Work Online: 4 Ideas for Post-College Businesses
The prevailing wisdom about education and employment is simple: go to college, get a degree, and you’ll have a good job when you’re done. Unfortunately for a great number of recent college grads, the post-college years have not been so kind. Instead of meaningful employment, many are scraping by and buried under loans.
If you’re wondering how you’ll climb out from under your student loan debt, one option is to go into business for yourself with an online business. All you need is a great idea and a well-designed website to sell your services.
Share Skills As A Tutor
You made it out of college so you probably learned some study skills along the way. Why not monetize those and hang out your shingle as a tutor? Being an English language tutor is especially lucrative and rewarding, as it allows you to work with English language learners who may be international students or immigrants. English language learners are typically eager and motivated and this form of tutoring mostly involves practicing conversational skills.
Build Your Site – Then Build Some More
Many recent college students have picked up technology and design skills that escaped older adults for simple generational reasons. With that in mind, if you were able to build your own professional website, consider that your most marketable skill might be web design. And if you have a degree in graphic design or a portfolio of prior design work, even better – you’ll attract interested customers in no time.
People will pay quite a bit for a high quality website, so commit the time to building an extensive client base and advertising your services. Along with loan consolidation and reduction options, this may be your best business option for reducing your post-college debt.
Show Your Style With Vintage Fashion
Vintage fashion never goes out of style and people will always pay top dollar for well-maintained vintage clothes. If you’ve got a good eye for styles from the past, consider opening a virtual consignment shop or second-hand boutique.
When running a vintage clothing business online, you can either rely on other people’s clothing collections and use a profit sharing model (consignment) or, if you have some money to invest and live where it’s feasible, you might consider hunting down garments yourself. You can also combine the two strategies to collect the largest number of vintage garments for your business.
Write It All Down
Some jobs are tedious, but even tedious jobs need to be done. That’s why academics, journalists, historians, and businesses are always looking for freelance transcriptionists to copy down their recordings. If you’re going to take on transcription tasks, you’ll need a high quality set of headphones, solid typing skills, and the ability to follow directions carefully; most transcriptions require very specific formatting. Beyond that, startup costs are minimal.
In today’s gig economy, many recent college grads are beholden to freelance work for demanding employers at dismal pay rates – why not break free and be your own boss? Build a website, apply your skills, and turn a profit. This is the modern marketplace.
