Source: The College Investor
The best side hustles for teenagers allow them to earn extra money while also balancing work, school, and extracurricular activities.
I love a teenager that’s hungry to make money. And teenagers who side hustle have a ton of potential to knock it out of the park.
Besides being ultra wealthy and successful, what do Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? They all began working towards their careers as teens.
Gates wrote computer code for a tic-tac-toe game, Buffett delivered papers among other small business ventures, Oprah worked for a local radio station, and Zuckerberg created a messaging program for his dad’s dental practice when he was 12.
With that in mind, we wanted to share some ideas about ways that teenagers can earn money right now.
In-Person Side Hustles For Teenagers
Teenagers, generally, are able to get out in person and hustle! They have fewer commitments that would make physical side hustles difficult. Here are some in-person side hustle ideas for teens:
Dog Walking Or Pet Sitting
How It Works: Families with dogs or pets may need help walking them or watching them while they are out of town. This is a great side hustle for teenagers as it simply involves spending time taking care of (hopefully) easy to care for animals.
Benefits: According to Wag, a dog walker can expect to average $25 per walk, and pet sitting can earn substantially more.
Getting Started: To get started as a teenager, you’ll likely need to connect with friends and family members with pets and see if you can offer your services.
Services like Wag and Rover are great to connect with people who need dog walking services, but they require you to be 18 or older.
Time Commitment: Low Time Commitment
Teenager Walking A Dog. Source: DALL-E
Babysitting
How It Works: Babysitting is another teenager side hustle “classic”. Babysitting has existed as a side gig for years, and teenagers are perfectly suited to it. All you have to do is watch someone’s child for a few hours, like a date night.
Benefits: The average rate for a teenage babysitter is over $20 per hour now!
Getting Started: Getting started as a babysitter usually starts with word of mouth – likely through your parents. Encourage your parents to share with their friends that you’re looking for babysitting work and would love to watch their children. Bonus if you already have a relationship with the family!
Time Commitment: Low Time Commitment
Yard Services
How It Works: There are a lot of opportunities for yard service work. From mowing lawns, to raking leaves, to helping shovel snow in the winter (depending on your location).
If you can build a relationship with your neighbors to help them with their yard work, you can be compensated for it.
Benefits: Depending on the services you can offer, you can expect to make anywhere from $50 to $500 or more per job.
Getting Started: I encourage teenagers to start with your own yard, then reach out to your neighbors. Going door to door is likely the easiest, but you can also create posts on Nextdoor and Facebook Marketplace to highlight what services you’re offering.
This is another one where your parents can help with a recommendation as well.
Time Commitment: Low Time Commitment
Tutoring
How It Works: Tutoring involves helping others with their homework or school subject. Teenagers can help younger students with their studies – especially if they’re especially smart in a specific area (like math). Plus, teenagers may have recently done the work, so it’s easier to remember what to teach!
Benefits: Tutors can expect to earn at least $20 per hour for elementary-age student tutoring.
Getting Started: Since teenagers can’t post on many apps, word of mouth, parent support, and listing on Nextdoor are going to be the best ways to get the word out!
Time Commitment: Low Time Commitment
Youth Sports Or Youth Activities
How It Works: Are you an expert in a certain sport? Or do you like working with children in the afternoon, evenings, or summer? Then being a youth sports referee or camp counselor can be a great side hustle for a teenager to make extra money.
Benefits: Youth sports referees earn about $25 to $50 per game. Camp counselors or after school counselors can earn at least $20 per hour.
Getting Started: Youth sports referees are going to have job listings for candidates, but if you play the sport and know the coaches and league, you’ll have a good chance to get the gig. For camps and after school work, look for job postings at schools and organizations that need youth workers.
Time Commitment: Medium Time Commitment
Online Side Hustles For Teens
A lot of teenagers have a knack for doing things online. And there’s a lot of money-making potential from online side hustles as well. Here’s a list of online side hustle ideas for teenagers:
Create Products To Sell Online
How It Works: Do you enjoy creating items? Crafting? Then you can create items to sell online. For example, maybe you enjoy making stationary, or art, or something similar. There are marketplaces where you can sell your items and profit.
Benefits: How much you earn will depend on what you’re selling and what the marketplace looks like. But the great thing about online sales is that there’s little to no startup costs.
Getting Started: First, you do need to create some examples of your work, and photograph them nicely so that you can list them for sale online. Then you can create a listing for your items to sell.
Etsy Selling is a popular way to get started with selling crafts and printables online.
Time Commitment: Low Time Commitment
Resell Used Items Online
How It Works: An alternative to selling your own products online is to simply go and find products to sell. I used to do this a lot as a teenager. I’d go to garage and estate sales, find items I knew I could sell, then turn around and list them on eBay. I started doing this as a Junior in high school and was making good money.
Benefits: Depending on what you sell, you can earn a little or a lot. It will come down to understanding your niche. At my peak, I was earning upwards of $2,000 per month selling on eBay.
Getting Started: To get started, simply find items to resell online. Look in your own room. Look in your parent’s garage or attic. Or look at garage sales and estate sales in your town.
Once you have some items to sell, list them on eBay, Facebook, OfferUp, and other Craigslist Alternatives.
Time Commitment: Low Time Commitment
Teenager at a Garage Sale. Source: DALL-E
Create Video Content
How It Works: Video content is extremely popular today – from YouTube to TikTok, Instagram Reels, to Facebook Video. There are a lot of video content platforms, and more and more people are looking to become content creators.
Benefits: The potential to earn is high, but it does take time. On some platforms (notably TikTok), even if you get a lot of views, you might not earn a lot of money. But a huge benefit for teenagers is that faceless channels are popular, so you can be a creator while remaining somewhat anonymous.
Getting Started: To get started, you need to create video content! The more you create, the better you’ll get. As you create, interact with other creators and your own audience to continue to grow.
You can then start to monetize through in-platform ads (like YouTube Adsense), or through sponsorships and brand deals.
Time Commitment: Medium to High Time Commitment
Become A Streamer
How It Works: Streaming is a variety of video creation but really caters to gamers. If you’re into video games, why not steam yourself on Twitch while playing and see if you can build a following?
Benefits: You can make money for doing something you’re already spending time on and hopefully enjoy.
Getting Started: To get started, you need to create a Twitch channel or other streaming channel and setup both your computer and a webcam. You may want to test out your setting and ensure that you can record yourself and your screen at the same time.
Once you overcome the technical hurdles, it will be about building an audience.
Time Commitment: Low to Medium Time Commitment
Web Development Or Design
How It Works: Are you into coding and or website design? Do you think you can help someone setup a personal brand website, or code a calculator, or build a business website? If so, then this could be a lucrative side hustle for you.
Benefits: You can work from your room (or anywhere with your laptop), on your own terms and time. And basic websites can start at $500 or more.
Getting Started: To get started, you need to build a small resume of samples. Whether your own personal website or others you’ve worked on.
Then, you can list your services online on sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and more. You can also look at local companies and use Facebook or Nextdoor.
Time Commitment: Medium Time Commitment
Other Money-Making Ideas For Teens
If you want ideas for the best ways to make money, here are a few to consider—of course, feel free to share this article with your teen!
Many of these are also on our list of the best summer money making ideas for college students.
- A part-time job: This is probably the easiest way to make money as a teenager. Once your teen starts earning, open an online savings account that earns interest and encourage saving over spending. I personally started working as a cart attendant and cashier at Target when I was 16. Before that, I would caddy bridge for my parents.
- Upcycle: If you have an eye for fashion, you might try buying worn-out items from garage sales or thrift stores and transform them into something that you could sell at a profit. Or try a platform like Poshmark to sell your gently used clothing.
- Start a business: Your business might be babysitting, house cleaning, lawn mowing or whatever you have the skills and passion for. Entrepreneurship is one of the key factors that helped make the people in this article millionaires before the age of 25.
While many of our side hustle ideas are best done if you have the assets and experience of being an adult, many of them can be done by teens as well.
Note: Some side hustles only work for older teens (18+). For example, to deliver food or groceries through an app (like Doordash), you must be 18 or older.
Why Teens Should Make Their Own Money
For the above billionaires we mentioned, perhaps a paycheck wasn’t necessarily the main goal of why they started working as teens. However, the lessons of hard work and problem-solving in adolescence would likely prove to be beneficial in their adult years as leaders.
Before kids become teenagers, many parents may set a regular allowance or pay them to do chores around the house so they can start learning valuable financial habits. As teens, earning their own income can provide valuable life experiences that go far deeper than Mom and Dad’s allowance.
About a third of teenagers have a part-time job and some advantages include:
- Learning the value of money
- Working with others as part of a team
- Building life and work skills
- Gaining vocational experience that could be useful in the future
While there are many other demands on a teen’s life, such as schoolwork, social activities, and auxiliary school activities, it’s worth guiding their time management so there’s room for a part-time job.
Active Income vs. Passive Income
One important thing to consider when looking for ways to make money as a teenager is the difference between active income and passive income.
The biggest advantage of passive income is that it’s income you can earn “in the background.” If you write an ebook, you only have to write the book once. You’ll then continue to make royalties or commissions with every sale for the rest of the life of the book, even in your sleep! In theory, there is no limit to the amount of passive income that you can make.
The downside of active income is that you only have a limited number of hours per day, so there’s a cap on the amount of active income that you can earn.
There are many different passive income ideas, but some common ones include selling an eBook, using affiliate marketing via a blog or social media, investing in real estate, and dividend stocks.
How To Invest Your Money As A Teenager
Once you’ve started earning money, you want to make sure that you are spending, saving, and investing it wisely. You can get started investing in high school (or even sooner), and the earlier you start, the more the power of compound interest will work in your favor.
Divide your money into these three categories:
Short-term savings: Saving for near-term needs and wants
Long-term savings: Investing for retirement and the future
The exact percentages will vary with your unique situation, but if you can, try to put at least half of your money into long-term savings. Getting into the habit of saving a good chunk of your income when you’re young will serve you very well as you get older.
The Bottom Line
While there may be some money-making ideas that are only for adults, but there are a lot of side hustles for teenagers out there too!
Take a look at some of the passive income ideas to see if there is one that you think you have the skills and passion to pull off.
The younger you are when you start making money, the more time you have to find the right income sources for you, and the more time you have for your investments to grow.
