How can I make a little bit of money during the school year on the side?
Asked by
skobol (
1
)
August 19th, 2009
I need to make a little bit of money. I don’t require a lot of money but I need a little bit coming in during the school year. Unfortunately, since it’s during school I won’t have a lot of time.
Do any of you here at fluther have any ideas as to how I can make a little bit of money online without a huge time commitment? I only have programming skills, which don’t lend themselves to short projects very easily, so it’d be nice to have something not difficult or with too many prerequisites.
Thanks!
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
17 Answers
Some schools will let you do workstudy jobs if you are particularly qualified for them and you don’t otherwise qualify for workstudy.
I made decent money my senior year as assistant cluster manager—since I was there in the middle of the night (anyway), I could fix problems.
How old are you? How much free time do you have? You may have to compromise your principles and get outside and do scut work. (Lawns, snow blowing, helping the elderly, babysitting babies who sleep while you study, etc.)
What about building simple web sites? For other students, faculty, your folks’ friends, etc.?
Working at your college’s computer lab help desk? There may also be other part-time IT jobs.
PC repair?
You say you’ve got programming skills. It’s not a direct relation but it’s typically a safe assumption that somebody who likes to program is at least a little bit handy with computers in other aspects.
If not repair, how about helping people set up computers? Choosing what to buy on the budget, setting up, installing everything they need, etc.
Another suggestion, get a job on campus. If any company is going to work well around your school schedule, it’s going to be your school. Work in the bookstore, or the cafeteria, or other student services.
@gailcalled I’m 16. I don’t have a lot of time, schoolwork has me on a tight schedule.
Restaurant work. Start busing tables, work your way up to waiter. Restaurants have reasonably flexible scheduling. Busing is fairly mindless; use it as an exercise period. Find a place where you get a cut of the tips.
I apologize for not supporting the coding direction of the suggestions. I am sure that is a real skill of yours, but it is time consuming to market your services, visit clients, keep track of billing, etc. Of course, take a gig if it falls in your lap.
@skobol: I am the proverbial old lady in tennis shoes. I have a 17 yr old who works for me two hours on week-ends and normally does heavy lifting and yard work. But from time to time, he gives me a lesson on my Mac and with my new (to me) digital camera.
Last Sat. he showed me how to upload photos from the camera to the Mac. I pay him $18/hour and he uses his own car.
sell drugs. lots of them.
Oh, ONLINE! No, dog walking wouldn’t really work, huh? My bad.
you can sell drugs online
@ABoyNamedBoobs03 (It’s even less humorous the second time around. We’re supposed to learn from our mistakes.)
What about working in one of those “Internet caffès”? Like being at a help desk.
@gailcalled it’s not my problem you don’t have a sense of humor…
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
