How College Students Can Make Money Online

College/University Students are a very interesting bunch of people so dear to my heart.

Why is that? Because I am a college student too. I am actually in my final year of University. Now tell me which college student would not want to make some extra income? The word “extra” in this case applies to college students that currently have a job earning them some income.

For some (me included), we would like any income to take care of the bills and keep us afloat. In this post, I will try to provide a lot of useful information on how college students can earn some income online – both passive and active income. I will also be sharing some of my personal experiences with you.

Let’s get straight into it…

I will start by saying there is NO one way for college students to make extra money. There are a million and one ways to make extra money for yourself. You could start with a hobby like giving haircuts, planning events, making art and selling it etc. You could also go with the traditional way of working extra jobs and hours. There really are many ways of earning money for yourself.

Even within the online world, there are still a plethora of ways you could earn money online as a college student. Some of these ways include freelance writing, resumé editing, online tutoring, managing social media accounts and more. In this post, I will be emphasizing on the methods that have worked wonders for me in the last year and a half: Authority Sites and Mini-Niche Websites.

Making Money Through an Authority Site

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Whenever you hear the term “Online Business”, this is exactly what we are referring to. Quite simply, an online business is an Authority Site. As you add content to your site regularly, your website becomes more and more relevant to your niche. It is this relevance that led to the word “Authority”. The goal is to eventually become the go-to person for information and solutions within your niche.

The first step to building an Authority Site is to identify a passion. As college students, we are at a point in our lives where we have tried a lot of theoretical and practical stuff. A lot of people within this age range have an idea of what they like and love. Are you into soccer or fashion? Perhaps gardening or singing? All these provide good niche ideas to kick start building an authority site. For those that are not quite sure what their passion is, they at least know something they are strongly interested in learning about. In other words, they are passionate about learning something in particular. This still passes as a passion.

The second step is to, of course, build a website. This quite literally is your Online Business. Come to think of it, how do you build an authority site without a website? I know some of you are now thinking “Well, I don’t know how to create a website”. I’ve got good news for you: Don’t worry about it, just relax. Check out our post on how to build a website ASAP. It is SUPER EASY. You could have a free website up and running in a couple of seconds.

You might be wondering why I am emphasizing on the word “passion”. This brings us to our third step in building an Authority site. To build a successful online business, you have to be consistent in producing content on your website. From experience, I can tell you the only way to be consistent is when you are actually excited about the content you get to produce. Passion is what pushes you to continue when you have not started making money, and you are just on the brink of quitting. Passion reminds you that you are building a business that WILL make money doing something you really love.

The last step is the most rewarding part: Earn money. As you write out content on your website, google and other search engines begin to notice your content and give you rankings. More rankings lead to more traffic, which in turn leads to more earnings.

My first online business was in a niche I thought I was passionate about. I love fashion and shoes, so I chose Men’s Footwear as a niche. I was on and off for the first 6 months or so (I went 3 months without producing content at some point), so I did not earn any money. Remember I said consistency is key. When I returned to the website and became consistent with producing content, I started to earn income from the website within 2 months.

Making Extra Income Through Mini-Niche Websites

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Some College students already have a job and earn enough to pay their bills, but still would not mind some extra money on the side. This income is what is called Passive Income. If you are anything like me, you could have an authority site AND mini-niche websites. So making mini-niche websites is one way to make passive income for college students.

With the right tools and training, this could be done very easily. I am going to try my utmost best to summarize what mini-niche websites are all about, without getting you confused. If you already fear getting lost, you can navigate here to get the simple breakdown tutorial from an Online Business expert with over 10 years experience. You can also find linked videos within that page showing another expert building a mini-niche website from scratch.

To build a mini-niche site, you basically have to find a very broad niche and dig all the way down till you find a section of this broad niche that has very little competition. In this case, the niche does not necessarily have to be a passion because you might not be updating this website with content way too often.

The aim of a mini-niche site is to rank for one particular keyword with a decent number of searches and low competition. Since competition is low, it will be significantly easier for your website to rank on the first page under this keyword. This website primarily directs visitors to Amazon or any other site relevant to the niche, using your own unique affiliate links. With every purchase using your link, you gain commissions.

If you stuck around till now and you are still confused, please check out this post. It contains a live case study of building a mini-niche website from scratch.

I have made a few of these mini-niche websites myself (some are pictured above), and even started earning money from one of them a few days after creating it. Some of the others got ranked and started earning money after a month or two. Since it is a specific low competition keyword, you could rank and make money with these within a relatively short time. The thing is because you don’t have a lot of room to branch out in terms of content, your income potential is far less than it could be with an Authority website.

A mini-niche website is an excellent option for people who want to earn some money on the side, without putting in too much work to earn it. It is a good option to have, not necessarily something to depend on.

A Personal Story…

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I came in for University in Canada in 2011. As an International student, tuition goes for about $15,000 per year. Could be more depending on the program. Coming here, my parents were prepared to fund my study in Canada for 4 years. My initial program choice, Mechanical Engineering, was supposed to be a 4-5 year program anyway.

Due to indecisiveness, I decided to switch to Economics-Statistics after studying Engineering for nearly 3 years. I just did not enjoy the appeal of having to work for somebody anymore, so I opted for a program that is leaned towards providing a level of independence. I could have gone with Business but some of the courses I had already taken would count towards my Economics degree. Economically, this made sense to me and I am yet to regret this decision 🙂 . This program switch caused me to extend my stay in University for 2 extra years. Feeling bad that my parents will have to pay extra for my indecisiveness, I made a challenge to pay the tuition fees for at least one of the two extra years.

At the time, my plan was to get a job during the summer and work the whole time. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I did not get a good-enough job to achieve my targets. So I decided to put in a lot more work on my websites online. Due to school commitments, I mostly work on my websites at night. Work shifts and school might occupy your day, but how about an hour or two at night? It does not have to be every night anyway. I just work whenever I have the time honestly. And Guess what?

I was not only able to make enough to pay for one year, I have already saved enough to pay for the first semester in my final year. All from my online business!

Now…

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If I could make enough money online to pay off my tuition fees, tell me why you can’t achieve the same thing. I did not have any coding or blogging or affiliate marketing experience prior to getting started online. I was not even aware of the possibility of making money online until I got connected to the training!

The only thing standing between you and making consistent money online is access to the right tools and training to get started with. Hit the button below to gain access to training that will guide you to success online.

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Do you have any questions (literally any questions)? Please feel free to leave a comment, and I will be more than happy to answer you in the best way I can. See you down there!