Are you in college? Then you definitely need more money. With loans, rents and other expenses beating at the door, the ability to make a little extra cash gives you a breath of fresh air. There are excellent opportunities for you to earn without damaging your studies.

The following ideas don’t require you to work 15 hours or more every week as opposed to part-time jobs. A flexible schedule will help you stay focused on studying. You will also understand budgeting as you walk you through the process of tracking your income and spending. Read on to learn 10 helpful ways to earn extra money.

  1. Selling Last Semester’s Books

Got some old textbooks that you don’t need for the coming year? Why not sell them?

Your college bookstore is not the best place for that. The cash redemption will be the lowest. Instead, consider the sites like Books Counter, WeBuyBooks.co.uk, BookScouter, or sale sites like eBay and Amazon. If there’s some fiction on your shelves, you can also turn it into dollars.

  1. Freelance Writing

Does your professor praise you for the writing assignments? Maybe it’s time to get something more than good grades for your academic papers. Maybe you want to try out a UK essay writing service? Try to work as a writer or an editor.

Other areas where you can monetize your writing skills are blogs, websites, newspapers and magazines. Just find your field of expertise.

  1. Starting a Blog

If you like the previous idea of freelance writing, think about blogging. You’ll quickly create a portfolio for the prospective clients to see. And it will give you a possibility to earn passive income from affiliate marketing. Here’s a short explanation on the latter.

A blogger adds an affiliate link to a product. Visitors click on the link and go to the site where they may make a purchase. If they buy the product, the blogger gets a percentage. The advantage of affiliate links is that they keep bringing you income as long as readers visit your site and follow the links.

  1. Starting a YouTube Channel

If writing isn’t your cup of tea, a vlog is an alternative way to get online income. Videos are more pervasive when it comes to marketing. People can see you playing a video game, trying out a face mask, or wearing clothes.

Both the written blog and video blog should have many subscribers to bring a steady income. The most followed YouTubers make collaborations with brands to design special products. It has financial benefits for both bloggers and businesses.

  1. Giving Campus Tours

Many colleges offer guided campus tours. Prospective students come to get an idea of campus life in a particular school. Other visitors want to see the historic buildings or sites situated on the college’s grounds. Being your college tour guide is an easy way to make some funds without a huge time commitment.

  1. Selling unnecessary clothes

Don’t want to wear that Zara leather you bought last autumn anymore? Or late-night snacks caused your skinny jeans lay in the wardrobe for months? Find a new owner for them! List your clothing items for sale on eBay.

ThredUp can help you to get rid of the garments you’re tired of. They accept good brands that are slightly worn. So, filter your closet.

  1. Becoming a Handyman

Have you ever mowed lawns, fixed leaky faucets or painted bedrooms? This experience may come in handy to you now. Visit TaskRabbit. People use this site to find someone who can help them with moving, home repair, yard work and other tasks. There’s always someone in the local community who needs a pair of extra hands. This can be a one-time chore that can help you pay for your Saturday night out.

  1. Tutor

If you’re in college, chances are that you have good knowledge of some subjects. You can help high-schoolers to learn Chemistry catch up in Math, Biology, or Foreign Language. Use tutoring websites to advertise your services online. Payment starts at $10 per hour.

If you show academic strength in your college subject, then offer help to your peers. Explain lecture materials. Help in paper writing or other homework.

  1. Taking Care of Pets

If you adore dogs, then pet-sitting or dog walking is the right job for you. As a pet sitter, you will care for the animals while their owners are away, either for one day or for longer periods. It involves playing with dogs, feeding and brushing them, and driving them to vets and grooming appointments. People can also ask you to clean up, water plants, or bring in newspapers and mail. These additional tasks mean additional money.

Dog walkers take doggies out, either individually or in small groups. If there’re any pups in your neighborhood that need to be walked, you could gather them together at the same time. Apps like DogVacay and BarknBorrow can connect with those who might want your services.

  1. Becoming a Graphic Designer

The big part of graphic design business is developing website graphics and logos. There’s a great demand for such services. As well as the competition. But it’s also possible to earn a good income by designing business cards, eBook covers, wall art, personalized gifts, t-shirts, and product packaging.

Use 99 Designs and Café Press to find individual clients and companies looking for a skilled designer. It can become your full-time job in future. If you start now, you’ll have an impressive portfolio after graduation.

These ideas don’t take a significant amount of time, effort, resources, or money investments. But they can give you more than some extra bucks. It’s the opportunity to assess your abilities in a particular sphere and your entrepreneur potential. Each of these options can be developed into a successful start-up. You can end up having a textbook store, providing city tours with local guides, or running a cleaning service. Just try!

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Today I’m going to talk about that which should not be named – online casinos (duh duh duhhhhhh). For years these have had bad press and recently many companies have been handed large fines for breaking the rules and allowing players to spend money from fraud, or to spend money from debt / selling homes and generally ruining peoples lives. Over the past few years the UKGC (the UK government body responsible for legislation) together with the CMA for advertising standards have been working together to clean up the industry.

Online casinos and slots sites are now much more responsible and much more player friendly than they use to be several years ago. Players can set deposit limits, take a break, have reality checks and they will soon be able to self exclude from every casino site in the country with just one click of a button on the new national GAMSTOP service that all operators must subscribe to.

In addition to this players also must now complete Due Diligence checks when they spend over a threshold to ensure they can safely afford to gamble with large amounts of money and to prove the money is not from the proceeds of any crime.

Another recent development that is really helping players is the new guidelines from the CMA that any stake with cash must pay into cash and then be withdrawal able, regardless of the status of any bonuses or wagering. This means players money will no longer be locked into casinos and it tips the balance towards to player who’s odds are still stacked quite high against the casinos.

So, who are the good guys? Are there any good guys in this industry? Well yes, there are Rose Slots is a new online casino aimed at women who enjoy gambling with slots and want to do so responsibly and safely. This new online slots site has very low default deposit limits, preventing players from accidentally spending too much and damaging there lives. In addition Rose Slots will have a very generous cash back on losses scheme and awards free spins for every deposit of £20 or more.

RoseSlots.com believes that gambling, like any other form of entertainment should be enjoyed for the thrill of winning big, but that this should be controlled so that players do not end up chasing losses and seeing the “red mist” of gambling. Let us not forget that gambling can be an addiction for some players and this is why Rose Slots is extremely careful and proactive in helping players to gamble responsibly.

Rose Slots will open its doors in a few months to women in the UK and we recommend if you want to gamble responsibly, this is the best place to play. Not to mention RoseSlots.com will have some of the leading industry game suppliers providing classic slots and new content every week for you to enjoy. So go on, give them a visit and see what you think, you will also win up to 500 Free Spins when you make your first minimum £10 deposit at Rose Slots.

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A toilet. A sink. A bath and/or shower. Our bathrooms are relatively easy to design and predict. And of course, when you have children in the house – the bathroom quickly becomes one of the busiest rooms of the house!

True, it’s not often a room we spend much time in. We don’t entertain in there like we do the living room, we don’t cook and socialise in there like we do the kitchen – nor do we really rest in there like we do the bedroom. The bathroom is a functioning room – which often means it gets neglected when we want to update our homes!

Bathrooms can be pretty boring places, and with so much traffic and daily abuse, it’s not always somewhere we want to spend money on either! So here, you’ll find a few ideas of how you can add a splash of colour into your bathroom, with every budget in mind.

Your toilet seat

Yes! It may sound silly, but buying and installing a new toilet seat in the bathroom – really makes a huge difference! There are literally thousands to choose from, and if you’re looking for a little colour then go for something that no one would expect. Purple, red, even green!

Who knows, a funky new toilet seat might be the push your little one needs to complete their toilet training. Check out this web site for a little inspiration.

The walls

Usually, white or maybe even blue! Or if your bathroom is stuck in a time warp then maybe even avocado green or a dull pink. You can easily drag your bathroom into this century and introduce colour in a wide variety of ways.

If you’re looking for a simple and straightforward way to colour your walls, then create a feature wall with a bold striking colour. Dark blue is usually a firm favourite with interior designers. Especially if your bathroom suite is white. You can buy paint that is specifically made for bathrooms, so it can withstand all the moisture and heat your family throw at it.

If you’re up for a real challenge, then why not update or add tiles to your bathroom walls. Around the sink, the bath or the shower – or even all around the bathroom – the choice of tiles available is incredible – so you can go for a colourful, Roman mosaic style bathroom or a classic monochrome tiled scheme – the choice is yours!

All the little things

If you’re not up for a bit of DIY, painting isn’t your thing – you don’t know anything about tiling and you’re like your toilet seat just the way it is, then don’t worry. You can still make little changes that will really make your bathroom pop with colour.

Why not invest in a new bathmat in your favourite colour? And once you’ve got that then why stop there? A trip to a local discount shop can ensure that your soap dish, toothbrush holder, soap dispenser, toilet brush holder and even bathroom bin, all match beautifully without breaking the bank!

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This post, as you may have guessed from the title, comes courtesy of Bee. It was inspired by the recent launch in the UK of Lottoz, an online lottery platform that lets you play lotteries from around the world from the comfort of your own home, or potentially in Bee’s case, you’re own library.

…

Lately I have been thinking about playing the lottery. I know that the chances of winning are basically zero, or 14 million to one or something, but there’s always this little part of me that thinks I really could win. I mean, someone has to win, right? And it’s never going to be me if I don’t actually play.

I just find it frustrating how much money limits us in what we want to do. I don’t really want much. I really enjoy my job so I don’t ever feel like if only I won the lottery I would finally be able to throw my apron to the ground and just walk out. In fact, even if I was a millionaire I would probably still do it, just because I love it. I wouldn’t even have to win that much money for it to make a big difference to my life, just enough to buy a one-bedroom flat with a bit of cash leftover would really be all I would need to keep me happy and put my money worries to one side.

But that’s thinking about it seriously. If I really did win millions of pounds, here are the things I would definitely consider buying, even if only for a fleeting moment.

A house with its own heated indoor pool, gym and library

I do have a gym membership for a gym that’s really easy and convenient to get to, but even so, I feel like I would definitely get up and go more if it was in my own house and I didn’t even have to get dressed before I went. The same with the pool. I really love swimming but hate swimming with other people around me peeing in the water and stuff. The same goes for a library. I feel like I would read a lot more if only I just had somewhere to keep all my books and a quiet place to read them in. Obviously I don’t think this would actually make any difference to whether I used them or not, and the pool and library would start collecting dust, but it would be nice to at least have the OPTION to better myself in my own home.

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Every three minutes a child with cancer dies in a developing country.

Take a minute to think about that.

In the developed world, a child with cancer has an 80% chance of survival, but in the developing world this can be as low as 10%. How can that be fair? Purely based on where you happen to be born, thousands of children are robbed of that most basic gift – the gift of growing up.

The irony is that relatively, healthcare is much cheaper in developing countries: while it costs £100,000 to treat a child in the UK with cancer, £500 can treat a child in Malawi. £15 covers the cost of a CT scan and £50 could pay for a round of life-saving chemotherapy for a child with cancer in Ghana,

This is good news though, it means that our help can make a big difference.

World Child Cancer aims to address this issue through sustainable solutions which increase awareness of childhood cancer, reduce misdiagnosis and support families that are being pushed further into poverty due to all the costs they have to bear. To promote awareness of their work and to raise funds to help reduce the number of children dying needlessly, World Child Cancer commissioned a photo series as part of their Stop the Childhood Cancer Clock appeal, working with photographer Andrew Whelan, whose images of his daughter Jessica suffering from childhood cancer moved the world last year.

The powerful photo series aims to highlight the incredible things children can achieve if they are given the gift of growing up.

Asha, aged 5, dreams of becoming a scientist when she grows up

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find a private tutor

A few months ago Belle had a bit of a blip at school. She does triple science GCSE and although I’m pretty handy with a simultaneous equation, when it comes to science, I’m not always hugely helpful. She’d recently had a chemistry test and had scored 28%. She was not feeling good. I decided that a little bit of extra help was called for, so we had a search for a tutor online and found one nearby – a friendly looking woman called Fiona.

Belle was nervous before we went. I think she was worried about looking stupid and not knowing the answers, but as I pointed out, she’d look MORE stupid if we went all that way and then knew ALL of the answers, as it would just look like we had paid £30 to see inside Fiona’s house, and that would be VERY creepy. View Post

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When Belle left primary school, it hit me a bit harder than I had expected. I’ve never really been big on ‘firsts’ – first day of school, first whatever else – they are exciting and fun but never moving. 

But when Belle finished primary school, it suddenly hit me that I had no children left to watch in school nativities. No more primary school sports days to go to. No more having to ingratiate myself with the other parents on the playground so as to arrange play dates. Nothing.

It turns out that ‘lasts’ are a bit more moving for me than ‘firsts’.

And then she went to secondary school and every day is an achievement just to get her to go, so that’s a distraction. Bee finished her A-levels and graduated and all of those things are okay because they aren’t the END. Bee can finish things and that’s okay, because Belle stills gets to do them.

Last night Belle brought home her school report for the end of Year 10. It was part of a big pack of information about school uniforms and newsletters and a calendar for the next academic year. I have a paper diary, because I can’t get my head around not writing down dates with a pen, and I have an academic year one because it seems to fit better.

I picked out the calendar and got a pen, ready to write in dates of note. I started at the end, (I don’t know why really, but I do the same with magazines), and the first date was GCSE results day.

empty nest

I text Bee.

‘MY DIARY GOES UP TO THE DAY BELLE GETS HER GCSE RESULTS. I AM NOT READY TO NOT HAVE ANY CHILDREN LEFT AT SCHOOL AND TO NEVER HAVE TO GO TO A BORING CONCERT OR PARENTS’ EVENING.’ View Post

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If you’d have asked me this time last year if I thought I’d ever be able to afford to buy a house I would have laughed heartily. No one can right? And then I CASUALLY went into an estate agent, just wanting to nose at some new apartments that had been built in our town, and it turns out there’s such a thing as a 5% mortgage, and suddenly it all seemed rather more feasible.

But no one would ever give ME a mortgage surely?

Even at business networking groups people look at me suspiciously when I say I BLOG for a living – imagination the reaction of a financial institution??

Except oh. It turns out that actually I’m worth a punt.

Right, so we’ll just go and look at a few places, no pressure. Except this one which we see in our first round of visits is actually pretty nice. It’s way over what we can afford but we may as well make an offer?

And then it’s accepted, and nothing goes wrong, and here we are.

Honestly, I always thought buying a home would involve some kind of wizardry or a suitcase full of cash – or maybe working with one of those companies that buys homes outright, like Noble House Buyers – proven New Jersey cash home buyers. I mean, that sort of no-fuss approach seemed worlds away from my situation, but somehow, here we are. Go figure.

And it’s lovely, and it was the right decision, and I have the SHELVES OF DREAMS but there is also a part of me that feels deflated and overwhelmed and a bit ‘well what now?’ about the whole thing.

I think I spent so many nights in the three months between the offer and the move lying awake, imagining all the things I was going to do and how amazing it was going to be, that when I got here, it felt like everything was over before it began. Yes, I still have all of these projects do to, but it turns out they take hard work and money AS WELL AS Pinterest boards (who knew!) and I want everything perfect NOW. View Post

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Jon from The Money Shed is back today to tell you all about a really useful social media scheduling tool for bloggers called SocialOomph. I have used SocialOomph in the past and it’s definitely worth checking out if you want to save time promoting blog posts.

how to schedule social media updates

Image by Lenka Horavova/shutterstock

It can’t just be me that dreads having to schedule their social media can it?

It doesn’t matter if you run a website, a blog or anything else in-between, one of the most time consuming things you will end up doing is scheduling your social media.

No matter if it’s Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram you will end up driving yourself mad each week as you schedule your updates to make sure that you have all your bases covered and your blog posts can get promoted to as many people as possible.

THOSE DAYS ARE OVER!!!

SocialOomph is an amazing service which takes the manual side of scheduling social media updates so that you can spend more being creative elsewhere. View Post

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I’m sure she is sick to death of people saying it, but Belle has changed so much in the last couple of years.

She’s grown about four feet (practically) and she doesn’t look like a child anymore. And yet it feels like only about five minutes ago that we went for a walk up on the hills and did this pretend photo shoot, just before she accidentally trod in a poo in her sandals:

Happy days. View Post

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It’s not too late to fundraise for Marie Curie this year! Although the Great Daffodil Appeal has come and gone, you can still raise funds for the charity throughout the year.

Here’s a list of fundraising ideas to get you started. This definitely isn’t an exhaustive list, so get creative!

Get crafty

If you’re feeling crafty, try making and selling crochet or origami daffodils. You can even share your skills with others by holding a creative workshop and charging an entry fee to raise money.

Daffodils

Photo – Neirfy/shitterstock

Get baking

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It has been a long time since I wore a watch. When I was little I had a Snoopy one that I loved. It had a red strap and Snoopy’s arms went around to tell the time. I used to wear it all the time.

If you just can’t wait, you can get 10% off everything at Obaku with the code SLUMMYSINGLE.

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