When I was in college in 2005, the only way to start earning money as a side income was by giving tuition to your fellow students or juniors.
Your scope was limited because you have to be physically available for your work as well as you can connect with fewer people limited to your college or your town.
But now the time has changed a lot, the internet has removed the physical barriers and provided enormous opportunities to students to earn money online along with their studies.
You never know if your part-time online work can become your full-time business even before you complete your studies.
I have recently read about Avinash Mada a B. Tech student from Lovely Professional University (LPU) Punjab, who was operating an Instagram channel to share funny memes as a hobby.
Eventually, his memes became so popular that he started getting paid promotions of different brands and now he is an entrepreneur (Instagram Marketer) while doing his B . Tech. We’ll discuss this in detail later.
If you are among those students who want to earn money online, then this article will help you learn about the 11 best ways to earn money online in India who can earn passively without hampering their studies.
11 Ways to Earn Money Online in India for Students 2023
#1. Become a Freelancer
A freelancer is an individual who is self-employed rather than working for a company. The Internet has provided many opportunities for freelancers to work online without any geographical restrictions.
You can take up Indian as well foreign projects from portals like Upwork, Fiverr and earn money along with your studies.
You get easy to do work like
- Removing background images or retouching photos,
- Data entry,
Or you can do tough tasks such as
- Writing a research thesis,
- Video editing
- Web designing
You can easily find these types of work on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, or Internshala.
Many engineering and medical students create research reports to earn money along with their studies.
If you are good at photoshop or video editing, you can do simple tasks like retouching photos or you can edit videos as per the client’s requirement to earn money online.
Programmers and software developers have numerous opportunities to work as a freelancer that we’ll discuss in the next point
The above snapshot shows how you can earn $15 for 2 to 3 hours of work which is easy to do without hampering your study.
Potential earning – Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 30,000 per month
#2. Software Developer
If you are into programming, you can start earning money by taking up coding projects in Php, Android, iOS, Java, or which language you are proficient at.
Initially, you can take small projects where you have to update an already existing app or software. With experience, you can pick an entirely fresh project.
As shown in the example below, one project is for beginners where you have to create a small app to fetch ids from ads. And in the second project, they need an expert developer to create a fresh android app.
Potential earning – Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000 per month
#3. Become Content Writer
If you feel a connection with writing, then content writing would be a good source of income for you because you can spare only 2-3 hours from your daily routine for writing without compromising your study.
Join an online content writing course and you would be able to start earning around Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 6,000 as an intern with beginner-level writing skills.
When you polished your writing skills with experience, you would easily earn Rs. 10,000 per month as a part-time job along with your study.
You could easily find content writing jobs on portals like Internshala, Upwork, and LinkedIn. Hindustan Times requires interns for part-time content writing work, adv. posted at Internshala as shown below.
Potential earning – Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 20,000 per month
Also read – Best forex cards for student in India
#4. Start Your Blog
A blog is a platform where you use your writing skills to express your ideas to the world. You can help other people with your blog posts by providing useful hacks, tips, and reviews about different products.
For example, if you are a fitness freak, you can provide information like how to lose fat, or how to maintain a healthy weight without going to the gym, or whatever you feel useful to your reader.
Providing genuine and practical information will help you create a solid reader base. People like to revisit blogs that provide useful information. Yourstory, Jagoinvestor, Shoutmeloud are famous blogs in India.
You can start a blog on anything you feel passionate about such as
- Technology and gadgets
- Food
- Health and fitness
- Marketing
- Beauty and fashion
- Productivity
- Pet care
. Blogging is a slow journey, you might not see any income in the starting few months but once your blog starts earning there’s no lookback.
Initially, you may be able to earn Rs. 1-2,000 but once established you can even earn Rs. 50,000 to 1 lakh per month.
Potential earning – Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 1,00,000 per month
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#5. Instagram and Facebook Influencer
Instagram and Facebook are powerful visual social platforms to engage with the audience closely. Let’s discuss both one by one.
#1. Instagram Influencer
You can create short videos, memes, infographics to engage your Instagram audience.
You need not require millions of followers on Instagram to start earning, having 1-2K followers would be enough to start some income.
You can earn Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 1,00,000 per month depending on your subscriber base and engagement.
Remember I talked about Avinash Mada at the start of this article. Let’s discuss his story of becoming an Instagram influencer during his graduation.
He is still a B. Tech student at Lovely Professional University when he started an Instagram page as a hobby with a few university friends as his followers.
He used to post funny memes on his Instagram page, his interesting memes gained popularity and his followership kept on increasing. Eventually, brands and companies started approaching him to promote their products on his Instagram channel.
Now he is earning millions from brand collaborations and launched his own Instagram marketing startup “IG Accelerator”. You can use 11 different ways to earn money from Instagram in India.
#2. Facebook Influencer
If you are active on Facebook and having a Facebook group is a good way to start income. You need a high level of engagement with your group members to earn from Facebook.
If you have an active community, then you can do affiliate marketing or get brand promotions. You can review products that will provide value to your Facebook group users. In that way, you can not only earn income but also help your community to use better products.
Potential earning – Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000 per month
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#6. Affiliate Marketing
Whether you do blogging or a social media influencer on Instagram, you can earn money from home without any investment from affiliate marketing, which is a better income option than ads.
Affiliate marketing is a term for promoting other brand products on your blog, or any other medium and earning a commission in return. Just like a regular shop in the market, that keeps products of several companies and he gets a commission on the sale of each product.
You can review products or services and share a link that your followers can use to buy your recommended products. You earn commission on the sale of each product or service.
You can become an affiliate marketer with e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, or similar portals.
For example, if you have a fitness blog, and you posted a review article about the best protein powders and shared a “buy link” of the best protein powders recommended by you.
Now when your reader clicks your recommended link and buys the protein powder from Amazon, you will receive a commission for that sale.
You are earning without any active involvement because even if you are sleeping, the reader clicking and buying from your link will make you earn money passively.
Potential earning – Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 20,000 per month in the beginning
#7. Data Entry Work
Data entry is the easiest job that doesn’t need much skill except your typing speed.
You can work as a transcriptional writer, or do data entry on a company’s software. There are 2 problems with data entry work –
- Legitimate offers are less
- You get paid less as compared to other skill-oriented jobs
However, a genuine data entry job will help you earn Rs. 3,000 to Rs. 5,000 per month as part-time.
The above snapshot is from Upwork for a data entry job in Microsoft excel. You can also sign up at Fiverr and search for data entry work.
Potential earning – Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 10,000 per month
#8. Online Tutions
COVID outbreak in 2020 has left students studying online and if you are good in any (or multiple) subjects, you can teach your fellow students that subject online.
Applications like Zoom have made teaching online very easy as you get high-quality audio-video along with a screen sharing option that offers flexibility to show your content to your students making it a virtual classroom.
You can start teaching for free initially, you can fix a joining fee when you get some positive response. That will help you earn 10K to 15K easily in your spare time.
Since you will be teaching subjects you are preparing or you have already prepared from your study curriculum, that will help you go deep in the subject as they say, “Teaching is learning twice”, and you will also start earning some passive income.
Potential earning – Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000 per month
#9. Graphics Designer
Creative persons who love to do graphic design, then you can easily earn money while studying. Only becoming a logo designer would make you earn dollars.
According to a study by DDIY United States, small businesses can pay you around $500 for a logo that matches their branding.
Not only logo design, but you can also even make simple Canva graphics, or templates and earn money online.
Potential earning – Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 30,000 per month
#10. Sell Photos or Videos Online
If you love clicking photos, you can make your hobby a source of income. You can sell your photos on many visual content sites like Canva and Foap.
If you love clicking photos, you can make your hobby a source of income. You can sell your photos on many visual content sites like Canva and Foap.
You might have heard of big stock photography platforms like Shutterstock, Gettyimages and iStockphotos.
But the problem with these stock photography portals is that either you don’t get any customers easily until you go for their paid subscription or they give you peanuts of your sale and keep a huge pie to themselves.
Potential earning – Rs. 500 to Rs. 5,000 per month
#11. Start Youtube Channel
YouTube is one of the most popular media platforms with 2 billion visitors every month. If you like making videos, then a youtube channel is an easy online income source for you.
The most viewed videos on YouTube are “kids videos”. So creating kids-oriented content is very much profitable. You know one of the highest-earning YouTubers in 2020 (according to Forbes) is Ryan Kaji, a 7-year kid.
You can create kids’ rhymes, or Panchatantra stories using free animation software like Animaker or Blender.
With an increase in subscribers, you will become a YouTube influencer. A YouTube influencer requires a minimum of 10,000 subscribers. You can earn around 1-2K per month initially from ads.
Several toys or kids’ fashion brands may contact you for paid promotion.
If kid’s videos are not your cup of tea, you can write videos on something that you are passionate about or you can also start a youtube channel about something you are studying, you won’t have to put extra effort because you are already investing time in learning that subject.
If you are good at drawing or graphic design, you can teach people on youtube. You can still earn from ads or by promoting products.
With an increase in your subscriber base, you can also launch your paid course to earn extra money.
Potential earning – Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 1,00,000 per month
Closing Thoughts
First of all, look for your area of interest and finalize the platform on which you feel comfortable to express yourself, then take action.
Start with whatever understanding you have and you’ll improve over time. Let me know how you are going to earn money online in the year ahead.
right🤘