Author Topic: Side income by hosting international students  (Read 3378 times)

ethereality

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Side income by hosting international students
« on: April 07, 2014, 02:22:24 PM »
Hi everyone,

I'm trying to help my mom find some ways to earn money as she's still living paycheck to paycheck with not much in savings. We have two empty rooms in our house, and have listed the rooms for rent, but I wonder if anyone here has experience hosting international students as a way of side income?

We live in Los Angeles County in a safe neighborhood with many local colleges.

rescuedog

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Re: Side income by hosting international students
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2014, 02:26:43 PM »
I looked into this as I thought it'd be a great experience to host an international teen.

From the place I was looking at, it's not a side income really.  The teen would eat that much $ in food.  I think it's designed to covered their expenses, not to actually come out ahead money wise in the end.

What about Air BNB?  She could list her rooms on their.  People look for room rentals kind of like they do on Expedia.  Try to see what rates are in her area (www.airbnb.com).  Of course someone needs to manage it all for her if she cannot.

Lans Holman

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Re: Side income by hosting international students
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2014, 04:02:30 PM »
We did this through our local community college.  Hosted a girl from Japan for about 9 months and had a great experience.  I liked doing it through them rather than just putting a roommate ad on craiglist or something because we knew they did a screening and also we would have a contact person if anything went wrong.  We got $500 a month which is quite a bit more than we could have charged for rent, and she didn't end up eating with us all that often.  My guess is that most of those colleges have some kind of program for placing students, you could call around and see how they work.

bmiles62

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Re: Side income by hosting international students
« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2014, 04:20:38 PM »
We are also doing this. We are hosting a high school age student from China. We have really enjoyed the experience and get $600 a month. She is in 9th grade and plans to come back next year so we may be doing this for the next three years. We are responsible for food and taking her to school events etc....

johnintaiwan

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Re: Side income by hosting international students
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2014, 11:46:05 PM »
One of my old bosses here used to do this when he lived in Vancouver. You can make a lot of money off the Chinese/Taiwanese students if you speak mandarin. They are often not confident in their english and are looking for that. As someone said before, you can also charge a premium for only girls. Often the families back in their home country are worried that they will become wild and crazy american students, speaking their language and having a girls only requirement helps a lot. I think you will not get much by getting paid through a study abroad group. He always put ads on the web where students looked in their home country before coming to study. As someone else mentioned, an ad in a local chinese newspaper should work very well, too.

bikebum

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Re: Side income by hosting international students
« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2014, 01:12:47 AM »
This is a great idea. I'm gonna run this by my lady; we have some colleges in town.