I am on the same path you are on right now. First pick up a copy of Tim Ferriss's Book The Four Hour Work Week and also Ramit Sethi's I will teach you to be rich. After your done reading those go to both their blogs and read as much financial information as you can (Don't worry its not that much reading). After you get through those books you should begin implementing their suggestions. Ramit's book should straighten out your current financial situation allowing more time to absorb Tim's inspirational book.

While Ramit's book is a near step by step instruction guide to financial independence Tim Ferriss will kick you right in the pants to get past the biggest hurdle of passive income, which is starting.

GOOD LUCK

Create a website and sell cheap publicity on it.(i did that one and it gets me around 200 usd about every 2 or 3 months, which is not much but its something)

Or you could try doing med school meds try outs (not recommended) they pay you for taking certain meds every hour or 2, tough they do use placebos, some ppl do get the real deal, so either go with the website or get a job that only requires 3 hours a day at most, (usually on non commercial chain stores)

Good luck!!

I am good at finding students to tutor, I am however not available all the time to tutor, so I offer to connect people in exchange for a commission, usually $20, $10 paid by the student, and $10 by the tutor, and this usually generates a couple hundred dollars a semester, which is enough for eating out and movies with friends. Try looking for a TA job in a basic science lab, you pretty much do nothing but sit there and make sure the students don't do anything stupid, and answer questions, you can also try grading, if your school has a psych department try taking surveys.

As far as pure passive income, I would suggest setting up a website, writing good content and selling ads.

If you're in a position to invest money, look into buying stocks. Stocks consistently out-perform every other investment in the long run. For passive income, you would need to buy stocks that pay out dividends. This is a strategy used by retirees for money to live on. Not all stocks pay out dividends, so do your research. Also, if you aren't looking to make money buying and selling, consider buying blue chip stocks. These are highly stable, valuable to investors, and generally less risky than the average stock.

There are many ways to generate passive income as a student. First though, you need to figure out what your strength's are.

-If you are a good writer, you could try writing guest posts for blogs. Many blogs pay for this content if it is accepted. I've seen as high as $125 per article!

-If you are good at design, you can check out sites like Graphic River, where you get paid whenever someone downloads your designs.

-Possibly look into setting up a website where you can make money from an affiliate website.

-Use a website like Sharenotes.com or studyblue.com where you can make money when people download class notes you have submitted.

One thing that I've heard often is to create student resources specifically for your college. For example, write a single-page Freshman's Guide and host it. Then find a way to market the address to freshmen. The single page can be used for ad space, and if you have enough freshmen, this will work as a income generator.

I once had a wiki for my notes, and interestingly, a lot of my peers found the wiki and started using it! So if you have student resources that you can share for free, use it for ad palcement. And make the ads very student-specific.

You should check out some websites that offer online surveys. There are a lot of scam websites out there, but a few that I can recommend. I personally use Opinion Outpost for the majority of my surveys. In total over a couple years, I have earned close to $1,000 - in cash! They used to pay cash - they would send a check by mail. Now they do gift certificates through Amazon.com. A few months of surveys allowed me to buy nearly all of my text books for this semester. A lot of people didn't like the switch to Amazon certificates, but it is still very useful to me. A couple other sites I would recommend would be Panlebase.net (UK only, but is expanding to the US), PineCone Research, SurveyHead, and HotSpex.

What kind of blogging platform allows for adsense? I want to set up a blog, but I also want to be able to generate some small cash on the side with it.