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We’ve become used to the idea that we’ll have student loans well into our thirties. We’ve embraced the belief that we can’t make proper money until we have graduated with a college degree. And so, most students are unlikely to even think about getting a well-paying job. Bartending and waitressing, among other useful but limited work opportunities, are some of the most common options.
But the truth is that you don’t need to take on a low paying job while in college or spend your college years piling up student loans. These days, there are plenty of opportunities online, and you can get started from your dorm room. Finding the right hosting and building a good website is one option, especially if you already have a good handle on web development. Choosing the best dedicated server hosting in order to host as many visitors as possible is a good idea if you want your website to blow up. But even if you have no experience in web development or don’t want to build a website, you can find work online.
Freelancing Websites
There are now freelancing websites, such as Upwork and Fiverr, that give you the option to create a profile and start applying for jobs. You don’t need to pay anything. You don’t need to have any prior experience.
What you need is to be able to sell yourself. And you need to believe you can do the jobs on offer.
If you’re good at writing essays, you can get paid to write for companies’ blogs, up-and-coming magazine sites, website copy, and more. On these freelancing websites, a lot of people think you need to bid really low in order to get jobs. But you should never accept an offer so low that it feels undignified. At the beginning, you will need to do some low-paying jobs, but before long you should be writing articles that earn you $30 in an hour. Gradually, you can start raising your prices until you’re earning more than many fully qualified professionals.
It’s not just writing jobs that are available. You can get work doing web design, creating music for adverts or promotional videos, editing video, and so on. Again, you don’t need to show potential clients any degree. All you need to do is show them you can do the job. If you do a good job, they will hire you to do more.
Building a Portfolio
It’s a good idea to build a portfolio by creating your own samples. You can find free websites like JournoPortfolio or create a blog on WordPress for free. Once you’ve done a few jobs, you’ll be able to post them as samples for future clients to see.
Working online is different to searching for jobs in the traditional way. Because you can show them what you can do without signing on for a full-time job, within a couple of days, they can base decisions on results, rather than on how you look on paper.
Start now and by the time you graduate, you’ll have less debt, and a lot more work experience than the average graduate.
