How to make money doing freelancing as an Indian student?

A lot of students in India want to learn how to make money parallel to their college studies. Due to sheer talent in the country and a huge amount of requirement in India and even in foreign countries, there is a large opportunity lying in front of you as a student. You can make decent money working as a freelancer if you have at least one marketable skill.

In this blog post, we will talk about some ideas on how you can make money as a college student. The post would be more helpful for Indian students since we have tried to cover areas where Indian students can create maximum impact.

Blogging/Content Writing

This is one of the most common ways to make money. There are so many startups and large organizations and all of them want better rankings on Google search. For this, they create blogs which are informative articles about the products and services that they offer. This way, when someone searches for something related to their products and services, their website comes as one of the top search results, which drives user engagement. This, in turn, helps them get better sales.

So, you can learn how to write simple blogs and provide blogging related services. For instance, you can learn about new tools and technologies like Web Development, Machine Learning, Mobile Apps, Blockchain, etc., and create blogs for other companies who are looking for such content.

Content Proof-checking

If you are not very well-versed with Blogging or Content Writing, you can still make money by proof-checking the content. In proof-checking, you evaluate the content written by someone else and try and find out common errors like plagiarism, grammatical mistakes, etc. It is an extremely simple job and a lot of companies look out for students and freelancers who can proof-read/proof-check the content.

Creating Question Banks

A lot of startups hire students who can create question banks and corresponding solutions to these questions. For instance, startups who are looking for content with respect to engineering entrance exams, CAT, etc. These are the most common and obviously, India is a hub for these entrance exams. If you have done well in any of these exams, you can make decent pocket-money.

Remote Internships

A lot of companies offer remote internships. You can find many such remote internship postings on AngelList. In fact, if you are able to crack one, you’d be able to make a decent amount of money because many US companies pay quite well. This is again quite good for Indian students since a meagre amount of $1,000 is quite high in India.

Creating Online Courses

Many companies that offer e-Learning content want freelancers who can create online courses about various topics. As an example, companies look for courses around various tools and technologies like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Web Development, Mobile App Development, etc. They are open to hiring students, provided you are able to show sufficient knowledge in that area.

Digital Marketing

A lot of companies hire freelancers who can do Digital Marketing for them. This involves various activities like writing posts on various social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., creating short videos on YouTube, etc. This is again a simple skill to learn and you can make a decent amount of money if you are able to crack a few clients.

Online Tutoring

Many students and working professionals want online tutoring on some or the other space. For instance, learning English, learning to play a musical instrument, learning to write code, etc. If you are good at any of these skills, you can try reaching out to clients who want such services.

Software Development

If you can create a web application and mobile application, you can certainly find a lot of startups with whom you can work parallel to your college. Not only will you get paid, but you will also learn a lot. Try dirtying your hands on Android App development and Web Development. You surely would be able to make a decent amount of money.

Video Editing

Many companies hire freelancers who can edit videos. This is particularly common for those companies who are into e-Learning space. With simple free tools like Lightworks, Da Vinci Resolve, etc., you can sit in your hostel room and make a lot of money.

Where to look out for such companies?

There are many freelancing platforms where you can create your profile and apply for freelancing projects. Some of the most common ones include:

•  Upwork: Upwork is undoubtedly the most popular freelancing platform. You can find all sorts of postings on Upwork where you can dirty your hands.

•  Fiverr: Fiverr is pretty much the same as Upwork.

•  Truelancer

•  Freelancer

You can alternatively follow the following simple algorithm:

•  Make a list of skills that you know. The skills should be marketable, meaning that they should be useful for someone else.

•  Make a list of companies who are in the related space. For instance, if you are good at writing tech blogs, try and make a list of companies who maintain a tech blog.

•  Reach out to them via email. You can usually find the email ID on their website. Alternatively, you can try and find someone from the company on LinkedIn. Drop them a polite message, asking if there are any opportunities in your skill domain.

Besides making money, you will learn a lot of other things:

•  Communication skills

•  Dealing with clients

•  Negotiation

•  Billing and Accounting

These skills are highly important and whatever you end up doing in life, you will always have to be a master at these. So, freelancing is a great opportunity to learn them.

Some ways by which I (Aman Goel) made money in college:

•  Solved JEE Main 2014 paper for a coaching institute to earn Rs. 4,000 in a single day.

•  Created JEE question bank and solutions for an e-learning platform and made some Rs. 13,000 in a month.

•  Wrote solutions to computer science books and made some Rs. 1.2 lakhs in a few months.

•  Created a website for a startup and made Rs. 10,000 in a week.

•  Took TAship (Teaching Assistant) for 4 semesters (17 months) and got paid Rs. 6,000 per semester, for a total of Rs. 1.02 lakhs.

•  Created trading alphas for a US-based hedge-fund and made Rs. 2.5 lakhs in a matter of 4 - 5 months.

•  Created Machine Learning models for a US-based startup to earn some Rs. 60,000 in 1 month.

So basically, I made some Rs. 5.6 lakhs by doing freelancing during the 4 years of my college. My college fee was almost Rs. 1.5 lakhs per year. By doing freelancing, I could pay for almost entire college fees. This, of course, excludes the money earned during my internships.

Freelancing is easy. All you need is to get started!