Making Money with Your Hobby on-Campus
BY SYLVIA KOHL
As I have mentioned in my previous article ‘Why Hobbies at College Are No Less Important Than Classes’, engaging in your hobby is an excellent way to take your mind off your studies, freshen up after an intensive day. In general, it will help improve your mental and physical well-being to keep your productivity at a stable level. However, wouldn’t it be nice if you could level up your hobby to be more self-sustaining and probably even bring you an extra buck now and then? Who knows, perhaps you can even find a way to turn what was just a pastime into a full-fledged career? Here are several suggestions that can give you some food for thought.
1. Photography
Although everybody and his dog seem to be engaged in photography to this or that extent today, the number of people who are any good at this is very limited, and you can capitalize on it. There are multiple ways to go about it: make high-quality pictures and sell them to stock photos sites or offer photography services – people are quick to see the difference between amateurish and professional work, and if you know your way around a camera, you won’t be disregarded.
2. Graphic Design
Today is a great time for graphic artists of all kinds, from illustrators to 3D modelers and beyond. You can either join a freelance website and offer your services, answer ads or even set up a website of your own where you show your portfolio and explain in detail what experience you have and what kind of work you can perform. However, remember that a serious graphic designer should have relatively high-quality tech tools like a drawing tablet, and finding the right variant that would fit into your student budget may be a tough task – using a reliable resource like Tech Spectacle as a source of information may be a good idea.
3. Music
If you are reasonably good at playing a particular instrument but the circumstances don’t allow you to be a part of a band, there are still a few ways to turn your passion for music into a lucrative pastime. In addition to an obvious idea of giving music lessons (it may sound a bit dull, but in fact, it’s the most certain way to earn money on this hobby, even if you are a rather mediocre musician yourself) you can try yourself at being a session musician. Bands, both local and touring ones, often look for local talent to do some session work, either in the course of a tour or to get additional sounds in their records.
4. Crafts
Doing things by hand and selling the results of your work is as traditional about a hobby as it gets, but today people in this line of work have far better chances of actually making money off it than any other time. The reason is, you are not limited to selling stuff to your friends on campus or the locals – with the help of websites like Etsy you can send your crafts to virtually any location in the world.
5. Editing
Most people and especially students hate rereading and revising their written work in the search for mistakes. That creates an opportunity if you happen to have a different experience about this pastime. By taking a reasonable fee for proofread service, you can become a go-to person for anybody willing to give their last essay a once-over without paying an arm and a leg to a professional proofreading agency.
There are dozens of hobbies and dozens of ways to make money out off them – the only thing you need to do it is a little bit of imagination and determination to go on working.
Sylvia Kohl is an IT teacher with more than 8 years of professional experience. Her main spheres of interest are e-education and she convinced that learning process doesn’t stop after years in school and university.
