As students, we often search for opportunities to earn some extra cash. We browse the internet to find proven ways to earn as we continue our studies. If you are one of them, you are in the right place. I will share a few viable, low investment, and cool ways for students to generate passive income. 

The first question you may ask is, “what is passive income.” Well, passive income is money earned via a partnership, business, or rental property in which you are not actively involved. However, over time, the meaning has evolved to include money generated online with little or no work, such as Affiliate Marketing, Dropshipping, Portfolio Income, etc. The thing with passive income is that it is always an overly long time to get going at first. But if you grind persistently, you could be making money while you sleep. 

Enough with the background talk. Now, let’s explore the opportunities. 

Becoming An Affiliate Marketer

So, the first way to generate a passive income is to work as an affiliate marketer. If you are unfamiliar with the term, let me give you a brief context. 

Affiliate marketing for students involves selling other people’s goods in exchange for a certain amount of commission. Because you get a commission every time someone uses your referral link to purchase the recommended goods or service, it’s a terrific source of passive income. 

However, to pull this off successfully, you must first associate with affiliate programs through leveraging your website, blog site, or it can be your social media accounts. Affiliate programs are agreements in which an online merchant Website pays an affiliate Website a commission for bringing the traffic. Affiliate Web sites offer links to the merchant’s site and are rewarded according to a set of rules. Some renowned affiliate associates interested in you are Amazon affiliates, Cj affiliates, ClickBank, etc. 

If you are unsure if there is enough for emerging affiliate marketers, then you will be delighted to know that the affiliate marketing sector is expected to grow to $8.2 billion by 2022, according to Statista. Since all you need is a modest investment along with your time to start making some extra income, you may begin exploring now to get started. 

Start a Dropshipping Store

This business model involves setting up an e-commerce store where customers browse their favourable goods and conveniently purchase them. The interesting fact about dropshipping is when you use this business model, your supplier takes care of everything, from manufacture to packing to fulfilment. As a result, Dropshipping is one of the most successful ways for students to start making money from wherever they are. As a beginner, drop shippers should expect to make 20 percent to 30 percent of each transaction.

As I mentioned earlier, affiliate marketing doesn’t require a large amount of cash flow as an investment. A similar case goes for dropshipping as well. Instead, your only investment in dropshipping is your time. To start dropshipping from today, you can sign up for Shopify. After that, you may join up with Oberlo, Amazon, Alibaba, or other e-commerce sites to locate high-quality things to sell once you’ve created an online store. 

Selling Digital Products

E-books, online courses, audio goods, downloadable templates, software, and other digital products are becoming increasingly popular due to their inexpensive development costs and inherence to their natural adaptability. Your primary input is your time and expertise on a particular topic you appreciate. Moreover, because the entire process can be automated on platforms with immediate downloads, selling these commodities is the essence of passive revenue.

As a student, if you’re a part-time photographer or have an excellent camera, selling photos online can help you supplement your income. High-quality photographs and films will be paid for by stock photo sites like Pexels, Shutterstock, and other online media outlets. In the same way, video footage, music, and software are all considered digital products in their own right.

Print On Demand

Whether you’re an artist, a designer, or an entrepreneur, print on demand might be an exciting source of passive income and an opportunity to market your ideas. Working with suppliers to personalize white-label items such as t-shirts, posters, backpacks, and books and selling them per order requires many responsibilities. But, similar to drop shipping, you only pay for the product when you sell it. There’s no need to stock up on supplies or merchandise. 

Print-on-demand (POD) is acclaimed for its adaptability nature, ease of management, and potential to provide a great entry point into the ever-expanding world of E-Commerce. There are several reasons why it is an excellent option to earn money as a student. The most reasonable thing I can say about POD is one of the most straightforward methods to start a business, making it ideal for students with little or no prior experience. All you need is a basic grasp of the internet and a budget of less than $50 to get started. If you opt to sell on a platform like eBay, you will receive 50 free product postings each month to get started with no money down.

Monetizing Through Blog

Blogging is increasingly becoming one of the most popular online money-making options for students. As more students see the importance of blogging, they use popular blogging platforms such as WordPress, Weebly, Blogger, and others to put down their thoughts on a variety of topics and themes. Well, you may be thinking, “don’t I have to be a geek to start my blog.”  The cool part is that you don’t need any programming or design skills to get started. Instead, you may quickly set up a blog using a content management system and hosting providers like Shopify or Bluehost. Also, there is a plethora of content on the web and youtube to guide you through the process. 

If you want to get a tremendous amount of traffic on your blog site within this competitive field, improving your Search Engine Optimizing for the site would be beneficial. SEO increases the visibility of your blog to those looking for the exact information you provide, leading to a higher monetization rate by displaying more ads on your site. In addition, you can monetize through the blog by Affiliate items to sell, developing sponsored content, owning and selling your items, using Google AdSense to run adverts, and so on. 

Now I should warn you that there is no such thing as a get-rich-quick plan. While passive income is real, making the most out of it requires hard work, an intelligent approach, and unwavering commitment. If you have made it to this far of the article, I know you have all these qualities to excel in earning extra cash. Good luck!