I was lucky enough during school to work for the University I went to during the day manning their help desk, but traveling to my real job in the evenings every night was a pain. I’d have seriously gone for an online job had they been so abundant back then.

These days there are many legitimate job opportunities online for students, and many can be done on a part-time basis too.

If you haven’t considered supplementing your loans with employment, here are some of the benefits of looking for part-time jobs online as a student:

Flexible Hours – Unlike traditional office jobs, many online jobs are assignment and deadline based – meaning your employers sends you a list of things to get done, and tells you when they need to be done by. It’s up to you to schedule enough hours in between in order to get the assignment completed on time.

Variety of Work – The types of jobs online available to students is extensive, including data entry, article writing, blog commenting, writing reviews, promoting products as an affiliate, submitting classifieds, taking surveys, proof-reading.

Your office jobs might pigeon hole you into filing papers or sitting answering the phone to the same questions all day, but the assignment nature of many jobs allow you to be flexible in the type of work you choose.

Experience: No previous employment? No worries. No qualifications yet? No worries. There are plenty of options to work online with little or no experience, typically the only requirements you are going to run into is being old enough to legally do the job, and having some form of bank account or Paypal account to get paid in.

No Travel Time – Got a couple of hours between classes and nothing planned? Perhaps you find yourself eating dinner watching TV and surfing the web at the same time?

Working right out of your dorm room, bedroom at home, or even the library (on your own computer) – you can fit an hour in here, another hour in there. Without the hassle of needing to travel to your place of employment, making time to get your work done on schedule becomes a breeze.

There aren’t many drawbacks to working online, so long as you are educated about how to find legitimate jobs, and know what to expect, and to avoid, during the whole process. Remember to avoid sites asking for money upfront, and never give out your personal information such as credit cards and social security numbers.