Make money
How to make money over summer break
The students who end August with real money lock a main gig early and stack something async on top. Here is the plan, the numbers, and the timeline.
Write It teamUpdated 4 min read
Summer break is twelve-ish weeks where time stops being the constraint. The students who end August with real money usually did two things: locked an anchor job early, and stacked something flexible on top of it.
First, decide what this summer is for
- Max cash: go full-time seasonal. Lifeguarding, camps, landscaping, warehouses. Boring math, big numbers — 40 hours a week is the most money most students can earn before graduating.
- Résumé: take the paid internship or research spot. It may pay less than a warehouse, but it buys the next job. If the internship is unpaid, stack a real earner beside it and treat the internship as a class.
- Flexibility: run gigs and online work. Traveling, summer classes, or family obligations? Async work keeps earning through all of it, because nothing about it cares where you are.
The summer options, compared
| Option | Typical pay | When to lock it in | Stacks with other work? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lifeguarding | $13–$20/hr | March–May (get certified first) | Yes — evenings free |
| Camp counselor | $300–$600/week, often + room and board | January–April | No — all-consuming |
| Landscaping / moving crews | $15–$22/hr | Rolling | Barely — tired evenings |
| Retail / food service | $12–$16/hr + tips | Rolling | Yes, shift-dependent |
| Online tutoring | $15–$30/hr | Anytime | Yes — fully async |
| UGC videos (Write It creator program) | $20 base per approved video + $1.50/1k views | Anytime | Yes — one evening per batch |
Pay is a typical US range and varies by region. Camp pay often includes housing and food, which changes the math more than the weekly number suggests.
The timeline that beats a July scramble
March–April: apply for the anchor.
Camps, pools, and paid internships finish most hiring by May. Two applications a week starting in March beats twenty in June.
First week of summer: set the stack.
Decide which two or three evenings a week go to the flexible layer — tutoring sessions, freelance work, or filming a batch of short videos — and treat those slots like shifts.
August: taper and bank it.
Seasonal hours dry up late in the summer anyway. Let the async layer carry the last weeks, and move the pile somewhere you will not casually spend it.
For the flexible layer of the stack, the program we run was built to be exactly that — so here are its actual terms.
Getting paid to make short videos: the Write It creator program
Write It — the AI writing extension a lot of students already use in Google Docs — runs a creator program that pays you for short videos about the product on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. It is the rare version of "get paid to post" with a floor, not just a lottery ticket:
- $20 base per approved video. Once a video passes review, the base is yours — even if the clip gets almost no views. You are not gambling on going viral.
- $1.50 per 1,000 views on top. Views keep paying after you post. A clip that does 50,000 views earns about $75 in view pay on top of the base.
- No follower minimum, no application. You post from your own account, paste the link in the creator dashboard, and the views start counting. Proven video formats with reference clips are provided, or run your own idea.
- Cash out from $20, paid through Stripe. One approved video already puts you at the cashout minimum. Payouts go to your bank or debit card.
Make the money survive September
Decide the split before the first paycheck lands: a share for the school year, a share for spending now. A summer that grosses $4,000 and banks $2,500 beats one that grosses $5,000 and banks $800 — and the second version is what happens without a rule.
Add a per-video layer to your summer
Evenings after your shift are enough to film and post. Each approved Write It video pays the $20 base, and view pay keeps counting while you are back at work.