Whilst most people are at university, they are not in a position where they have much money at all. Usually, at this stage, people are looking for ways to make a little bit of extra income, sometimes even alongside their studies and day jobs. It may be tiring, but university offers something you won’t always have later in life, and that is flexibility. Between lectures, you often have chunks of time that can be used productively; it may be 30 mins but sometimes there may be an hour or two between classes and lectures, even a short amount of time perfecting your side hustle every week can generate meaningful progress over a semester.
Freelancing
People at university usually have a lot of transferable skills, whether it’s writing, video editing, copywriting, graphic design, or even the ability to speak more than one language, and you are able to do translation work. There really is a possibility of freelance work, no matter what your skills and interests are.
People at university tend to have many useful, transferable skills because they’ve already stacked up a great deal of academic work with 18 or more years of life experience, and they are in an educational setting where they learn more every day. This aids the aim of putting what they learnt in their courses into practice in their future workplaces.
If you set up a freelancing side hustle, there are more than just monetary benefits; you are building up a client base which you can continue to work for when you leave university if you don’t find a job straight out of your course, which is quite likely for the vast majority of people.
You are also, by using your current transferable skills, creating and learning more of them. To successfully complete freelance work and keep clients wanting you to do more, you must have good communication skills, price your work fairly, and be self-disciplined. Self-discipline comes in when you see your friends going out to have fun, but if you have work to complete, you need to be able to stop yourself from going. Being able to price your worth is important to get right, if you accidentally undervalue your work and therefore your prices, some people may enjoy a bargain when they realise your actual worth, but some people may overlook you if your prices are really too low as they might assume that you are not very good at what you do if you’re charging so low.
Tutoring
If you are really competent with a certain subject and you really excel, you may find it a good way to make money from tutoring other university students. Not everyone on your course will find it as easy as you find it, this goes for people on the same course at different universities, too, as the theory will likely be very similar.
Another target group for tutoring would be first- or second-year university students, particularly if you are a third- or fourth-year student. PhD students are also great candidates to start tutoring other students. This is because they are becoming experts in their fields and were likely very successful in their undergraduate or master’s program, which they might have completed before moving on to their PhD.
Tutoring is also great because the sessions can be as long or short as you want to make them. If you can find a room at the library or even just a quiet space in the main building, then you can do the tutoring on campus and make it fit in with the gaps on your timetable. You could do a short, intensive session of around half an hour, or you could do longer sessions of an hour or two.
Online
Selling products online can be a great way to use your own skills if they’re creative, like graphic design. You could create designs and sell them on t-shirts, tote bags, or other items. This could be a great way to make money from your art and creativity while also getting to show off your work. On another note, from just the money, it feels great when someone buys something that you worked really hard to create. When you make something that people will be wearing and wearing outside, it is also great because they will be telling people that you made it, if they are asked where the item is from, this will draw more business to your side hustle, maybe one day making it your main hustle! Some people even try methods such as matched and value betting as a side hustle, too.
Managing your side hustle
One vital thing is to make sure that you remember, at least in the beginning, that it is just a side hustle and getting your degree is the most important thing. So, make sure that you still focus mainly on your work for that, rather than ways to make quick money, as that will be better in the long run, for most people.