If you want to earn some extra money while in College, there are many ways to do it. You could work part-time, locally on some projects for clients or as a freelancer through the internet from home.
The first two options are a bit harder to achieve because you are a student, and you probably won’t be able to manage everything. If you are working part-time, many times, you will be in a lack of time to learn everything and get to the workplace and do the job. You will very likely be exhausted to achieve all of those things and maintaining a good College status.
On the other hand, if you work as a freelancer, you will get the chance to get projects on your terms, whenever you have the extra spare time you can find a project, and when you have to study hard, you can concentrate entirely on that. Also, being able to work from anywhere is perfect for a College student because you can work when you go home, or you can work while you have free time from your bed in your dorm.
There are many services on the internet where you can work as a freelancer whenever you want, and we will write about those in future articles.
My favorite freelancing website is Upwork.
Upwork is currently the biggest and highest quality freelancing platform on the internet. There are tens of thousands job postings every day from people from all around the world.
What kinds of qualifications do you need to be eligible to work and earn on Upwork? How do you make money as a college student on Upwork?
If you have any skill that you can offer from your computer through the internet, then you can definitely work on Upwork.
There is an enormous number of categories that you can choose for when searching for a job.
If you are a web, mobile or software developer or designer, you can work on any of those and there are many subcategories of this category like; e-commerce, desktop software development, Scripts, utilities, game development, QA, testing and product management
There are also many, many other categories like Design and creative where you can find millions of different creative jobs; from graphic and logo design to audio production, voice talents, photography, animation, illustration and lots of others.
There are all the different kinds of writing jobs, and actually I got hired as a writer for this blog on Upwork and I moved up to an editor, writer and proofreader and now I am managing a big part of this blog and I am being an important component of the team, and the coolest thing is that my schedule is almost entirely without tight deadlines. I can work literally whenever I want, I can start working on Monday, or I can travel and do all kinds of different things on Monday and Tuesday and start working on Wednesday or Thursday, as long as I finish all of the tasks, there is no limitation about where I should work from or what time should I work at(only for meetings, but even those I can answer even when I am traveling).
Other categories include admin support, virtual assistant, IT and Networking, Translation, Engineering and architecture, data science and analysis, accounting and consulting, customer service, legal and many more subcategories.
The pros of upwork are:
Flexibility as I already mentioned. When you have exams or are swamped with other activities and projects, you do not need to apply to projects and can focus on that. Moreover, when you have free time you can use it to work on some projects on Upwork and earn some money. If you are moving for a semester abroad, you can still work on Upwork, you do not need to find another part-time job.
Get experience and learn new things
Especially if you do not have the opportunity to work as a college student in your field of expertise, you can always do that on Upwork. When searching for a job if you do not have an option or opportunity other than working at a bar serving coffee Upwork is perfect. Also, if you do not have a chance to do an internship, you can get the experience on Upwork.
All of the work that you have done on Upwork, you can use it on your CV when applying for a job later on.
For example, if you are studying journalism and writing, you can drastically improve your writing skills over your colleagues if you start working on different writing projects on Upwork, and you will get paid for it.
Also, you can ask your employers on Upwork for references, so you can also use those in future job opportunities.
The learning and gaining experience opportunities on Upwork in your field are limitless. Plus, you are treated as a professional and not as a student when you work on Upwork.
Extra money for saving
Even when you are already working part-time, you can still do small projects on Upwork and earn extra money and save that money and spend the ones from your part time job. This is an excellent way to the road to becoming a financial adult and save from a pretty early age. This can have a tremendous impact on gaining a big amount of wealth in the future and being ahead of everyone else.
You save much time
You can work whenever you want and stop working whenever you want. Also, you do not have to go to a place and start working at a particular time which saves the time you need to get to the workplace and back home. This can save you much time, and these are the main reasons why I think that freelancing is a much better option for students than anything else.
You can work jobs in different fields
You do not need to work just in your field, but you can try out different and new things, which is an excellent way to test your other skills and see what makes you happy, and this might become even your side job or even primary job that you will work in the future.
Reputation gamified
One of the things that I like the most about Upwork is the reputation system. When you finish a project on Upwork, you evaluate the client, and the client evaluates you, so, you have the Job Success score on Upwork and the better you are at the work you are, the higher your score will be, and you can even become a top freelancer if your score is 90% or above and because of this score you will get paid highly. So, the better freelancer you are, the better payment you will have. The same goes for clients when you apply for a job; you can see their scores, are they a 1-star client or a 5-star client with silver or a golden medal. So, you always know what you are getting into, and knowing upfront that you are going to work with amazing clients is a great thing.
Payment safety on Upwork
Whenever you start a job on Upwork, you are guaranteed to get paid if you finish the job correctly. Upwork takes the money from the client up front and keeps them there, and when you finish your job you always get paid, if the client decided that he/she doesn’t want to pay you money, Upwork would protect you, and you will get paid, and the bad client will get banned from the site.
Many payment methods
You can transfer the funds from Upwork in many different ways. You can use PayPal, Payoneer, Skrill, Direct Deposit/ACH, Wire Transfer and other methods.
My favorite payment method is through Payoneer and it is a very reliable service that you can use, plus they offer special bonus when you sign up and earn your first 100 dollars you get $25 bonus.
Great support team
The support team on Upwork is fantastic and is available 24/7. If you contact them, they will respond in short notice. I have contacted them dozens of times and sometimes they have answered in a matter of minutes and sometimes an hour or 2 later. Also, the problems have always been resolved.
Bid on jobs or get invited
When you first start to work on Upwork, you apply on job and bit for jobs, but after a while, when you have a good reputation. You do not have to apply to jobs because clients can search for a freelance and find you at the top of the results. I have been working on Upwork for around 6–7 months now, and in the past two months I have not applied for one job because I have so much work just from the clients that contact me with great offers.
Automatic payment from clients
The payment is automatic. There are two options for working, hourly and fixed option. The fixed option is; you start working on a project, you finish it, and you get paid. The alternate option is you download the Upwork app, and when you begin working, you start the app, the app monitors your time, and this is awesome. For example you are working hourly on Upwork, at the end of the week the entries go to the client for review, and once the client reviews your work, he/she approves it and you get paid automatically. So, the payment system is made to be very simple and safe.
The Cons:
Competing against the whole world
This might be a pro or con, depending on how you see it, but the thing on Upwork is that you are not just competing with people in your city or country, but you are competing against people from the whole world. So there is a big number of great freelancer on Upwork. The con about this is, especially when you are starting it is tough to get a job. I got my first project the day that I joined Upwork(I guess I was lucky), but many struggle in the beginning. After a few finished projects, you can already get jobs easily and after a couple of months on Upwork you can get highly paid projects.
Site issues
In the past couple of months, there were a lot of site issues, and there was often site downtime, which can be pretty annoying.
Some scam tricks and phishing hacks
Some job posts are scams or people who want to hack your accounts, but the good thing is that this is rare and can be avoided easily if you just stick to applying to jobs that are from highly rated clients.
You can get too much work
Since I became a highly rated freelancer, at times, I have been overwhelmed with work and have worked over 50 hours per week(but it was worth it). The thing is once clients start contacting you, you can get some sweet offers that you cannot say no to. : ) I began to learn to say no even to some great offers from some fantastic companies, because currently as I am writing this articles I am working 50 hours per week, but I am working that much because I chose to, and I became a workaholic and started liking some of my jobs a lot. You can say no to a client anytime you want. : )
Another con would be that many clients pay really little, so you have to search through a lot of job posts to find employment opportunities that are well paid, especially when you are starting out.
All in all, Upwork is an amazing platform where you can work with amazing clients, learn, earn get experience and become a rockstar freelancer.