South Africa’s unemployment rate has been consistently high for a lengthy period of time. Today, COVID-19’s consequences are pushing the figures even higher, as a large number of individuals have lost work in a short period of time as a result of the lockdown.

However, there is a silver lining to every storm. It’s time to consider additional ways to supplement your income and to explore the various prospects accessible today.

In this article, we have short listed 5 part time jobs that can help you boost your income:

1. Digital Marketing

In the past few years, most businesses started to see the importance of marking their presence in digital platforms. Companies who have been ignoring the impact of online marketing are now looking for marketers to make their business relevant in the internet. This has increased the demand of digital marketing skills.

Digital Marketing is broad, making it impossible for you to specialize in all sections. Therefore, depending on your preferences you can choose to specialize on any of the sections and provide the service.here is some of the skills needed:

• Social media specialist. As a Social Media Specialist, you will have to offer services of managing a company’s Social Media marketing strategy and advertising campaigns.
•  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). You can offer website owners the services of maximizing traffic to their sites by improving page rank within search engines. As SEO specialist, you will be responsible for reviewing, analyzing and implementing changes in the website.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM). You can promote websites on search engines to increase their visibility through paid efforts. In SEM you will be more like buying traffic through well structured paid advertisements of the site.
• Web developer. You will need to have an understanding of some computer languages, such as HTML or JavaScript. Web developers are responsible for how the website looks. They create the site’s layout and integrate graphics, applications and other content.

Digital marketing might be new to you, but there is nothing to fret about because there are a lot of online courses offered to enhance these skills. Google and other online learning platforms offer these courses for affordable prices, some are free of charges.

2. Tutoring

The demand of online tutors has grown rapidly in the past few months due to the lockdown. You don’t really need to be a qualified teacher to start teaching your expertise subject area online.

College students are often hired to tutor elementary and high school students or as peer tutors, while for older candidates, a bachelor’s degree in a subject area can help you line up tutoring jobs. There are a lot of sites and online teaching institutions that hire passionate individuals to teach students in their expertise area.   

3. Online Freelancing

A freelancer is someone who offers their services for a fee and usually with no expectation of a permanent single client. Becoming a freelancer is a fast and affordable way to boost your income, especially when you freelance the skills you already have.

There are a lot of skills you can freelance, among others you can offer; Blog writing services, translating, graphic design, photography, coding and a lot more skills.

You can even earn some money writing for us: Click here to start writing for us.

The internet has many sites you can use to find freelancing jobs. Below is a list of five sites you can also check: Editorr, Freelancer, Service Scape, Flex Jobs, Upwork.

4. Ride share/delivery driver

If you have a reliable car or motorcycle, then you can start making some cash from it. In the past few years ride share companies like Uber have intensively marketed their services and most South Africans are now comforted to use their services. Registering your vehicle will allow you to make extra cash in your own schedule and without even spending a cent on marketing.

You can also check company websites in your location for information on driving, delivery jobs.

5. Brand Ambassador

Look at the time you spend on social media, imagine if you would get paid for being in your favorite social media platform. Currently, most people with high social media following are making money being brand ambassadors or social media influencers. Of course, it takes a warm personality, a special hobby or even a special skill to gain high following.

Brand Ambassador/social media influencers communicate often with their audience on social media, providing knowledge surrounding products. Because of the depth of engagement with prospective customers, most businesses are now using these services.

If you were one of the laid off individuals during this covd-19 lockdown, you probably agree that the situation would have been better if you had supplementary income. Besides that, there are a lot more advantages of a part-time job.

Part time workers have more free time to spend with family and loved ones, unlike when you have a full time job. You might as well use that free time to pursue extracurricular activities or further your studies.

Mostly, these jobs are done from home saving you money you would spend on transport. It will cut the cost you spend on fuel and car maintenance costs, they may also shave the cost of your monthly auto insurance premiums.