These 17 best side hustles to make money will change your life. When international students come to America, they are not eligible to work for a while and even getting a job on campus becomes a problem. This makes it difficult to pay fees at times or even settle some bills. What I am going to share with you will be a lot of leasing to you.
These are some of the ways you can get going right from the first week when you arrive in America. You do not need to wait for more than two weeks to be able to make extra income from these suggestions I am giving.
I must say that I have tried al these before. I have either been a provider or client or I personally know someone doing it.
At the age of 19, I moved to America as an international student and I tried many of these and continue to advice many others to try.
In order to be able to do this, you will need to pay the price to get your driver’s license and a car or a computer ($400-$600) as soon as possible.
Let us go on to look at our 17 best side hustles.
1. Make deliveries for Instacart
Instacart is an app. People order for food on this app and then, people do the shopping and deliver. After this, the app pays you. I personally know people who were making about $1,500 biweekly through Instacart and were spending about 30hrs on it. You do not need anyone one to employ you in order to join. But all you need to do is to download the app onto your smart phone and you’re good to go.
2. Deliver food for Ubereats, Doordash or Postmates.
I will encourage you to do all three. I know someone, a student, who was making about $1,500 every two weeks. This person only had to work for 4 days in a week. Do not forget to sign up for all three.
These are also delivery services. When people feel lazy to order food, they use these apps for the order and someone on the app gets to deliver them. Again, you need no application process. All you need to do is to download the app. This is also one of best side hustles you can be involved in.
3. Drive for Uber or Lyft
This is very popular in America. The only catch is that you need to have a good car unlike our two previous hustles. Uber is very flexible and you can make between $4,000-$5,000.
If you have a car, this is one of the best side hustles to do.
4. Sell items on eBay or Craigslist
On this, I will personally encourage international students to opt for Craigslist. Back when I was in college, around summer, people will be leaving, and because they are not able to leave with everything they had acquired, they tend to throw them away. So, my roommate and I planned to go to some apartment complexes to look for some of the things people are throwing away. I remember back then that we got a perfectly functioning air conditioner which we sold for $200. There was also a time we got a microwave which we sold. There were a lot of things we got to sell. This was one of our best side hustles. This is something you can also do. I didn’t have to do much. All I had to do was spend maybe 2hrs to go round searching and I ended up making some easy $500.
I will advice Craigslist because you do not need a social security number to sell on there.
5. Renting your spare room on Airbnb
Airbnb is like renting a hotel for regular people. Lately, I do not stay in a hotel until I really have to. I make sure to rent an Airbnb anywhere I go because it is available.
Instead of getting a 1-bedroom, get a 2-bedroom if you are a student a you live around campus. This is because you will always have a load of people who are looking for rooms. Do not look for a roommate. Instead, put it on Airbnb. I remember spending around $150 for 3 nights. This can help you to easily pay your rent and get something extra for yourself.
6. Rent out a storage room on Neighbor app.
If you have a basement or if you have a spare room, that is not in use, you can do this. Use your phone to take a picture, get the Neighbor app and put it on there that you have the space available. Someone can give you $25 a month to rent. This May look small but it can go a long way. If you have a bigger space you can get more money.
7. Tutor on tutor.com or on wyzant.com
I used to do this when I was a student. You will need a computer to do this. They are set up in such a way that they are looking for students already and are looking for people to teach them. It helps if you are good in maths because many people are afraid of these kinds of courses.
You may have to do an exam to show that you can do what you say you want to do. Also, you will go for an interview. This is just to make sure you follow their process on how to teach on the app. If you fail the interview you can try again.
Wyzant.com is different is different from tutor.com because they will reach out to you if they need assist with a tutor. But tutor.com has a fixed timetable.
If you are a student go and look for your school’s newspaper and check the classifieds section for parents who are looking for a college student to teach their children and let them know you can do that.
What I did was I added myself in the classifieds section that I can teach calculus, trigonometry and other subjects. Someone reached out to me and I taught consistently for a year. I was making about $60 a week. You can charge more.
8. Be a Caterer
I always encourage my students that if they know how to cook, they should monetize it. If you do not know how to cook, go on YouTube and learn how to cook some simple foods like jollof or wakye. Once you’re ok, and ready to go, you can make a simple flyer in 10 minutes on canva.com to help with advertisements on WhatsApp, Facebook or your church page.
I will advice you that you should get actively involved in church because you can easily get a lot of orders from some working professionals at church.
9. Braiding hair
Braiding can make you a lot of money. People are very willing to pay around $100 to braid their hair. What people do is that they braid somebody’s hair, put it on social media, and advertise. Learn how to make different hairstyles because they will go a long way to help. The African American community in America patronize braids a lot.
It takes about 6-7hrs to make ladies hair.
Don’t say that there is no option or you cannot do any of these. You can always learn something.
10. Walking dogs using the wag app
I have also seen students doing this. You must like dogs before you can do this. Professionals are always looking for people to help walk their dogs so get on the wag app and register. They will look you up to be sure you are legit and you will be good to go. You can be able to reach out or those with dogs can also reach out to you to walk their dogs.
11. Giving music lessons
Take advantage of your musical talent if you have one. If you know how to play any of the musical instruments, and you’re good at it, get on canva.com and make a neat simple flyer and put it out there. Soon enough, you will have someone reaching out for you to teach their children.
You must be able to structure it well. You can go over to their house to yeah or they can bring their children over to your house for you to teach them. Obviously, When you go over to teach, it will cost more than when they bring their children over. So, you can charge an amount per hour for a number of hours a week.
12. Teaching Driving lessons to students
If you have a license you can teach people to drive. Usually, they teach you the various routes to use when you are learning to drive. So, you ca also teach others to help them get their own licenses.
Driving schools charge around $100 an hour and people pay for about 5hrs to do that. You can charge less than that and still produce the same quality lessons for them. Instead of someone paying $500, you can charge them $200. That is a good deal right there.
13. Dry-Cleaning Pickup & Delivery
This happens a lot with professionals. These people get so busy that they don’t get the time to be able to do a lot of their laundry especially when they have children. You can set up a dry-cleaning pickup and delivery and start with your church. Just make a flyer and talk to your pastor about it and seek permission to share with the members.
You can arrange and pick up their dirty clothes to a laundromat to wash for about $50 a week. You can charge for an additional hour if you have to fold it for them.
These professionals know that laundry can take almost all of their day so they will be more than happy to have someone do it for them.
Take advantage of this as it is one of the best side hustles out there.
14. Computer Repair
another one of the best side hustles is computer repair. Many people do not have any idea where to send their computers when they develop problems. So, if you are good at working with computers, make a flyer and let everybody in your church or computer to know. Some of these company’s charge around $100 for diagnostics before actual charge for repairs. But you can charge lesser to beat the competition and people will always want to get it done for cheaper.
In America, people usually only buy a new computer when their gets spoiled. It is sometimes a problem because they do not have anyone to help fix. They will just go ahead and buy a new one.
You can easily go to YouTube to learn about how to fix the screens of iPads and iPhones or other tablets to add to your pc repairs as it will give you an extra edge as a repairer.
15. Website Designer
This is the most lucrative job and best side hustle you can learn to do so far. I have set up a site called fasttracktogoodjobs.com where you can go and sign up to learn. It is just a two week course. If you are at home waiting for your social security, you can use the time to learn this. You will be able to charge anywhere between $500-$1,000 and also, have a monthly recurring income. But you need to know what to do and how to sell yourself.
16. Social Media Manager
The nest best side hustle you can engage in is to be a social media manager. This is simple. When people set up businesses, they want people to help run to run their Facebook or Twitter campaigns or any other platform they’re on. You can sell yourself as a social media manger and get a flyer to help. You can take advantage of your time spent on social media. The pros charge around $50-$100 an hour. But you can charge around $15/hr as a student. You can always start with your church members who have these small businesses.
17. Teach English to Chinese Students on VIPKid
This is a website that caters for Chinese students who have gotten admission to the university. You can find them here. This is also good for missionaries. As long as you have a good internet, and can speak good English, you can teach it. They pay is also good. This is something you can do from your home.
These are 17 best side hustles you can do to help make ends meet as an international student. None of these have anything to do with employment since you are your own employer.
You can also learn about how to pay for college here.
