College life is pretty much synonymous with being young and broke. We all know the common tropes — cheap beer, instant ramen, and mac and cheese. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t need to be that way, even if you can’t fit a part-time job into your schedule.

Find yourself a side hustle. Whether you’re tutoring or driving Uber, the best way to make extra spending money as a student is to capitalize on your free time. Balancing school work and a job with set hours can be a challenge. But with a little bit of creativity and entrepreneurial drive, you can build a work life around your schedule and set your own hours. You may even be able to gain some experience in your future field before you graduate.

Here are eight great student side hustles, including some that will allow you to work from your dorm room.

Tutoring or teaching online courses

Is there a subject area where you are particularly knowledgeable? Maybe you play an instrument, or perhaps you know how to code in a few programming languages. Maybe you’re multilingual. Perhaps you’re just exceptionally good at math. In any case, if you have something worth teaching, monetize your knowledge by finding someone who wants to learn.

Tutoring can be a great side hustle for college students. It pays well (private tutors may charge anywhere from $20 to $50 per hour) and you can generally set your own hours. You’ll sharpen your understanding of the subject you teach, hence the old aphorism — “you never really learn something until you teach it” — and you’ll build strong communication skills, which are valuable in pretty much every line of work.

To find students, first see if you can work for an on-campus tutoring service. Most schools have peer-to-peer tutoring services that hire students to help other students with coursework. You’ll likely need strong grades and possibly a teacher’s recommendation to qualify. You can also offer tutoring services privately, either to other university students or to local grade school students — hang up fliers around your college’s town or advertise on Craigslist to find clients.

If you can’t find students in person, you can also apply for a position at an online tutoring services like Chegg Tutor or Wyzant. These sites can help you find students that you can teach virtually, so that you can work remotely. You also have the ability to set your own hours so you can work around your class schedule, rather than plan your schedule around your work hours.

If you find that you have a knack for teaching, you might want to consider broadcasting your lessons through an online education platform. As online education has taken off in the last decade, websites like Udemy and Skillshare have emerged, offering educators to create and sell courses directly to students via their platforms. With these platforms, you have the ability to share video lessons with millions of people around the world. It also turns teaching into a form of passive income — you still have to engage with students by providing feedback on their work and answering the occasional question, but the burden of teaching each lesson to each student is removed. 

Editing service

Proofreading and editing papers is one of the classic college side hustles. Entrepreneurial English majors with good grammar have been doing it for decades. It’s incredibly easy to get started and is always in high demand on campuses.

Start out by offering your services to friends and classmates, charging in the ballpark of $15-$20 per hour. A word of advice: make your service as professional as possible. That means following all style guidelines according to the terms of your client’s assignment. It also means following professional proofreading protocols. For each project you should fact-check, spell-check, and meticulously check grammar by each line. You should also make use of common proofreading shorthands. I recommend creating a style guide to send your clients. Taking these steps will help you professionalize your business, which means you can charge more.

You may also want to offer services at various rates. For example, you might offer a spell-check and proofread for $15 per hour; a spell-check, proofread, and fact-check for $20 per hour; and a comprehensive full edit, including spell-check, proofread, fact-check, and a structural edit, for $25-$30.

You may also want to offer your proofreading services online. You can do this via general freelancing websites like Fiverr and Upwork or through dedicated online proofreading services such as Polished Paper, ProofreadingServices.com, or Wordvice. Or you can simply create a website and market your services independently on social media and sites like Craigslist.

Bookkeeping

Business and accounting majors, this one’s for you. If you’re organized, adept with numbers, enjoy working with spreadsheets, and expect to be managing finances in your professional future, bookkeeping on the side is a great way to dip your toes into the field while you’re still in college.

Not to be confused with the more formal title of “accountant,” bookkeepers are generally responsible for managing daily financial transactions and tracking inward and outward cash flow. Bookkeepers are typically involved in paying suppliers, recording invoices, billing clients, documenting receipts from customers, processing payroll, filing accounting reports and related tasks.

Accountants and CPAs (certified public accountants), on the other hand, take on more responsibilities, such as handling taxes and building the business’ financial strategy. Working as an accountant requires a degree and certification.

Bookkeeping is not an easy job and involves taking on a lot of responsibility. It’s not recommended as a casual side job. However, if you are genuinely interested in accounting or financial services, bookkeeping in college is a great opportunity to put what you are learning in class to the test and gain some real experience to show future employers.

You can make a solid hourly salary as well. Bookkeepers make between $18 and $23 per hour on average — about what you would make on an hourly basis in a full-time, $40,000 per year job.

In order to get into bookkeeping, you will first need to become familiar with bookkeeping software — QuickBooks is the industry standard. You should consider taking some classes on bookkeeping so you can learn the typical workflow and best practices within the trade.

Then, you’ll need to find clients. This can be a challenge if you don’t have any prior experience. Ask around at businesses in your college town to see if any could use bookkeeping services. Oftentimes freelance bookkeepers find clients through personal connections, so see if friends and parents have any potential leads. Also make use of websites like Craigslist or Upwork, where you may be able to find remote clients.

Freelancing in your field

Freelancing is more than just a way to earn a little bit of cash on the side. It is an opportunity to develop real experience in your field before graduating. Most students build their professional experience through internships during breaks from school. But unless you happen to get a part-time job in your major (which is unlikely, particularly if your college isn’t located in a big city), there are few opportunities to work in your field during the school year. 

Freelancing allows you to do that, on your own time and at your own discretion. It can also help you develop specific, marketable skills that you can utilize after graduation.

With the exception of highly professionalized fields like medicine or law, undergraduates in most majors can find a way to freelance in their field.

Marketing students, for example, can offer to handle social media for local businesses. Computer science students can put their programming skills to use by building websites and applications.

Students in fields that are creative and/or primarily portfolio-based (e.g., graphic design, photography, website design, writing) will benefit the most from freelancing on the side. It’s not uncommon for professionals in these fields to be full-time freelancers — over 40 percent of the entire American workforce is expected to work freelance by 2020 — so you will get a taste of the lifestyle and workflow of freelance professionals. Full-time freelancing presents various benefits, such as flexible hours and mobility, but also unique challenges, like irregular hours and payment. By trying your hand at it in college, you will have an opportunity to determine if it fits your desired lifestyle.

But even if you decide you don’t want to freelance, you’ll need a strong portfolio to show to future employers. Freelancing shows employers that you have experience working with other professionals, that you know how to do things like cooperate and negotiate, and that you have an understanding what a professional workflow looks like. Furthermore, you’ll have real evidence of your abilities to showcase.

There are a variety of ways you can choose to go about freelancing. You can pitch your services to clients online, either via dedicated freelancing platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, or through Craigslist and industry-industry specific job boards.

Before you do that, though, I would recommend trying to work with local businesses. While online freelancing platforms can be a great resource, working with local businesses allows you to develop personal relationships with your client — relationships that could last into the future. Furthermore, it’s easy to get lost among the endless competition online. In smaller towns, there may be fewer opportunities, but there is also a smaller pool of competitors.

Personal training or coaching

This is an area in which former high school athletes and exercise science or kinesiology majors can thrive. Personal trainers can easily make anywhere from $26-$50 per hour, even without much experience. You can become certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), the American Council on Exercise (ACE), or Fitness Mentors by taking only a few months worth of classes — you could even finish them over a summer break.

As a certified personal trainer, you’ll be able to work for a gym, which will pay you a fixed rate with a regular set of hours. Or you could find clients on a freelance basis. While both are strong options, the latter provides a certain amount of flexibility and the ability to set your own rates, though you may have a slightly harder time finding clients.

If you’re an athlete but not particularly interested in personal training, your other option is to try to find a job coaching. Oftentimes, local children’s recreation leagues hire college students with high school playing experience as part-time coaches. A fun and relatively undemanding job, coaching part-time as a college student also can lead to a career as a high school, college, or even professional coach, if you choose to pursue it.

Dropshipping

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term dropshipping, it is a form of online retail in which an online store sells products that it never actually stores or handles directly. When a drop shipper sells a product, the manufacturer ships it directly to the consumer. The retailer never actually touches the actual product, serving as a sort of middleman in the transaction.

This model has many advantages for entrepreneurs with small budgets or few resources. Dropshipping has a low overhead relative to traditional retail and costs less money to start up, making the initial risk far lower than many other kinds of business. It doesn’t require a physical space or warehouse and can be conducted entirely via the internet. Because dropshipping doesn’t require actually buying your inventory, you can offer a wide range of products and can scale your business up with fewer growing pains than a traditional retailer would have. And you can generally automate a good deal of the business and make your own hours.

For all of these reasons, dropshipping is an attractive business for aspiring entrepreneurs with limited time on their hands. But that doesn’t mean it is pure passive income. Starting an effective dropshipping business requires time, energy, and money spent on marketing and customer service. Further, profits are garnered from effectively skimming money off the top of each purchase, so the profit margins are small.

But it is still a worthwhile endeavor for people who are willing to actually commit to their business. Websites like Shopify will help you build an online store, even if you don’t have the technical know-how. And there are countless blogs and YouTube channels that will provide you with valuable advice as you go through the process of building your store. Zach Inman, for example, is a student who has created successful dropshipping businesses while still a student, as well as a YouTuber who creates videos about effective dropshipping strategies.

Diving into the gig economy

As we head into 2020, the gig economy is in full swing. The number of people in the United States working gig jobs is expected to rise to 9.2 million by 2021. For college students, the growth of on-demand jobs is a great thing. Whether you’re driving Uber or Lyft, walking dogs with Wag, or delivering food through Postmates, you’re effectively your own boss and are able to set your own hours. 

Furthermore, it is generally easy to get started. Most gig economy employers require employees (or contractors, technically) to pass a background check. If you are signing up to be a driver, you’ll need to have a certain level of driving experience and will need to pass a car inspection. The terms for signing up vary by platform, but in all cases, it is easy to get in and easy to get out.

Working as a full-time gig economy worker comes with some well-documented challenges and pay is lower than these companies like to advertise (no, you probably won’t make the $25 per hour Uber claims). But you can certainly make about $15 per hour — more than you would in a minimum wage job in most parts of the country — and for students who have to work around their class schedules, any job where you can work around your own schedule is a great opportunity.

For a complete guide on the gig economy platforms, check here.

Selling clothes online

If you have a keen eye for style, an overflowing closet, and an entrepreneurial spirit, flipping clothes online can be a great way to make some extra cash — and it can be a lot of fun too.

Online marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, and Poshmark make it easy to list items and connect with buyers online. Most sites take a small percentage of each sale — the highest take 10-30 percent, some take as low as 5 percent or even nothing. In doing so, they connect you with millions of potential buyers from all over the world.

Countless people with a strong fashion sense are using these sites to generate extra income and even build small businesses. Natalie Gomez, for example, started selling clothes via Poshmark while she was between jobs. She soon was selling $10,000 per month worth of clothing via the platform, turning her hobby into her full-time business.

Gomez started by casually selling her used clothing, but once she found that she could make a profit through the platform, she started flipping items from popular retailers like Anthropologie and Zara. Many users seek out rare items in thrift stores, where they can find potentially valuable clothing for cheap prices. It’s not necessarily an easy job and it takes a person with an ability to read and react to trends in fashion and effectively market their online store. Only about 10 percent of Poshmark’s sellers use the platform as their part-time or full-time job. But if flipping through bargain bins at thrift shops is your idea of a good time, you can certainly turn your hobby into a solid income stream.

Conclusion

Making money as a full-time student will always be a challenge, but it’s a whole lot harder if you aren’t able to set your own hours. Instead of accepting that part-time job at the coffee shop or the campus bookstore, choose a side hustle. You’ll never have to sacrifice class or study time for work again.