Your Guide to Starting a Business or Freelance Service as a Student

Make it rain with your new business venture 💸

Starting a business is a huge responsibility but it can be super rewarding as a student. You can create client relationships while studying, earn some extra money on the side and add skills and experience to your resume for future careers.

To get started, you’ll need a solid idea.

Some business ideas for students could include:

• Selling handmade products (clothing, jewellery, pottery, etc.)
• Social media management
• Tutoring
• Pet-sitting
• Graphic design freelancing
• Content creation
• Photography
• Coaching

And so many more. You don’t have to have a revolutionary business idea – just the ability to provide a good or service to a customer base who wants it!

There’s heaps of resources for you to research what kind of product or service you want to sell.

Note: Not all these steps will be applicable to your business/side hustle. You can pick the ones you think you’ll need.

Get an ABN.

Even if you’re doing freelance work, you still need to register for an ABN because it identifies you as a business which is legally required to operate and receive income for your services.

You can apply for an ABN online through the Australian Business Register (ABR) at abr.business.gov.au.

Write a business plan.

A business plan doesn’t have to be twenty pages long with a page of contents and heaps of detail – it can be just a couple of pages explaining your idea, so you know where to get started.

A business plan should include a description of your business, what you plan on selling, and how you plan to do it. You should also include all the tools you’ll need with ways of promotion like branded socials accounts and a website.

It’s a great document to show other professionals you’re serious about your hustle. But also a great way to keep yourself motivated.

Advertise your business on social media.

The handy thing about social media is that you can easily cross-post between platforms to grow your reach as you’re starting out.

Depending on the audience for your product, you may want to focus on Facebook for an older audience or Instagram or TikTok for a younger audience.

There are templates available online to get you started, a good resource is a website like Canva to figure out what you want your socials to look like and to create posts.

Build your branding.

This isn’t necessarily needed for every side hustle or business straight away, you can leave this till you’ve grown your client base a bit more or till your business feels more established.

But if you’re ready to build a brand board, you can create one with a primary and secondary logo, colour palette and font suggestions. You can either make this yourself, ask a friend or use a website like Fiverr to find someone to help you out.

Websites like Dribble, Behance (requires an Adobe account), Pinterest or Designspiration can give you some inspo to get started on your designs.

Create a social media pack.

When building your brand on social media, it’s good to start with these first few posts to get the word out and help your audience to understand who you are and what you’re selling.

• Profile picture
• Cover image design
• Story templates (you can create polls, do questions, etc)
• A short promo/teaser reel
• 3-5 posts outlining what you’re selling

You can use Canva templates to create these posts and also to create a style guide.

Get the word out.

Besides social media, you’ll might need a website to showcase past work you’ve done,or for products that you’re selling.

You can use templates available on Canva, Squarespace or Wix.

Figure out what rates you’re going to charge clients for your work, depending on what you want to sell.

For freelancers, a good starting point is charging hourly or creating packages that people can buy which includes a few different services.

With all these tips and even more resources available online, it should hopefully be a bit less overwhelming with getting started on your business.

You'll also need resilience and discipline to keep going when things get tough while running a business. And despite your best efforts, there’s a chance it might not succeed. But, there’s plenty of resources to help you get started.