,
choose a category and select keywords you want to work with. You then wait for
advertisers to contact you and take you up on your offer, paying you the amount
you specified for each tweet that you make.
All throughout the process, the tweeter has full control over his or her account,
and may choose the wordings of the tweets, or may choose to reject the tweet
altogether.
3. Blog for Ad Revenues
If,
however, you already have a blog with a devoted following it should be easy for
you to leverage your readers into hard cash. Ad networks such as Google
AdSense pay big money to place their ads on your site, and you’ll
receive a payment every time a reader clicks one. While it’s easy to go
overboard and fill every spare pixel, if you place your ads well it’s possible
to make a comfortable income from your site.
One of the most successful bloggers around today is John Chow, a
Canadian blogger who makes more than $40,000 a month through ad sales and
other revenue streams. Ironically, his blog is about ways to make
money online.
4. Sell Affiliate Products
If
you have a flair for sales copy you could try your hand at selling products for
affiliates. While many people take the seedy route of selling diet pills and
penis enlargement products, if you want to keep your conscience clear you’ll
find that Amazon runs a very successful affiliate program that allows you to
make money advertising any of the products for sale on their site. eBay also
have a pretty good affiliate setup, with their top affiliates earning $1.3
Million a month, WOW!
5. Write an e Book
In
recent years the self-publishing world has exploded online to the point at
which you don’t even have to run your own site in order to promote a book.
Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo are just a few of the sites on which you
could self-publish today, with commission rates of around 70% available on
every sale.
The number of eBooks on Amazon reached 8 million
last year, and Amazon stated that eBooks are outselling hard backs 2 to 1, 62%
of ebook sales fell into the Thriller and Mystery genre, so if you feel that
you could pull this style of genre off then you will be in for a good chance of
sales.
26 year old self published author, Amanda Hocking
from Minnesota makes more than $2 Million a year from her ebook
sales. Amanda Hocking’s stories about, trolls, vampires and zombies
and ‘supernatural teen romances’ sell for $2.99 or for as little as $.99.
6. Become a Virtual Assistant
Every
small businessman would love to hire a full time assistant to take care of the
little things, but many simply can’t afford one. Thanks to the Internet,
though, they can now hire part time assistants who work for a whole host of
clients, and all at a much lower cost than a full time staff member.
If you work from home this may be a perfect
opportunity to make a consistent income. Virtual assistants can earn $20 an
hour in return for booking travel tickets, interacting with clients and dealing
with the daily needs of small businesses.
7. Lease Your Skills
Most
people have at least one skill that carries a market value, though until now
that skill may have been impossible to monetize in the
traditional job market.
Sites such as 99Designs, Elance, Freelancer and iWriter allow people to hire
out their skills as writers, coders, designers, translators and lots more on a
contract basis. Freelancing sites are a great way to boost your income in your
free time, and with enough motivation and hard work you could find yourself
earning a comfortable full time income from them.
8. Selling on eBay
eBay is a
great way to turn your unwanted things into a little spending money, but it
isn’t just a place to sell your old Star Wars action figures. In fact, eBay’s
global marketplace can offer a great way for canny traders to buy and sell
their way to profit. By buying wholesale you can sell anything with a mark up.
Even better, if you have the skills to make things people want to buy you could
start your own home-based craft business, selling to customers around the
world. Matt & Amanda Clarkson are a
successful couple
who so far have managed to make over $8 Million in eBay sales.
9. Become A Mobile App Tester
People
that are rather uncertain of their application development potential can still
make some money through the usage of iPhone apps.
People that have the time and desire to test iPhone apps and
discover bugs can be rewarded payments for their efforts. uTestis
one such application. Individuals that have signed up will also build some
reputation on the basis of the testing they have done so far.
Better reputation signifies access to more profitable app testing
opportunities.
10. Designing T-Shirts
Finally,
if you have something of an artistic streak you could kick off the next viral
sensation with your own range of funky, arty t-shirts. Sites such as CafePress
allow users to upload their own t-shirt designs and sell them
on their personal online store.
You can also contact distributors such as threadless.com or designbyhumans.com to
release your t-shirt designs to the masses.
If your designs catch the eye you could be looking at enormous profits when
they take off in a big way.
Checkout our article The Top 10 Tips On
Starting Your Own Successful Clothing Line, this should give
you an idea on how to kick things off.
Conclusion
As you can see, to make money online you don’t have
to be particularly skilled with computers. You don’t need to be know how to
build your own website from the ground up, and you don’t have to be a mogul
with millions of dollars to invest in success. If you have any kind of artistic
skills, creativity or business savvy you can turn it into profit.
In short, you should understand that the online world is just like real
life. The same opportunities are there for the taking, but instead of drawing
your customers from just your home town you can reach out with your great ideas
to the far reaches of the earth.
So why not start today?
On this page you’ll find all the best ways to make money in
your spare time whilst at university based on our own experience. We’ll keep
adding new ways to this page so go ahead and bookmark it. And please do share
your own ideas in the comments!
Top
ways to make money online and offline
1.No-risk
matched betting
Hands down the quickest way to make a lot of money
(well, without breaking the law). Lots of students have genuinely made £100s
from this technique. It’s completely legal, risk free, tax free, and anyone can
do it.
It works
by taking advantage of free bets regularly offered by betting sites (such as WilliamHill.com)
through ‘matching’ them at a betting exchange. Matched betting eliminates the
risk (you are betting both for and against a certain outcome).
This leaves
you being able to squeeze out the free bet, which can be as much as £200!
Multiply this by how many betting sites there are and you can quite easily come
away with a profit of a few hundred pounds.
Owen walks
you through how to make your first £15 profit (using a real life example) in
this gem of a guide to matched betting.
If you know of any better way to make £30/hr sitting at home, please let us
know!
2.Online
surveys
Credit: Julio Marquez – Flickr.com
An increasingly popular way for students to make money is to fill out online
surveys in their spare time. Research companies are always recruiting new
members to answer surveys and test new products.
For a few
minutes of form filling, you can make a couple of quid which is paid as cash or
in rewards. You can make up to £3 for some surveys!
Interested
in earning cash for doing what you already do online? This has to be one of the
easiest methods of making money online without really any effort or change in
your behavior.
This
innovative idea by Qmee.com rewards you
for searching in Google, Bing or Yahoo. You just install a simple add-on to
your browser and when you conduct a search there may be a few sponsored results
alongside your normal search. Each Qmee result has a cash reward attached – if you are
interested in it simply click on it and collect your reward.
The best
thing is there is no minimum to cashout – our first one was just 72p wired to
our Paypal account. You also have the option to donate it to charity.
Sign up
now for free and start earning from your own searches! Click here to start.
4.Social
Investment Networks
The
historically hard-to-break world of investing in stock markets and currencies
has been cracked wide open. Today there is no need to be a fat cat or fund the
yachts of Wolf of Wall Street style stock brokers. You can do it all
yourself with the help of free online market trading platforms.
Having
spent many hours researching this new opportunity, I’ve been experimenting with
eToro.com which has over 4 million users
worldwide. It was recently featured in the BBC 2 documentary “Traders:
Millions by the Minute” and the Financial Times.
One of the best things on eToro is the CopyTrader
feature. This lets you literally see, follow and copy the investments of other
top performing traders.
Follow
George’s complete guide to trading on eToro
to learn more. I think $200 is a good amount to get the most out of the
learning curve by trying out a few different markets. If nothing else you’ll
learn a great deal about various investments and industries.
Warning:
trading can be volatile and you can lose money, so don’t throw your life
savings into it!
5.Mobile
phone recycling
Credit: CannedTuna – Flickr.com
See how
much you can get for your old mobile phone using our in-house mobile
phone price comparison tool! Maybe ask your parents if they have
any lying around too.
You can
get some good money and help the environment by recycling mobile phones with
certain companies listed on the comparison tool. Most
phones are shipped off to Asia to be dismantled and we know of at least one
student who received a £120 cheque in return.
6.‘Get Paid
To’ sites
Similar to making money from online surveys, GPT sites
reward you in cash and vouchers for completing various offers or activities
online.
Exciting
update! We’ll soon be launching our own GPT
service for our readers. Invites will be limited and UK only, please join our
mailing list if you’re interested in hearing once it’s live:
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
The ‘Disney Vault’ secret
To keep
demand high across generations, Disney Studios carefully restrict the supply of
some home release classics. They are locked away in the ‘vault’ for 8-10 years
before being released for a short unspecified time.
Buy them
in this window at normal retail price and you can turn a nice profit when they
go off sale for another decade or so. For example, in 2011 you could buy Beauty and the Beast
on Blu-ray 3D for just £24.99. In just a couple of years it’s now
on Amazon for a staggering £74.99!
Importantly,
not all Disney releases are subject to the vault and only the true most popular
classics will maintain such demand.
If you’ve ever seen the film The Social Network then
you’ve most likely had your brain spinning as to what website you can start-up
to make you billions.
And of
course there are lots of stories out there about successful students who have
started a site while at university, or even bought a domain name and later sold
it for 1000s.
In fact, Save
the Student is one such example of a website started at university by Owen Burek in his first
year, which has since grown into a full-time and successful enterprise.
Read
Owen’s 4-step guide to setting up a website if
you’re interested in finding out more. It’s really not that difficult to get
started and there are plenty of opportunities to make money online.
9.Write and
publish a Kindle eBook
If
students are good at anything, it’s researching and writing. With the Amazon
Kindle store, anyone can publish an eBook and make money.
And the
Kindle app is now available on almost any device (laptops, iPads, smartphones
and yes, Kindles) so your global market is huge!
List your
book for £1.49 – £6.99 and you earn 70% of the sale. Considering Amazon is the
ultimate selling machine (and remember people are looking to spend), that is a
fantastic deal.
The key to success with eBooks is to create value, and write
non-fiction. Simply bundling information you have researched and complied on a
common problem (eg. ‘secrets’ to finding a job) and then presenting it in an
easy to digest format (an eBook) justifies someone spending a few quid on it.
Another
big tip is to have a great cover designed so it stands out, and once your book
is live on the Kindle store (approval takes less than 48 hours) it’s really
important to get some reviews so it shows up higher in results. Encourage
readers to leave an honest review at the end of your book.
The best
thing about this lucrative idea is that once you’ve invested the time (say 20
hours), you’ll earn a passive income for years to come! For a step-by-step
guide to publishing and earning with eBooks, see “How to
write a nonfiction eBook in 21 days“.
10.Affiliate
marketing
If you’ve
got a good presence on social media or perhaps you even have a blog or website, you can start
bringing in money immediately by promoting all sorts of companies, products,
services and offers online.
Sign up to an affiliate network such as Affiliate
Window, check their offers blog or browse the merchant listings to
find something you think your friends would be interested in, grab your
affiliate link and share it. If someone buys (can be within up to 90 days)
using your link you’ll make a nice commission.
To take it
a step further, set up a website (read our guide) or a
topical Facebook page and invite all your friends to join it and post your
affiliate offers on there.
11.Review
music for money
If you
love music, make it your business by reviewing unsigned bands and artists
online for cash with Slicethepie.
It can
take a while to build up your reputation but some users of the site have said
that they earn £40 a month. This may not sound like much, but if it’s something
you enjoy then it shouldn’t be hard work and is another thing for your CV. Money you earn
will be in $US but anyone can sign up and review.To get started, head over to Slicethepie now or read our quick guide for more
info.
12.Competitions
Entering
competitions of course comes with no guarantees, but there is a growing
community of so-called ‘compers’ in the UK consistently making up to £50,000 a
year through all sorts of competitions.
Types of
competitions available to enter range from simple registration forms and
Facebook page liking to answering questions correctly over the phone to being a
TV game show contestant. Imagine you made it onto Deal or No Deal
instead of just watching it!
Then head to our active competitions page to enter other free
competitions that we have found. Just note that some of these sites may send
you spam so use an alias email address and opt-out of as many of the offers as
possible.
Many
students work part-time or during the summer months, and others will be on
placements or paid internships. More often than not, if you are a student
working during the year, you will be overpaying income tax.
Why?
Simply because few students reach the personal tax-free income allowance each
year but are put on an emergency basic tax-code by their employers
meaning tax is being paid when it shouldn’t be.
Use our student tax-back service to help you reclaim
any tax you should not have paid. Just enter your details in the calculator here to work out what you may be owed.
Otherwise for more information read our guide on claiming tax back here.
14.Get
cashback when shopping
I earned
this much in 2 years
This is
not only a way to make money but also to save money as a student. If you look
at it in a different way then you are making money with every purchase you
would have made anyway, whether it be 10% or 0.5% cashback.
There are
a number of cashback sites out there which pay you the commission they
otherwise would have earned.
We
recommend signing up with both Top Cashback and Quidco.com which are free and offer the best
selection of retailers and exclusives.
15.A
part-time job
A part-time job is the obvious first choice, opted for by
most students looking to supplement their student loan. It provides a pretty
steady flow of income and can enable you to gain valuable work experience.
However,
depending on where you live, jobs are not always easy to find. Check local
classifieds, our student job search,
student
job websites and your university careers service for vacancies.
It’s also
worth signing up with the Graduate Recruitment Bureau,
a free service which will match you with both part-time jobs or graduate
opportunities.
The
default price is $5 (hence Fiverr..), but you can attach extra services to gigs
for more money. Whilst it might not seem like much, it can quickly add up and
there are plenty of examples of people making a really good living from the
site. The key is to get a system in place which minimises the time spent on
each gig.
But there is another way to profit even more from Fiverr for
potentially far less work. How? By simply reselling gigs elsewhere. For
example, find a decent logo designer then reply to jobs on Elance or even local classifieds. A $5 spend can
easily become $50+, and it’s repeatable!
If you’re
not interested in selling at all there’s SO much good stuff you can get done
for yourself. Have a browse and get inspired!
17.Sell
second-hand course books
One great
way to make money is to buy other students’ text books at the end of the year,
and then sell them just after freshers’ week – when the new intake of students
know that they need them!
You can
either advertise on campus or list them online very easily on Amazon.co.uk Books Trade-In (just bear in mind
they take a commission on books sold).
Don’t ask
us what this means, all we know is that it’s an easy way to make fast cash from
your sofa. The concept is based on ‘internet crowd-sourcing’ where businesses
advertise specific, scalable tasks they need completing quickly.
There are
a variety of tasks (known as HITS), but most commonly they involve mindless
data entry or form filling. You are rewarded in cash (though $USD) for the work
you do, and you can choose for what and when you work. Give it a go [Update: Currently US signups
only, try ClickWorker].
19.Buy and
sell domain names
A domain name is just a website address (eg.
‘savethestudent.org’ or ‘mysite.co.uk’) and there are lots of extensions (.com,
.net, .co.uk etc).
They cost
as little as £1.99 to register with 123-reg.co.uk or GoDaddy.com yet premium domain names can fetch
£1,000s if not millions when sold on. In 2007 VacationRentals.com went for a
cool $35m!
Now you’re
probably not going to come across anything like that, but you can still turn a
quick profit with a bit of searching. The trick is to find available domain
names which have some commercial value, snap them up and then list them for
sale on a site like DomainLore.
20.Mystery
shopping
Today becoming a mystery shopper is easier than you think
and you can get rewarded handsomely.
We’ve
recently come across a really fun smartphone app called Streetspotr that
pays you in cash for completing various tasks in your local area. So definitely
check that out first!
More
traditionally, there are plenty of agencies that pay you to visit all sorts of
shops to feedback on how they are performing. For more info on where to apply
see our guide to becoming a mystery shopper.
21.Be an
extra
Do you
fancy yourself as a budding young actor or just that person that walks past in
the background shot of an episode of Eastenders? It could be you if you
apply to be an extra.
The pay
isn’t bad either – £60-80 a day on average, and you hardly have to do anything!
You can
apply at Be On Screen for a number of opportunities or 2020 casting is another agency (just know they
take a cut from your earnings).
22.Sell all
your old CDs, games and movies
If you are looking to make a very quick buck, then selling
your old bits and bobs that are cluttering up your room is a good idea.
The best
thing about it is that you can rip all the songs and films onto your laptop or
external hard drive before selling them. This means that you are only really
selling the plastic and artwork!
You can
earn anything from 10p to £20 per item, and the earnings can really add up if
you have a large collection. Whilst you’re at it, see if your parents have any
‘clutter’ they’d be happy to see the back of.
You can
also sell almost anything for free on Amazon Trade-In or Preloved and sites like MusicMagpie will pay you instantly for sending in
unwanted items.
Become a
tutor to local GCSE or A-level students (find out more about tutoring here).
There are now a few online tutor sites too, so you can go also global without
too much hassle.
You may feel as if you aren’t qualified to be a tutor, but
seeing as you are at university you will most likely have the qualifications to
tutor for GCSE or even A-Level. Some parents may feel that their child will
react better to a younger tutor, and it can be great experience, so why not
give it a go?
You can
advertise on SchoolsTrader or sign up with Bright Young Things & UK
Tutors. You can expect to earn around £10 an hour. However, make
sure you don’t have to do too much tutoring around your exams!
24.Sell your
photos
If you
think you’ve got a good shot and a little creativity, try uploading your
photographs for free to stock websites. A good starting point is Fotolia
or istockphoto.
Make more
money selling photo subjects that people are demanding, and there’s a great
resource to find this out here. It might be a good
idea to test them out in print first yourself (get free photo prints here).
25.Rent out
your car parking space
Some student accommodation comes
with a drive or garage. If you aren’t using your parking space and you live in
a busy area then you might be in luck. There are plenty of people that may work
in the city centre and are fed up of paying through the roof for daily parking.
Ok so this
job takes a certain kind of person, as you’ll have to take a lot of rejection
and be persistent.
But if you
are bubbly, personable and reckon you could sell ice to an Eskimo then this
could actually be a great student money making idea. You get paid commission on
new sign ups (typically around £20).
Have a
look at Wesser as well as charity websites like Oxfam.
27.Babysitting
Advertise your services locally. It’s a classic money-maker,
and for good reason. You get paid (well) to watch TV and not very much else!
Be warned
that you will need a CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) check to look after small children,
even though some parents may not ask for one. If you are wondering what to
charge, then look at local ads but you can expect to be paid over £6 hour even
if you aren’t trained in child care. It really is easy money (unless you get
stuck with the child from hell!).
28.Become a
freelance interviewer
Do you
have ambitions to take on a career in HR? Do you love asking questions? Believe
it or not, there are companies that will ask you to carry out interviews for
them and pay you for your time. It couldn’t be simpler.
You could
make £185 a week plus have your travelling costs covered. The downside is that
you will have to commit to at least 20 hours a week, so make sure that you have
the time! Apply at NatCen.
29.Dog
walking
Dog
walking may sound trivial but it’s big business. Just think that as a student
you’re likely to have free time during the day when others are out at work and
worried about their pets at home.
You could
make around £7 a dog for a 1 hour walk, and it’s also a great way to keep fit.
Sign up to and try sites like Tailster that match you up with dog owners.
Alternatively advertise your services locally with fliers or on classified
websites such as Gumtree.
30.Rent out
your house for filming
Directors for TV and film are always on the hunt for houses
to film in. For instance, a scene for Coronation Street was recently
filmed in the student house one of the Save the Student editors used to
live in!
Not only
can you make good money but it’s crazy seeing your own place on TV. Start out
by looking at film-locations.co.uk.
31.Rent out
your body
Ok, ok – this isn’t what you think. “Renting out your body”
can go as far as you want it to go. For example we reported on a story a while
back about students who are turning to lap dancing
to make a quick buck.
If you are
comfortable taking off your kit for a more acceptable cause then why not try
life modelling. Sit there in the buff while budding artists capture your every
curve (or pokey bits) in frightening detail! Try RAM,
a website especially designed for these kind of jobs.
You could
also get involved in clinical drug trials. If
this scares you a little then you can find more information here about what’s involved.
Warning: Do not do anything you are not comfortable with, no matter
how desperate you are for money! There has been an unhealthy rise in student
prostitution in recent years – do not fall victim to it!
32.Freelance
work
Perhaps
you enjoy writing, managing Facebook pages or doing a little bit of graphic
design in your spare time. There are so many freelance jobs out there that
require simple skills or just time that someone else might not have.
And the best
things about freelancing is that you can work for clients in the UK
and around the world with just an internet connection from home, to your own
hours whilst developing valuable skills.
A great
place to start is with the leading freelance site Elance.com. Or try using our student job search to find
freelance jobs.
33.Busking
If you can sing or dance then this is your time to shine
baby! Did you know that Justin Bieber started off busking? That’s right, with a
little work you can be as annoying as him.
There are
really no tips for this except choose a good spot with high footfall, make sure
you are good and play your heart out. Some buskers in the past have been known
to make upwards of £20 hour.
34.Sell
clothes on eBay
Everyone’s best friend when it comes to getting rid of junk
is eBay. Online auctions are a sure-fire way to turn
that sleeveless jacket (which came in and out of fashion in a week) into hard
cash.
Some eBay
sellers look at trends and try to predict what will be big ahead of the market.
If you are good and don’t mind taking a risk then you can buy early in bulk and
sell on when the craze hits.
If you
have an interesting story then you could try selling it to the papers. It could
be anything from sleeping with a professional footballer to getting caught in a
clothes horse!
One of the
Save the Student team was unfortunate enough to have a pigeon fly
through and smash their window at university and sold the story to The Sun
for a tidy £50.
You could
also film your mates at all times and send it into You’ve Been Framed to
net yourself £250 and a few seconds of fame.
36.Sign up
for psychology experiments
These are
the things you may get to your student e-mail inbox from your university or
careers service every now and then. They aren’t dangerous and usually don’t
require too much effort or time. They tend to compensate you quite well (around
£10/hour), and they may even interest you!
It’s worth
bearing in mind that these are different from the medical or body
experiments/horror stories that you hear about. There will (hopefully) be no
strange probes involved!
37.YouTube
videos
According to recent stats we now watch more videos on
YouTube than searches on Google. And with the recently introduced YouTube Partner Program you can now profit from
making and uploading videos. You will receive a percentage of the advertising
revenue collected per 1,000 views.
Depending
on how successful you are (virality, subscriber base and topic) you can make a
lot of money, and there are plenty of stories every week of more and more
YouTubers making it their career.
Also known as Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), this is a
business model that allows you to generate ongoing income in two ways: by
making a commission selling products and by recruiting other members who go on
to sell. The later allows you to make money from the sales made by those you
have recruited.
Importantly,
this is not a pyramid scheme (they are illegal) because there is an end goal
which involves a customer buying a product or service of value.
It’s also
not a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. You will have to work I’m afraid! However with
the growth of social media, network marketing is becoming easier and lots of
people are now making a decent living from it.
This is a
serious way of making good money on your own terms and it’s well worth reading
up on it. I recommend getting “The Business of the 21st Century” by Robert
Kiyosaki.
39.Source
property for wealthy investors
We all know how much money there is in property, but on the
surface (with house prices as high as they are) you might be thinking this
market is off-limits.
Truth is,
lots of people make a great deal of cash simply sourcing suitable properties
for wealthy investors who simply have no time.
The trick
is to find properties below market value (BMV) by avoiding estate agents and
instead flyering your area with your contact details offering to buy houses.
Then approach investors with a no-brainer offer to pass on the details of
cut-price property in exchange for a % of the sale value.
Most
cities will have monthly networking events for landlords and property
investors. Track these down, sign up, put on your best suit and go along with
lots of business cards. Or you could start on LinkedIn or even Twitter to build
some initial contacts.
As you
might imagine, this isn’t necessarily a quick way to make money but once you’ve
got a few investors in your phone book it can prove to be very lucrative in the
long run. If you’re interested, I recommend reading this
book.
40.Advertise
your other skills
What can you do well where others struggle? Fix bikes,
computers, write articles, create websites, make
cupcakes or fresh lemonade?!
The key is
to be creative and think outside the box. A writer at Save the Student
actually made small models out of beer cans and wire and sold them to other
students. Great idea with big profits!
There are many other creative ways
to make money as a student. With any luck you’ll be on the road to making millions!
Please feel free to share your own ideas by leaving a comment below.
The
Internet has caused an explosion in the demand for stock photography. As the
number of media and commercial outlets has increased dramatically with the
growth of online media there’s an enormous need for high quality stock photos.
If
you have a flair for sales copy you could try your hand at selling products for
affiliates. While many people take the seedy route of selling diet pills and
penis enlargement products, if you want to keep your conscience clear you’ll
find that Amazon runs a very successful affiliate program that allows you to
make money advertising any of the products for sale on their site. eBay also
have a pretty good affiliate setup, with their top affiliates earning $1.3
Million a month, WOW!
In
recent years the self-publishing world has exploded online to the point at
which you don’t even have to run your own site in order to promote a book.
Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo are just a few of the sites on which you
could self-publish today, with commission rates of around 70% available on
every sale.
Every
small businessman would love to hire a full time assistant to take care of the
little things, but many simply can’t afford one. Thanks to the Internet,
though, they can now hire part time assistants who work for a whole host of
clients, and all at a much lower cost than a full time staff member.
Most
people have at least one skill that carries a market value, though until now
that skill may have been impossible to monetize in the
traditional job market.
eBay is a
great way to turn your unwanted things into a little spending money, but it
isn’t just a place to sell your old Star Wars action figures. In fact, eBay’s
global marketplace can offer a great way for canny traders to buy and sell
their way to profit. By buying wholesale you can sell anything with a mark up.
Even better, if you have the skills to make things people want to buy you could
start your own home-based craft business, selling to customers around the
world.
Finally,
if you have something of an artistic streak you could kick off the next viral
sensation with your own range of funky, arty t-shirts. Sites such as CafePress
allow users to upload their own t-shirt designs and sell them
on their personal online store.
