5 plus 1 Online Jobs For College Students

Having trouble holding up a job and going to school at the same time? Perhaps you need an online job with a little versatility. The Internet offers a variety of professions that you can get into while in college, and you may even fin them to be rewarding after graduation. These are the kinds of jobs that you can do when you want, where you want, and still make enough money to pay your bills. Here are six online jobs for college students.

1 – Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is probably the easiest and best-paying way to make money online in college. In this case, you are assigned articles to write for a client’s blog, website, or marketing material, and then you get paid based on the amount of work you do. Payments will either be fixed per word or per project, or they will be set as standard hourly rates.
Great sites to find freelance writing jobs include:

• oDesk
• Elance
• Craigslist (your city > jobs > writing / editing)
• Freelance Writing Gigs
• Textbroker

2 – Online Tutoring

This is a great option for college students. If you are knowledgeable in a specific school subject, you could sign up to be an online tutor. This will require you to work with students through chat or video messaging to help them understand their homework and class work better. Most tutoring websites will ask you to go through a series of tests to determine if you are capable of being a tutor on their site. They may also require you to have a minimal amount of college education, like an associate’s degree or diploma. The majority of online tutoring jobs are paid by the hour, but there are some that are paid per day or per session.
Great sites to find online tutoring jobs include:

• Tutor.com
• Homework Tutoring
• Aim 4 A

3 – Data Entry

Data entry work is most often some form of copy/pasting online. You may need to take product descriptions from a spreadsheet and put them into a website. You might need to do some research for a client to gather links for a specific project. This work may sound a little complicated, but it’s not. Most of it requires very brief training from the client, and it is all very repetitive. Data entry work doesn’t always pay a lot, but it is simple work that you can do in your spare time.
Great sites to find data entry jobs include:

• oDesk
• Elance
• Amazon Mechanical Turk
• iFreelance
• Craigslist (your city > jobs > web / info design)
• Craigslist (your city > jobs > admin / office)

4 – Virtual Assisting

Virtual assisting is essentially secretarial work on the web. You will do a lot of the same tasks an office secretary would do, like scheduling appointments, managing emails, making phone calls, etc. The only difference is that you work at home from your computer. Most of the other online jobs on this list would require you to work with multiple clients to maintain long-term pay, but this would give you more of a traditional 9-5 feel for your job, where you work with one or two clients total. Of course, you don’t have to work 9-5. You can work whenever you want as long as it fits your employer’s needs.
Great sites to find virtual assisting jobs include:

• oDesk
• Elance
• Guru
• iFreelance
• Craigslist (your city > jobs > admin / office)

5 – Survey Taking

All those spam emails you get about making money from online surveys aren’t as crazy as they seem. You can in fact make money from taking surveys online. Will you make enough to pay the bills? Probably not. This work is best left for side money rather than something you rely on for rent. You can get paid different money for different types of surveys, but you will have to prove that you fit the demographic the survey is targeting. Answer the questions honestly and you will see which surveys you are qualified to take.
Great sites to find survey-taking jobs include:

• Pinecone Research
• Survey Spot
• iPoll
• My Points

6 – Misc. Side Tasks Online

When all else fails, you can do side jobs online similar to how you might babysit to make money in person. Common side tasks include testing links for a client, writing movie and product reviews, sending test faxes to a client’s fax machine, finding images for someone’s website, liking or sharing a webpage on social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and more. This work won’t pay a ton of money, but it could give you some spare cash to use on the weekend.
Great sites for online side gigs include:

• Amazon Mechanical Turk
• Craigslist (your city > jobs, sort by telecommute)

What You Need to Work Online

Before you get too excited about working your next online job, you need to make sure you are prepared to do this. Here are a few things you’ll need to have a job on the internet:

• A computer with consistent access to the internet
• Microsoft Office (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel) or similar
• A PayPal account
• A bank account to transfer money to or deposit checks into
• An email account
• Skype (optional but ideal)

While you may not need all of those things for all of the jobs listed above, it’s a good idea to have them ready to go. That way, you can take on whatever job you find online without having to worry about a delay. If you do not have a computer of your own, you might be able to use one at your local library when you want to work. You may also be able to get a free version of Microsoft Office from your college to use on your personal computer. Explore your options, and you could soon be making money from home.
Making money online will save you from having to take out excess student loans to pay for your living expenses. If you already have student loans, the free student loan tool on Tuition.io can help you manage your debt, repay your loans, and get debt free as soon as possible. Check out our personal finance blog for more tips on how to manage your money in college.