• Be a personal coach – Are you a fitness freak who enjoys hanging out at the local gym? If the answer is yes, become a personal coach or fitness expert to a classmate. Amateur dietitians too can easily find a market.
• Be a painter – Painting is a job that requires only minimal capital. Get a brush or two, paints, a ladder and overalls, and you are ready to start. It may well progress to more paying dry walling jobs in the future.
• Be a fashion designer or a writer – For individuals suffering from the creative spark, both are good options. In fact, schooldays are the right time to start on a portfolio of your own.
• Dabble in real estate – Admittedly, this is one of the riskier options and requires some amount of natural flair, but many students do find it worthwhile. I knew a guy who bought himself a Mercedes at 23; he bought a house for 60k, refurbished it himself, and sold it for 110k.
• Start a cleaning and laundry service – No doubt this option will definitely attract many customers because not many people actually enjoy doing laundry. This can progress to a whole new business line in the future too.
• Start a ride service – For those who have a vehicle, travel regularly and enjoy driving, a ride service is an apt choice.
• Be an eco/green consultant – Do you feel incensed when you see forests disappearing and animals becoming extinct? If you do, go green and become an eco consultant. Read, write, and blog on the subject. Do your duty to the planet and earn money in the process.

So much for the physical, offline businesses; on the online front, business options are more diverse and interesting:

• Designing – If you are skilled at Photoshop or CorelDraw, you can shine at student parties and functions by designing brochures, banners, etc.
• Copyediting – This type of work does require some creative and language skills. However, the jobs are generally highly paying.
• Researching for term papers – You will find many clients for this service as very few enjoy researching or facts checking for their term assignments and the like.
• Designing websites – This is viable if you have an Internet connection and enjoy playing with colors and fonts.
• Developing content for websites – All websites need content writers. The jobs offer good payments and are highly flexible.

The idea is to play to your strengths. After all, the best lessons you learn are the ones outside the school.

Here are some of the basic reasons you need to have a business card as a student.

1. Share your contact information – this is pretty basic. Without a business card, you find yourself writing your name and number or email address on any scrap paper found or a bar napkin. It is then likely to get thrown away because it looks like trash. With a business card, it is much more recognizable so it does not get tossed, and it looks much more professional.
2. Professionalism – going along with the above point, if you are trying to network with people within your university community or local business people, not having a card to give back to them after getting theirs does not look professional. Solve this whole dilemma by GETTING BUSINESS CARDS NOW!
3. Networking – if you are serious about making connections, then you need to have business cards. It happens to me and I am sure it happens to you all – after you meet someone and talk to them for a few minutes, you move on and start talking to someone else. Then after the night is over, you can not remember what the first person you talked to did. But, if you have their business card you can easily see their company name and probably a slogan on the card or you can look up their website to find out about them. The same thing goes for students. If your card is focused on use as a student, then you are likely to have your University/College name, your contact information, and your degree or program of study. This quickly gives someone a snapshot about you and helps refresh their memory about the conversation they had with you.
4. Personal Branding – as a student and soon to be college graduate, you need to brand yourself in a certain way. Whether that be in your area of interest, a certain discipline, a certain industry, or based on your own company. Personal branding plays a huge role in college and having business cards is a way to help you stand out among your fellow students.
5. Other “Partners” – college students like to party. So why not give out your business card when you are out at the bar, club, or party to give your information to prospective “partners”. I’ll leave it up to you which kind of partners you share your information with. I’m sure there are some who you do not want to have your number the next day.

Hopefully these tips help you out in deciding to get business cards printed up as a student.  Don’t think about whether you need them or not, think about what to put on them and how soon you can order them.

If you are looking for a good online printing company, I strongly recommend PrintPlace.com. They are a online printer that I have used many times and never had an issue with. The quality and range of products are great.

Best of luck,

Chris Pund