College is one of the best experiences of your life. From new friends, new adventures (the parties) and of course the education –we can’t forget about that! Now while college is all fun and games, it pays to be a college student.

As in, you will literally have to pay all of your life savings to go to college and then be broke for the next 4 years of your life. Fun times! So if you’re anything like I was when I was back in college, you’re probably looking to make some money to live and not starve.

So, to provide you with the knowledge that I wish someone was kind enough to offer me back in the day, today we are going to be talking about passive income for college students.

Smart Passive Income for College Students

Yes, people, money for doing absolutely nothing. Shall we begin? 

1. Make YouTube Videos 

If you are looking for ways to passively make money while in college and have a back-up career plan, why not start creating youtube videos? Double points if you actually already have a youtube channel!

Once you gain enough subscribers, you can begin to monetize your videos and make good old cash for doing absolutely nothing. It seems too good to be true, but it really isn’t.

Although it may take you some time to get the ball rolling, it will totally be worth it in the end. You may even be lucky enough to drop out of college altogether (don’t tell your parents I said that). 

2. Rent Out Advertising Space on Your Car 

Another clever way to make passive income for college students is to advertise your car. Yes, you read that correctly. Brands will pay you money to put their ads on the side of your vehicle. It’s easy money!

Think about it, you’re going to be driving to and from campus, to friends’ houses, class, and where else you kids go these days.

So, my point is, if you are already driving, you might as well make a passive income and showcase ads on your car! 

3. Start a Blog 

Starting a blog is an excellent long-term investment. Meaning, you will have to put some work into it at the beginning, but it’s not that bad, trust me.

All you need to do is make sure you are consistently posting good quality content to your audience and building a presence online.

You can soon monetize your blog with affiliate marketing and brand deals, and then before you know it, you will be making sweet old cash. 

4. Use a Cash Back Credit Card 

Cashback credit cards are a great way to, well, you guessed it, get cashback from your purchases! If you are already accumulating debt on your card, you might as well be making money to pay it off!

Cashback visa cards are a great way to get a little extra income every month to buy groceries and other essentials that you will need when you are in college, so make sure to take advantage of this opportunity. 

5. Create an Online Course 

Creating an online course is an excellent way for college students to make passive income, especially if they are in the third or fourth year of their degree.

All you would have to do is take a course for a first or second-year course that you feel super comfortable teaching, and voila, start selling that online! It doesn’t even have to be about a subject related to your degree.

It could be a self-help course or a course on how to do your make-up—the options are seriously endless, and this will definitely pay off in the end, I promise! 

6. Rent Out Your Parking Spot 

Did the residence gods bless you with a prime parking spot on campus even though you don’t have a car?

Well, my friend, the opportunity is knocking, and you could be renting that parking spot out to some for a couple hundred dollars a month. That’s right, my friends. Prime real estate.

We all know how difficult it is to find parking on campus. I think I spent half my degree finding parking. If you have a spot that you aren’t going to use, then start putting that puppy up for sale! 

7. Flipping Items 

Flipping items is another fantastic option for college students to begin making a passive income while they are in school.

All you are going to have to do is find some valuable items at your local thrift shop and check online to see if other people are selling the same item.

If they are, check to see how much and then decide if it’s worth you buying it and putting it up for sale. This is a great way to make easy money with minimal investment, to begin with.

If you get the hang of it and know what you are doing, then you have the possibility to make a lot of money doing absolutely nothing! How incredible! 

8. Livestream on Twitch 

This one is for all my gamers out there whose moms forced them to go get a degree!

If you consider yourself an expert gamer and would rather spend the entire day gaming in your room, I don’t blame you. That was me when animal crossing first came out. Twitch is such a popular website that people can go viral overnight.

Although it’s super competitive and it makes takes you some work to get established, the payout, in the end, is going to be marvelous! 

9. Influencer Marketing 

College social media influencers, where are you all at? This one is for you! If you happen to be pretty well established on social media while you’re in college, which I don’t have a hard time believing is probably most of you nowadays, you should be doing influencer marketing!

All you have to do is reach out to brands and see if they need any help marketing their products. If they say yes, then it’s your job to review the product and then promote it to your followers.

Most of the time, brands will provide you with a free product for you to review, and then all pay you per post you do speaking about and promoting their brand!

Seriously you guys, this is one of the easiest ways to make money, so make sure to hop on this trend while you still can! 

10. Print on Demand Store 

Are you well into creating art and digital photos? Why not create a print-on-demand store with some of your designs? Print on demand stores is super fun and smart way to make a passive income without investing very much at all.

The print-on-demand store works if you provide them with a design that will go on mugs, t-shirts, phone cases, etc.

Once you get an order, the store will print your design onto the product that was sold. The only downside to this is that the store will profit from the sale, so you will not be making the entire amount.

11. Sell Stock Photos and Videos 

Another excellent way for college students to make a passive income is to begin selling stock photos and videos that they make. Whether it’s selfies or pictures and videos, you’ve taken from past trips.

There are so many online websites that will pay online creators for their images and video. You can earn a couple hundred dollars a month just by doing this gig alone, which is excellent!

If you are already a photographer, or perhaps you are in art school, then voila, you have cracked the system! 

12. Sell Your Notes to StudySoup 

If you are a born genius who takes incredible notes in all their classes, then this gig may be for you. You can actually sell our notes online and make income.

Who wouldn’t want to make money doing a task that is already required for them to do? It seriously doesn’t get much better than this! When you sell your notes to Study Soup, they will change the notes around to remove any plagiarism issues before selling them to other students.

The nice thing about this is that you can sell your notes to the website every week, depending on how many classes you are taking.

Thus, allowing you to make a couple hundred dollars a week, which I say is a pretty darn good deal if you ask me! This may also give you the incentive to go to class more and pay attention. 

13. Participate in College Studies 

Again, this is going to be one of the easiest ways for college students to make a passive income at their school, especially if you have a psychology department. Why, you might ask? Well, there are always psychology studies that are occurring on campus that pay students to participate.

With so many studies going on, you could be a part of a couple and make a decent amount of money per study. Studies will range from surveys, focus groups to full-blown experiments.

While this may take up some of your time, the pay is going to be oh so lovely afterward. You can often get extra credit for participating in studies as well, which is a double win, my friends! 

14. Set Up And Ecommerce Store 

Have you ever seen young kids, probably around 19 – 20 years of age, driving in fancy sports cars and ever asked them what they do for a living? Oh yeah, they do dropshipping and e-commerce. I am not kidding.

By creating an e-commerce store, you have the opportunity to make thousands of dollars a month. All you need to do is pick a couple items that are a part of a niche that would sell well and then set up an online store.

The nice thing about drop shipping is that you don’t have to deal with packaging the products or buying the stock.

All you do is simply connect the buyer and the manufacturer through your website while you sit back, relax, and get paid! I know it’s actually a dream come! 

15. Narrate Audio Books 

Lastly, on our list of how college students can make a passive income is to narrate audiobooks. Yes, this is a job, and yes, you can earn good money doing this.

You can make anywhere from $100 to $500 per book, which is insane to put into perspective for literally just reading a book out loud!

Another positive to narrating an audiobook is that you do not need any special equipment but rather just your laptop and a microphone! All you need to do is set up an account on Fiverr and start selling your voice to people looking for their content to be narrated!

I mean, come on, who wouldn’t want to be a voice actor and make money from the comfort of their own beds? It’s perfect. I wish I had done that while I was in college! 

Final Thoughts 

As you can see, my friends, there are so many fun ways to make passive income while you are in school. Don’t settle for the broke college student stereotype!

College is expensive, yes, and the only reason college students are broke is that they don’t know the right ways to make money while they are in school full time!

However, after reading this list, there should be at least a couple jobs on there that pique your interest! You never know; your passive income gig may even make you enough money to go full-time and become a millionaire by the age of 25. 

Dream big people and work smarter, not harder! 

If you have any ideas about how to make a passive income while you’re in college, make sure to drop a comment down below for us! 

Okay, that is it for today, my dudes. I hope you enjoyed your time here with me. I know I did! What can I say? I’m fun. Until next time my dudes! Like always, it has been an absolute slice! 

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