Student Entrepreneurship- how it works
College is the place where you spend four or so years of your life piling up some papers that are supposed to earn you a living for the rest of your life. However, this usually turns out different for many graduates when you finally leave campus and get into the realm of reality out there. You suddenly remember that electricity is not only about the light but mostly about the bill you have to attend to monthly, you find yourself renting a house instead of booking a room from the student’s portal and the price of food somehow doubles when you are living outside campus. I suppose this is why creativity and reason are gradually becoming an essential part of a student’s life. Just how far in life are you willing to be by the time you graduate? Do you want to set the standard or do you want employers to set limits for you? If the latter is true for you, then this article will not make sense to you. If you are the go getter who wants to set your standard, then here is how to be your own boss:
What is student entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurship is the process of starting a business or other organization. Student entrepreneurship in layman’s language is simply being involved in a legal ‘money-making’ activity while still pursuing your studies. It does not have to be related to your books.
How to start:
The beginning of everything is always an idea. Once you have a great idea, look for necessary platforms to develop it and to get insights on how viable it is. Universities often offer such opportunities through networking programs or student organized events that involve experts from the cooperate world. Participate in such programs and share your ideas with necessary professionals who might link you to potential collaborators and investors. You might also want to join student organizations that create opportunities for you to meet professionals in your line of study. Such chances are very hard to come across after graduation.
Write a business plan
This does not sound interesting to many especially if you are studying numbers, but it’s very necessary if you are to start a serious business. A business plan is bound to become the road-map for your venture; write a full description of your business outlining your vision and mission clearly. Once you have a business plan, it becomes very easy to carry it out and very hard to give up on it. Somehow you are psyched up to get out of your comfort zone and follow your dream.
Source for funding
Getting finances can be a hard thing to do since most students don’t have assets to sell or to help them secure loans. However, you can take advantage of different youth programs in the country e.g the famous Uwezo fund or other community development funds. You may also form a group of student entrepreneurs and send proposals to organizations or government to support your project. Great projects more often than not always get sufficient funding from the cooperate world.
Businesses that don’t require money to begin
There are projects that make money for you without necessarily requiring money to start up with. Students with different talents especially in the entertainment industry or brilliant programmers could market themselves without having to spend a million dollars for a startup. Sometimes stupid ideas turn out to be more profitable. For instance, someone in USA started a museum to display bad art that couldn’t be displayed in other galleries; he is currently making more money than the person selling good art in most galleries of the world. Besides that, there are many brilliant ‘stupid’ ideas that are working out for people in Kenya. You just need to identify a niche in the community around you and fill the gap.
You have started the business. What next?
Once you have established your business, you need to make it known to the rest of the world. Take time to market and inform people what you are doing. Internet is the easiest and cheapest place to market your products since most people have at least one social media account. The other alternative would be taking advantage of opportunities in the student organization to make your products known. For example you could supply your products in stalls owned by student organizations or do some ‘flyering’ around your campus. Marketed products will always do better irrespective of how new they are in the market.
End game:
You don’t have to neglect your studies in order to pursue your entrepreneurship dreams. Choose something that will fit into your school curriculum and that you find fun in doing; you will never notice that you’ve been working until you see the money coming.
You might also want to add Google to your circle of friends. There are numerous opportunities online that you could take advantage of as a student and still afford to call yourself an entrepreneur. Examples include:
- Freelancing and online writing: find online sites where writing jobs and other online jobs are offered e.g. freelancer.com, iwriter.com and elance.com. You can choose to write articles or apply for jobs of your choice online and get paid.
- Blogging: Simply start a blog of your choice, write anything and use Google AdSense to make money through adverts placed on your blog by Google.
- Amazon Turk: Perform simple tasks at amazon.com such as participating in a survey and get paid instantly for every task you perform. Amazon Mechanical Turk is a crowd-sourcing Internet marketplace that enables individuals and businesses to coordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks that computers are currently unable to do. It is fun and interesting since you earn as you work.
There are many other ways of earning money on Google; you just have to Google them.
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