Unusual Ways to Make Money

This is a list of some unusual ways to make money that some of you may not have considered. Rather than just do the usual student-work or part-time pizza delivery job, you might consider some of these instead.

Did you know that some people with more money than time will pay you to do their shopping for them? And if you have a flexible schedule this could be a much more interesting way for you to earn money than working at the local pizza joint or student cafeteria.

Some independent personal shoppers anywhere from $25 to $250 an hour! And depending on the situation may reasonably ask to be reimbursed for transportation costs.

While the Mystery Shopping industry has been flooded with all kinds of scam artists claiming to offer you mystery shopping jobs for a fee, the truth is that earning money as a mystery shopper is possible if you get ahold of the right information.

You won't get rich being a mystery shopper, but you can earn extra income and also get certain things, like meals, paid for that you'd be paying for anyhow.

The most successful shoppers are those with good writing skills and the ability to make objective observations - which is easier said than done. Generally you won't need to spend any money to become a mystery shopper, although some people choose to pursue various forms of legitimate certification.

You can get extensive from help from the free Mystery Shopping report here if this sounds like an interesting way to earn money for you.

For many younger students blogging is second nature and something they're actually quite good at - in fact better than they might know.

The most successful bloggers (from a financial perspective) combine unique style with unique perspective. They are transparent and create a loyal following.

Of course you'll also need decent writing skills in order to get paid to blog and you'll need to learn how to set up a blog and drive traffic to your blog or blogs.

One thing that's tricky is to remain transparent while still getting paid to post. Currently this problem is solved by having proper blog disclosure statements about the nature of product reviews on the blog. And most pay-to-post services require that you don't do a favorable review about a product you aren't actually favorable about - a nice idea, but pretty much unenforceable.

If you're knowledgeable in a particular topic area, you might consider becoming a tutor. In fact there are tutoring services that will help bring students to you and you may also be able to work directly with your school to obtain tutoring clients.

Rather than go into the details here, you can read the detailed HubPage about how to become a tutor here.

There's almost always a vegan, vegetarian, or just plain sprout-loving sect on campus. Check the prices at the local health food store and see if you can compete with them by growing and selling your own sprouts.

You'll need a dark damp place to grow them and it make take a month or so to really figure out the whole supply and demand cycle. But it's an incredibly simple thing to do, but for some people hard to keep on top of - which is why they "buy" instead of grow there own.