How to make money as a teenager in 2024
The market is full of opportunities and there are a lot of ways to make money as a teenager. But sometimes you may struggle to figure out what to do that generates income. In searching for ways to make money, many of us create a mental barrier, and somehow our money-making ideas remain out of reach. It does not matter what your skill is and how much time you have, there are ways to make some extra money.
It is not hard to get a job if you forget about your certificate and mentally prepare yourself to get a job. You can easily start earning money every month. But the contradiction starts in yourself when you start thinking about job responsibility, duty hours, and the money you earn at the end of each month.
Anyway, you have to start somewhere in your life. But before joining any job you need to know the opportunities you have and which one is suitable for you. Choose something that is interesting, and comfortable for you.
Easy Ways to Make Money as a Teen
There are two types of opportunities for you, the first one is working online and the second one is doing part-time jobs. You may look for a part-time job or you may want to work for yourself; whatever may be the case, there are lots of ways to make money as a teen. Now we are going to discuss the various authentic and legitimate easy teenage money-making ideas.
Ways to make money as a teenager – Online
1. Learn a Skill and Freelance
There is a lot of freelance work online. Register yourself on various authentic freelancing sites like UpWork, Guru, and Freelancer and start finding opportunities. These are the authentic website that pays real money to freelancers.
Try to get a general idea of the responsibility and specific task you need to perform for a specific skill. Check out various gigs about the skills given below and the profiles of various freelancers already registered on the sites mentioned above.
There are lots of ways to make money as a teenager online. Here is a list of specific skills that you may need to start your online freelance working journey. If you already have knowledge and expertise on any one of these you can start or start to develop one that actually fits you.
• Writing/copywriting
• Social media management
• Digital marketing
• Coding
• Bookkeeping
• Graphic design
• Proofreading
• SEO
2. Sell Stock Photos
If you have a passion for taking pictures and if you are a great photographer, you could possibly sell your photos online. As contributors, you have the opportunity to get paid a royalty every time your photo is purchased. A site like iStockPhoto always finds such kinds of contributors. This could be an opportunity to expose your own art to the world.
Even if you are good enough at creating digital images then also some sites are looking for good digital art for selling online. This is the easiest way for teens to make money online.
Tools To Get Started:
• Depositphotos
• iStockPhoto
• 123RF
• Dreamstime
3. Website User Testing
If you don’t know then you will be surprised to know that you could get paid to simply try out a new website and give feedback. There are many authentic and legit sites like UserTesting.com that provide this type of opportunity.
How to Join: To join you need to register as a user of UserTesting.com. Then simply log in to your account, find the gigs, and give feedback, and usability ratings on a different website and online apps. There are lots of ways to make money as a teen but this one is the most simple one to make money online.
Tools To Get Started:
• UserTesting
4. Become A Virtual Assistant
If you have expertise and knowledge in writing, social media, and blogging then becoming a virtual assistant could be a good option for you. As a virtual assistant, you need to help other people run their sites and social media accounts. Depending on the amount of time you have, this could even become a full-time gig.
Tool To Get Started:
• UpWork
5. Blogging
Blogging is a great way to make money but it needs a lot of potential, a lot of patience, and a solid money-making strategy. Blogging is not a quick and easy way to make money for teens but it has a very high potential to earn money when you start earning from blogging. Remember it is not an easy task to build an audience. But also not an impossible task either, the only thing is it takes time, patience, and continuous dedication to your work. There are various routes to income from your blog when you successfully build up an audience.
You can earn money by:
Sell advertising
Become an affiliate for other people’s products
Sell your own product online
And lots more we will discuss in another post.
6. Online Surveys
There is an opportunity to make money online by simply filling out online surveys. There are a lot of sites that provide this type of opportunity, all these are legal and you get paid real money for the work done. Thinking about how to start, all you need is to register yourself online and all these companies will contact you when your profile matches their survey requirements. Typically the market giant conducts market research for their various products as well as their brand’s feedback. You may feel that these companies are scams but there are really a lot of survey companies for a big brand.
Here are some authentic online survey sites you can start with:
• Survey Junkie
• Swagbucks Surveys
• MyPoints – Opportunity to earn a $5 gift card at the time of sign-up, verifying your email, and for every 5 surveys you complete.
• Opinion Outpost
• Fetch Rewards – This app will pay you for filling out surveys and doing other tasks
• Branded Surveys
Another good site is PineCone which offers unique high-paying surveys for most of the age group.
7. Just Search the Internet
Do you search the Internet? Want to get paid for it? Then the site Swagbucks is a perfect match for you. We have already talked about this site. It rewards users for completing surveys, watching videos, and searching the internet using their search engine. Usually, they will reward you in the amount of 10-15 points, after doing several searches using their search engine. You only have the option to cash out rewards at the 500-point mark.
Another option is InboxDollars. Like Swagbucks, they offer cash bonuses for searching the web or shopping online.
Tools To Get Started:
• Swagbucks – Opportunity to earn a $5 bonus at the time of signing up
• Inbox Dollars – Opportunity to earn a $5 bonus at the time of signing up
8. Sell Gigs on Fiverr
Fiverr is a micro-selling site. You can sell almost anything like random projects, your design work, or simply video recording talking about a brand. If you are new to this site then spent some time on it web you will realize two things:
1. There are a lot of different kinds of gigs
2. Most people charge more than $5 – that’s just the baseline price
A cool thing is that there are gigs for almost everything that you can sell! You will learn a lot of selling ideas from here.
Tool To Get Started:
• Fiverr Sellers Account
9. Play Video Games
Do you know what you can get by playing video games or by watching videos? There are a lot of people who are interested in watching online videos or a live stream of your playing. You can build up an online audience if you are good at playing video games. Here is a list of authentic sites that provide this type of opportunity, you may set up an account and start building your online audience.
Twitch TV: Get paid with donations, or apply to become a Twitch partner and get paid for serving ads when you reach 500 regular viewer counts
• Mixer: You have the income opportunity from donations or becoming a partner and making money from ads
• YouTube: Create your own YouTube channel. Choose your niche that you are interested in and start making videos. When you start making your video you will find your style. When you have enough videos and a good number of viewers and subscribers then add ads to your channel or apply other affiliate methods to generate income.
Although there are a lot of other easy ways to make money for teens. Because you have to build an online audience making an online audience needs a lot of time and patience. But the plus point is that you are playing video games, doing something that you like to do.
10. Resume writer
If you are good at writing resumes then you can sell resume writing gigs online on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork. For more information log in to Fiverr and search gigs related to resume writing and spend some time reading the page, you will get a basic idea of how to start your resume writing services.
11. Teach English Online
Are you a teacher? Or do you at least have a bachelor’s degree from an American college or university? If so, you could teach English online. You could teach children in other countries online!
VIPKid is one of the most popular platforms that connect native English speakers having a degree with children from other countries like India or China. You can set up timing for the classes; people can sign up for your class online. You only get paid when you teach online and people register for online classes.
The best thing is that it is a good online income opportunity with flexible timing and the teachers earn $15-$20 per hour by teaching online English. Another teaching site is Qkid – where you can teach English even if you just enrolled in college.
Tool To Get Started:
• VIPKid
• QKid
12. eBook Publishing
If you love writing or writing is a passion for you then you could write eBooks and sell them online on various sites like Amazon. If you don’t like to run a site or don’t want to start your own blog then this route of selling eBooks will be a good option for you.
Ways to make money as a teenager with a Part-Time Job
Doing a part-time job is the most preferred way to make money as a teen. But there is a lot of other good reasons to do a part-time job. When you are hired; you will get paid for the hour you work. It is one of the low-risk guaranteed incomes with a fixed rate per hour. It is not easy to make money for teens because you need to work for someone else, But if you join as a teen in any part-time work, you will learn a lot of things through the process.
13. Deliver Food from Restaurants
Delivering food from restaurants to your local area can be a good avenue for generating some extra income. If you don’t have your own car then also you can make money with delivery in some cities with Uber Eats by using your own bike or scooter.
Tools To Get Started:
Sign Up To Deliver With Uber Eats
14. Become An Uber AND Lyft Driver
If you have your own car and you don’t mind sharing your car with strangers for money then this is perfect for you. It’s one of the few jobs that you can do 100% of your own time.
To start this you need one car and some free time. Once you are signed up with Uber and verified as a successful driver-partner, you are ready to drive people around. The income potential is as much as you put your time into it.
One thing you need to remember is that you may need to sign up with multiple companies like Uber, and Lyft at the same time to efficiently utilize your time and maximize your earning potential.
Tools To Get Started:
• Sign Up and complete the verification process to Drive With Uber
• Sign Up and complete the verification process For Lyft
15. Deliver For DoorDash is a good option to make money for teens
It is a good delivery service that provides service nationwide. You can join Doordash and find the gigs that your local area restaurants have posted recently. Because thousands of restaurants are signing up regularly, most likely you can find gigs in your area. There are lots of easy ways to make money for teens but this one is the most simple one.
The best thing with Doordash is that you will get paid 100% of the delivery fees. Doordash directly charges money to the restaurants, not you.
Tools To Get Started:
• Sign Up For DoorDash
The Bottom Line
When a teenager gets a job they start to learn something new, which increases their skill set. This helps build confidence in teens. Having a job teaches teens how to balance time, and money, prioritize what’s important in their life, and also help to gather valuable work experience and confidence.
And other benefits they can even start investing as a teen. By starting savings early, they could have a couple of million dollars at the time of retirement age just from saving small amounts. It teaches them how to earn and manage money because earning money is important but managing money is more important to get rich. Now wouldn’t that be nice?
