Today, everyone can make money online by sitting in the comfort of their home. The best part is, with your smartphone, you can make money online without investment right from the comfort of your own couch. However, it isn’t easy to find an easy way to earn money online without investment. So, what are proven ways students can make money online without investment?
- Become a podcast editor.
- Start a niche blog and monetize it through affiliate marketing
- Start an e-commerce website and sell products online
- Help authors build an online course
- Look for freelance jobs
- Start a YouTube channel
- Register on Amazon Mechanical Turk
- Write an Ebook
- Sell your craft on Etsy
- Sell used textbooks or books Fulfilled by Amazon Program (FBA)
- Sell used products on eBay.
- Sell stuff online
- Start selling stock photos online
- Becoming an Online Community Manager
- Become a Virtual Assistant
- Transcribe interviews
- Complete online surveys
Read on to discover in detail how you can make money online creatively without investment. At least one or more of these options will likely be appealing to you.
See also: 9 Best Ways to Earn Money Online with Autocad
What Are Proven Ways Students Can Make Money Online Without Investment?
Now is the best time for you to make money online without investment; here are proven ways students can make money online without investment.
1- Become a Podcast Editor
Now there is an exciting and unusual opportunity to make money online without investment and faster. As more and more people are starting up their podcasts, more and more people need some help, specifically with the editing of their shows; you could become a podcast editor.
What Skills Are Required to Become a Podcast Editor?
You just need to learn how to use something like GarageBand or Adobe Audition, or even Audacity online. Your job is to take a person’s audio file, take out all the mistakes, and make it sound great.
If you compare podcast editing to video editing, audio editing is a lot easier.
How Can You Get Started With Podcast Editing?
The nice thing is that many podcasters are publishing online and are available for easy access on social media. You can work with them, talk with them, see what they might need help with, and see if they already have an editor.
I promise you many podcasters would love to get an extra five to ten hours a week getting away from editing and more into building relationships with their audience or creating even more content, maybe even reaching out to your favorite.
Start simple one podcaster, one client, see what it’s like and go from there now. You might also enjoy reading: Is it Safe to Start an Online Business?
2- Start a Niche Blog and Monetize it Through Affiliate Marketing
Beginning a niche blog is one of the easiest ways to make money online without investment. To find your niche, look for something you are passionate about or willing to learn.
When you create content for your niche blog, try to focus on the audience’s needs, answer their questions, and build trust with them. It will make your affiliate marketing much more lucrative and effective.
Affiliate marketing is usually when you receive a commission for generating sales or traffic to a retailer you have partnered with. You achieved this by including links on your blog page that send your audience to some product outside your site.
When writing blog posts, make sure you put your audience’s needs first and do not recommend any product or service you do not believe in. Although starting a niche blog is a long-term process, it is still one of the best ways of making money online.
List of affiliate networks you can partner with:
Make sure you partner with a brand that fits your audience’s needs.
See also: What is an Instagram Brand Ambassador? And How to Be One
3- Start an E-commerce Website and Sell Products Online
If you have ideas of the products that people want, then starting an e-commerce site will be your best option. You will sell your products directly to consumers with no middle person. However, this means you’ll have to take on a hefty share of the responsibilities. That includes the following:
- A website to list your products
- A merchant account to accept payments ( like Stripe or Paypal)
- Logistics strategy, meaning a way to accept orders and deliver products to consumers.
- Somewhere to stock all your products (this can be your dorm room)
- A marketing strategy to make your products visible to your customers.
If you don’t have products or do not want to deal with the hefty share of the responsibilities, you can also sell products that aren’t your own through dropshipping.
Dropshipping doesn’t require you to own or stock any products. With dropshipping, you offer products for sale on your website and fulfill orders by purchasing the product from a third-party company, then shipping it directly to the customer.
List of Websites to sell your product with dropshipping:
- Shopify
- AliExpress
One of the benefits of dropshipping is that you don’t need to buy products upfront. You only purchase the product when you get paid by the customer. It is a relatively lower-risk way to make money online; however, it requires marketing skills to drive traffic to your online store.
See also: How Old Do You Have to Be to Start an Online Business?
4- Help Authors Build an Online Course
You don’t need to have your own book or platform with readers. Still, there are people out there like authors, especially those of older demographics, who just don’t have the technical know-how, the time, or the ability, or even the thought to create an online course to further their readers and are looking for additional help.
You can get paid for helping authors build an online course to educate their readers continually. You can create an online course for an author with a platform already through their book to help that author make more money, and when you can help somebody get paid, you can get paid handsomely.
How to Get Started?
- Go to Amazon and look at the top 10 books for a particular category you might be interested in.
- Reach out to those authors via social media or even create a little video for them, pitching this idea of creating an online course to support their book to take the readers that they already have.
- Put them into a program where likely a lot of them would want to join and do a revenue share. Yeah, you heard me, a revenue share.
These top 10 authors have tens of thousands, sometimes millions of readers, and you can become the person who can technically help these authors create an online course and sell them.
You can even charge a set fee just to start this process and ongoing royalties on top of that. If you have a relationship with these authors already, you might as well create there if you know anybody that knows them or maybe you are a reader of that book.
And you want to share how much of an impact it’s made on you, plus pitch this idea on top of it that could work too.
I would also recommend you reach out via social media and use the video capability in places like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, which often captures people’s attention and helps you get through the noise. See also: Can You Make Money by Making Instagram Filters?
5- Look for Freelance Jobs
Freelancing is an excellent option if you enjoy working on various projects. You can find freelance jobs with any skill, such as developer, writing, graphic design, and photography. Freelancing is a proven way to make money online without investment.
With freelancing, you will need to find your own clients by developing a system to find leads, learn how to craft cold pitches and understand where and how to find new clients.
List of reliable platforms where you can find freelancing jobs:
- Upwork
- 99 Designs
- Freelancer.com
- Fiver
- Task rabbit
- Skyword
Each industry has its own set of freelance platforms; however, these sites are an excellent place to start your freelancing journey.
How to Promote Yourself as a Freelancer?
Becoming a freelancer means that you are your own boss. Consequently, you will have to take the initiative and responsibilities. And part of your responsibilities requires you to learn how to market yourself through multiple channels. You need to let people know what you do.
Social media is a great place to begin promoting yourself as a freelancer. Sometimes you will be surprised by the number of responses you get after letting your friends know what type of services you are offering.
Make a list of your family members or friends you think may be interested in your services or know someone interested in it. Send these friends a personal message. And let them become your first advocates.
Another method of promotion as a freelancer is to partner with agencies. You can sign with a recruitment agency to reduce the amount of effort it takes to find leads. Usually, recruitment agencies have a connection with several large companies that are looking to engage freelancers.
Few of the more well-known recruitment agencies include:
- Randstad
- Tundra Technical
- Flex on Demand
- Creative Circle
To succeed as a freelancer, you will need to develop time management skills and stay persistent enough to keep pushing through. You might also enjoy reading: Can You Make Money Online by Java Programming?
6- Start a YouTube Channel
Starting a YouTube channel is a great way to make money online without investment. One of the most important steps in starting a YouTube channel is figuring out why. Not just why you want to start a YouTube channel, but ask yourself why anyone should watch what you are producing. You must also be consistent.
YouTube is highly competitive, and to cut through the noise; you need to give people reasons to watch your content. First, start with a niche and find what makes you unique.
Ideas of Content That Does Well on Youtube:
- Product reviews and how-to videos are the two most popular.
- Educational videos
- Unboxing videos
How To Make Money on YouTube
- Create a YouTube account (if you already have Gmail, then you have a YouTube account)
- Advertising revenue – Youtube pays you by displaying ads.
- Views and ad clicks – You can earn between $1.50-$3.00 per 1,000 views depending on niche and industry.
- Channel memberships – You encourage your subscribers to make monthly payments in exchange for some premium membership.
- Merchandise shelf – You can sell merchandise via tee print
- Super chats – Giving your fans the option of paying to have their messages featured in a chat stream.
- YouTube premium revenue – Google describes this as getting a piece of a “YouTube Premium subscribers fee” whenever any of your subscribers view your videos.
If you are interested in starting a YouTube channel, I wrote a whole article about Blog and YouTube, and answering which one should you start.
7- Register on Amazon Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is basically a crowdsourcing website that enables businesses to hire remote workers to complete tasks virtually temporarily. These tasks usually include validating data, research, and conducting surveys.
How Much Money Can you Make on MTurk?
Most of the tasks on MTurk pay you between 0.01 cents to 0.35 cents range. You may make $1 for completing a psychological survey, but it is not usual. And keep in mind that Amazon takes around 20-45% off of each transaction.
Turkers (workers on MTurk) make an average of $2/hour, according to a recent academic study.
Amazon Mechanical Turk is not the best platform if you are looking to earn a living. However, if your goal is to make a few extra dollars, then give it a try.
8- Write an eBook
One of the easiest ways students can make money online without investment is to create an eBook. If you have any topic or hobby that interests you and is incredibly knowledgeable, you can write an eBook on arts and crafts, investing, and anything.
You can write an eBook about any topic you want! If you are interested in any topic, hobby, or idea, chances are other people are also interested.
Imagine a person, maybe you, who knows a lot about something so much in fact that people could potentially even pay you for that info? The cool thing about an eBook is that you can just keep selling it over and over once it’s out there.
If you are considering writing an eBook, I encourage you to check out this article: Is Amazon KDP Worth It? (Including its pros and cons!)
How to Get Started?
If you are super knowledgeable about a particular topic that you just do an in-depth analysis and research, that’s just too good to give away for free. You can package it and sell it in an eBook.
Where to Sell your eBook?
You don’t need a website; you can use Amazon kindle publishing. Keep in mind that they will charge a commission on every sale. Or you can use Convertkit, the free version, to sell and distribute your eBook.
9- Sell your Craft on Etsy
If you are a creative or artsy person, you can sell your art on Etsy. It is one of the most popular websites dedicated to crafts, unique vintage products, and handmade items. If you love creating your work, such as visual art, postcards, photography, accessories, then give Etsy a try.
How to Get Started on Etsy
- Head on Etsy
- Create an account, including the name of your shop adding a photo and bio.
- Click the Sell on Etsy link, then Open Your Etsy Shop.
- After filling out some general information such as country, language, currency
- Check out this article: How to Market Your Etsy Shop: The Ultimate Guide.
10- Sell Used Textbooks or Books Fulfilled by Amazon Program (FBA)
With the Fulfillment by Amazon, you basically send your products to Amazon, and they store them for you. Once a customer orders one of your books, Amazon will pick, pack, ship and track the order for you.
How to Get Started with FBA
- Create your Amazon selling account
- Log in to your Seller Central to set up your FBA account.
- List your books or textbooks.
- Prepare your products for shipment to Amazon.
- Make sure your products are safe and secure for transportation to a fulfillment center.
- Ship your products to Amazon – Create your shipping plan, print Amazon shipment ID labels, and drop your products at the nearest UPS store (Amazon offer you a deep discount via partnered carriers)
- Check out this article: 5 Tools for Conducting Product Research on Amazon FBA.
11- Sell Used or Product on eBay
You can use eBay to get rid of items around the house or buy products at thrift stores and resell them for profit.
If you are interested in selling and wonder if selling on eBay is worth it, check out this detailed article to learn more about the pros and cons of selling on eBay.
See also: Is Selling on eBay Worth It? The Pros and Cons
12- Sell Stuff Online
Another way students can make money online without investment is by selling stuff online.
How to Get Started?
Look on websites like craigslist.org, where people give away free stuff, and then you resell them on the Facebook marketplace.
Garage sales are also an excellent way to find stuff to resell online. And selling stuff is a great way to use the internet to earn more money.
Where to Sell Stuff Online?
You can sell your stuff online via different Facebook groups. You just need to create free ads on Facebook or a website like craigslist.org.
You might also enjoy reading: How Much Can You Actually Make with Online Arbitrage?
13- Start Selling Stock Photos Online
Use your smartphone or a camera to take pictures and sell them online. Content creators and influencers are always looking for photos to go along with their content, blog pieces, marketing material.
When starting, you just need to focus on two things:
- Finding your niche: Look for something that your audience can expect from your photos, such as fashion photography, travel, portraits, nature.
- Building your audience: at the beginning, exposure is critical; use platforms like Instagram to share your beautiful photos. Be consistent and use specific hashtags to make sure you are reaching the right audience.
There are various websites where you can sell your pictures; however, the following sites are a great place for you to start.
Where to Sell Your Photos
- Adobe Stock
- Shutterstock
- Getty Images
- Fotolia
- Twenty20
- 500px
- iStock
14- Becoming an Online community Manager
What are people craving nowadays? It is a community connection, a sense of belonging to be around other people but not just like any random person other people like them. You help creators build an online community on something, whether on a free platform like Facebook groups or a paid platform like Circle.
More creators and brands who have audiences and fans want to bring them together. It creates more and more need now for people to manage those communities’ business ideas. You can help and serve creators by becoming a community and or an event manager.
Have you noticed how Facebook groups are like the thing? Because of the pandemic, more and more people are wanting to find and connect with other people just like them. You can help them moderate their live streams or live chats; whatever the case may be, this is of high value to creators who understand the importance of people now.
How Can You Get Started?
- Create a vision of possibilities for a creator.
- Help them understand what the possibilities are or where they might be lacking. It is best if you are already involved in this community, and you can step up to take charge and bring this community together.
- The more that you can understand what this will do for the creator, the more value it seems to them, and the more likely they are to work with you
See also: Can you Make Money Online Without a Bank Account?
15- Become a Virtual Assistant
Becoming a Virtual Assistant (VA) is a popular means of making money online without investment. As a VA, you will help with business administrative or secretarial tasks virtually.
The key to succeeding as a VA is to learn or sharpen a skill. You can start with free learning such as YouTube, LinkedIn, and specialized blogs. With LinkedIn, you can actually become certified.
Working as a VA is a great way to invest in yourself excellently as you will learn business skills such as blog management, digital marketing.
Some of the services you can provide as a Virtual Assistant include:
- Blog Manager
- Bookkeeper
- Customer service
- Digital marketer
- Online translator
- Newsletter writer
- And more.
Where to Find Clients as a Virtual Assistant
First, try to find ways to showcase your skill set so your potential clients will discover your talent. If you want to work as a blog manager, you want to prove your skills by working on your own blog or completing blog management-related certification on LinkedIn.
You can also use your branded website as a portfolio of all of the work you’ve done. Below are a few places where you find clients as Virtual Assistants:
- Upwork
- Fiverr
- PeoplePerHour
- Social media
See also: Here’s How You Can Make Money Online With Math Skills
16- Transcribe Interviews
It is very time-consuming to transcribe podcasts, so many businesses are looking for people like you to help them.
Types of Transcriptions
In addition to podcast transcription, there are other opportunities to use transcription services.
- Legal transcription
- TV and Film
- Financial
- Data entry
- Data entry
Where Can You Find Transcription Jobs?
- Transcribe Me
- Daily Transcription
See also: Here’s How You Can Make Money With HTML
17- Complete Online Surveys
Completing online surveys might be one of the easiest ways to make money online without investment. Instead of playing a video game, you can use your free time to earn extra money.
Be aware that some surveys might not pay you in cash but will give you points to redeem at specific stores.
I would not recommend you make taking online surveys your main side hustle. Taking online surveys will not necessarily make you rich; however, it is easy to earn a few extra bucks in your spare time.
Best Sites to Find Surveys Gigs
- Swagbucks
- Survey Junkie
- Opinion Outpost
- Pinecoast Research
Key Things To Make Money Online Without Investment
These 17 proven ways students can make money online without investment are NOT a quick get-rich scheme; you will need to work consistently.
One of the advantages is that you are young with no huge responsibilities, so you can test several opportunities and see what will work best for you. However, you will need to be patient and persistent to see great results.
With patience and persistence, you will be able to have extra sources of income stream. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in one day; it takes time, patience, and persistence to make anything significant.
Closing thoughts
These are 17 proven ways students can make money online without investment. You can start each as a side hustle and then turn it into a career. No matter which way you choose, be consistent and persistent, and the payoff will be huge.
As a student, you have the advantage of being young; therefore, you have time to taste different and see what works best and suits your lifestyle.
Remember the two keys to success are patience and persistence; no matter what method you choose, be persistent, make sure you stick to it long enough and promise you it will pay off.
It has indeed never been simpler or more convenient. No matter your skills or interest, it is possible for you to start earning money online today.
With these 17 ways students can make money online without investment, no matter where you live, you can start today as long as you have high-speed internet and a smartphone.
Pick one of these 17 ways students can make money online without investment, and I guarantee you won’t regret it.