Students are notoriously hard up for cash, and with the massive rise in tuition fees seen recently, UK students are turning to ever more creative ways of making a bit of extra money. In a report by Which? it was discovered that 19 per cent of students have broken into their overdraft in just the first term at university, and that 45 per cent had to spend more than they expected on items for their course.
From getting regular part-time jobs to hanging out in the library to reduce electricity bills, students are incredibly resourceful when it comes to finding ways to free up cash for the things they really want. Here are four of the strangest things students have been known to do to make some extra money.
1. Treasure hunting
An eye-patch, peg leg and a shoulder-dwelling parrot are not required to get into some real-life treasure hunting. Students have been known to spend weekends on their local beach (should they have one), metal detector in hand, snapping up everything from lost coins to mislaid jewellery. Even looking with the naked eye can often shore up some worthwhile treasures, as long as you’re out of bed in time.
Other methods of ‘treasure hunting’, favoured by the student set include fishing coins from under the washing machines at the launderette, spotting lost jewellery in car parks and raiding forgotten change from parking machines, as well as lockers at the swimming baths.
2. Film extras
Plenty of film productions need all manner of people to be extras on their sets, and as long as you don’t mind being paid to hang about all day wearing daft costumes, drinking tea from a polystyrene cup and generally doing not very much, you’ll be ideally placed to take up the offer. Be warned though – often, you’ll be expected to provide your own costume, so if it’s a 1950s biker flick you could end up spending more on black leather jackets than you earn in a day!
Film companies pay anything from £80 – £300 per day for extras, so it’s well worth registering. However, they often only open their books once a year, so make sure you find out when that is.
3. Earn a fiver at fiverr.com
Fiverr.com is, as the name suggests, a place where you can buy anything for a fiver. From the student’s point of view, it’s the place where you can offer to DO anything for a fiver. While some of the offerings are fairly sensible (proofread some text, draw a picture, write a poem) some are downright bizarre. Here are just a few of the best:
- I’ll fill my shoes with ketchup and wear them for five minute
- I will eat cat food for a fiver
- I will sing anything you want as a chinface
- I will cast a money and good luck spell on you
- I will let you be verbally abusive to me
There are many more!
4. Virtual farming
This might be a little bit out there, but people are making real money from creating make-believe resources for other people to use in make-believe games. For this, they pay real, proper money for the privilege.
Games like World of Warcraft, Second Life and other MMORPGs (we’re advised this means Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) offer dedicated entrepreneurs the chance to build, develop, create or grow a variety of commodities which are useful in the game and can then be sold to other players for real money.
For UK students, this can mean just a few extra pennies, but for some of the full-time WoW farmers in China, this is a real job and the way they make their living. Crazy.