5 ways you can earn money - even as a busy student!
Being a student in London can be tough, with the cost of living crisis thriving and going to a difficult uni where you have to put so much time and effort into your uni work, and then the long travel times from campus.
It can sometimes be very difficult to maintain and even find time in the first place for a consistent part-time job.
As part of National Student Money Week, Communications Lead at The Costume Store, Mili Beagley (they/she), has put together 5 easy ways to make money as a student to help you manage your studies and your wallet.
💰 Easy ways to make money as a student 💰
While I’ll always recommend working a full-time job over summer to get you through the year, here are my top 5 tricks that I use to rake in that little bit of extra cash.
10 Hour Day Rate as an Extra: ~ £110 - £150
One of my favourite and fun ways to make money as a student is being an Extra (or Supporting Artiste as they sometimes call it) in movies, tv shows, ads and music videos.
While there are a lot of different agencies out there the two that have got me the most jobs over the past year have been: Entertainment Partners & Casting Collective.
Once your signed up they will basically just send you jobs that they think fit you and you can either accept or decline the job.
If you accept the job you have to keep the date free no matter what, and it’ll go through the next round of checks to see if your a good fit, sometimes you will get ‘released’ which means you didn’t get the job and you no longer have to keep the date free or you get ‘pencilled’ which means you got the job!
You don’t need any acting experience or any professional photos in good lighting, I just took my own in my room against a white wall and if it ends up being something you want to continue doing in future and want to look more professional you could always just ask a friend to take some nicer ones for you.
Sometimes if you're lucky enough you can get upgraded on the day to a ‘walk-on’ role where you can earn up to £400 for a day's work.
What sucks though is depending on the agency they have a yearly admin fee that they take a cut out of your first job for, and then you pay a usually 20% commission on all other roles, so it's best to check this before you get started, and it can also take sometimes up to 8 weeks to be paid. There is another app called ‘Spotlight’ that you have to pay a monthly/yearly subscription fee for but you can find your own jobs on there to avoid the commission.
And my personal favourite thing as a chronic lazy girl, is that there are often caterers on set so you’ll get fed a nice good meal.
The days are sometimes very long and tiring, and sometimes you’ll have to wake up at ungodly hours to travel to set but overall you’ll have so much fun and meet so many really cool people.
(And don’t worry if you look ‘different’, I was worried I wouldn’t get any jobs because I’m covered in piercings and tattoos - but I promise you they find something for everyone)
If you are in your late teens and early 20s and look visibly under 25, a good way of earning money is something called ‘Serve Legal’. Basically you go into bars, shops and order alcohol and see if they ID you. You get paid, reimbursed for your travel & what you bought - and also get to keep the free booze!
If you're over 25 an alternative to this is being a ‘mystery shopper’, like Serve Legal, some jobs will pay you and cover your travel, some will just cover the cost of a meal out or your shopping at the store you bought from. You’ll need to complete a report that they give you about the customer service too.
Here are some of the best paying mystery shop apps I have found:
iShop for Ipsos
Redgigwam
Tern
ISC CX
There is a list of more details and pros and cons of each one of this website.
The only thing I would say to be mindful of is that with these two options people can get in serious trouble or even lose their jobs if you are really harsh with your reviews - so as a former retail worker, please be honest but also be kind where you can.
As a UAL student if you're not taking full advantage of ArtsTemps - you are missing out.
From year long jobs like being a Halls Rep (which I would one thousand percent recommend you do if your living in halls next year as it is consistent work but also super flexible around your studies and personal life), to doing campus tours to quick little jobs like writing the article that your reading right now - are all examples of the things you can do through arts temps.
All the jobs are super well paid, and usually very fun to do, and because you're working for the university everyone's super understanding when you have to prioritise your studies.
Because obviously there are only a certain amount of jobs and a lot of people applying for them you aren’t always guaranteed to find work - so an alternative you can use is this app called ‘Stint’.
Stint is an app that does the same sort of thing, it’s more things like when restaurants and bars are running low on staff so you do the small little back of house jobs like washing dishes, folding napkins and stuff - it’s less well paid than arts temps, but there are jobs posted daily on there for you to pick from so is a lot more consistent.
There is sometimes a waitlist for London just because they make sure that there is not more people using the app than there are jobs posted - so gp sign up even if its just to have in your back pocket in case you need it.
One thing that I never considered before coming to university is the power of social media and how you can monetize it.
Obviously the hard part is making the content and being consistent and it can be quite disheartening when your putting all the effort in and not getting much return - but as long as you have a niche, your consistent and your listening to what people want, reaching out to people - you’ll start to build a platform.
Once you have this platform there are so, so many different ways you can use it to earn money. You can turn on monetization of your content using the TikTok creator programme, same with YouTube even if you are doing just Youtube Shorts.
The Ramdam app is super useful, they have bands posted up each month who want people to create videos for them as promotional campaigns and you can earn £40- £120 per video you make.
Apps like LTK Creator, Metapic & Zezam help people to shop your looks and you can get paid per click or on commission of different sales you make on social media.
You can collaborate with brand just by emailing and asking them - it's always best if you have a ‘Media Kit’ to show your insights, and sometimes you get paid per post, to model for the brand, or sometimes you do it just for the free product (which if it is clothes you can always sell things you don’t wear on Vinted & Depop to get some extra cash back)
The Pingfluence app also, although it doesn’t pay you can get you invites to launch events, parties, brunches, theatre shows all sorts of cool & free exclusive things that you don’t have to pay for yourself.
And last but not least, if you're an art student chances are you have some sort of desirable skill that someone out there in the world requires - and Fiverr is a super easy way to get paid for it.
Whether it be graphic design, web design, illustration, fine art - you can create ‘packages’ at different prices for your services and customers can pay you through the app!
