Side Hustles for Teens to Start Making Money

3 Ways To Make Money Online

Affiliate Marketing

Be a Freelancer

Start a Blog

You’re a teen, and you’re becoming more independent.

You’re probably even wanting to get a job so you can get a car or just have more money.

But, you have school to deal with and you don’t want to spend all of your free time working.

That’s why it might be a good idea to work a side hustle from home.

When I say, “side hustle,” I’m talking about something small and easy that you can do to make a bit of income in your spare time.  

There are plenty of great side hustles for teens that you can easily do online. Let me share some of the best ones with you.

Side Hustles for Teens to Start Making Money

1. Answering Online Surveys
2. Sign Up for Swagbucks
3. Become an Online Tutor
4. Sell Your Art Online
5. Become a Freelance Writer
6. Make Money Through Video Games
7. Start a Blog and Monetize It
8. Sign Up for A Private Car Rental Service

1. Answering Online Surveys

Side Hustles for Teens - Answering Online Surveys

Do you like to give your opinion on stuff?

Believe it or not, filling out online surveys is one of the best side hustles for teens to get into if you have some time to spare every now and then. 

But Why Would Anyone Pay You to Do a Survey?

Well, brands, companies, and other organizations are always doing research to see what consumers are interested in. And the best way to find this stuff out is to get the opinions of regular people.

What Kind of Questions Will You Be Asked?

It depends on what kind of surveys you choose to answer. Here are some of the most common ones:

  • Brand Recognition Surveys – Asks you about a certain brand to see if you’ve heard of it, purchased one of their brands, how much you trust the brand, and whether you’ve seen ads for the brand.
  • Product Appeal Surveys – Asks you questions about specific products and how you feel about it.
  • Advertising Effectiveness Surveys – Asks questions that help the company determine if their advertising is working.
  • Service Effectiveness Surveys – Asks questions about a specific service and how you feel about it.

Tons of companies use online surveys to gather user feedback… smartphone companies, shoe companies, automobile manufacturers, online service providers, and more are all looking for customer input about their products.

How Do You Get Paid for Taking Online Surveys?

It’s pretty simple; you need to sign up for an online survey website, and through that site, you complete surveys to earn rewards. With most online survey sites, the larger the survey you take is, the greater the reward you receive.

There are a variety of different ways that these sites allow you to collect your rewards, and the best ones offer you multiple ones. You may earn free gift cards for various physical and online stores, prepaid credit cards, or even a deposit to your PayPal account if you have one.

Some of the best online survey sites to check out are Swagbucks, MyPoints, and DailyRewards.

Not all online survey sites are legit, so avoid any that ask you to provide your banking information or other sensitive personal information, as well as any that promise you expensive bonuses and survey rewards.

Many legit survey companies offer small sign-up bonuses, but anyone promising you hundreds of dollars or expensive electronics in exchange for your work is likely trying to scam you.  

You can also check out these sites that will pay you to type.

2. Sign Up for Swagbucks

Side Hustles for Teens - Sign Up for Swagbucks

I mentioned Swagbucks already when talking about taking online surveys, but Swagbucks comes with lots more ways to make money.

  • You can also earn money by watching trailers for upcoming movies and other short videos
  • You can play quick online games
  • And you can shop online and earn

Completing these activities earns you points that you can redeem to receive gift cards from various retailers or even redeem with PayPal for cash.

Swagbucks is one of the most well-known online rewards programs, having been in business for 14 years so far. In that time, they’ve given over $405 million worth of rewards to their users. Rest assured, Swagbucks is a legitimate and safe service to use.

How Do You Get Started & How Much Will I Make?

  1. Get started by signing up with Swagbucks (which is totally free, plus you get an instant $5 worth of SB rewards as a sign-up bonus).
  2. Then, either through the Swagbucks desktop website or through the mobile app, you can watch videos and complete other activities to earn SB points.

You won’t earn very much for completing any of these activities (only a few cents worth of SB for each one), but if you’re able to complete a lot of them, it can really add up. 

Tips for How to Make the Most on Swagbucks

  • Play Videos While You Do Other Stuff – You don’t want to spend hours upon hours watching hundreds of short videos just to earn a few bucks. But, if you’re the type who likes having some background noise when doing other stuff, then throw on some Swagbucks videos and just let them play in the background. You can also turn down the volume and let Swagbucks stream videos to your phone overnight while you sleep (although you should make sure your parents’ internet plan allows for this sort of activity).
  • Shop Through Swagbucks – If you ever shop online, shopping through Swagbucks will allow you to earn back a small amount of cash with each purchase. Through Swagbucks, you can shop with a variety of retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, Old Navy, Etsy, and many others. You can also buy gift cards through Swagbucks and earn back cash that way. 
  • Play Games Through Swagbucks – You can play tons of popular mobile games through the Swagbucks app, like Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Trivial Pursuit, Solitaire, and tons of others. If you have a bit of downtime and want to earn a few extra SB, you can play one of these games and earn SB for whatever time you spend playing.
  • Earn From Friends – You can also refer a friend to join Swagbucks, and if a friend signs up through a link you send them, then 10% of everything your friend earns through Swagbucks gets added onto your total earnings. So if you manage to get a few friends to join, you can wind up earning some pretty decent bonus cash.    

3. Become an Online Tutor

Side Hustles for Teens - Become an Online Tutor

You might think being a tutor as a teen isn’t really possible unless you’re already a certified teacher or at least some sort of child prodigy. But that’s not the case at all.

As long as you like helping others learn and you’ve got a strong work ethic, you can become a tutor pretty easily, and potentially turn it into a fairly lucrative side hustle for teens.

How Do You Get Started as a Tutor?

  1. Choose Subjects – The first step to becoming an online tutor is to figure out what sorts of subjects you’re most knowledgeable at and what you enjoy teaching others about. Try and think of a specific skill that you could teach (for example, if you can promote yourself as a grade 1-3 English or a grade 6 biology tutor, you’ll be in a good spot).
  2. Get the Word Out – Talk to your parents or other parents you know and ask them to see if any of their friends are looking for tutors for their children. You can also put up flyers around your neighborhood or school or see if there are any online forums through your local homeowner’s association that will let you post about the services you’re offering.

What Should You Charge?

Base your prices around what other people in the area are charging for similar services.

For example, find out what the average hourly rate for babysitting is around where you live, and add another $5-10 dollars onto that number since the work you’re doing is more challenging than just babysitting.

Or, you can look up what adult tutors in your area are charging per hour and divide that hourly rate in half. 

How to Be Professional

Making sure you give off a professional impression is a good way to build up your reputation and get referrals.

A good and easy way to do that is to create an email address specifically for work, and include all your contact information in your email signature, like so:

Best regards,

Jim Jimerson
[email protected]
(555) 555-5555

The great thing about tutoring is that you don’t have to physically be there to tutor someone. You can easily tutor someone over Skype, Zoom, or any other platform that supports video calling.   

4. Sell Your Art Online

Sell Your Art Online

If you’re an artist, you really can sell a few pieces and gain some exposure. There are plenty of ways to get your stuff out there and make a little bit of money with this side hustles for teens.

Selling artwork is one of the most popular side hustles for tons of people today, not just teens.

Etsy

Etsy is where it’s at.

This is one of the best platforms for artists looking to easily sell a variety of arts and crafts projects. People use Etsy to sell things like custom t-shirts, handcrafted jewelry and accessories, sewing patches, hand-knitted scarfs, custom coffee mugs, and more.

Whether you’re a full-fledged artist or you just like to make little knick-knacks in your spare time, Etsy can be a great resource to help you sell your stuff. 

Technically, minors aren’t allowed to sell products through Etsy, so you’ll need to ask your parents to help you with some aspects of the sales process, like monitoring orders and responding to reviews and messages. 

Etsy charges you a small fee to list products on their site and claims a small amount of the money you receive as a transaction fee, but the upside is that they make it really easy to set up and open an online shop of your own.

Zazzle & Redbubble

There are also services like Zazzle and Redbubble that allow you to sell your artwork printed on a variety of products, like t-shirts, coffee mugs, and stickers. 

DeviantArt

If you like to create digital art, you might consider turning to DeviantArt where you can sell prints of your work. DeviantArt is a huge, long-running community of digital artists and photographers, and it provides a platform that artists can use to either host their artwork for free or sell it.

You can sell your artwork on DeviantArt for free, although if you purchase a Premium Printing Account for $25, you have a lot more freedom in terms of what you can charge for your artwork, the size of the prints you can sell, and what formats your can sell your artwork in.

Sell Your Photography

If you’re a budding photographer with a reasonable degree of skill, you can also create a little side hustle selling your photos to stock photo companies. iStock and Shutterstock are two big examples of companies that pay for stock photos. 

You won’t actually get any money from uploading your photos to these sites; rather, you get a small amount of money whenever someone downloads your photo from the site.  

5. Become a Freelance Writer

Become a Freelance Writer

Being a freelancer is not just one of the best side hustles for teens; it’s one of the best side hustles for any age.

The perks of being a freelancer are pretty great:

  • You get to set your own hours
  • You can choose how much you get paid
  • You’ll be able to do only the work you want to do

But while freelancing comes with a lot of freedom, with that freedom comes a lot of responsibility.

It can be pretty tough because it forces you to look for work on your own and to come up with your own work schedule that is suitable for you.

What Can You Do as a Freelancer?

As for what kind of freelance work is out there, some of the easiest freelance work for a teen might include:

  • Writing
  • Editing
  • Graphic Design
  • And things along those lines

While the actual work can sometimes be challenging, it’s pretty easy to just become a freelance writer. You just need to show that you have a strong grasp of your native language, and you should be good.

Where Can You Find Clients?

Some excellent places to look for freelance work are Fiverr and Upwork. These two websites make it really easy to find people who are looking for freelance services.

Through these sites, you can find people in need of technical documents, short stories, proofreading, marketing materials, and more.

The great thing about these sites is the variety of work that’s available, so no matter what kind of writing you’re interested in doing, you’ll be able to find something that appeals to you.

6. Make Money Through Video Games

Make Money Through Video Games

Odds are, you’re into video games to at least some extent, right?

If you play video games a lot in your spare time or have a large collection of physical games, there are a few ways to turn your gaming hobby into a solid side hustle for teens.

One of the most well-known ways to make money by gaming is through a video game streaming service.

Twitch is by far the most popular streaming service, and like all video game streaming services, it lets streamers broadcast their gaming footage to a live audience.

It can take a while to build up the size of your audience to the point where you’re actually making money off of it, but don’t let that discourage you; even the most popular streamers took a long time to get to where they are now.

And let’s face it, you’re probably putting in the time playing video games anyway.

How Do You Make Money Playing Video Games?

As a Twitch novice, you can make money by asking viewers for donations, selling merchandise to fans of your content, and partnering with third-party sponsors.

If your channel meets certain criteria, you can also potentially become a Twitch Affiliate or a Twitch Partner and make even more money directly through Twitch.

How Can You Make Immediate Money With Video Games?

Let’s say you’re looking for a more immediate way to earn a few bucks from video games.

In that case, why not consider renting your games out to other kids who want to play games but don’t want to purchase a copy at full price?

When it comes to peer-to-peer video game rentals, there aren’t really any existing platforms that support such a service. But you could easily create a Facebook group or a similar online forum to look for other people who would be interested in using a service like this.

There are also some services that allow you to play mobile games in exchange for awards with actual monetary value. For example, you have VeryDice, a dice-rolling game that awards successful rolls with points that you can exchange for gift cards. 

Or you have App Cent, a service that rewards users for trying out new games and other mobile apps. With each new app you try out, you receive a certain amount of points, which you can use to buy gift cards, redeem for cash, or purchase other paid apps.

7. Start a Blog & Monetize It

Start a Blog and Monetize It

It’s totally possible to make money through blogging, even as a teenager, and it could even be one of the best side hustles for teens. If you’ve got the writing skills and patience, you can potentially turn blogging into something far more than just a side hustle. 

Blogging is something that anyone can do at home, but to create a truly successful blog, you’ll need to put in a decent amount of preliminary research.

Before you even thinking about making your first post, you need to have a specific topic that you want your blog to focus on (the more specific, the better).

Being a teen can actually be beneficial to your success when it comes to running a blog; not too many active bloggers out there right now are teens, so just from your age alone, you’ll be able to offer a unique perspective on many topics that adult bloggers won’t really be able to. 

Ideally, your blog should also have a tagline, a logo, and other things that help it stand out and look more professional.

These things can be hard to do yourself, so try getting the help of some friends who know their stuff about graphic design and website programming for these tasks if you’re not capable of handling them yourself.

How Do You Make Money Blogging?

As for how to actually make money through blogging, there are several ways you can do this.

The easiest way is to sell ad space on your blog to various other companies (but you need to have a lot of page views first).

You can also make money by publishing sponsored content to your blog or by using affiliate marketing (my favorite method).

Check out my list of high-paying affiliate programs.

It takes a long time to build up an audience big enough to actually generate any sort of income from a blog, but if you have the patience to do it, a blog can be a great side-hustle for just about anyone, including teens. It’s one of my favorites because it brings in passive income.

8. Sign Up for A Private Car Rental Service

Sign Up for A Private Car Rental Service

If you have a car and you don’t drive it very much, this side hustles for teens could work well for you. You just have to be okay with other people driving your car.

I’m talking about services like Turo or Sixt that allow you to privately rent your car out to people in the area.

These services are growing in popularity because people can list pretty much any car they have, meaning that private car rental services are a great resource if you’re looking to rent a car that’s cooler or more unique than what the big rental agencies have to offer.

So, if you have a car that’s just sitting around and not being used much, consider renting it out on Turo. Depending on what features your car offers, you can potentially earn upwards of several hundred dollars a month.

If you’re interested in finding out how much you can potentially earn via Turo with your car, their site features a handy calculator that you can use to get an estimate. In general, though, the nicer your car is the more money you can earn.

Conclusion

If you’re a teen looking for a side hustle that you can easily do from home, there are plenty of options out there for you.

No matter what type of work you’re interested in, whether it’s making money through selling art, making money through blogging, or just making some money through various odd jobs, there’s plenty of work. It’s just a matter of getting out there and finding it!

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Affiliate Disclaimer: I may (and probably do) receive affiliate commissions from any products I recommend or links I put on this page. My opinions are my own but they are truthful and I do my best to recommend products that I have vetted and/or purchased myself.