Top 5 Online Jobs for Students

Contributed by Cara Siera

The COVID-19 pandemic unlocked the door for remote work, a door that’s not likely to close anytime soon. StrongDM reports that in 2025, there are three times as many remote jobs as there were in 2020.

This, in turn, has led to profitable opportunities for university students. How so? Many students work their way through school, juggling classwork, homework, extracurricular activities, and a part-time job. Below, we’ll look at the benefits of the shift towards online jobs for students and highlight our top picks.

Benefits of Online Jobs for Students

Working online (instead of traveling to a job site) has its advantages for college students. These include:

• Saving time: Even a 15-minute commute to and from work can eat up valuable time you might otherwise spend studying. When you work from the comfort of your dorm, apartment, or campus cafe, you recoup that travel time.
• Flexible work hours: It’s usually pretty easy to align an on-campus job with your class schedule, but off-campus work schedules can be another story. It may be difficult to arrange a different daily schedule based on your Tuesday/Thursday and Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes. The business’s open hours or busy periods may be hard to reconcile with the time you need for class or study groups. In contrast, many online jobs allow you to set your own hours, or even to decide how much work you want to take on in a given week.
• Steady internet access: Online jobs require strong, fast, reliable internet access. If you live in a dorm or work while on campus, high-quality Wi-Fi is provided, usually free of charge.
• Practicing what you’ve learned: Depending on your degree, you may be learning skills like graphic or web design, marketing, or programming. Many online jobs allow you to put those skills to use right now.
• Life training: Adulthood is all about balancing and juggling responsibilities. Working while attending school can help you practice this vital skill.

Top Online Jobs for Students

Check out these online jobs perfect for university students. Find one that matches your major or interests.

1.   Freelancing

Freelancing is one of the best ways to put your skills to use, be they writing, photography, editing, web design, or graphic design skills. You can find customers by creating an online presence—a personal website, social media, and a Google listing are a good place to start.

You can also find work using general freelancing platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, or brokerage platforms like Textbroker for content writing and Ocus for photography.

2.   Tutoring

Did you know that you can get paid for having conversations? Many adult English learners and the parents of children want to interact with native English speakers to improve their skills. When teaching children, you may be required to write and submit lesson plans in advance. Some platforms require a bachelor’s degree (which may not be a problem if you’re a graduate student), but others, such as Cambly, do not.

3.   AI Content Moderator

Artificial intelligence (AI) is still a work in progress, and its responses to prompts can be inaccurate, biased, or even hallucinatory. AI moderators check prompts for accuracy and flag inappropriate outputs.

4.   E-Commerce Seller

About 16 percent of all sales were made online during a recent fiscal quarter, up from 15 percent at the same time last year. Students can tap into this by creating original products for sale or reselling existing ones.

Etsy is a well-known marketplace for selling handmade items, and a number of platforms, such as Zazzle and Printify, allow users to design items that are printed and droppshipped on demand. This is especially valuable for students who may not have a lot of space for storing inventory.

Retail arbitrage, or reselling items, is another option. Students with a good eye for fashion labels or collectables may be able to purchase inexpensive items from thrift stores and resell them for a profit on eBay, Poshmark, or Mercari.

5.   Cryptocurrency Mining

University students can earn money mining Bitcoin or similar cryptocurrencies, but it requires careful consideration of costs, risks, and technical know-how. Mining involves using high-powered computers to solve complex mathematical problems that validate transactions on the blockchain. Successful miners earn Bitcoin as a reward, but with today’s competitive landscape, solo mining isn’t usually profitable without access to specialized hardware such as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), cheap electricity, and technical expertise.

Instead, students might consider joining mining pools, which allow participants to combine computing power and split rewards. Before getting started, ensure mining doesn’t violate campus internet or dorm policies. When done responsibly, it can be a passive income stream or a gateway to deeper involvement in crypto and blockchain technology, especially for technology-focused majors.

Key Takeaways

Working online can help students pay the bills while maintaining a reasonable schedule and learning valuable skills. With technology changing every day, keep your eyes open for new online job opportunities.