9 Side Hustles for College students can start in 2024 (Unique Ideas)

Are you looking for side hustles for college students to make some money? Continue reading as we have listed 9 side hustles for college students that are worth considering.

1. Statistics, Data, and Study Report Hunting

Blogging is one of the best ways to make money. With true blogging, anyone can rank their content on Google and make a lot of money from ads, services, courses, digital marketing, affiliate marketing, etc. 

The main issue the bloggers are facing is that after Google Helpful content update and core update in March 2024, more than 50% of blog websites lost their traffic significantly or completely. The main issue the current bloggers are facing is how to write 100% unique, high quality and helpful content to rank on Google. 

To rank Google with high-quality, helpful content, you need to write content with unique information, data, and statistics no one shared in the blogs. But the other issue is it is very time-consuming to hunt or find accurate statistics, data, and study reports to support their blogs. Here you can offer statistics and data-hunting services to writers and bloggers. 

Based on the topics they give to you, or the outline, you can find or hunt the studies, statistics, data, or figures to support each H2 heading and talking points to back up the articles. You can change the price based on the time spent on each topic. Note that for some topics, it is very difficult to find statistics or studies, in that case, you can ask for higher pricing.

Pricing: $15 – $100 ( Based on the number of statistics or studies reports needed by the buyer. 

2. Tutoring Your Expertise to Kids

Learning new things, and skills takes time, effort and money. Many parents are eager to find skilled individuals who can teach their children specialized skills outside of the traditional school curriculum, such as coding, music, arts, or advanced sciences. Educating these new skills is one of the worries all parents face about their kids. Working parents don’t have time to teach these in person as well. So, they always consider an alternative way to teach new skills to kids. 

We know that there are many online sources and websites to learn new things and skills. However, teaching on-site or directly is 100% more effective than online. So, parents prefer this. However, to get an expert or skilled person in a particular skill set locally is ideally preferred by the parents. It is not only convenient but also a cheap option for parents.

If you have any expert knowledge or skill in particular subjects or niches, you can offer these as part-time jobs. You can teach math, coding, (include a few more subjects here) and more. 

Pricing:  $20 – $50 per hour (Dependent on the skill being taught, your experience level, and regional rates. Consider offering package deals for multiple sessions.)

3. Local Car Wash Service

In every family, there is at least one car on average. Every car owner wants to display their car neat and clean. But sometimes, they don’t have time to go to car wash companies and clean their car frequently. 

They always prefer if someone in the neighborhood or locally comes to their home and cleans or wash cars. However, it is very difficult or not profitable for a car wash company to send someone to the client’s home and wash cars. Only the rich can afford the prices charged by the clients. So, here is the opportunity for the students.

Students can explore this opportunity and get high rewards with little investment. With basic tools like (a bucket, sponge, car shampoo, hose, and drying towels) students can offer car wash services on the site of clients. This will be highly profitable for the students.

If you can rent premium car wash services based on the requirements of the client, you can also offer premium services as well. In that case, you can charge comparative competitive pricing including the rented equipment for premium car washing as well. You don’t need to buy those, but you can consider if you get more premium car wash requests regularly.

Pricing: You can charge $10 to $ 40 based on the car model 

4. Personal Computer Virus Removal Services

Today, one of the major issues all computer users face is virus attacks on the computer. The virus comes in such a way from browsing websites, downloading files, clicking on spammy links, movie downloads, message links, chats and more. 

If your computer gets infected with viruses, you may lose all of your important data like a credit card, banking login passwords, email, website, or blog login credentials (including more). Also, your social media accounts, YouTube channels or any monetized or revenue platforms.

Many users don’t like or trust to go to service centers and assign them to clean up the virus from their computers. This is because of a lot of cases we have been hearing or seeing in the service center where people stole personal information or data. Because of these people who trust someone who knows locally or in the neighborhood who come to their home and clean up viruses from the computers.

If you know how to clean up viruses, or format or factory reset and install the fundamental or necessary software, codecs, and antiviruses, you can offer these as services. This will be a profitable side hustle as they can contact you again if any issues they face in the future as well. They trust you more than an employee from a service company to do that. 

The main challenge you may be facing is that, if you do formatting an older version of Windows or Mac versions, it will be difficult to get the codecs and drivers compatible with that model computer or laptop.

Pricing: You can charge $50-$100 based on the hours

Here are the categories and some commonly used software names you may need to consider:

Operating System

• Windows 10
• Windows 11

Drivers

• Device Manufacturer’s Website (for downloading specific hardware drivers like GPU, motherboard, etc.)

Essential Utilities

• Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome (Web browsers)
• 7-Zip or WinRAR (File archivers)
• Adobe Reader (PDF reader)
• VLC Media Player (Media player)

Security Software

• Windows Defender (Built-in antivirus in Windows)
• Malwarebytes (Malware protection)

Office Suite

• Microsoft Office
• LibreOffice

Others

• Dropbox or Google Drive (Cloud storage)
• Notepad++ (Advanced text editor)
• CCleaner (System cleaning tool)

These are just a few examples. The specific software you choose to install can vary based on your personal or professional needs.

5. Buying and Selling Used Textbooks

If you are a student, you must have asked yourself “Should I buy the textbook or rent from someone or buy a secondhand?”

The information you get from a new book, a rented book and from a second-hand book are always the same. You know you can save more than 50% of the costs if you don’t prefer a new textbook?

Yes, that is true and you can get even cheaper than that. Many students prefer or consider buying second-hand books to save some money. Due to this, there is still a demand for second-hand books for students and you can take it as an opportunity. You can buy or approach the students once they complete their studies or if they pass to the next standard or grade.  

You don’t need to buy the used book and keep it as an inventory. You can approach the potential buyers in your school or college and if someone is interested you can buy from the passed-out student and sell to the students. This way you can get some decent amounts. Note if you get more orders, you can make more money without hard efforts.

Pricing: You charge a profit from 25% – 45% on the price you paid. ( You can consider more if you getting more demand)

6. Renting Out personal Camera Gear

As a student, if you have high-quality imagery cameras and gear, you can consider renting out to people who want cameras for their small or accident usages. Whether it is for office usage, party usage, or local trips, taking photos of their pets, family get-togethers, birthday parties and more. The limits are endless. 

The advantage here is that, in these cases, most people don’t consider buying brand-new cameras and gear. Because it is costly compared to renting out. Moreover, if you buy any camera within the next day, it is called “second hand”. If you sell it, at least it will lose $200-500 dollars in one day. 

So, if you have a camera that can take decent images and videos, you can rent out to people locally. 

Pricing: You can charge $100-$400 per day based on the model of the camera

7. Local Photography and Video Editing services

If you have a really good talent for taking photographs, photo editing, or videography, you can offer these services locally. 

A lot of businesses and families don’t want to pay a costly payment to professional photographers and videographers for their business promo, product promo, ordinary celebrations, or requirements. We know that professional photographers charge a minimum of $5000 for parties, weddings, or any kind of event.

If you can take amazing pictures and real estate videos or any promo videos, consider offering them as services locally. But to get your first order, you need to convince yourself you are capable of doing that by creating your social media profiles, and reels with high-quality images and videos. 

To improve your skills in photography, you can consider joining photography workshops as well. The main challenges of these services are, that you need a high-quality camera, a backup camera for accidental issues, camera gear like flash, gimbal, tripod, carrying bag, quality lenses, etc.

Pricing: You can charge a minimum of $300- $1000 per client

8. Window cleaning

We all live in our home or a rented home and we usually clean our home daily or at least once a week. Surprisingly, one of the areas we don’t clean frequently is the windows. Why is that?

The answer is, that we think that it is the area where dirt doesn’t come to us. Just kidding. It’s mainly because it is a very annoying or inconvenient area to clean. We can try to cover up the interior area, but what about the exterior?

Most of the working families don’t have time to clean up the exterior windows. 

In this case, as a student, you can consider this a side hustle opportunity and offer window cleaning as a service. You can consider it on holiday, which is both practical for the client and you. However, you need to take some safety measures while cleaning the exterior windows.

Pricing: You can charge $20 – $100 based on the number of windows and risk involved ( like height, near electric posts, etc)

9. Audio Quality Enhancement Services

Imagine, you are a very talented animator. You created an amazing video and rendered the video in 8k and uploaded it to YouTube or any online platform or TV channel. But what if the audio is not hearable or up to the mark?

Nobody is going to watch until the end, right? (Kids also don’t consider it)

Audio, especially the voiceover, if hot hearable, all kinds of video fails. Sometimes, many people record their audio in high-quality audio recorders and microphones, but due to some technical issues, the frequency will be under the value or standard. It is not an issue, we can boost the audio further. However many don’t know how to edit or process the recorded file to improve the audio quality and volume as well.

You can see on YouTube and social media many videos or podcasts that audio is low volume or unhearable.

Here is an opportunity. If you know how to edit, boost, process the recorded audio to improve the scale to high frequency, add bass and treble, compress, amplify, and normalize features, you can offer this as a service. In Fiverr, few people sell this service and the competition is very low as well. 

You need to learn how to improve the quality of audio with video editing software like Adobe Audition, or free software like Audacity to start this service. 

Pricing: You can charge $5-$10 for each one-minute or two-minute audio 

Conclusion

These 9 side hustles for college students mentioned in this video are capable of earning some extra or decent amounts for students. Always remember, any business needs dedication and hard work that pays off in the future.

I hope these side hustles listed are useful and informative for you. Always consider the risk factors before starting any and good luck