15 Ways to Make $10,000 Per Month as a Student

As a student, you typically got no time, no capital, and no experience, right? So how do we know it's possible for you to make $110,000 a month despite all of these obstacles? Well, because we've done it, and we've seen thousands of other people do it too.

So let's start off by looking at those three big holes, shall we? First of all, you do have time; you're just wasting it. Research shows the average student spends about 10 hours a week partying and up to 50 hours a week scrolling on their phones. You have time.

Second, for online businesses at least, you don't need capital. All you need is your phone and a computer. And third, you don't need experience either. Okay, everything you need to know can be learned on the job. We've kept the majority of these strategies limited to things that you can do online just to save time. We've also added some time frames and some of our own experience because, after all, ACK was started by a student.

All right, now let's jump into the 15 ways you can make $10,000 as a student. Welcome to Alux.

First up, freelancing. Did you know that freelancers in the software development, UX design, and project management industries make between $50 to $150 an hour? Graphic designers and web developers are also in high demand. It takes about 1 to 2 years to make $10,000 a month, as you have to build up your network and balance your work with other commitments. But it is possible. You can start on freelance websites like Upwork or Fiverr, but make sure you also get set up on your website, social media, and Google Ads. You need to have your hands in all of the pots to establish a reliable client list.

Now this next one is going to surprise you. It is ambitious, but it's not impossible. You can actually make $10,000 a month from tutoring—yes, tutoring! That job that most students do in their spare time for some spare change. If you put your mind and marketing skills to work, you can snag premium clients online and face to face. You have to focus on areas with high demand and willingness to pay, like college admissions test prep, graduate exams, advanced science and math, coding, or finance in business. Market yourself as more than just a tutor; you're a premium service provider who offers personalized learning plans, detailed progress tracking, and whatever other resources they need. You could also give group tutoring sessions and create and sell online courses to leverage your time. Intensive boot camps and workshops work well too. These are high-value, short-duration services that allow you to charge premium fees. As you build up your clients, you'll need to scale and hire on more teachers. Even charging premium rates at $100 an hour, you would need to work 25 hours per week, which is too much when you're still studying yourself. The courses, group classes, workshops, and scalability are your secret weapon here.

Number three is drop shipping. Now, a few years ago, everyone was on the drop shipping dream boat, right? A lot of people fell off of it, though, because it takes more work and time than you might imagine. But those who stuck with it are in the benefits today. Drop shipping is all about marketing a winning product, customer service, and supply chain communication. If you can nail those four things, well, you've got a winner. You don't hold the products yourself; you're the bridge between the manufacturer and the customer, and platforms like Shopify make drop shipping so much easier. Those with a winning product that benefited from viral marketing have reached $10,000 in about 6 to 8 months, but the more realistic timeline is 2 to 3 years. This is how long it takes to build up your brand, optimize your supply chains, and nail your ad strategy.

Number four is selling digital products. Now, making money by selling digital products is often overlooked because how much could you really make by selling a template on Etsy? Well, a lot, actually! From things as simple as invoice templates, sewing patterns, and printable cards to more detailed products like content creator kits and eBooks, you can start a company that exclusively creates templates, uploads them to Etsy, and people pay to print them. Daily planners, school worksheets, and homeschool planners are also popular. You can use websites like E-Rank to see how well a product idea is selling, create your templates in Etsy, and add extra special touches in there to stand out from everyone else. Curate your products based on popular holidays and themes of the year to make sure they'll be high in demand. Your initial setup will take 1 to 2 weeks, then building your brand and shop will take about 1 to 3 months to hit the $10,000 a month mark. You have to scale your income, so automate your communications and delivery, and diversify your product range to include high-end items, specialized online courses, software tools, or high-quality stock and video footage. When people stick with it, they reach the $10,000 per month mark in about 2 years, and that's with working part-time.

Next up is affiliate marketing. We know a lot of people in the industry who started off writing random blogs as a hobby. They would write about anything from online gaming to epic hiking in their city and hosting murder mystery nights. Doesn't seem like anything special, right? Well, there are thousands of people who love that kind of thing, and there are companies who sell products related to any topic you can think of. Before they knew it, they were making around $220,000 a month with affiliate marketing. Now this was a few years ago, so the market wasn't as saturated back then, but it's still possible to make that. It's just going to take a little bit longer.

With affiliate marketing, you earn a commission for promoting another company's products or services. The more sales or signups you drive through your unique affiliate link, the more money you earn. You can promote these products on blogs, social media platforms, YouTube, or an email list. Set up your platform and search for an affiliate program related to your niche. You could also check sites like Share a Sale and ClickBank to sign up for programs that work best for you. You'll have to spend about 10 to 15 hours per week in the beginning, and then 15 to 20 hours during your growth phase.

In the past, you needed some pretty decent coding skills for this next one, but with AI as your guide and teacher, well, anyone can do it: app development. Now, app development can be a really lucrative field. You can make money through direct sales, in-app purchases, subscriptions, and advertising. But we've been in the app business for just over two years now, which reminds us: happy birthday to the Alux app! We can tell you that creating a bespoke app and getting it live for purchase in app stores takes a lot of time and work, and capital. This route for app development might not be the best for a student because you have to spend so much time creating and marketing the product, not to mention the monetary investment.

Of course, you could make something relatively easy, like a crossword game, and throw in dozens of ads, but there's no longevity with that. Your customers will become annoyed and they'll move on. If you're a student starting out and it's just you, better avenues would be through enterprise app distribution and third-party app marketplaces. Target businesses or organizations and offer a development or a custom app for them. They'll pay a lot more and you can create something like a payment app that can sell to multiple companies.

There are also third-party app marketplaces where you can sell and distribute your apps. These are more targeted approaches that don't rely on you spending so much time and money on marketing. You could also run Google Ads campaigns. Companies want to rank on Google, but a lot of them don't know where to start. Not every in-house marketer or social media manager is adept at running Google Ads campaigns because it changes so often and it's a complicated platform with lots of tools. So people will outsource something specifically for Google Ads, and if you can stay on top of everything, well, you can charge businesses a commission on their ad spend.

When you target businesses, your customer base might be smaller but the expenses are higher. You've got fewer people to deal with, and you're bringing in more money. You can use ChatGPT and Google Ads scripts to automate your customer reports. Starting from scratch, it could take anywhere from 1 to 2 years or more to build your skills, reputation, and your client base to the point where you're consistently earning $10,000 a month. This includes time spent on learning, gaining initial experience, and gradually increasing your rates as you prove your value.

Then there's a career coach. Now coaching can be a catch-22 because there's no regulation and, unlike some of the specialist jobs on our list, it's not always easy to spot if someone is good or bad at it. So people are a little skeptical overall, but career coaches typically do very well. Now, you might be a student who hasn't even started their career yet, but as a college student, you've got access to the latest research, technology, and resources. You're also constantly writing and delivering projects where you can see results and feedback. You're the best person to help someone with their resumes, their LinkedIn profiles, career strategies, and even salary negotiations because, well, you're doing different parts of this in everyday college classes.

You do need a course to start off with a low hourly rate as you build up your customer base and to be a genuinely reliable source for the person hiring you. Experienced career coaches can charge around $200 an hour. Starting out, depending on what you're studying, you could charge between $25 to $50 an hour.

Now, data scientist. This one might be highly contested because even as a full-time data scientist working for a company, it takes a few years of experience to hit that $10K a month mark. That's why you have to add something extra to it, and that's ranking on Google with your website. You want clients to come to you; that's how you charge a premium price. You need to build a solid portfolio, which you'll partly do during any one of the online data science courses. From there, you can offer your services at a discounted price to build your client list.

Now what's really going to make the difference here is the time you put into marketing yourself. You need a blog where you write about topics related to data science and a website showing your services. As a student doing this part-time, it's going to be challenging and it will take up to about 30 hours a week, which is more than some of the other strategies on this list. If you've got a natural inclination for statistical analysis, machine learning, or computer science techniques, then this will feel like another fun project.

A YouTube channel! You know there's a niche for anything on YouTube, right? Instead of trying to capitalize on your popular hobby that already has a lot of content, think of the most unique, random thing you can think of that nobody else seems to enjoy. That's where you should go with your channel. It's easier when the things you talk about or show on your channel are already things you do in your daily life, so you don't need to do too much extra research or content gathering, and that passion will come through. Growth on YouTube is often slow at first but accelerates as you gain more subscribers and viewers through being consistent. A big milestone is reaching YouTube's partner program targets, which start with at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past 12 months to start earning ad revenue. Some of the wealthiest people in the world started with YouTube, so there are no limits to this—just a lot of hard and consistent work, even when nobody seems to be watching.

Virtual event planning has seen significant growth in the past few years. It involves planning events that are held online, like webinars, online conferences, workshops, and virtual networking events. Like a normal event planner, you have to work from the initial concept to the planning stages, execution, and follow-up. If you're doing this part-time, reaching the $110,000 a month milestone will take about 2 to 5 years, unless you know some people in the industry. And you don't have to start at the beginning with learning the ropes and getting your own clients.

Start subscription box services. A lot of people tend to overlook subscription box services because it's more hands-on work than some of the other jobs. You have to gather the products, package them, ship them, market your business, and communicate with customers, but it's a rapidly growing business with a high customer satisfaction rate. The subscription model gives you a steady stream of income each month, which makes your financial planning and growth forecasting more predictable. You can reach out to other companies to get discounts on products in exchange for advertising and curate and personalize the boxes to increase your customer loyalty. It provides connections and experience that people often don't get with online shopping, so it's easier to build a strong, supportive community.

Dive into social media management. Now, as a social media manager, you'll need to stay on top of trends, understand different platforms, and deliver messages that resonate with the target audience. You can start off by offering your services to local businesses and startups or through freelance platforms. You could charge on a monthly retainer basis, which is common for ongoing social media management services. Depending on the scope of work and the size of the client, this retainer could range from a few hundred to several thousand per month. Now, the growth to reach $10,000 a month takes 1 to 3 years of consistent work, depending on how quickly you can scale your operations and the demand for your services.

Start a blog. Now, you might be tempted to start an online career with a YouTube channel, Instagram, or TikTok account because that's what everyone else is doing, right? But hear us out: starting with a blog is the way to go. Now blogging's got a special place in our hearts here at Alux because that's how we started. It allows you to refine your niche, curate the type of content you want to put out there, and build a loyal audience. Even with all the other social media platforms, blogging is still incredibly powerful. You can make money through affiliate links, display advertising, sponsorships, and membership subscription models. There are endless ways to diversify your income stream with blogging.

You could also flip vintage clothing. Now, vintage clothes are all the rage, and if you like thrifting, you could turn it into a lucrative business if you know what to look for. Shop at thrift and consignment stores, find stylish, unique pieces, and fix them up if you have to. If you're good at searching and a little bit lucky with some knowledge of the fashion world, you could stumble upon some high-value designer pieces just hiding amongst the mesh. You could open up a store account on Etsy, Vinted, Depop, or any one of the other platforms that specialize in selling clothing for casual vendors.

And lastly, become a video editor. Full-time video editors can earn anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000 a year, which means to become one earning $10,000 a month, well, you're going to have to offer specialized services and skills. It's something you can do from home in your own spare time, and there's always a demand for quality editors. Like most of the other strategies, if you want to attract the best and highest paying clients, you need to get your name out there. Everything boils down to the quality of work and marketing.

But at the end of the day, business growth happens in bursts and plateaus. The only student who can make it to $10,000 a month is the one who can stick it through the more challenging times and just keep going. All of these options take a lot of time and dedication, and if you can bring that into every part of your business, well, there’s just no limit to what you can achieve here.