How To Make Money While In College

The college years are some of the poorest years in an individual’s life. You are always trying to scrape money together to buy pizza and to hit up places on the weekend. Students try everything from selling text books to taking a part time job to make extra money. There are other ways that you can increase the amount of money in your pocket during college. Here are a few non-traditional ideas that you can use to make sure that you aren’t sitting in your room broke during the weekend.

1. Host a video game tournament.

You can make money for yourself and your friends by hosting your own video game tournaments. You can host tournaments for any sporting games that you have. We all know that Madden and NBA 2K11 are two of the more popular games. Circulate a sign up sheet around the campus and have each person register. Charge a $20 entry fee to each contestant. Pay out 85 to 90% of the total revenue to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. Keep 10 to15% as a fee for administering the contest. After all you have to organize the tournament, create brackets, schedule matchups, provide your own Xbox 360 or PS3 for the games.

For example, you could structure it as follows. Let’s say you get 50 people to enter the tournament. The total amount of money raised would be $1,000. The first prize would be $500, 2nd prize $250, and 3rd prize $100. This leaves you with $150 as your profit. You could host one of the tournaments every month and increase the payout as more people enter.

2. Use social media for promotion.

College students are great at using social media. You can use your knowledge of Twitter, Facebook, Skype, and instant messaging to earn some extra cash. Contact a few websites and offer to promote them for a fee. You can determine how much to charge based on the audience that follows you. You can charge a flat fee and earn incentives for the number of viewers that you bring to a site.

You could easily charge $10 per 1,000 twitter or facebook followers. Make money by making your influence work for you.

3. Use your design skills.

Just about everyone has a webpage today. Whether it’s a personal website or a Facebook page, people need help customizing their sites. You can design webpages, images, or logos for other people’s websites. Ashley Quails of Whateverlife.com became a millionaire designing Myspace layouts for teens. The overhead is low and the cost is minimal to start an online design business.

All you need to get started is to learn how to use HTML. Familiarize yourself with building different designs and layouts and practice constructing different themes. You can charge a couple of bucks or hundreds of dollars depending upon how good your designs are.

4. Start a delivery business.

If you have  a car then you can make money in college. How many times has another student asked you for a ride to get something to eat or to Walmart? You can turn your driving ventures into a business. Print up a flyer and offer to run errands for fellow students. You can pick up food, groceries, or dry cleaning for other students.  Charge them a fee based on the task performed and the distance. Let them know that tips are appreciated! These small trips can turn into real money makers for you while in school.

5. Become an online tutor.

The client base for tutors used to be limited to their physical location. This is no longer the case. Tutoring no longer has to take place face to face. You can provide online tutoring to students at colleges all around the world. Create a website for yourself and promote your tutoring services nationally. You can accept payments electronically through Paypal and communicate with clients using online services.

Make sure that you are qualified before becoming a tutor. You will have much more success billing yourself out as a tutor if you have a high GPA.

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