This article has seven ways for students to make money online. Sadly, in this world, at this time, every one of these methods can also get a student swindled. There are lots of people out there who are willing to swindle people in whatever way possible. That is why every item has a beware warning underneath. If you know that there are risks to making money online - then at least you can go part way to protect yourself against it.
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1. Selling Stuff on EBay
Sell your unwanted goods on eBay. Pay the fees and work out how much profit you actually made. Keep 20% of the profit and put 80% into buying new stock wherever you can find a bargain. You then go back to eBay and try to sell the items for a profit. You must then repeat the process again and again until you have loads of cash.
Warning
There are people who are going to pay you, and when you have delivered it, they will claim it never arrived and get a full refund. Even if you try to fight the case through PayPal or eBay, you will lose. The only way you can win is if you pay extra for tracked mail and get proof of postage. However, if you do this, you will have to pay more postage fees, which means you will have to charge bigger postage fees. This is often not possible because there are so many people who are charging cheap postage. This means that your items would never sell because everyone else is cheaper.
2. Answering Surveys
There are online companies that will offer to pay you for answering surveys. They do take a long time to answer and do have trick questions to make sure that you are not just clicking random boxes. The pay rates differ but this is a method of making a little bit of money online if you have a lot of free time.
Warning
A lot of these companies are con-merchants and will simply rob you of your money. What happens is that there may be a website that legitimately pays people for filling in surveys. So con merchants will copy their surveys and give them to you with the promise of lots of money. You fill in the survey; they submit it and keep the money. Some of them will be awful about it and will offer to pay you monthly, which means you do a month worth of surveys for nothing. There are also some that will only pay you if you do $20 worth of surveys per month, but only let you have access to $15 worth of surveys per month.
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3. Blogging
If you are a student, do not start a blog unless it is a blog about your chosen discipline/qualification. Any time you spend writing a blog about anything else will be time removed from your studies unless you integrate your studies into your blog. Blogging makes money through affiliate adverts. Your traffic can visit the blog and click on the adverts. When they click on the adverts, you will be paid a few cents.
Warning
The potential return for blogging is pitiful. You must use your blog as a way of keeping your studies fresh in your mind so that any money you make from it is just a happy bi-product.
4. Be an Audio Transcript Writer
People record their meetings, memos, and podcasts. They want people to transcribe their words into text, so you are tasked with putting their words to paper (so to speak) and they pay you for the service.
Warning
You need to do some very deep and detailed research on how to protect yourself if you do this because there is nothing stopping people from taking your work and not paying you. You cannot insist that you are paid before you hand over the work because nobody will agree to such conditions. Therefore, you must find a way to protect yourself and your work.
5. Be an Audio/text Translator
This is very similar to above, but translators of one text to another, from one spoken language to another, or one written language into another spoken--is far better paid.
Warning
This is the same as point four--there is nothing stopping people from taking your work and not paying you.
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6. Be a Freelance Programmer
These are in great demand, thanks to mobile apps, online tools, and other computerized applications. If you are good at what you do and can provide the solution that an employer is looking for, then you can set some very high prices.
Warning
Just like point four and five, you are going to have to do a lot of research into finding ways to protect your work. There are lots of people who are willing to steal your months of work, so you need to mitigate the risk, and set up as many safeguards as possible.
7. Invest in Low-Cost Shares
They are known as penny shares. You take some of your hard-earned cash and invest it in penny shares. There are online banks such as HSBC that allow you to pay a one-off fee, every time you buy or sell. The rest of the money you invest will then go on the shares. So, for example, you may save up $200. $30 of it goes on buying your shares, leaving $170. The shares you pick cost only 0.71c per share. You purchase 23,943 shares. The price of the share goes up in three weeks to 0.99c per share and you sell your 23,943 shares to get $237, minus a selling fee, that is a profit of $7 for nothing. If you are lucky--those same shares may go up to 1.5c per share, which would pay you $359. The great/terrible thing about penny shares is that they may bounce up and down in price for a week, and then stay the same for two years. If you catch them at a time when they take a temporary peak, you can make a nice profit.
Warning
Your shares broker will tell you the same, “Shares may go down as well as up.” The downside to penny shares is that the company behind them is often new and unstable, so they may go out of business, which will mean you lose your money.
