3 Ways a Student Can Earn Income While Studying Fulltime

If you see yourself in this dillema and are enrolled in college on a full-time basis with just a few minutes a day to sit in front of your computer, then the great news is you really do have the time to start making money that will off-set some of those college tuition fees.

These 3 ways a student in college can reduce their debt is meant for you.

#1 Create a Student Blog

Blogging is a popular activity among college students and is quite profitable if done correctly.

If you were to use a this free Blog at Google's Blogger, Google Adsense will encourage you to join their pay per click program so they can post links to other websites on your blog. If someone visits your Blog and clicks on their links, Google will charge them a fee and split the earnings with you.

Having a popular Blog with lots of traffic is a great way to earn some extra cash, and if you're a college student in credit card debt, your earnings could easily cover the monthly interest on those cards.

#2 Become a Ghost Writer

One form of driving traffic to a Blog or website is through article marketing. Article marketing is nothing more than expressing your thoughts in 500 words or less and posting those thoughts on relevant websites.

Those who want massive amounts of free traffic to their sites, but who can't write an article, hire a ghost writer who is paid a fee for their work.

Usually this fee is under 20.00 an article, but once you have the hang of it, writing 4 or 5 articles a day is a breeze.

If you have debt in college, this is a sure way to pay it off pretty quickly. Search the Internet for "Ghost Writers Wanted".

#3 Use Affiliate Marketing Through the Internet

An affiliate is someone who presents a product for sale and when it is purchased, they earn a commission.

The most successful affiliate marketers represent companies with products they are familiar with and would enjoy promoting, or they select a product that addresses a need they know others in their situation share.

Example:

A student in college is a student in credit card debt, right?

Who better to know more about this situation than you?

In this example, the student would select an affiliate program that would help other students earn an income to off-set college tuition.

To find the program, they would simply go to the Google search browser and type in the words "make money+affiliate" in quotations. The results page on Google will have many affiliate marketing opportunities for the student to choose from.

Choose the affiliate product you are most comfortable with and post your thoughts on it's benefits to other college students on your Blog.

How Do You Make Money?

The product you choose to promote will have a sales link in the URL provided be company you are affiliated with. Within this URL will be your own identification tracking number. When someone clicks and ultimately purchases the product, the sale is tracked back to you where you'll earn a commission. Usually in the neighborhood of 75% for a $97.00 eBook.

I hope that if you are a student in college who has some debt that you'll use this advice to assist in your ability to pay your college tuition.

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Tools To Build Your Website

First, we're going to need a domain name - if you want to be fancy and get a nice .com feel free to head to Go Daddy, and register one. However, most of the good names are taken, and the one I have works just as well. Eventually we'll run out of .nets and .coms, and everyone will have to go to other extensions realizing they are exactly that.. since anyone can register a dot com they don't win much with me in the way of credibility. There is no 'real business' or 'trustworthy individual' application.

 There are plenty free domain names you can get, but most are long and rather ugly. Mine is from a website called uni.cc (www.uni.cc) if you aren't googling it already. You can choose to have your freebie hosting forwarded or do a real deal DNS update which many free domain hosts don't offer. They are ad free, and only ask you place a small button on your page (like the one at the bottom of mine) stating you are a member of the uni.cc network. I like this site best, but there are plenty others you can grab up with extensions like .co.nr, .zap.to, ect.

Okay, we've got a free name! Next on our list is web hosting.

Webhosting

Since I've not got around to the other project i've reminded myself about (Home server/media center) it's time to get some free hosting! I've found many hosts; some better than others. Here's my top list for you to pick from!

#1 Freehostia (www.freehostia.com)

* Disk Space: 250 MB
* Traffic 5Gb
* 2 Domains
* 1 MySQL Database
* Their ads? No
* Your ads? Yes
* Custom 404 Pages

#2 Awardspace (www.awardspace.com)

* Disk Space: 200MB
* Traffic: 5GB
* 2 Domains
* 1 MySQL Database
* Their Ads?: No
* Your Ads?: Yes

The above listed providers have many other features available. There's one thing I dislike about Awardspace.. if a visitor encounters an error on one of your pages they are directed to the providers homepage with no back link or explanation for the error! I went with Free Hostia since I can edit my own 404s. However, you can get more space, traffic, ect. by allowing ads - That opens up your options a lot, but this should be fine for a personal page.


Html Editors

Now that we have a place to park we need to get ourselves a car! Usually webhosting editors leave much to be desired if you're not an html wizard, but fear not. You can download many external programs to make this task much easier for you! If you are not very good at html you'll want something with a WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) editor. There are plenty of these out there both commerical and open source.

I'm using Kompozer (www.kompozer.net) for my editing needs. You can open an existing document, or create a new one. If you have any experience with simple html at all this program will serve you well. For more advanced users you can edit in raw source code, there's a preivew button, view in browser option, ect. ect. All for zero dollars.

There are many other options that offer trial periods or 'restricted versions such as FirstPage, Coffee Cup, ect. I was using firstpage, but it started crashing on me as soon as they added the teaser wanting you to buy their full version..Don't know if they've fixed it or not since then, but you can check it out.


RSS, and updating feeds
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The newest thing i'm playing with is what you're reading! I wanted an easier way to do site updates, and integrating a blog seemed a great way to go. I messed with some things, and decided I like blogger the very best.

If you'd like to use blogger (www.blogger.com) on your website - I've found FTP to be the easiest way for me.

1. Go to your blogger homepage.
2. Click the Settings tab--- > Select "Publishing"
3. Choose the 'Publish via FTP option.


Now you need to enter your upload information. The FTP server information will be given to you somewhere on your host's page. You'll need to enter..

1. Your host's address FTP server address
2. Blog url (Enter the homepage address if you want the blog there.)
3. Enter the FTP path (/www.yourpage.com/ for the homepage.)
4. Enter your FTP Username and Password.

You can leave everything else alone - As they don't need to be edited to get it working. Click save, and blogger will ask if you want to republish. If you have blogs posted already click 'yes', and they will be uploaded to your webpage instead of blogger's pages.

If you want to change your site's front page content you can visit blogger, and post as normal. When you publish your site will get some new content for your visitors! There's an option to subscribe, view archives, recent posts, ect. So if your friends, family, co-workers, ect. are fans of google reader like I am they can subscribe to your webby, and be notified when you post something new!

Search engines
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Something else that's a little irritating to find is a search engine. One that will send results of YOUR site, and not results of others from google. Most of them want some massive monthly, yearly, first born, fee to use theirs or you need the technical know how to code your own.

There are several free ones you can use. Google themselves make a site search - Though there's was not working well for me for some reason. So I went with Free Find (www.freefind.com). All you do is sign up, paste the code, have them spider your site, and you have a search for your site.

It'll search all the pages you have, and collect results for your users if you have lots of blogs or files to look through. They offer this service ad free save one banner/small text ads on top of the results page which are not very obtrusive.


enjoy and let comment.

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AdSense Tips For Bloggers

Adsense for blogs make perfect sense. Google’s advertising programs are designed to work with sites related to the keywords for the ads that are being presented. Each time you add content to your blog, the Google spiders gobble it up. The more you update, the more the Google spider visits your page. Ultimately, you move up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for the topics that you write about. You see where this is going. The higher your search ranking, the more traffic you receive, which ultimately leads to higher revenue from AdSense ads.

The beauty of blogs is their potential for rapid growth. If you become known as an expert in your area of expertise, word of mouth spreads quickly and your blog can become very popular. So it is vital that you always teach something with every blog entry. You want your readers to come back frequently and they will if they know they will learn something. Not only will your readers bookmark your blog and return often, but they will link to your blog enthusiastically as well. People in forums will refer to your blogs and discuss what they learned. Websites will link to you as a valuable resource. In short, an informative blog can grow very quickly if the information it provides is valuable. 

It is important to write about specific topics, and sprinkle your blog entries with specific keywords to get the best results – and the highest revenue – with your Google AdSense ads. There is a method to the madness. Start your revenue generating blog by testing the waters. 

Decide what area you would like to write about and then do some keyword research. Research is easy if you use Google’s keyword tools found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox . The keyword tools are located in your Google AdWords account. Yes, you need a free AdWords account to be successful but you don’t have to fund it to use the keyword tools. Look for keywords related to your subject that are high paying. These are keywords where the bid amounts are high. Make a list of the top paying keywords, and use that list to determine what topics you will write about. 

Remember, you want people to visit your blog time and time again, and build up a readership, make sure that your blog is well written and informative. Don’t just target keywords for the sake of targeting keywords – the writing needs to make sense! Writing valuable content is the first step to generating traffic to your blog, and traffic is needed to profit from AdSense ads! 

You are allowed to use the AdSense ad units in two different places on each page. You can accomplish this in a couple of different ways. First, you can add the AdSense ad code to the template for your blog. This is done through the control panel for your blog, and some knowledge of HTML is needed. The other option is to paste the AdSense code directly in your blog post each time you submit a new post. You can use it once at the top and once at the bottom, or once after a few paragraphs of the post, and again after a few more paragraphs. 

Get that code in there however you see fit – but then pay close attention to the results so you can see what is working and what isn’t. Tracking is everything if you want to make real money!
Of course, you need to advertise your blog as much as possible as well. Make sure that you provide Trackbacks to other people’s blogs as often as possible, and that you visit blogs, leave comments – and leave a link for your blog as well!

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5 Tips For Bloggers

Tip #1

Understand the industry you want to be paid to blog for.

Let’s assume you enjoy health and nutrition and have read up on this topic for years. In fact, you know many facts and “insider secrets” by heart and often share this information with friends, relatives, and strangers in your local health food store. That’s a topic you could easily be paid to write about. Because of your vast knowledge, the posts will come easy and when they don’t you’re magazine subscriptions will offer plenty of food for thought.

Tip #2

Never accept a non-compete contract.

As a blog writer, you will make your living writing for various blogs. A non-compete clause will prevent you from writing about the same topic on another blog and that’s not good for business.

As a health and nutrition specialist, you may write for a vegetarian blog, a holistic treatment blog, a vitamin company’s blog, and even a diet blog. There’s no competition there, right? And no “conflict of interest”, correct? The non-compete clause won’t even apply.

But what if you’re asked to write for another vegetarian blog? That’s when the non-compete clause kicks in and prevents you from earning a better living. Is there really a conflict of interest? Not if you don’t post the same information on both blogs. You can write for five different vegetarian blogs and still not show a conflict of interest. It’s all about choosing a different angle on the same idea and writing about it.

Tip #3

Never rely on revenue sharing as your sole source of income.

You’re job as a blog writer is to write about topics relevant to the blog’s theme and interact with commenters. Your job isn’t to market and advertise the blog. That’s the company’s job. If the company isn’t pulling its weight, the ad revenue will not exist and if the ad revenue doesn’t exist, neither does your salary. It’s best to be paid a flat fee, but if the company you truly want to work for only pays in ad revenue, negotiate a monthly stipend plus a percentage of the ad revenues.

If you’re going to get paid based on ad revenue or clicks, and you’re job is to also promote and market the blog, you should start your own blog. That way, you get to keep all the income you earn and don’t have to share the revenues with a company who isn’t doing anything to help promote the blog—aside from hosting (which you can get for as little as $7 a month and free if you stick to blog networks.)

Tip #4

Get paid in advance.

Negotiate a contract to get paid at the beginning of the month for that month’s blogging. That way, you will never be out money for a project you’ve completed. And remember, if the company can pay the web host, the electricity bill, the web designer, the internet provider, and so forth, the company can afford to pay you!

Tip #5

When writers’ block hits, to a search online.

Sometimes bloggers get what’s known as “writers’ block”. Writers’ block simply means you’ve run out of ideas to write about. It happens to the best of us, but it doesn’t have to hurt your career as a blogger for hire. When writers’ block occurs, get online and search for blogs, websites, and forums related to your blog’s topic. After a half hour to an hour of reading, you’ll have plenty of ideas to write about.

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