This article was contributed by Credit Bureau Singapore and edited by The Blue and Gold.
The post-examination periods or school term break is a good period to take advantage of your free time to earn some side income to fund your tuition fees or sharpen some of your skills before you venture into a full-time adult job.
Pet Boarding
If you love animals, you can be a pet sitter for your neighbours or anyone residing near your neighbourhood. Pet boarding can be day-care service, overnight stay or sometimes even just a few hours of walk and play-time. This requires zero certification and it is a great entry point for anyone as long as you have a big heart for pets and animals. It is a win-win situation for you to earn additional income during your school term breaks or even during self-revision hours as most pet owners will typically require this service if they are out of the country or they will be away from home for long hours during the day. There are many online platforms that allow you to post out your service or otherwise there are also companies who are recruiting freelance or part-time pet sitters.
Earn Interest as You Save
Banks and financial institutions have been pushing out more lucrative interest rates to get more consumers to keep their savings with the bank. Typically, these come with certain criteria that you will have to meet in order to enjoy the maximum benefits; such as opening a new Current or Savings Account (CASA) with a minimum lump sum deposit, monthly GIRO salary crediting or minimum spending on the debit or credit card every month. There are saving accounts targeted at pre-graduates who generally do not have a fixed monthly income yet. Usually, your first student savings account will have little to no initial deposits but still allows you to accumulate interest.
Create Your Own Branding Through Content Creation
Do you know that you can get paid for creating your own content and writing product reviews? With the rise in e-commerce shopping and live streaming, more businesses are recognising the promotional value of engaging professional or popular content creators to promote their products.
With the emergence of newer generations like Millennials and Generation Z who grew up with tech products, traditional marketing channels like print advertisements and cold calling are less effective for these groups of consumers. Businesses understand the change in market trend and the buying decisions for these groups of consumers are very much influenced through social media advertisements and authentic reviews.
The consumer engagement level through content creators together with the speed of social media traction also allows businesses to reach out to the public faster and to a more targeted audience. Many homeowners have also engaged popular content creators to help promote their own home-based businesses too.
Of course, creating your own branding is no easy work and it might take a period of time before you can gain a loyal readership and traffic before you start earning your first dollar. Content creation requires a substantial amount of commitment, good writing and storytelling skills to attract a pool of fast-paced audience.
Join a Focus Group Discussion or Be a Mystery Shopper
Get paid to speak the truth! Focus groups are paid in-depth surveys that are typically used for marketing research especially for a new product launch or for existing products. Marketing research companies or retailers usually engage mystery shoppers to shop at several locations to evaluate and grade the organisation’s customer service skills and attitude before reporting back the overall findings. These are also low barriers to entry part-time jobs that do not require any skills to participate. The downside is that it may not be easy to be selected as usually the marketers are looking out for people with very specific demographics that best suit the client’s intended target audience.
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