Believe it or not, the teenage years are a great time for kids to explore their hustle and entrepreneurial side. So, while some of the side hustles for teens listed below are purely side jobs they can get, we've also listed several side businesses that they can start as well.
The reality is that a few extra hundred dollars can go a long way as a teenager. And best of all, many of these side hustles can turn into legitimate businesses if they stick with it.
The keyword here is “hustle.”
If a teenager wants to make a little extra money without having to flip burgers or get a part-time job, they can try out some of the unique ideas below. Some of the options even make it easy to make !
Overall, some of the side hustles for teens listed below are easy to get started. Others might require a little investment, but the payoff could also be much more significant.
Let's jump into the side hustles for teenagers!
The Best Side Hustles for Teens
The will be ones where they can make some outside of school hours.So, late afternoon or evening jobs are great.
Then in the summertime, teenagers can become a camp counselor or try something a bit more ambitious such as starting a that plays on the skills they already have.
For example, if a teen is a talented graphic designer, they may consider starting their own online business freelancing for clients to make .
Regardless of the the teen chooses to pursue, it should always be something they will enjoy and a that will encourage them to further work towards their goals, such as saving for their college fund!
- Selling clothes online – Either sell your own clothes online, or find valuable clothes at thrift stores and then turn around and sell them on consignment or online on eBay or other marketplaces.
- Dog Walking – This is a great one for teenagers. You can start small with your neighborhood and then expand…and potentially even hire more dog walkers to work for you.
- Become a freelance writer – Gifted teenagers can find lots of work as a freelance writer through Upwork, Fiverr, Textbroker, or other places.
- Youth Sports Coach – Get a local job working with younger children coaching soccer, baseball, gymnastics, dance or other sports.
- Standing in lines – Yes, its a thing. Consider looking on Craigslist or TaskRabbit for opportunities.
- Taking online surveys – SwagBucks allows you to take surveys and get paid if you are over 13 years old. Earn a gift card as you complete the online surveys. A perfect work from home opportunity for teenagers.
- Advertising on your car – But only if your parents allow it. Hustle required to find companies that are willing to pay for the advertising space.
- Affiliate marketing – If you can grow a social media following or build a website that gets traffic, you can make money by referring other people's products. Here's a guide to get started with affiliate marketing for beginners.
- Running errands
- Teaching a group fitness class for youth – This could also be a business opportunity as opposed to just a side job. Start your own small gymnastics class in your backyard or dance class in your basement.
- Sell products on Etsy – If you have crafting skills, you can sell your handmade soap, crochet, knitting, or lots of other products on Etsy. Lots of teenagers have been successful at selling their own products on Etsy.
- Charging scooters – Bird or other electric scooter companies pay people to keep the scooters charge. Depends on if this is available in your city.
- Mobile Oil Change Service – People will pay for convenience. If they don't have to do anything to get their oil changed, many people will do it. Go to their house, change their oil, get paid.
- Pool Cleaning Service – You can set up a regular route on a weekly basis and get a nice book of clients that will pay you to simply get leaves out of their pool and top off their chemicals.
- Sell on Amazon FBA – Investment required here. But if teens can come up with an idea of a product to manufacture, the process is definitely doable. Here's a good guide to getting started selling on Amazon.
- Human Billboard – Either get a job to twirl signs for a local business, or convince a business to pay you to make a carry around a rectangle “human” build board on your body. Bonus, you get lots of exercise.
- Cleaning service business – Let family and close friends know that you are willing to tidy their house, do dishes, and tidy their laundry – you might be surprised how easily you can pick up a few regular clients that can make you some extra money. Plus we created a guide for how to start a carpet cleaning business. . Plus we created a guide for how to start a carpet cleaning business. .
- Fiverr Gigs – There are all sorts of online gigs you can do on Fiverr. Get paid $5 at a time.
- Local sports officiating – Local leagues and cities are always looking for a young person to help officiate youth sports.
- Have a garage sale – You might need your parent's permission on this one, but if you take charge and run the entire thing, you can likely make some extra cash.
- Sell services on Upwork – Freelance writing and graphic design are the most common.
- Influencer on Social Media – Lots of teenagers have been able to attract thousands or even millions of followers. Tik Tok, Instagram, and whatever the latest social platform is are ripe for getting paid to promote other products.
- Become a virtual assistant.
- Get a part-time job – When all else fails, check the classified ads or visit all your local fast food restaurants and start applying for a part time job.
- Sell Photos Online – People of all ages can sell their photos on places like Shutterstock.
- Graphic design
- Pet caretaking – This might go beyond dog walking or grooming. If you are good with animals, you can find friends and neighbors that would love to have you do some pet sitting or otherwise care for their animals.
- Buying and Selling Used Books – Lots of opportunities exist to buy books low and then sell them high. You can do all of this book flipping online. Consider trying out TexTrader to start flipping textbooks.
- Sell on CafePress – Create new graphic designs and sell your designs on all kinds of merch products.
- Manage social media for small businesses – We confess, teens are better than “old” people at social media. Businesses will pay big bucks to keep their social media feeds active on a daily basis. Ask around locally to start because just about any kind of business wants to have a social media presence nowadays.
- Picking up Trash
- Become an Amazon Associate – Amazon will pay you a commission if you refer people to Amazon and they buy a product.
- Junk Hauling Service – If you are a teenager with a truck, this can be a great side job. 1-800-Got-junk is now a $100 Million + a year company and it all started with one young guy and a truck.
- Start an Amazon Merch store – You don't have to handle any inventory. You just upload your designs that might go on a tshirt or mug and Amazon will print and ship your products for you when they sell.
- Yard Work service – Start asking family and neighbors if you can mow their lawn or trim their hedges on a regular basis. This is a great business for teenagers.
- Build a software product – If you have a great idea, you can make some serious money with a unique software idea.
- Blogging – The website you are reading right now is a blog, and it makes good money. If a teenager can write at a 7th or 8th grade level, they can blog. Learn how this guy makes a living blogging.
- Finding Gigs on Craigslist – Obviously, you'll need to look for an age appropriate online job, but checking Craiglist on a regular business could drum up a nice side hustle.
- Reselling shoes – If you can find new edition shows that sell out quickly, you can often sell them for a MUCH higher price after a couple months. Check out this six figure show reseller here.
- Become a nanny – Great for teenage girls typically. Wealthy families are often looking for young people they can trust to care for their children.
- Wash and detail cars – This could be a mobile service where you show up at a client's house, wash their car, and take home some extra money.
- Create a Gift wrapping business
- Babysitting – Both teenage boys and teenage girls can make great babysitters. Let friends, family, and neighbors know that you are looking to babysit and we are confident you will start getting calls!
- Wedding Photographer – If you can prove you've got the photo taking chops necessary, you can dip into the lucrative wedding photography space that definitely pays above average.
- Become a house sitter – Only trustworthy teenagers should look into this.
- Ironing and Mobile Laundry – Make a little extra cash helping out busy households with their laundry.
- Build a sales funnel with ClickFunnels – Clickfunnels allows you to sell your products online with an easy to use funnel system that maximizing the amount you make per sale. Lots of stories exist of young teenagers creating big businesses from their ideas.
- Create a mobile app – Teenagers are on their phones all the time anyway, why not create a game or app that you can make some extra income from?
- Computer Repair Service – This is a great opportunity for tech-savvy teenagers.
- Sell items on Ebay or Craigslist – List your own products or even help others sell their old stuff online.
- Selling your old electronics
- Web Design
- Window Cleaning
- Sell Sewing services
- Pet waste removal – This side hustle for teens can be a great one. Develop a regular book of clients and help them remove waste from their backyard on a weekly basis.
- Tutoring elementary school children – This is a perfect after school activity for teenagers.
- Selling handmade products
- Start a Shopify store – Shopify is probably the easiest place to start your own online store.
- Online teacher – If you can't tutor your neighborhood kids perhaps you can try developing a clientele online.
- Customer Service Representative
- Instagram Marketer – Social media isn't going anywhere and companies are willing to pay top dollar for influencers that have large followings.
- Modeling
- Start a niche site – If you are passionate about a particular subject like dogs, hiking, or bowling, you just might be able to start a site on that subject and make money as you grow the traffic.
- Customer interviews
- Teach music lessons – Piano, violin, or even singing lessons could be a great side hustle for teenagers.
- Podcasting – Why not? Start a podcast focused on teenagers and you just might get a large enough fan base to earn some sponsorship money.
- Consignment business
- Writing Kindle eBooks – You can either write books yourself or hire writers to produce a book that's 20 to 50 pages. Amazon makes it easy to launch and sell your book as a self published author.
- Vending Machines – Teenagers might require a little seed money from parents to buy their first vending machine, but this can be a great business idea to earn some passive income.
- Teaching an online course – Now it's easier than ever to teach just about anything online. Create a course and get paid for your work.
- Knife Sharpening – Odd jobs like knife sharpening are something that most people don't think about. But if you look for potential clients in your neighborhood, I'm sure you'll find some.
- Flip domain names – Domain names are bought and sold every single day. Learn the ins and outs of what makes a valuable domain and you've got a potential online side hustle.
- Flyer Distribution Service – Business want their ads to be seen, and so they are willing to pay teenagers (or anyone else) to deliver their flyers door to door. Bonus: consider starting your own flyer delivery business.
- Food delivery driver – DoorDash is probably the place to look if you want to deliver food. However, the minimum age requirement is 18 years old. Younger teenagers with a license can still deliver pizzas if they get hired at the pizza place.
- Start an online handbag rental business
- Flip websites – Buy low, sell high. Investment required. However, if you learn what makes a website valuable you can often buy a website for 24 times monthly earnings and then turn around and sell it for 32 times monthly earnings or higher.
- Mturk – Small online tasks are added daily. Mturk was created by Amazon and is a HUGE marketplace for small tasks that can be done online.
- Craigslist Arbitrage – You can often get items for SUPER cheap or even free on Craiglist. You can turn around and sell it for a higher price on Craiglist, eBay, OfferUp, or other places.
- Pet Grooming
- Carpet Cleaning – Either get hired as a carpet cleaner or start your own carpet cleaning business. You can even rent equipment to start until you've earned a little extra cash.
- Dropshipping – Check out this story of 2 brothers making over $30,000 a month dropshipping. Business skills are hustle required.
- Start a YouTube channel – You've heard the stories of teenagers making boat loads of money from their Youtube videos. The money is real, but lots of hustle and a little bit of luck are definitely required.
- Be a part-time caregiver – With an aging population, there is always a need for any type of caregiver for our seniors.
- Yoga teacher
- Sell tshirts online – The only investment required is designing tshirts using photoshop or a similar graphic design tool (or just hire a graphic designer to do it). You can use a “print on demand” service that prints the shirt after you sell it.
- Buy and Sell Baseball Cards – There is a hot market for buying and selling baseball cards. Collectors will pay top dollar for the right cards.
Which is the Right One for You to Pursue?
Overall, you can see that there are lots of great side hustles for teenagers. Now you really have to consider the type of hustle you are looking for. Do you want a part time job that you can just clock in and clock out for a paycheck?
Or do you want to start a little side business with some of these ideas? The business ideas are harder to start, but can have a much bigger payoff if you do them right.
If I were a teenager, I would want to pursue the highest paying opportunity with the lowest amount of effort required over the long term. You are probably not going to find that at a minimum wage job. Although at this age, jobs paying 15 an hour are pretty decent.
You'll need to truly use your “hustle” to start a little business on the side like walking dogs or tutoring younger children. But these opportunities can pay you MUCH much more than serving ice cream at Dairy Queen (or working in some other fast food restaurant job).
And if your little side business grows enough, you can start hiring other teenagers to work for you. Perhaps it can even be enough to pay for your entire college.
Still not sure what the best side hustle is for you? Consider signing up for the Niche Pursuits Newsletter here. I share online business ideas, strategies, and motivational stories of others starting side gigs.
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Spencer Haws is the founder of NichePursuits.com. After getting a degree in Business Finance from BYU (2002) and an MBA from ASU (2007) he worked for 8 years in Business Banking and Finance at both Merril Lynch and Wells Fargo Bank.
While consulting with other small business owners as a business banker, Spencer finally had the desire to start his own business. He successfully built a portfolio of niche sites using SEO and online marketing that allowed him to quit his job in 2011. Since then he's been involved in dozens of online business ventures including: creating and exiting Long Tail Pro, running an Amazon FBA business for over 3 years and selling that business, founding LinkWhisper.com, and co-founding MotionInvest.com. You can learn more about Spencer here.
