Its been more than a year since I started Free College Blog – and I’m still trying to figure out how to best help students find money for college. I think I’ve learned a lot through the process and I hope readers have gotten something out of it too, especially everyone who has contributed to the conversation and tried to help out a fellow poster with a pressing question.
Looking back on the last year, there was a post about blogging for college money and I’m more convinced than ever that this is a good strategy for students for more than the straightforward reason of potentially making some money.
First of all – yes – you can make some money online. Even a blog like this one can make its expenses back and so can a blog about your own favorite hobby or activity or news items. Sometimes the things you’re most interested in won’t be the highest paying, but there’s usually a good balance somewhere where topics overlap. For example, Fastweb’s free scholarship search and free college scholarship search engines aren’t the biggest money-makers for a webmaster, but its decent. There would be more money to be made selling student loans, but I’d rather try to help students find money for college that doesn’t have to be paid back.
So think about that – by combining something you’re interested in with a product or service related to that topic, you can find an online business model that doesn’t require selling out your sense of ethics.
The money is the obvious, short-term value of building your own website or blog. The long term value is the skill sets you learn and can later contribute to a business. When you start blogging or developing websites for business purposes, you learn about design, you refine your content-writing skills (this can be text, audio, photography, graphic design, video, any kind of content really), and you start to learn about how internet marketing differs yet resembles traditional marketing.
Perhaps best of all, you’ll have something to show for your initiative. You’ll have some proof that you can take a concept, match it to existing opportunities, and become a “self-starter” with a strong work ethic and ability to learn applied skills.
Of course, a personal blog about your pets and what you ate for dinner last night probably isn’t going to be a regular source of income. Yet even if you have no plans to monetize your website and you have no intention of ever adding advertisements, you’ll still learn skill sets that businesses are looking for.
So just go out there and start building your own websites. It may not pay off your tuition bill today, but it will help you get ahead in the long run – and that’s what college is all about, isn’t it?
In the theme of free, I’m going to recommend a few free web hosts that can get you started online:
Whoever said you “Have to spend money to make money” obviously didn’t have internet access and blogging software.
What do you think? Are you running a website? Does it make money or help you learn new skills? Share your experiences in the comments below!
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:18 am
yep.. that works but you can’t use free hosting.. they will reject you as far i know
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:26 pm
You can make money with Blogger and Squidoo, WordPress is the only “good” free host that I know of that doesn’t allow advertising.
BTW: The problem might be that you are republishing EzineArticles without proper attribution to the author. (This is why I’m taking the link out of your comment, its not really your work)
December 5th, 2008 at 9:16 am
I think you are right that a blog could pay off in the long run, but in my opinion if you want to make money to actually pay for expenses during college you will do better delivering pizzas. At least that is what I had to do.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:25 am
Its good for the students who plans for their career in advance….Really I appreciate for the research you had done for the students that they can earn while learning..
December 12th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Nice post. I too run a blog and wish I had known many of the tips I know now when I was in college. The key to making money in college is being able to do it without falling behind in your studies. The internet makes it all possible.
May 10th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Wow that was quite motivating. I also started a blog in my passion of earning online, but i haven’t had much success so far. You have to be devoted to this work if you wanna earn big. That’s what my experience says. There’s no such thing as easy ways to earn money online, though the ideas may seem easy. But the implementation sure brings you challenges, as there are numerous others like you who are competing in this game of earning $$$$ online.
May 19th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I tried the blog thing and it never really worked out. I was being paid much less than minimum wage and dropped the idea.
September 26th, 2009 at 7:11 am
at first, it is a nice post
then, the information in this post are practical not theoretical because of i already have one site and it is all for information on interior design and when it will has visitors then i can use it for ads like ads google or at least for some advertising for products related to the niche that i talk about so it is a good business but on the long run as any other business so students must do it beside their work until these sites become a good source of income
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:49 pm
this is beautiful site
July 4th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Thanks for the commitment to informing us readers with such a quality read. I found your site on the Google search engine and am very likely to subscribe to your RSS Feed if I see more content like this as I search through your old posts.