How can college students make money online? This list of the best online jobs for college students will show you how.
More and more people are attending college and working at the same time. This may be those who are going straight from high school to college, adults going back to college, those working towards more degrees, and so on.
I had to work throughout high school and throughout college, and I will admit that it was tough at times.
While almost all of it was in-person, hourly jobs, I would have loved to find something online instead! It would have made it much easier to balance work and school if I had a flexible, online job like I do now.
I didn’t find out about blogging until towards the end of my time at college, and I wish I would have learned about working online sooner as it would have helped me greatly.
Being able to work online would have been helpful for many reasons, such as:
- No commute
- The possibility of a more flexible schedule (so that you can build it around your school schedule)
- Being able to make money (duh!)
And more.
Being able to make money in college can help you start making payments on your student loans, have extra spending money, help you pay rent, and more. It might sound early if you’re in college straight from high school, but you could even start saving for retirement.
While I wasn’t in college that long ago, I don’t think there were as many online jobs for college students as there are today. And if there were, I had no clue they existed.
Now, there are plenty of online jobs for college students with no experience. This is really exciting if you are looking for flexible ways to make money while you’re in school.
Some of the best online jobs are work from home jobs that involve you working for someone else, or you may be able to even start your own business.
There are online jobs for college students that involve freelancing, teaching, selling stuff online, writing, and more. The jobs I’ve listed in this article are ones that allow you to pick your hours and how much you work.
This may allow you to work a little less during busy semesters and pick up extra work during breaks.
Whether you are looking to start making extra money, you’re looking for something part-time, or if you are looking for full-time income, this list of online jobs for college students in a great place to start.
Towards the end of this article, I also have included tips for managing both your college and work schedule.
Content related to the online jobs for college students:
- How I Graduated From College In 2.5 Years With 2 Degrees AND Saved $37,500
- 21 Ways You Can Learn How To Save Money In College
- Parents Paying For College – Is This A Good Idea?
- 4 Reasons You Should Go To Community College First
- How Do Student Loans Work?
Below are 16 online jobs for college students.
1. Create a website
My favorite online job is blogging, of course!
I even started it while I was in college and getting my Finance MBA. I wish I would have started my blog even sooner. I was working so many different jobs while I was in college to pay the bills, and it got exhausting.
Blogging has allowed me to travel full-time, work from home, have a flexible schedule, earn somewhat passive income, and more.
My blog was created on a whim as a way to track my own personal finance progress. And, when I first started my blog, I honestly didn’t even know that people could make money blogging or how to create a successful blog!
I did not create Making Sense of Cents to earn money from home, but after only six months, I began to make money.
You can easily learn how to start a blog with my free How To Create a Blog Course.
Here’s a quick outline of what you will learn:
- Day 1: Reasons you should start a blog
- Day 2: How to determine what to blog about
- Day 3: How to create your blog (in this lesson, you will learn how to start a blog on WordPress – my tutorial makes it very easy to start a blog)
- Day 4: How to make money blogging
- Day 5: My tips for making passive income from blogging
- Day 6: How to grow your traffic and followers
- Day 7: Miscellaneous blogging tips that will help you be successful
Out of all of these online jobs for college students, blogging is by far my favorite. It does take a little more time to start making money, but it’s very flexible and fits with any kind of schedule.
2. Help local businesses grow through Facebook
One of the better online jobs for college students to earn money is by helping local businesses advertise on Facebook.
By running Facebook ads for businesses, you can help them grow their reach and find new customers.
I had the opportunity to interview Bobby Hoyt about this subject. Bobby is a former high school teacher who paid off $40,000 of student loan debt in a year and a half. He now runs the personal finance blog Millennial Money Man full-time, as well as a digital marketing agency that he started in 2015.
I interviewed Bobby about running Facebook ads, and in this interview, you will learn:
- How Bobby started making money through running Facebook ads
- Why small businesses want Facebook ads
- How a person can find their first Facebook ads client
- How much you can make doing this type of work – the average is around $1,000 extra a month per client
Also, Bobby has a free webinar on this too. His webinar (you can sign up here) will teach you how to start this business even if you’re brand new, how to find paying clients, and more.
3. Sell items on Amazon
Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer has many, many people who sell items and earn money from home. My friend Jessica Larrew explains how selling on Amazon may be one of the online jobs for college students that would be a possibility for you.
In the first year that Jessica’s family ran their Amazon FBA business together, working less than 20 hours a week total, they made over $100,000 profit!
If you want to learn more about starting an Amazon business, I recommend signing up for this free training that will teach you how to sell products on Amazon and make $100 to $500 per day.
In my interview with Jessica, How To Make Money From Home Selling On Amazon, you’ll learn why this is one of the online jobs for college students you should check. This includes:
- How Jessica started selling on Amazon FBA
- What exactly Amazon FBA is
- How to choose what to buy and sell
- How much a person can expect to earn
- The positives of selling on Amazon, and more
4. Take paid online surveys
Not too long ago, one of the ways I made extra money to pay off my student loan debt was by doing paid online surveys.
No, I didn’t get rich from them, but I was able to earn some side cash by taking online surveys in my spare time.
And, I did this while I was in college too.
There were many times when I would receive an easy $100 check in the mail from completing surveys in a one-month period. The work is really easy. It can all be done from home, on your own schedule and timeline, so it’s a win-win!
Companies use surveys all the time to learn what their current and potential customers think of their products, services, and overall company. With the surveys you take, companies get valuable opinions on how to improve their products, and that’s what they are paying you for.
To increase your chances of making money, I recommend signing up for as many online survey companies as you can. I say this because individual survey companies may only send a few surveys your way each month, so the more you sign up for, the more money you may be able to make.
If this is one of the online jobs for college students at home you’re interested in, here are the survey companies I recommend:
- American Consumer Opinion
- Survey Junkie
- Branded Surveys
- Swagbucks
- InboxDollars
- Opinion Outpost
- OneOpinion
- Pinecone Research
- Prize Rebel
- Survey Club
- User Interviews
5. Teach English online
This job will only work for college students who already have their bachelor’s degree from a U.S. or Canadian university (it does not have to be in teaching – it can be on any subject). So, if you are in college working on obtaining more degrees, then this may be one of the online jobs for college students that’s an option for you.
Teach English online has become extremely popular, making it one of the best online jobs from home for many good reasons – it’s flexible, there’s a high need, and it pays pretty well.
Surprisingly, you don’t need to be a teacher to learn how to teach English online. You also don’t need to speak more than one language – you only need to speak English.
Those things make teaching English online a really great side hustle or online job for almost anyone.
The amount of money you can earn teaching English online will vary, but it’s typically around $14 to $22 per hour.
Because this side hustle is becoming popular, there are several great companies that allow you to teach English online. My top three picks are ones my readers have recommended and ones I have personally looked into:
Learn more at Make Extra Money By Teaching English Online.
6. Customer service representative
If you’re looking for more “traditional” online jobs for college students, then customer service might be worth checking out. Many large companies outsource their customer service departments to people who work from home.
Customer service representatives can be responsible for a number of things, like:
- Working at an online call center
- Working as a chat agent
- Offering technical support
- Virtual assistant tasks
- Working as a travel agent
The number of large companies who need online customer service reps is growing. Companies like Apple, American Express, UHaul, and more are now offering these types of online jobs.
7. Virtual assistant
Virtual assistant jobs are growing like crazy, and more and more companies and online business owners are looking to fill this role.
Virtual assistant tasks may include social media management, formatting and editing content, scheduling appointments or travel, email management, and more. Basically, you can get paid to do any task that needs to be done in someone’s business, but doesn’t need to be done by them.
My friend Kayla is a full-time blogger, virtual assistant (VA), and project manager who earns over $10,000 per month while working from home. She is also the founder of $10K VA, her course where she teaches exactly how you can make a consistent $10,000 per month as a virtual assistant too!
Kayla used to work a full-time job as a credit analyst, earning about $2,000 per month. She was struggling to make ends meet while paying off debt, so she started a side hustle as a virtual assistant.
Read my interview with her, How Kayla Earns $10,000 Each Month From Home as a Virtual Assistant, to learn if this is one of the online jobs for college students you’re interested in. We talk about:
- How much can a beginner VA expect to make
- How a person can find their first virtual assistant job
- The steps to become a VA
- Her best tips for being a VA
8. Write your own eBook
Writing your own eBook is a great way to make money online, and there is probably something super helpful that you could write about (even if you think otherwise!).
In fact, my friend Alyssa self-published her first book and has sold more than 13,000 copies.
She is now earning a great passive income of over $200 a day from her book ($6,500 in one month alone!).
She is also the creator of From Blog To Book, a course that will help you write, launch, and market your first book. I’ve already signed up for the course, and the expertise she shares is absolutely amazing. Some of the modules in her course include:
- Mapping Out Your Book Content
- Strategies for Writing Your Next 30,000 Words
- Where to Publish Your Book
- Tutorial: Getting Your Book on Amazon
- Design Your Book Cover
- Set Pricing for Your Book
- Create Your Marketing Plan
You can check out her super helpful course by clicking here.
If this is one of the online jobs for college students you’d like to learn more about, read How Alyssa is making $200 each day in book sales.
9. Write romance novels
My friend Yuwanda Black has found one of the best online jobs that is also super interesting. She writes romance novels, and in one month, she was able to make over $3,000!
I was able to have her write on Making Sense of Cents about her creative way to make extra money. In the article linked below, you can learn:
- How she got started writing romance novels
- How much money she has made
- Her top tips to start writing successful romance novels
- Why your novels do not need to be long (her most successful books are under 10,000 words)
- How to promote your romance novels
- How to sell on Amazon
And much more!
Learn more at How to Make Money Writing Romance Novels.
10. Start an online store
I feel like so many college students and young adults are starting online stores, and it completely makes sense. It’s something you can do from home, and there are ways to do it that don’t involve storing your inventory.
Yes, you can start your own online store, and you don’t need to have tons of experience or a lot of money to do so. Many people start with no background.
I’ve also heard of a number of students who have successfully started ecommerce stores because there aren’t any degree requirements for this option. It’s also one of the best online jobs for college students because you can work it in just 5-10 hours a week like Jen Leach, from E-commerce and Prosper, did.
I had the chance to interview Jenn, who explains exactly how to start an online store and not need to store the items you’re selling.
Jenn is a corporate mom turned e-commerce store owner and blogger.
She started her online business a little over three years ago, and since then, she has developed and grown three successful online e-commerce stores earning an average of $19,000 per month.
She is super successful despite only spending around 5-10 hours per week on her e-commerce business.
E-commerce and Prosper, Jenn Leach’s course, teaches you how to start an online store. She reveals her successful rinse and repeat formula to students in her course. It’s the same formula she uses to earn an average of $19,000 per month. This course will teach you:
- How to start an online store
- Winning e-commerce success tools
- How to turbocharge your e-commerce success
- How to start making money in THREE days
Learn more about this at How Jenn Makes Over $10,000 Monthly With Her Online Store In Less Than 10 Hours Per Week.
11. Voice over actor
This one is a little different from all of the other online jobs for college students in this article.
A voice over actor is the person you hear but rarely see on YouTube videos, radio ads, explainer videos, corporate narration, documentaries, e-learning courses, audiobooks, TV commercials, video games, movies, and cartoons.
In 2014, Carrie replaced her salaried day job to become a full-time voice over actor. People are constantly asking her how she got her start and how they can too.
So, she created a six-week online class, and it sold out. Several of her students booked voice acting jobs before the class was even over!
I was excited to learn more about this job, so I interviewed Carrie to learn:
- How she got into this interesting career field
- Who the common clients are
- How much money a beginner voice over actor can expect to make
- The positives of this job
- How to find your first job
- The costs, and more
You can read my interview with her at How To Start Voice Over Acting.
12. Resell items online
Have you ever found something that you thought you may be able to resell and actually make some money? When I was in college, I actually knew a couple of people who successfully resold items online and made a good living from it.
Melissa’s family earned $42,875 in 2015 through buy and sell flipping, and they were working only 10-20 hours per week.
Yes, just 10-20 hours a week!
And in 2016, she hit $133,000!
Some of the best flips they’ve done include:
- An item that they bought for $10 and flipped for $200 just 6 minutes later
- A security tower they bought for $6,200 and flipped for $25,000 just one month later
- A prosthetic leg that they bought for $30 at a flea market and sold for $1,000 on eBay the next day
Melissa also has a great book called 5 Ways to Get FREE Items To Resell for Profit, which teaches you how you can earn money from home by flipping items.
You can learn more at How Melissa Earned $40,000 In One Year Flipping Items.
13. Freelance writer
Working as a freelance writer is one of the best online jobs for college students because there is a growing number of jobs out there for freelance writers, and many people start with no previous experience.
A freelance writer is someone who writes for a number of different clients, such as websites, blogs, magazines, and more. They don’t work for one specific company, rather they work for themselves and contract out their writing.
Alexander Webb and Kristin Wong (writer for New York Times, Glamour, Lifehacker, and more) created Come Write With Us, an online course for writers. This course teaches everything Alexander and Kristin have learned from writing for top newspapers and magazines.
Their course delivers real results and students have become freelance writers for magazines, websites, and one even writes for the New York Times.
In this course, you will learn things such as:
- How to become a professional writer
- How to set your freelance writing rates
- How to build your portfolio
- How to pitch clients
- How to find freelance writing gigs
You can learn more in the article How To Become A Freelance Writer.
14. Transcriptionist
Transcription work is a growing area of online jobs for college students. Transcriptionists listen to audio files and convert them to text.
In 2007, Janet started working from home as a medical transcriptionist. Shortly after that, she started a successful general and legal transcription business.
While running her business, she noticed a need for more skilled transcriptionists, so the idea of creating a course and introducing one of the best online jobs to more people popped up. Janet now teaches others in her online course how to transcribe online.
In this my interview, Earn An Income At Home By Becoming A Transcriptionist, we talk about:
- What a transcriptionist is
- How you can get started as a transcriptionist
- What kind of money you can expect to make
- The type of training you need, and more
Related: Best Transcription Jobs For Beginners
15. Proofreader
Have you ever read an obvious mistake and wanted to fix it?
Proofreaders look for punctuation mistakes, misspelled words, lack of consistency, and formatting errors.
You take content that other people have written and then go over it with a fine-tooth comb. You might be proofreading blog posts, print articles, academic articles, website copy, ad copy, books, student papers, emails, and more.
In one year, my friend Caitlin made around $43,000 by working as a freelance proofreader.
In her free 76-minute workshop, you will learn:
- Common questions about becoming a proofreader
- How to become a proofreader
- 5 signs proofreading could be a perfect fit for you
16. Freelancer
Freelancers are people who work for others by doing part-time jobs. A business may hire you on for one-time gigs or you may get a long-term job with a company as a freelancer.
In addition to some of the freelance jobs I’ve already mentioned (writing, proofreading, and transcribing) there are even more freelance jobs out there for people who have experience in a variety of fields, including:
- Graphic design
- Web design and development
- Video editing
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Programming
- Photography
This is one of the best online jobs for college students because you can use a skill you already have and start finding work on job platforms like UpWork and Fiverr.
How can a college student work from home?
Whether you are working a part-time or full-time job, balancing school and work can be tough, and I completely understand that feeling.
There are many working students in college who are able to manage both, but there are also many who struggle with it.
There are many ways to start balancing school and work so that you can graduate college while working a job.
I took a full course load each and every semester (usually 18-24 credits each semester), worked full-time, and took part in extracurricular activities. It was definitely hard, and I won’t lie about that.
However, sometimes a person doesn’t have a choice and has to do everything at once. Or, you might be choosing to multi-task and are wanting to learn how to better manage your time.
Working while you are going to college can help you not take out as many student loans, or you may be an adult who has to work to support your family while you are going to college. Either way, finding good time management strategies will help you be more successful.
Here are my tips for balancing school and work:
- Find your motivation for balancing school and work. This is important because at times it will be hard to manage both, and thinking about your motivation will give you the extra energy you need to keep going.
- Carefully plan your class and work schedule. To balance school and work with a carefully planned out schedule, you should start by researching when the classes you need are offered and start trying to eliminate any gaps that may fall between your classes. Having an hour or two break between each class can quickly add up. Also, if you happen to have time off between classes, using that time to do your homework and/or study can really help.
- Another time management tip is to try and put as many classes together in one day so that you aren’t constantly driving back and forth between school, work, and home. Balancing school and work can be hard, but it starts with creating a schedule that uses your time efficiently.
- Eliminate any time that you’re wasting. The great thing about finding an online job is that you’ll eliminate your commute time, which can be a huge help!
- Have a to-do list and a set schedule. This one is a no-brainer!
Please head to 9 Ways To Successfully Balance School And Work to learn more.
What is the best online job for a student? Which is the best online jobs for students?
With so many online jobs for college students, you are probably wondering which is best. I believe the best one is what works for you. Think about what things you’re interested in, what skills you are learning or already have, and how much time you want to spend learning new things.
There are online part-time jobs for college students, full-time jobs, work from home jobs for college students, remote jobs for college students, and more.
For many of the online jobs for college students above, you may simply just need a laptop and an internet connection. You may be working as an online tutor, making money blogging through affiliate marketing or on social media platforms, finding jobs on freelance sites, answering survey sites, finding transcription jobs, starting a YouTube channel, or more. This can be a great way to make extra cash or even a full-time career.
You may be able to make money from home with your parents, in your own apartment, in your campus dorm room, or wherever else you may live.
You may be able to find jobs by searching on Google, looking at job boards, sharing your resume with your network (such as on Twitter or LinkedIn), and so much more.
No matter which job you choose, deciding to work in college can help you in so many ways, and finding an online job has even more benefits.
What do you think are the best online jobs for college students? Do you want to work online from home?
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