There are some real beauty and democracy to what the internet does for people who are looking to take their skills and make some money off of them. And, just because you are a student, that doesn’t mean you are out of the running with building your skills and taking them to the next level – far from it, actually. There are several ways to leverage your expertise in being a business. Some of the ways are new – for example, you have tools that didn’t exist for people just a few years ago. While other ways of success are old – such as generating a business plan, setting hours, and devoting yourself to quality. However, once you decide to start a business, you must be all in on the business.
The first thing you must do when starting an online business is to figure out your passion and how much time you want to devote to the business. The more time you devote to the business, the better chance for success. However, being a student means that you have limited time, therefore your time must be used efficiently. That is why when setting up a business you must be intentional and plan. The planning is actually the hardest part, but when you scope out your vision and you set up a checklist and tick off the boxes, what happens is you get the results that you are looking for and then some. There are some different businesses, however, that is truly ideal for students who are looking to earn some cash on the side. When looking into these businesses, you’ll find how easy it is to get started and move forward without having to deal with much in the way of overhead.
Dropshipping
For students, one of the things they deal with when starting a business is the lack of capital. Specifically, if you are selling goods, the problem becomes warehousing those goods and determining how to get them from your location to the customer’s location. You don’t have time to build an inventory and a shipping department – nor do you have the cash. Enter drop shipping. This is a really simple way to build up your wallet without having to sink too much into the actual nuts and bolts of the business. In fact, think of drop shipping this way – you have a store window, someone comes in and places an order for the item in the window. You don’t actually have the item, instead, you purchase it – at a lower price than the one you sold to the customer – and the drop shipper sends it to the customer.
This is what drop shipping is. You will open a store on a platform like Amazon or eBay. Once a customer places an order, you coordinate with your drop shipper to deliver the order. There are a couple of caveats though. The first is you must find a reliable drop shipper. This is easier said than done. A great thing to do is look at different drop shippers and talk to the people partnered with them. This will help you determine if this is someone you want to work with. The other issue is the margins. Dropshipping is competitive, so you will not make absurd margins. Instead, you have to focus on your marketing so that your customers come to you first before going to someone else to have their orders fulfilled.
Dropshipping is a great idea, and it can work out well if you do it right.
Blogging
For students, there are few mediums that lend themselves more to their experience than blogging. However, a blog is more than just slamming your fingers onto a keyboard and churning out your opinions. You have to make your blog compelling and a must-read. Easier said than done because not everyone is a gifted writer. Still, you don’t need to be a gifted writer to understand how to appeal to an audience. The key is using your blog as a way to solve problems that people have. Don’t assume everyone has already come up with the idea either. Trust that you have a compelling way to bring that information to people, and your blog will most certainly take off.
There are some issues with blogging, though. The first is you have to be able to build a blog site. This is actually not too rough, and WordPress has an excellent platform for bloggers. Still, if you are not passionate about building a site, this is not the easiest sell. The other issue is that your blog may not make a lot of money at first, and that would lead to temptation just to shut up shop and stop producing content. Creating content and finding ways to get that content out into the world is the fun of blogging, so as your network develops, you can bring in readers a variety of ways. Just be patient and produce good content, and people will come.
Videos
The truth is that viral content can make money, and a great example of how money can be made with videos is YouTube. The Partner Program with YouTube is a simple yet effective way to get people coming to your channel. The more views you have, the more money you make. The best news is you don’t need to hit paydirt with the next “Honeybadger” video – going viral isn’t as helpful as getting steady views on a variety of your content. In fact, the less viral, the better. The reason is going viral is something that does not happen and then expectations get so high that it’s impossible to live up to them.
There are some issues with videos. The biggest one is that you have to develop an audience. This is where your social media can be helpful. If your social media directs people back to your YouTube channel and you have a healthy social media following, you can easily make your videos go to the next level with the views.
