27+ Business Ideas for College Students (Not Difficult To Do)

In this article, we will cover Business Ideas for College Students. With every business idea, we will also share with you some tips on starting it. Also, we have some tips for you on how to increase your business once you have started it.

College life is a great time to start your entrepreneurship journey. They say “If you start early, you can find some magical things”. And there are hundreds of business ideas for college students that you can start today.

The main issue college students have is lack of time. So taking care of that, we have created a list of Business Ideas for students in College.

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• 1 Business Ideas for College Students

Business Ideas for College Students

Being a college student does not stop you from working on any small business idea. Still, there are thousands of college students who are earning money from creative business ideas. The truth is, it is quite safer to test your entrepreneurial skills within your college. So that when you come into practical life, you can do even better. Here are some of the Golden rules for you:

• Don’t do anything illegal.
• Never compromise someone safety to make money.
• Don’t skimp on your studies in favor of making money.
• Check any rules regarding business in your college.
• Find out you need any license for the business.
• Pick one of Business Ideas for College Students according to your interest.

So here is the list of Business Ideas for College Students.

1.       Become a Blogger

This is one of the best business ideas for college students that our team suggest. You can earn money by making your own blog. You would write content on your blog based on the niche you choose. People often choose niches that they are interested in. Choosing to do what you love is the key to success. So don’t go to niches that have high earning but doesn’t suit your interests.

What is a blog anyway? A blog is a website that focuses on written content mainly. That written content is known is a blog post. Most blogs are in niches of, news, celebs but you can start a blog in any imaginal niche.

Bloggers often write from their personal perspective which makes them connect with the readers easily. In additions, most blogs have comment sections, where people can comment on their questions and thoughts on any specific post. This is a better way to connect with your readers.

Should you start a blog? One of the great misconceptions in the whole world is that you need to be a great writer to write awesome content and make your blog successful. But the case is not that.

People are here on your blog to read your personal perspective about something and you don’t need any special writing skills for that. The only thing required to be a successful blogger is the passion to write about your niche. Here are the advantages of starting your own blog

• You can make money from Home easily.
• Share your stories with people.
• Recognize what you are good at.
• You can find a community.

Now that you have chosen to work as a blogger, where should you start? Turning small business ideas for college students into successful startups is not that hard. Here is the step by step Guide.

• Pick a Blog name.
• Get your blog online by registering your domain. Find yourself a hosting.
• Customize your blog according to your choice.
• Write and publish awesome content.
• Promote your blog.
• Make money from your blog by placing ads and selling products.

For more detail guide on How to Start a Blog, visit this page.

2.       Start a YouTube channel

One of the most successful business ideas for college students is earning from YouTube videos. Now everyone has a dream to become a superstar and also earn millions of dollars from YouTube overnight. But the case is a little different.

As college Students, You can’t do YouTube as a full-time business. So you lack time to make professional videos. But this doesn’t mean that you should not start your own channel. Now we suggest starting a YouTube channel on things you love to do.

If you are one of those crazy students you are always interested in performing Science experiments, here is the idea. You can make videos on these science experiments and monetize them. But what if you are not interested in that. Here is the list of niches you can start easily and don’t need that much of hard work.

• Lifestyle
• Celebrity Gossips in your country.
• Top 10 lists of stuff, people, blogs, animals, birds, etc.
• News
• Compilations of the best part
• Product reviews.
• Food reviews.
• How to do videos.
• Prank videos
• Social experiments videos
• Science experiments.
• Life hacks
• Cooking Channel

Now that you have chosen your niche, How to start working on that. Here is the step by step Guide:

• Signup and Setup Your YouTube Channel. Upload your profile picture. Make a channel art. Write about yourself in your About Section. Create your watermark.
• Create awesome YouTube videos. In the start, your videos may suck, but you will improve with time.
• Develop a content creating strategy.
• Passing the requirements for monetization that is currently getting 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time on your videos.
• Starting earning money from YouTube.

Besides ads, you can earn a lot of money from other programs too. Here is how:

• Earn from affiliate programs by selling products on behalf of others.
• Selling physical or Digitals products like eBooks, Software, etc.
• Licensing Your Content to companies that want to use your videos.
• Direct Sponsorship and Brand Deals. Once you become a pro YouTuber brands will approach you soon.
• Launch your merchandise online.

There are a lot Business Ideas for College Students but I think this one suits you the best as a Student.

3.       Language transcription service

Here we go with another Business Ideas for College Students. If you live abroad your country and people there speak different languages and you know both the languages, the one people are speaking and the other is your native language, you can start your language transcription service.

You can take this business to the next level by making it online. Here is the step by step guide:

• Define your niche and the type of service. For example, you can offer a service where you convert audio into text or video into text or just text into a text in another language.
• Pick a professional partner with you and start your company.
• Make a website about Services and explain your services there too.
• Hire an SEO expert for your website to rank on google to get more clients easily.
• Find your First client and provide quality services to ensure the return of your clients to work with you again.

There are certain skills required for this money bringing business. Try to excel in each of it to provide the best possible services:

• The first and foremost skill is your typing speed. Try some speed test online to check your typing speed. Join classes to learn more. Always keep in mind that practice makes you perfect.
• Having a good grip on grammar and English is also important. Many transcribers rely on Software like “Grammarly” for correcting sentences but that slow down their workflow. So try to develop skills so that you don’t need such type of software.
• Good listening skills are a bonus for those who convert videos and audios into text. The video and audio quality may not be perfect every time but you should be a good listener.

Talking about the investment, this business is on our favorite list from Business Ideas for College Students. At the beginning of the business, you need nothing but a computer with an active and fast internet connection.

Once you build your brand and company, you can then hire your team. You may need a foot pedal that helps you start and stop videos and audios. They cost from 40$ to 100$ depending on the quality and brand.

Here is a bonus tip. As you are going to work on your keyboard all the time, we recommend you to buy a comfy chair and a comfortable keyboard. This will help you enjoy your work.

4.       Online T-shirt Designer

Have you ever searched for T-shirts online because of an ongoing trend? We often do it. But you know who designs these shirts? All those designs are mainly provided by College Students. Let’s go into the detail of this idea from our list of Business Ideas for College Students.

Over the last few years, thousands of college Students have started earning money from their online t-shirt designing business. This business is popular in both beginner entrepreneur and also that expert businessmen.

But we are not here to talk about them. Let’s talk about you. How would you do your business as a college student?

Now before you start seeing dreams of becoming rich overnights, let me tell you that this field is quite competitive.

You have to work hard, make hundreds of designs and invest some serious money in marketing your brand. But don’t worry about the competition because we will cover all that you need to know to fight your competition.

• Find a Suitable Niche for Your Online T-Shirt Business.
• Design your own T-shirts.
• Make design based on viral videos, viral people, trends, etc.
• Market your business brand and find customers from Social media campaigns.

Well, let’s talk about Teespring. Teespring is an online website where you can create your own designs. You don’t need to manufacture t-shirts.

Just designs your shirts and bring customers to their site through your links to order stuff that you have designed and earned some cash. The only thing you need to do is to create an account on Teespring.

Isn’t it the best of all Business Ideas for College Students? Of course, it is. Here is the step by step guide for you:

• Go to Teespring. Create an account.
• Design your t-Shirts. Try to keep your design as simple as possible.
• Price your T-shirts. If you don’t know how to price, you can see some similar brands and see their price to get an idea.
• Promote your tees. Now, this is the hard thing, most people ignore this one and they say it’s not working. But promoting your tees online on Social media is a good option.
• Be patient and don’t quit after a few weeks.

But what if you sell your own manufactured T-Shirts? You can sell T-shirts online through drop shipping. Here is how:

• Decide your market first.
• Design your T-Shirts creatively.
• Choose a Quality Dropship Supplier for your business.

5. Personal Training Business

You have been thinking for a long time to start your own business as a student. Well, here is an opportunity to turn your dreams into a reality. People are pretty excited about this business idea. Aren’t they?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that fitness training business will increase by 8% till 2024. Which obviously means there is more competition out there in the future.

Starting your part-time Personal Training business as a student can be fun. Let’s talk about how to start:

• Get certified. Depends on the type of training you intend to do, you need some certifications.
• Understand your clients.
• Think About Specializing. This may seem a little scary but the idea is you can overcome competitions and get more clients by specialization.
• Do online marketing for your business. Create a website online and create high-quality content to get more clients. You can hire writers to do that.
• Use social media to get more traffic.

6.       Tutor

If was in college, I would have chosen this business. You know why? Because this is one of the best and profitable business ideas for students in college.

In the beginning every small business struggles but if you provide exemplary services, soon you will become one of those giving tips to other tutor startups. Here is how to start this business:

• Decide if tutoring business is right for you or not. Remember, not all students are eager to learn. Some students can try your patience.
• Tutoring is a very divorce business. So decide your niche.
• Plan your budget carefully. As a college student, this may look scary, but planning is the key to success.
• Do your research. Can you fight with your competitions? Can you afford the startup cost as a student? How will you grow your small business as a student?
• Analyze your competitions. How are they working? What are they good at? What goes wrong with them? And how much students they are getting each month?
• Choose a name for your company. Keep in mind to choose a short and memorable name for your company. A random google search can give you a bunch of ideas.
• Deal with all financial and legal issues.
• Create a marketing plan.
• Always keep the parents in your mind.
• Ask for help in business, whey you need it. Don’t be afraid of talking to others about your business and asking for their help.

Now that you have decided to start your own tutoring services, let’s talk about some marketing strategies that you can use to grow your tutoring business:

• AdWords as a tutor. AdWords are the ads that appear on the top of google search results. They are awesome for getting more traffic because they appear only when someone searches for your targeted keyword and phrase.
• For example, if you search for business ideas for students in college, you will get ads related to businesses that college students are doing.
• Start a website about your services. Do SEO on your website to get more traffic. If you don’t know how SEO works, hire someone online to do SEO on your website. Once your website starts getting traffic, your business will start sky rocking.
• Tutoring flyers can help spread your business. Spread flyers in your targeting places and see the magic.
• Craigslist ads as a tutor work best sometimes. Even though Craigslist has started charging 5$ per post, still it’s a good option for new businesses run by college students.
• Tutor Facebook ads. The good thing about Facebook ads is that you can target any specific audience. Go to Facebook ads manager and create your ad for tutor business.

7.       Social Media Manager

Let’s talk about some better business ideas for college Students. Social media start as a fun way to connect with your loved ones, but it has grown so much that even small and big businesses need social media to get more clients.

A lot of companies have several business accounts that are hard to handle by a single person. Such companies hire social media experts to work for them and manage their accounts.

So what exactly social media managers do? Just like Virtual Assistant, Social media managers offer different services depending on their expertise and client’s needs. As a student social media manager, you can offer services like:

• Develop market strategies for brands based on the client’s goals.
• Set up all social media accounts for any brand.
• Post content on behalf of the client.
• Stay current and share content related to news covering your client’s business.
• Customer Service for the brand.
• Analyzing market.

As a social media manager, you will get a lot of advantages. Let’s talk about some positive things about this business idea for college students:

• You will get paid to use social media. People usually enjoy using social media. If you are one of those, your business will sky rock soon.
• Small capital is needed to start this business. A laptop or computer with an active internet connection is what you need.
• You can run this business from anywhere. Being a student you can run it from home, hotel, etc.
• Focus on a few social media platforms instead of going for all. The business will depend on your expertise.
• The need for social media managers is increasing day by day as more and more brands are starting up nowadays.

Can you be a successful social media manager as a college Student? Yes, but you need to follow some rules for that:

• Understand the importance of social media as a marketing tool.
• Knowledge of difference of all social media platforms. It’s not that easy to post the same photo on all sites. You have to change formats according to the site.
• Develop the ability to understand market strategies that meet your client’s goal.
• Capture the client’s voice. If your client is funny to try to be funny like him.
• Managing social media accounts for several clients at the same time.

Let’s talk about Starting your Social media business as a Student. Here is the step by Step guide.

• Build your own social media Fan following first. A lot of following means nothing if they don’t care what you post.
• Study social media to find out how it works.
• Decide what services you will offer. We have discussed that above.
• Write a business plan.
• Determine your pricing. As a new business, the prices should be low. You can increase prices gradually once you are an expert.
• Choose your business name. Keep in mind to come up with a short and memorable name.
• Obtain required permits and license for doing business.
• Start working on your plans and help others start their own business.

8.       Podcasting

Start a podcast business is one of the fun business ideas for college students. But it is quite competitive and hard. In order to succeed in this business, you have to go through some steps.

• The first and foremost step is planning. Before you move on to the next step, it’s important to invest a good time planning your podcasts.
• Choose a unique topic for your podcast. You can also go for viral topics, depends on you.
• Pick a Co-host. It can be much easier for you to start and work if you have a co-host.
• Choose a name for your podcast. Try to make it short, simple and memorable. Also, purchase a domain name for that name.
• Decide your podcast length. The average podcast length is 28 minutes.
• Make a professional intro. Keep it short and interesting. Choose the intro music carefully.
• Buy yourself decent microphones for better audio quality.
• Make a list of guest for your show and start inviting them.
• Record your podcasts, edit them and upload them.
• Promote your podcast online.

A highly successful podcaster can make over 50,000$ per episode. Small podcasts make round-about 2000$ per year so it’s a time-taking idea. But if you market your podcast, you can earn more. Here is how to market your new podcast:

• Choose a good podcast hosting platform.
• Do Really Great on iTunes because they are responsible for almost 70% of the listens.
• Leverage your guest’s audience. People who are interested in your guest are definitely going to watch and listen to your podcasts.
• Promote on social media in different ways. Go for giveaways.
• Release at least 2 episodes on launch day. Try to build an audience before launching it.
• Convert the audio into a YouTube video. Upload on YouTube and promote your videos.
• Submit your podcast to podcatchers and aggregators. Podcatchers are small apps that allow the audience to listen to podcasts.
• Transcribe the audio. Try to get services on fiver which are round about 1$/minute.
• Run a giveaway contest.
• Be a guest on other podcasts.

9.       Dog walking business

If it’s getting hard for you to manage your finance being a college student, you may be looking for small business ideas for college students. Here is one more for you. Dog walking business is not that much competitive and easy to handle the job.

If you do it on a small scale, you can earn a small amount of money alone. But if you hire your team, you can sky rock your business in a few months. How to start your own dog walking business as a student:

• Come up with a name idea for your company.
• Plan your business carefully. Take the advice of an entrepreneur already doing that business.
• Understand your market before launching your business. Research your competition and your pro’s and cons.
• Price your services. Don’t price too high in the beginning.
• Promote your business.
• Use social media campaigns.
• Get paid for your services.

10.   Soap Maker

One of the easiest business on my list of business ideas for college students. Making soap is a fun hobby which can be converted into a full-time business later on. But as a student, you can earn some money from this business.

Home-made soaps are often a good choice for customers when they are made from organic ingredients and have beautiful designs. They are inexpensive and a perfect gift-giving idea. You can start your own soap business with a very small capital from your home:

• Understand your market. Find out your competition. Also find out places where soap is used the most for example Households, Restaurants, Janitors, Carpet Cleaners, Schools, and public Offices.
• Define your niche in soap making for example wedding favors, baby soaps, organic soaps, Novelty soaps, etc.
• Write a business plan for making your soap company.
• Find suppliers for your business.
• Set your wholesale and retail prices too.

Now soap making business can earn you some good cash if people start to buy your soap. In order to increase your sale there are some steps to need to follow:

• First and foremost, make a quality product. Use quality ingredients for your soap.
• Buy your ingredients in bulk. The more quantity you order, the lower the price will be. When you get ingredients at lower prices, you can sell soap at an affordable price too.
• Try to build your brand that has something creative. This is your chance to prove your creativity.
• Packaging and labeling also play a vital role in the sale of your soap brand. Try to make beautiful and attractive packaging.
• The label should enlist all the ingredients used so that people can read it.
• Pricing is an important step that can make your business or break your business. So try to make your price cheap in the beginning.
• Promoting your brand is quite important.

There are some possible challenges that you may face during this business:

• At first, you will work hour of hours and making no money. We recommend to start it as your side business.
• In the beginning, the prices may be too low to get profits.
• It takes time to establish a brand. Brands are not made overnights.
• You may end up working odd hours.

11.   Photographer

We personally love the photography business. It’s a fun business idea for students. Let’s talk about this in detail.

For a successful photography business, the first and foremost thing you need to do is powerful planning. Your planning should include your pricing, services and marketing strategies for your business.

A commercial photographer can make 17,000$ to 60,000$ annually but as a student, you will do your photography business in evening and Sundays. So you earn a little less money than that.

Talking about starting your photography business, you need to follow the following steps:

• Plan your business as we said before.
• Create your photography portfolio. Don’t know how to make one? Go to online photography services and see their portfolios to get a rough idea.
• Create your own photography website. Do SEO on your content. If you don’t know what SEO is, hire an SEO expert from any freelancing platforms.
• Get your photography tools. We recommend keeping your gear simple as a student. Order a camera, lens, SD card, and some extra batteries.
• Go for photoshoots. Try different angles. Be creative and learn some basic stuff about photography from online tutorials.
• Edit your photos. Adobe Photoshop is the best editing software we recommend. But you can go for any free software according to your needs.
• Keep track of your clients and business.
• Give your business an initial push through advertising. Re-invest the profits to get more traffic.

Here is the list of Do’s that professional photographers do. You should also give it a try:

• Meet up with all your clients before the photoshoot.
• Always have a contract.
• Figure out ways to know about clients.
• Try to educate your clients about your camera gear, lighting and how much time will you need for a photo shoot.
• Help your clients feel comfortable in front of the camera.
• Show them some result soon.
• Go yourself for a photo shoot in the beginning. If you are already booked send your best employee.

There is also a list of stuff you should avoid doing during photo shoots:

• Don’t show photos that are disliked by you.
• Try to avoid asking yes or No questions.
• Never lie to your clients.
• Try not to talk bad about other people in your photography industry.

12.   Child Care Business

Child care business is one of the most important parts of the American economy. If you have a passion for your own business, this is a chance for you to be your own boss. So what does it take to start your own child care business?

• Understand the demand for this business in your community. Go to google and search for Childcare business to see the existing businesses.
• What type of childcare you will provide? Home based or center based.
• Develop a business plan.
• Understand all licensing and zoning laws.
• Set up your business and give it an initial push through advertising.
• Re-invest money in your business.

Here is the list of other Business ideas for students in a college

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