Now that the concept of work from home has been introduced due to the pandemic, we have realised that so many jobs can be pursued remotely with the help of the internet. You do not have to go to an office every day, you just have to stay connected online with the office.
Best Online Jobs for Students In India
This is quite an advantage, more than you would think especially for students who are currently engaged in online or blended studies. Such students can pursue an online job that is flexible enough to fit their schedules. Students will not just earn some cash but a job will be like a stepping stone for their future careers. The hands-on experience that you will get with a job will be a big advantage for you later when you start your career as your CV will already be better than the students with only degrees. Any recruiter would prefer an employee with work experience to a fresher irrespective of the marks.
So, if you are currently a student then this is your golden chance to pursue an online job and give yourself an edge over the others. Following are some of the popular online jobs that students can easily pursue irrespective of their academic background.
1. Content Writer
If you have a flair for writing or in general you are good at English grammar, then this could be the perfect online job for you. As a content writer, you will just have to write blogs or articles which can easily be done from anywhere.
Content writers can be of various types. You can either be an independent blogger, a freelance writer, or a full-time content writer in-house for any company or organisation.
As an independent blogger, you can write about whatever you like on your blog site (eg, wordpress) and monetize your work with the help of the following:
- Affiliate Marketing
- Display Google AdSense
- Display ads from 3rd party Ad Networks
- Sell sponsored blogs
- Write product reviews
- Become an influencer
- Create pay-per-view premium posts
As a freelance content writer, you can work for several clients at the same time and write content for them on topics that they give. Your payment depends upon the amount of content you provide. Most freelance content writers are paid based on the number of words they write.
As an in-house content writer, you will be like a regular employee who will write content only for the company. You will then have to write a particular type of content relevant to your company and not whatever you like.
In any of these three formats, content writing can be easily done remotely because as a writer you have to usually work yourselves and not collaborate with others. So you can easily work from home. You also do not need any specific qualifications for content writing, you just have to be fluent in written English.
- Average Base Salary- ₹2,88,476 per year.
- Where to Find Work- Naukri.com, Internshala, Indeed, LinkedIn, Fiverr.com
2. Graphic Designer
If you can use software like Adobe Photoshop, sketch, Illustrator, Figma, and After Effects, then you should get ready to make some money out of your skills. Graphic designers are one of the top in-demand employees in the digital marketing field. There are countless online businesses that need graphic designers to design the visual marketing content for them to attract and appeal to their target audiences.
Who do you think designs those memes and quirky posts on Instagram? These are all graphic designers who make appealing designs and posters to attract as much audience as possible and bring profit to the organisation. So apart from traditional billboard advertising, graphic designers also work for magazines, advertising agencies, and companies with social media presence.
Again, you can either work as a freelancer or a full-time employee depending upon your needs and schedules. You do not need any particular qualification for this job, but yes of course you do need killer skills if you need to beat other designers with academic backgrounds in graphic designing.
Some other fields related to graphic design could be logo designing, animation, digital drawing, and photo editing.
- Average Base Salary- ₹3,01,259 per year
- Where to Find Work- Naukri.com, Internshala, Indeed, LinkedIn, Fiverr.com
3. Social Media Manager/Copywriter
If you like being on social media, creating content, and engaging with people, then yes there is actually a job for doing the same. Social media marketing has become an extremely high in demand skill in today’s times. Social media marketing is much more important than you would think with more than 4.5 billion active social media users.
The role of a social media manager is quite creative and involves creating social media campaigns to strategize brand promotions, analysing audience engagement, and sometimes communicating with customers.
While as a copywriter, you will have to write content for your brand. The role of a copywriter is to write engaging content to attract the audience and somehow advertise the brand at the same time. Copywriters usually have to write content for the advertisements that a brand/company runs to generate leads.
Both the above jobs are quite related and sometimes you might have to do both of them at the same time. Both of them are exciting jobs and perfect for younger generations like the students as they have more fresh ideas and imagination when it comes to social media as they are comparatively way more active there than the older people.
Since it is a job that can be completely pursued online, it is best for students who are studying online as well. Students who are pursuing full time degrees can pursue this as a part-time job.
This is the kind of job that will provide you quite a good exposure of the digital marketing world. You will be able to enhance your communication skills as well as inter personal skills as well. This job will help you a lot with personality development. And since you are a student just starting out, all these skills will be of great help to you in your future career.
- Average Base Salary- ₹3,09, 451 per year (Social Media Manager), ₹3,63,257 per year (Copywriter)
- Where to Find Work- Naukri.com, Internshala, Indeed, LinkedIn, Fiverr.com.
In this case, you can also pitch companies directly by looking for marketing agencies on Google.
4. Video Editor
Maximum of content that we consume today is in the form of videos and graphics. Especially short videos such as instagram reels, youtube shorts, tik tok, etc are being consumed way more than you can imagine.
This is why brands and companies have started investing in marketing that includes videos and motion graphics. Therefore, if you are someone who has cool video editing skills, then you must definitely monetise this skill as it is quite in demand.
You can work as a freelance video editor or you can also start working as an intern and continue as a full-time employee after your studies are over, as you’ll have good future opportunities in this profession.
Again, you do not need any particular qualification or degree to be a video editor. All you need is some creative imagination and solid technical editing skills.
- Average Base Salary- ₹3,40,746 per year
- Where to Find Work- Naukri.com, Internshala, Indeed, LinkedIn, Fiverr.com
5. Online Tutor
Tutoring is one of the most common part-time jobs and quite beneficial for students. This is because while teaching others, you can brush up on and revise your own knowledge and skills. There have been studies that prove that you are likely to hone your own knowledge and learning while teaching others.
Now since the times have changed and the education has gone online so now you can also tutor people online. This is quite beneficial as there will not be any geographical constraints, it will be time saving also and quite flexible as you can schedule sessions as per your and the student’s schedule.
You have two options in tutoring as well. First is that you can teach students that are quite younger than you. If you choose quite small kids, then you can teach almost all subjects as it would be busy. However, if you teach students from higher classes, then you might need to choose a specific subject in which you yourself specialise so that it is easy for you to teach.
Another option is that if you are a model student of your class, then you can propose to teach your fellow classmates who are not so great at studying and barely pass their exams. This way, not just you will earn some extra money but also you will be able to revise your own syllabus as you are teaching your fellow classmates. Therefore it is a win-win for you!
- Average Base Salary- ₹300 per hour
- Where to Find Work- Tutor.com and Wyzant
6. Website Designer
- Technology and the internet has taken a sharp rise in recent years and taken over the world. Ever since then, so many businesses have gone online. Now going online means they would need a website. Only a good website will help them ensure good online presence.
- This is why website designing has become quite a valuable skill recently. For students, it is best to take freelance work as they will be able to manage their time and schedule better. Working as a full-time web designer will need you to invest a lot of time as you might lack the experience. So the best way is to start freelancing to first gain the experience. Freelancing will give you the required exposure as you will know how different businesses interact with their users.
- However, you must be really good at designing to be able to get work. For starters, you can build a portfolio to showcase your skills to the recruiters because otherwise it will be difficult to get a job without proper qualifications as you’re still a student.
- Website designing can be a great future career, so if you start out early during your graduation, you will be able to build a great career really quick. Since this is a profession that values skills more than academics, you will be able to get high paying jobs right after your graduation if you already have hands-on experience.
- Average Base Salary- ₹2,86,110 per year.
- Where to Find Work- Naukri.com, Internshala, Indeed, LinkedIn, Fiverr.com.
In this case also, you can also pitch companies directly by looking for marketing agencies on Google.
7. Transcriptionist
- Big industries and corporations like media houses, academic institutions, health care, etc usually have huge data sets and in all forms (written and multimedia). Such industries often require documenting multimedia files into written ones. For this, a transcriptionist is required.
- As a transcriptionist, all you need to do is write/type the content of an audio/video. You have to very accurately document each and every detail and in correct syntax and grammar.
- As a transcriptionist, your role will also involve providing high-quality searching as well as indexing of the recordings. It will be beneficial for you if you have a good typing speed, especially if you are a freelancer as you will be able to complete more projects with better speed.
- This job will give you a lot of learning about different topics as you will have to listen to the recording very carefully. You will eventually be able to explore various new topics. Also, you will definitely be able to improve your English grammar and other languages skills.
- Average Base Salary- ₹300 per hour
- Where to Find Work- Rev and TranscribeMe
8. Data Entry Clerk
- Data entry jobs are considered as the ideal remote/part-time jobs as they offer great flexibility. They are great for students as the tasks are simple and less time consuming. You just need to have some good keyboard skills and accuracy with data.
- It is a less-stress job as you will be given a task and a deadline with enough time, so you can complete that task according to your own schedule whenever you want before the deadline. The tasks are not very complex so do not require much time.
- You will be given the instructions about the task by the client in your mail along with the data or the link to the data sources. You will just have to do the task according to those instructions and within the given time frame. You might have to work majorly on spreadsheets and you will be able to enhance your numerical and literacy skills as well with the kind of tasks you will perform.
- Average Base Salary- ₹2,30,142 per year
- Where to Find Work- Naukri.com, Internshala, Indeed, LinkedIn, Fiverr.com.
9. Virtual Assistant
- The job of a virtual assistant is quite a flexible one as you can take up tasks according to your own schedule. Virtual assistants can be said as online customer service providers. Your role as a virtual assistant might include sending messages or emails, email marketing, answering customer calls, addressing customer complaints. Or, you might have to work on spreadsheets for data entry related jobs.
- Big companies like Amazon, flipkart, LinkedIn, etc hire various virtual assistants to help them with data entry and customer interaction jobs. You can also get to work on various administrative tasks. This job will give you a lot of exposure as you will learn a lot about business administration while working different tasks.
- Average Base Salary- ₹250 per hour
- Where to Find Work- SimplyHired, Naukri.com, Indeed, CareerBuilder.
10. Website Tester
- When businesses or companies build their apps and websites, they first have to make sure that the users understand their website/app as they have visioned it. So, before the final launch of the product, owners first test their websites.
- The owners hire various people from diverse personas to be their users. The website testers have to just use the website like a regular user and give feedback about their experience. Based on these user experience feedbacks, the website developers may or may not make changes.
- The website testers are paid for their services. It is a really great option for students who are pursuing full-time regular courses because this job is not at all time consuming. You can do it whenever you want and from wherever you want. Additionally, you will add some analytical skills to your pocket along with the hand-on experience and knowledge of test management tools.
- Average Base Salary- The payment varies for different companies. The testers can get from $10 – $100 depending upon the intensity of the work.
- Where to Find Work- Userlytics, UserTesting, UserFeel, TestingTime.
Be An Entrepreneur
All the above mentioned jobs are something that you will get from somebody else. You will have to look for an employer/recruiter to find a job. However, if you have something that you think can be monetised, then you can even start your own business.
For instance, if you are good at making sketch portraits, paintings, or photography, then you can sell your artwork and even take custom orders online. You can use platforms like Instagram and Facebook to run your own business.
How? It is simple! You can just post pictures of your artwork on any of these platforms and advertise them accordingly. However, your advertising must be solid enough to reach as many people as possible so that you get many more orders.
You can even run your business on Whatsapp these days. You just need a business account where you can upload the catalogue of your artwork or whatever product you are selling. This way, you will be your own boss and be able to continue your hobby as well.
Benefits of Online Jobs for Students
Online jobs are a boon for students who are still in their final years of graduation as they can benefit a great deal even before their career starts. If you do not have any clue how employment works, then the first thing you should know is that hands-on work experience is equivalent to academic background. Gone are the days when being a bookworm worked, unless we are talking about government jobs for which you need to give written exams and clear interview rounds.
However, if you are willing to enter the much lucrative corporate sector, then my friend, there is immense competition, trust me. You need to stand out from the crowd to be able to make it big. And how you do it in the corporate sector is with experience. Even if you do not have relevant degrees but relevant hands-on work experience, you can easily stand out amongst the crowd.
However, many freshers think about how do they get work experience when they have just graduated and that there needs to be a first time. However, what they forget is that the first time that they are talking about is quite late.
What I mean is that if your first work experience is way before you graduate, then you can have an edge over other freshers. An online job is the answer to all your queries. So, all you need to do is pursue an online job whether freelance or full time or at least an online internship while you are still studying. It is best if you start in your second year of graduation.
So, now when you graduate, you will have both your degree and work experience in comparison to the freshers who only completed their studies and did not pursue any job. For obvious reasons, a recruiter will prefer you with work experience over a fresh graduate with just a degree in hand.
Job Oriented Online Courses
Most of the jobs mentioned in this blog can be pursued without any particular qualification or skill. However, some of them need particular technical skills like for website designing, graphic designing, and video editing you need to know technical apps like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
However, these skills can be easily learned remotely through online courses. There are various short-term courses present online that you can pursue to learn these skills.
If you wish to know about any such online courses, then you can visit College Vidya and find various short-term certificate courses and diploma courses as well. Here, you will not just find these courses but also information on these courses. You can get video counselling from expert education mentors for your career growth.