4+ Best Side Hustles For Teens (2024)
Thank you for checking out this article on the best side hustles for teens. Over the last 5-10 years, the desire to make money online has grown exponentially. The problem is there are so many “gurus” out there promising easy money for little to no work that it’s become nearly impossible to find a legitimate way to make money online.
Fortunately, if you’re willing to put in the effort, there are still plenty of opportunities to make a few extra bucks or a lot of money online. No matter what anyone tells you, there are only about half a dozen legitimate ways to start a side hustle for teens, and they all require knowledge and a strong work ethic.
In this article, we will dive into my top 3 teenage hustles, which I have personally experimented with and found success with myself, and explain why I think they’re best for teens over other methods you may have heard of. So if you’re here for real-world jobs like pet-sitting or mowing lawns, you’re in the wrong place.
The best side hustle for teens:
- Affiliate & Content Marketing
- Freelancing
- Copywriting
I often get asked, which method of having your own business online is the best and which has the most earnings potential? The answer to that is the one that you stick to.
They all have high earnings potential depending on how well you take to a certain method. I’m good at content marketing, but I suck at Social Media and E-Com, so I make money in one and not the other.
The important thing is that you know they all work, and it only requires you to remain consistent and exercise some patience.
1. Affiliate & Content Marketing
Affiliate marketing is easily one of the best side hustles for teens simply because the overheads are extremely low. In fact, you can potentially become an affiliate marketer spending absolutely zero, aside from some education if you wanted a head start.
For those who don’t know, affiliate marketing is helping to sell other people’s products for them in order to earn money for yourself. For example, if I was selling a course and I wanted to have affiliates, I could start an affiliate program that gave anybody who applied their own link to use.
The link would go directly to my course, but there would be a special ID in the URL, which would mean that if the sale went through, the affiliate to who the I.D belongs would get a percentage of the sale. Often 50% and above.
The biggest issue affiliate marketers face is how they get people to actually click on their links so they make commissions, and this is where knowledge of content marketing comes in.
There is a basic formula when it comes to making a living online, which is:
The more traffic you get, the more sales you make.
So you shouldn’t focus on sales as much as focusing on traffic, since it is somewhat of a numbers game. In order to get traffic, there are two ways to go about it.
- Paid Ads
- Content Marketing
Paid ads obviously require money upfront, but can be a powerful way to get target traffic to click on your links, whether they are embedded on landing pages or blog content. Content marketing is a little more complicated, but can actually be a lot more rewarding.
Content marketing requires you to create SEO-optimized content relating to the product you are trying to sell and then use a call-to-action to try and get the sale within the content.
For example, if I was an affiliate of Shopify, I might make a blog post or YouTube video about the Top 10 online store builders and plug Shopify as being the best one with a call to action to click on my link to sign up for a free trial.
There are many ways to use content marketing in order to drive affiliate sales. Andrew Tate is blowing up recently for utilizing his own content marketing method, which is allowing people to sign up to his affiliate program (50%) commissions and also have free reign to use and repurpose his content however they see fit.
Most people are protective of their content, but by allowing people to copy it and spread it around, he now has 100’s if not thousands of accounts in his name, spreading his content, and driving sales to his program. He has been praised massively for this out-of-the-box strategy that has paid him (and his affiliates) in spades.
2. Freelancing
Freelancing is also one of the best side hustles for teens. Freelancing has been around since the dawn of time and at some point, in the past, everybody was technically a freelancer.
In any given town, you might have a blacksmith working for himself, a weapons master, a herbalist, different farmers, builders, and everybody essentially just working for themselves selling their skills to others, often trading one for the other.
That’s essentially what freelancing is, picking a skill that you are 2-3 degrees ahead of your average person at and selling those skills in either B2B or B2C nature.
Freelancing is one of the best side hustles for teens because, again, the overheads and startup costs are extremely low. However, for a freelancer, I would recommend having a basic profile website up and a domain name for your email, as it does require a lot of outreach to find leads, and contacting businesses from a Gmail account can be seen as unprofessional.
I like to use freelancing as an umbrella term for anyone exchanging skills for money. This includes:
- Coaches
- Consultants
- Social Media Manager
- Anything you’d see on UpWork, like programmers, web designers, script writing, etc.
3. Start A Local Moving Company
This one might seem a little bit odd, but according to a 2022 Study, one of the best side hustles you can start is a moving company.
Here is some interesting data that you can take away from the study:
- Moving companies tend to earn between $75-128/hr
- A local move quote average of $128
- The typical duration of a local move is 2hr. 45min
- Top 10 cities for moving earnings
You can list your services for free on a site like Hire-a-helper or find customers on craigslist. Overheads are also virtually nonexistent since most customers hire their own transport/containers, so you don’t need to invest in a truck or lorry hire.
The majority of moves also happen on the weekend, so this would not have to interfere with your schooling, either.
4. Copywriting
Copywriting, while it also falls under the freelancing umbrella, I’m giving its own number as it is definitely one of the best side hustles for teens (or anybody). The reason is that copywriting is considered the best high-income skill with the lowest barrier to entry.
Meaning, that it’s much easier to school yourself up on being a copywriter than it is to become a full-stack web developer, yet they can both pay the same amount.
Copywriting is also one of the best side hustles for teens because it teaches you so many valuable skills that can help you in whatever you choose to do in life. Some of those things include:
- Persuasion
- Psychology and buyer behavior
- How to do cold outreach better than anyone
- How to close clients on high-paying monthly retainers
There are many reasons why copywriting is one of the best side hustles for a teenager. Despite its relative ease and lack of overheads, all you need is a computer and an internet connection, and you can start writing articles or creating other types of content for businesses or individuals who need help with their marketing efforts.
Developing strong writing skills is also hugely beneficial skill to develop. If you’re planning on going to college or pursuing a career in writing, having strong writing skills will be essential. Copywriting can help you hone those skills and give you real-world experience that will be invaluable in your future pursuits.
What About E-Commerce?
E-Commerce is the other popular method for making money online, but there are a few reasons I absolutely do not recommend it as one of the best side hustles for teens.
- Monthly overheads can really rack up, from Shopify + Plugin subscriptions and the money required for ads
- Lots of money will be thrown away testing ads until you find a winner. This is unavoidable.
- The tasks involved in and of themselves are boring and administrative. Setting up product pages and running ads.
- You need to keep your niche hidden since competition is high and other businesses will jump in and try to steal your niche/audience.
- The bigger you get the more complex things to get. There can be a lot of moving parts and it’s difficult to separate yourself from the businesses to a passive role.
What About Crypto?
Crypto is also something I get asked about, and again, I do not even put this in the category of the best side hustles for teens as it simply isn’t a side hustle.
The same rule applies and any other type of investing as it requires having a fair bit of money already before you start. If you have money, great, but if you don’t, investing should come after you start making regular cash flow from your side hustle.
We are currently in a bear market with crypto and while a safe dollar-cost-average strategy could pay off big in the next few years, it’s not something you want to rely on entirely.
In my opinion, utilizing and building cash flow in one of the 3 areas I mentioned, and then allocating some of that money into investments like Crypto is a much better strategy.
If person A started trying to trade Crypto with $500, it could take him months to get to $5,000 for example. Whereas person B could start learning the ropes of Copywriting and close 2 monthly clients paying him $2,500 a month and funnel half of that into crypto every single month.
The latter strategy is not only smarter, but it will bring more satisfaction and self-worth knowing you earned your money in the right way.
The Importance Of Learning High-Income Skills
When talking about the best side hustles for teens, I’m really talking about the best side hustle for most young adults.
There are many reasons why it is important to learn a high-income skill and stay away from get-rich-quick schemes like online surveys.
Perhaps the most obvious reason is that high-income skills can lead to high-paying jobs. If you have a skill that is in high demand, you will be able to command a higher salary. This can make a big difference in your ability to afford a comfortable lifestyle.
In addition to earning potential, a high-income skill can provide security and stability. High-income skills tend to be less volatile than other kinds of employment, meaning they are less likely to experience sudden changes or layoffs.
This can give you peace of mind, knowing that your job is not as susceptible to economic downturns.
Finally, having a high-income skill can also give you a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. It can be gratifying to know that you have a skill that is valuable and in demand. A big confidence booster knowing you can make money anywhere anytime.
Overall, there are many reasons why it is important to learn a high-income skill. High-income skills can lead to high-paying jobs, provide security and stability, and give you a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Not to mention extra cash.
If you are looking to improve your financial situation or career prospects, learning a high-income skill is a great place to start, even if you treat it like a part-time job at first.
Where Can You Learn These Things?
Thanks for checking out this article on the best side hustles for teens. You’ve probably noticed that there aren’t any university degrees out there teaching you anything you’ve read here today.
The truth is, university lecturers simply don’t know how to pull these things off as they take a lot of time and effort to figure things out and get the ball rolling.
The way you get ahead is like the famous quote says, “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Trial and error are much too slow of a strategy and it’s much better to bee-line to success by copying those who have already done what you want to do.
If you want to make extra money. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
If you’re interested in getting into Affiliate and Content marketing you can click here and get started on my SLVRSPN program (my online course) for free and also get free access to my community. There is no better program out there for learning this side hustle.
If you’re looking at getting into anything else, that is freelancing, copywriting, crypto, or even E-Commerce, trading, or Amazon FBA, I would recommend joining Hustlers University, because there is nothing else like it out there when it comes to teaching you ALL of the major ways to make money online and ALL of the major side-hustle options that actually work.
I would say the Hustlers University affiliate school is a little on the shallow side and only talks about how to make sales using Social Media, whereas SLVRSPN touches on using blogging and YouTube.
So, utilizing the same fundamental method, but using different avenues for traffic. Depending on what you resonate with most, I’d recommend just going with that. It’s ultimately not about finding the best side hustle for teens, but the best for you.
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