Tips for College Freelancers

So you’ve gone through the Fall semester, Christmas break, and the semi-annual sale at Victoria Secret to come to the fact that you are now broke, and have no way to fund your constant midnight trips to taco bell and your splurges on Amazon. There is one thing you do have though; a strong Wi-Fi connection and a laptop. With these two things you can have money in your PayPal account before those sales end. So don’t fret, just become a college freelancer.

Freelancing is something that is slowly becoming more relevant in todays modern technology era. Instead of working for one company, eight hours a day, five days a week; you are able to work for multiple companies for however long you want. The best part? You choose the job and the duration of your tasks. There are endless online jobs out there for college students. Here are 5 tips for college freelancers that will put you on the fast track to earning money!

1. Do Your Research

I know it’s exciting to come across a site that says, “Will pay $15 an hour” and “make $3500 this month,” but a lot of the sites stating they pay a high rate are usually the ones that are the scams. So do your research, look up reviews of the sites online and get real employee opinions on the company. Sites like upwork.com and projectforhire.com offer a lot of jobs for any type of industry; you’re bound to find something you can do that will actually make you legitimate money.

2. Start a Blog

Starting a blog is great way to show off your own personal writing skills. One thing to remember is that if you do want to blog for income, it is important to post frequently and promptly. Set up two days every week where you write about your daily life or something inspirational that has happened. Sites like blogger.com and wordpress.com help you set up an account with Google AdSense, which basically does all of the difficult s work for you. You decide where, when, and what type of ads that are shown, and AdSense will pay you depending on the amount of clicks on these ads.

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3. Apply for Jobs on Job Boards

Sites like elance.com and upwork.com have thousands of jobs posted daily, but also have thousands of people applying for them on the daily. Although it’s not a bad idea to get your foot in the door by applying to these positions, keep in mind it can be a long and tedious application process, with many dead ends. Apply for as many as you can, but don’t get your hopes up if those twenty jobs you applied for didn’t work out as you would have hoped.

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4. Reply Promptly to Emails and Employers

If you did get an email about freelancing for a company, YES! You did it! Now comes the part where you state your pay and the employer will describe your actual job. The key to this step is to reply promptly. There’s nothing more irritating than email-tag where you reply twelve hours later with questions that could have been answered in five minutes. Set your phone to notify you when you receive any sort of email to prevent long lag time in replies.

5. Use Your Personality

If there’s one thing I can’t stress to you enough, it’s to be yourself. Apply for online jobs that really use your strengths; whether that is creative writing, photography, being super organized and working as a Virtual Assistant, or just writing ss for businesses. Whatever your niche may be, use it to the best of your abilities. A lot of freelance jobs consist of boring, uninteresting topics. One great piece of advice I can give to you is to apply for whatever you are passionate about. You will find that whenever you do something that you actually enjoy, it won’t even seem like work.