Best Side Hustle Ideas For Teenagers

As a teenager, you’re likely juggling a packed schedule with school, family commitments, sports, extracurriculars, and social life. Finding time for anything else can seem impossible. But many teens face a common problem – wanting extra spending money or savings, but struggling to fit a traditional part-time job into their already busy lives.

The solution? Side hustles tailored for teenagers. These flexible money-making opportunities allow you to earn cash on your own schedule, without interfering with your other responsibilities. Side hustles also provide valuable real-world experience that can boost your resume and help you develop important skills for the future.

I’ve been in your shoes, trying to balance academics, activities, and the desire for financial independence. Through trial and error, I’ve discovered numerous ways for teens to make money that actually fit into a hectic high school lifestyle. Whether you’re saving for college, want to buy the latest tech, or just crave some financial freedom, there’s a side hustle that can work for you.

In this article, I’ll share my top 11 side hustle picks for teenagers in 2024, based on my own experiences and extensive research. These options range from leveraging your digital skills to tapping into your creative talents, ensuring there’s something for every interest and aptitude. Let’s dive in and explore how you can start earning money while still prioritizing your education and personal growth.

Best Side Hustles for Teens in 2024

The internet and social media have created hundreds of new ways to make extra cash on the side, and there’s never been a better time to start a side hustle as a teen.

You probably already know that the AI landscape has exploded with opportunities in 2024. Here is a list of some of the best AI side hustle ideas.

The best side hustles for teens between 13 and 19 years of age, in 2024 are:

1. Selling your artwork or crafts on Etsy or Redbubble
2. Pet-sitting and babysitting
3. Advertising your services through social media sites like Nextdoor and Facebook 
4. Participating in online surveys
5. Selling your old (aka vintage) stuff on eBay or Poshmark
6. Tutoring younger students
7. Starting a podcast
8. Launching your own YouTube channel
9. Becoming a brand ambassador
10. Starting your own blog
11. Becoming an influencer

Sell Crafts On Etsy or Redbubble

Founded in 2005, Etsy has become the go-to site for anyone looking for unique gifts and works of art they can’t find anywhere else. More than 4.4 million artists and crafts makers are currently selling their work on Etsy, and if you’re artistically talented, why not join them? 

Etsy sells an almost unlimited range of products, from wall hangings and downloadable digital art to jewelry, kitchen products, ceramics, furniture, clothing, themed gifts, and more.

You can even find people selling food products on Etsy, from customized birthday cookies to baking kits with instructions for making treats at home.

For the creative at heart, Etsy offers a platform to make money doing what you love. The best news is you only have to be age 13 or older to sell your creations on Etsy.

Another popular site for selling artwork and crafts is Redbubble, which has an age limit of 16 for sellers. There you can find great side hustles for teens. However, Redbubble’s own website offers a way around their age restriction: simply have a parent or older sibling manage your account for you.

Tip: Learn and master the use of AI art generators where you can turn your imagination into creating unique pieces of amazing digital art and sell them on Etsy.

Babysit or Pet-Sit

Be honest with yourself: are you responsible, timely, and self-motivated? Do you enjoy spending time with children and/or animals? If you answered yes to both of these questions, then babysitting or pet-sitting could be a fun and rewarding way for you to earn some extra cash.

Although pet-sitting doesn’t generally come with additional requirements, many parents will want to hire a babysitter with CPR and/or basic first aid training.

This is an excellent investment, and many cities offer easy CPR training for free that you can complete in one or two weekends through local institutions like the fire department. Just Google search “CPR training in [insert town or city name],” and you’ll likely be surprised by how many options you find.

Once you feel qualified, it’s time to find your clients. Word of mouth and community connections can get you a long way, but if you’re looking to cast a wider net, you’ll need to advertise your services more broadly: I’ll discuss just how to do that in the next section.

Offer Your Services Through Nextdoor or Facebook

Babysitting and pet-sitting are two classic side jobs for teens, but if neither of them sounds like your cup of tea, there are a lot of other services that teens can turn into decent side hustles. 

Services commonly offered by teens include:

1. Lawn-mowing and general yard work
2. Moving services
3. Babysitting
4. Pet-sitting
5. Plant-sitting
6. Grocery shopping/errand running for elderly or disabled neighbors.

Once you’ve figured out what you want to do, you’ll need to advertise your services.

Nextdoor and Facebook are both great social media platforms to promote your side hustle and get started earning cash and building your reputation in your community.

Nextdoor has become notorious for being a site of squabbles and unnecessary arguments, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a force for good. You can use social media sites like Nextdoor or Facebook to advertise your services to your neighbors.

Nextdoor has the obvious natural advantage of connecting you specifically to your neighborhood or community. It’s completely free to sign up: simply enter an email address plus your full street address (so Nextdoor can connect you to the right neighborhood), and that’s it:

You’ll be able to see posts regarding community events, crime and safety, and other people in your area offering their services. 

You can download Nextdoor as an app. This is recommended if you’re going to view Nextdoor on your phone because their website is annoyingly slow and clunky on mobile browsers without the app.

Once you have an account, you can choose how much information to provide about yourself, and you can create a post advertising whatever services you can provide.

Facebook may be less geographically focused, but you should check it out to see if your town or neighborhood has a group for advertising local services.

If you know exactly what you want to do – for example, babysitting – you can also look for Facebook groups specifically devoted to babysitting in your area.

For example, a search for “Bay Area babysitting” turned up more than 20 results for pages devoted to connecting babysitters with clients in the San Francisco Bay Area.

During the coronavirus pandemic, many Facebook groups popped up for young people to offer their services (paid or volunteer) to local seniors or immunocompromised people who didn’t want to risk a trip to the grocery store or need someone to drive them to the doctor.

Many of these groups are still active, and there are lots of people who post on Facebook when they’re looking to hire someone for odd jobs. In other words, checking to see if your community has a Facebook presence can be an excellent way to find a side hustle.

One of the great things about this particular kind of side hustle is that there are no age limits – as long as you’re responsible and capable, you can offer your services to your neighbors and make some extra cash without needing to be over 18 years old.

Online Survey Sites

Who doesn’t want to get paid for their opinions? These days, knowing the likes and dislikes of the youngest generation of consumers is priceless for the companies and corporations that market their products to them.

In 2019 alone, U.S companies spent over $73 billion on market research. So, why shouldn’t you get in on the action?

There are numerous companies that allow you to complete market research surveys online and get paid for it. One such company is L&E Research, which conducts both online and in-person market research studies in 11 major cities around the U.S.

Simply go to their website, create a profile, and they’ll match you with market research surveys that you’re eligible for. Note: once you’ve been matched with a survey, you still have to apply and get accepted through the screening process – it’s not an automatic acceptance.

The downside with using online surveys as your side hustle is that many online survey providers (including L&E Research) require you to be at least 18 years of age to participate in paid surveys.

However, there is a growing number of online market research studies and surveys that are open for teens aged 16+. Therefore, these options can be great side hustles for 16 year olds and older teens.

One such website is Toluna, which only requires you to be 16 to participate. Simply sign up for a free account, fill in your profile, and Toluna will send you weekly surveys that you’re qualified for. In Toluna you can find a great side hustle for teens.

Most users receive between 10 and 15 surveys a week. Although users outside the U.S can also sign up, U.S users are more likely to be matched with a higher number of surveys.

Toluna also offers other ways for teens to make extra cash, including content creation (they call their participants “Toluna Influencers”), contests, and daily games. 

Toluna pays all of its participants through PayPal, so you’ll need to make an account attached to a working bank account before you sign up with Toluna.

Another online survey site that’s open for teens under 18 is American Consumer Opinion. Founded all the way back in 1986 as a mail survey panel, it’s now one of the largest online survey sites, with over eight million users (called “panel members”) as of 2021.

It’s a safe and well-reviewed option for earning extra cash in exchange for your opinions on a variety of different products and topics. 

Despite its name, American Consumer Opinion is open to users from all over the world. Signing up is completely free, and their age limit of 14+ makes American Consumer Opinion a great option for teens.

Once you’ve signed up and built a profile, American Consumer Opinion will send you around one survey a month based on your eligibility. Filling out a survey takes, on average, between 10-15 minutes.

You earn points for each survey completed, which accumulate in your member account and can only be cashed in at particular times.

Sell Your Old Stuff

Do you have a closet full of cool, vintage clothing that you don’t wear? Or maybe some toys or collectibles that you’ve outgrown? 

You can turn your unique taste and collections into cash by selling your gently-used items online. 

eBay is the classic site for selling pretty much anything you can think of, from cars and kitchen appliances to Lego sets and vintage sunglasses.

You do have to be 18 or older to sell on eBay according to their seller terms of service contract, but you could always have a parent or older sibling manage your account for you.

You can create an account easily and start listing your items. eBay charges two fees: an insertion fee when you first create the listing for the item you want to sell and a final value fee when your item is sold. Both of these fees vary based on the value of the item being sold.

The good news is you have zero insertion fees on the first 250 items you sell every month. If you’re selling your old clothing or collectibles on eBay as a side hustle, it’s unlikely that you’ll surpass 250 items anyway.

This means that the only fee charged will be a small final value fee.

Although you can sell clothing through eBay, sites like Poshmark are a particularly great option for selling clothing because they have a built-in reputation and a large customer base.

All you have to do is download Poshmark’s free app for Android, iPad, or iPhone, take a few pictures of any items of clothing you’re planning to sell, and upload them to your profile (which Poshmark calls your “closet”).

Interested buyers can search by keyword, so make sure you tag your clothes with as many applicable hashtags as possible.

When you make a sale, Poshmark takes care of everything. You can print a prepaid shipping label to send your clothes to their new home (all shipping goes through USPS priority mail). 

All payments are guaranteed to protect both the buyers and the sellers, and the payment to the seller is not released until the buyer has confirmed that they’ve received their item in the expected condition.

Selling your old clothes, toys, or collectibles isn’t necessarily a sustainable side hustle, since you’ll eventually run out of stuff to sell. However, it’s a great way to earn some cash to put towards a particular event or purchase that you’ve been saving for.

Tutor Younger Students

Are you passionate about English literature? Gifted at memorizing and analyzing historical events? Or maybe you’re a math whiz? Then this is one of the best side hustles students and teenagers can do.

An academic strength can be turned into a life-long career after graduation, but you can use your skills to earn money even before then. Tutoring is a great way to earn money on a flexible schedule in a way that benefits both you and your clients. 

Check with your school to see if they allow students to hang fliers or post on the school’s social media page to advertise their tutoring services. This is the most direct way to find students in your area who are looking for a little extra help in a particular subject.

If not, no worries: there are plenty of social media and recruiting sites where you can advertise yourself as a tutor and easily find students. You can post on Nextdoor or Facebook, but there are also a few other options that you can check out as well.

The popularity of online lessons has skyrocketed in the past few years, and it’s easy to see why: you can earn money using your knowledge without ever leaving the comfort of your home. While many tutoring sites require their tutors to be at least 18 years old, there are a few exceptions.

One of these is the freelancing platform Fiverr, which allows anyone aged 13 and up to advertise their services.

There are ads on Fiverr for tutors in subjects ranging from geography, chemistry, and English to Excel, Python, and even religion.

Simply sign up (it’s free), make a profile that emphasizes your skills and qualifications (you can include things like SAT and other exam scores or even awards or academic recognitions you’ve earned), and set your hourly rate.

If you think that all sounds too good to be true, you’re not wrong: there are a lot of downsides with Fiverr that potential freelancers should know before they sign up. 

First of all, Fiverr takes a whopping 20% of your earnings. In other words, if you earn $10, you’ll only receive $8. 

Second, Fiverr is notorious for privileging buyers over sellers. Buyers can cancel an order and get a refund even after the service has been provided, and there’s nothing that the freelancer can do about it.

Considering all of this, if you want to make tutoring your side hustle, it’s probably a better idea to go through your school or your local networks like Nextdoor and Facebook.

With these platforms, you’ll be able to keep 100% of what you earn and have more control over your business.

Start a Podcast

Podcasting is quickly becoming the new radio. With people seeking niche topics, expert insights, or just some entertainment, there’s a potential audience for almost any subject you’re passionate about. From personal stories to professional advice, there’s a vast landscape to explore and carve your niche.

You should start by listing your favorite podcasts and identifying what you like about them. Then, find a unique angle or perspective that you can bring to a topic you’re passionate about.

Pros:

• Flexibility: Talk about topics you love and set your own schedule.
• Low Entry Barrier: Basic equipment and platforms can be quite affordable.
• Passive Income: Successful podcasts can garner revenue through sponsorships, ads, and merchandise.

Cons:

• Saturation: Many topics have multiple podcasts already.
• Time Consuming: Editing and promotion can be labor-intensive.
• Growth: Building an audience might take time and persistence.

Start Your YouTube Channel

The allure of YouTube is undeniable. The platform offers a space for any kind of content creator, from vloggers to educators. As the second-largest search engine globally, it’s a powerful tool to share your voice, teach, entertain, and even inspire.

You should create a content calendar for your first 10 videos, ensuring a mix of trending topics and evergreen content. This will keep your channel fresh and engaging.

Pros:

• Wide Audience: YouTube has billions of users worldwide.
• Monetization Opportunities: Ads, sponsorships, and fan donations can be profitable.
• Creativity: A platform to showcase and hone your creative skills.

Cons:

• Competition: Many content creators vie for views and subscribers.
• Demanding: Consistent content creation can be draining.
• Platform Changes: YouTube’s policies and algorithms can change, affecting visibility and revenue.

Become a Brand Ambassador

With a significant online following, brands could see you as the perfect person to showcase their products. This symbiotic relationship allows influencers to earn while providing brands with a genuine voice to market their offerings.

You could reach out to small businesses or local brands first. They’re often more open to collaborations and can provide a stepping stone to bigger partnerships.

Pros:

• Free Products: Often, you’ll receive freebies to promote.
• Monetary Compensation: Brands pay well for authentic promotion.
• Reputation Boost: Association with brands can enhance your credibility.

Cons:

• Trust: Balancing authentic content with paid promotions can be tricky.
• Dependency: Your income may rely heavily on brand deals.
• Flexibility: Some contracts might restrict other promotional deals or content.

Start Your Own Website and Start Blogging

Blogging is a time-tested method of sharing insights, reviews, stories, and more, all while potentially making a profit. In today’s digital age, having your own space to express and educate is not only empowering but can also be a stable income source.

Focus on SEO from day one. Use tools like Yoast SEO (for WordPress users) to optimize each post. This will help attract organic traffic over time.

Pros:

• Authority: Establish yourself as an expert in a niche.
• Monetization: Through ads, sponsored content, and affiliate marketing.
• Ownership: You have complete control over your content and platform.

Cons:

• Time-Intensive: Requires consistent content updates.
• Slow Growth: It might take time before seeing significant traffic.
• Technical Hurdles: Handling website issues, SEO, and updates can be challenging.

Become a Social Media Influencer

Social media platforms, from Instagram to TikTok, offer chances to shine, influence, and even earn from your content. These platforms give creators an immediate touchpoint with audiences, facilitating real-time interaction, feedback, and growth.

You should engage with your followers regularly. Respond to comments, host Q&A sessions, or run polls. Building a strong community is key to long-term success.

Pros:

• Direct Engagement: Connect directly with your audience.
• Multiple Platforms: Diversify your presence across different social media.
• Viral Potential: One great post can skyrocket your following.

Cons:

• Unpredictable Growth: Virality is rare, and growth can be slow.
• Platform Dependency: If a platform’s popularity wanes, so can your influence.
• Time Consuming: Creating engaging content consistently can be demanding.

Summary

Teenagers today juggle packed schedules, but many still want to earn extra cash on the side. Whether you’re saving for a car or just a new pair of sneakers, a side hustle can help you reach your financial goals faster. As someone who started side hustling as a teen, I can attest to the benefits it brings – not just financially, but also in terms of skill development and real-world experience.

While summer jobs are a classic option, they’re limited in duration. This leaves many teens searching for flexible ways to earn money during the school year without overwhelming their already busy lives.

The good news? There’s never been a better time for teens to start making extra money. The gig economy is thriving, and young people are at the forefront of this trend.

Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the number of people aged 16-24 who were working or actively job hunting increased by 19.8%. This trend has continued, with more teens seeking flexible work options.

Don’t worry if traditional part-time jobs don’t fit your schedule. Social media platforms and gig-based apps now make it easier than ever to earn money on your own terms. I’ve personally used several of these platforms to earn extra cash while balancing school and extracurriculars.

For creative teens, selling handmade items on Etsy or designs on Redbubble can be both profitable and fulfilling. I started an Etsy shop selling custom phone cases in high school, which taught me valuable lessons about running a small business.

Social media isn’t just for scrolling – it’s a powerful tool for finding gigs. I’ve used Nextdoor and Facebook to advertise my services locally. If you excel academically, offering tutoring services can be a rewarding way to earn money while reinforcing your own knowledge.

For the athletically inclined or those who enjoy physical work, helping with moving or tackling outdoor projects can be a great fit. I spent one summer helping neighbors with yard work, which was a fantastic way to stay active and earn money.

If you’re good with kids or animals, babysitting and pet-sitting are always in demand. These gigs offer flexibility and can be quite lucrative, especially if you build a loyal client base.

Don’t overlook the potential goldmine in your closet. Selling pre-owned items on platforms like Poshmark, eBay, or Facebook Marketplace is an easy way to declutter and make money. I’ve made hundreds of dollars selling clothes and electronics I no longer needed.

Wrap up, the internet and gig economy have opened up countless opportunities for teens to earn money. Whether you’re tech-savvy, creative, or prefer hands-on work, there’s a side hustle out there for you. Remember, the skills and work ethic you develop now will serve you well in the future. From personal experience, I can say that starting a side hustle as a teen was one of the best decisions I made. It not only padded my wallet but also gave me valuable skills and confidence that continue to benefit me today. So go ahead, pick a side hustle that aligns with your interests and schedule, and start working towards your financial goals!