Having a side hustle as a teen can be even easier than if you are older in your 20s or 30s. Why is this? 1st because teens generally have more time than someone working a 9 to 5 job or a college student. Additionally, teens have the best selling market right at their finger tips: high school. Some of these hustles will be selling to your fellow students during school and can be really easy to make $20 per day or even more.
- Selling Candy
This is definitely a common one but I have some helpful things that set this tip apart from others. The first tip is to stay away from King Sized candy bars such as Snickers and Kit Kats but also the big Skittles and M&M’s packs. The reason for this is because the profit margins are very small. A pack of 18 King Sized candy bars costs $14 after tax so selling candy bars for $1 you only will make $4 after selling all 18. Most kids won’t pay more than $1 for a candy bar. So what should you sell? Smaller packs for $1. You may think this won’t work but now a days selling anything under a dollar is very unusual and selling something like candy for over a dollar is too much. The smaller packs of candy you can buy for about 20 cents per pack so buying 18 of those will only cost you $3.60 and you can still sell them for $1!
So what types of candy should you sell? Trust me on this you’re going to want to go with those small Skittles packs to start. Also try those small nerds packs and you can even do 2 for a dollar on those and still make a lot. Others that can sell are other sour candy or peanut M&Ms. Avoid candies such as 3 Muskusteers and regular M&M’s.
Last tip is to sell them everywhere. The primary spots are going to be at lunch and after school but you can also sell between classes or in the middle of class if you’re careful. Like any good business you’re going to need to build up a client base that buys from you everyday or almost everyday.
How much can I Make? If you have a client that buys from you before school, one in your 2nd period, two in your 3rd period, one in between 3rd and 4th, three at lunch, one in your final period, and two after school you’re set up nicely. That may seem like a lot but it really isn’t and every class, in between classes walk, lunch, and after school is a whole new group of people that add up to 100’s of people you interact with each and every day. You only need 10 to 12 of them to buy from you if the average is about two dollars per sale to make $20 per day.
2. Selling Shirts
Again, being in high school is a huge advantage for this. Even if you are not or are not comfortable selling shirts to your class mates you can sell shirts online. The best places to sell online are on Merch by Amazon, Redbubble and Etsy. If you want to learn how to sell shirts on Etsy (the best site for selling shirts imo), check out this post here to get started.
If you’re more interested in selling at school to other students it can be really easy. A great thing about high school is there are so many events. Even if you plan on going to literally zero of them, you can sell shirts around them. Before making shirts you’re going to want to gauge the interest around the design you plan to come up with and then even make a simple sign up sheet with their size and if they paid yet or not ahead of time. (Setting up pre orders is crucial if they’re willing to pay ahead of time).
So next is coming up with designs and events to make shirts around. Both really easy. For your designs you can really just pull any image off of the internet and add text to it on a website such as Printful and make your design in 5 minutes. Then have it printed and shipped to your house in about 1 week. Events you could try to make shirts around are: the big sports game, making fun of homecoming, making fun of your rival school, rallys, a word or phrase you and classmates made up, the cool thing around school (I don’t know what it is now a days sorry) and many more.
How much can I make? Using Printful you can print a shirt and ship it for under $10 on bigger orders, otherwise it’s about $12 for one shirt. Then you can sell them for $20 or even $25. Again, gauge the interest on the price of the shirt and the design to see if people are interested. The biggest event I sold shirts for in high school was a rivalry football game shirt. I literally took two images of a football helmet and made one green and one red on a shirt with some text with the school names and sold them for people to wear at the game. I asked around and had about 40 people interested but didn’t take pre orders. I ordered 20 to be safe because a lot of people say they’re interested but really aren’t (also that was about all the money I had to spare). I ended up selling out and had people around school asking if I had any more. I probably could have sold over 100… Well the good thing was our team ended up winning a game no one thought we would so I made shirts celebrating the win and bought 40 this time and sold out again! On average the shirts costs $10 per shirt and I sold each for $20, so in the end I wound up making $600 in about one week!
3. Mowing Lawns
Well if you read the one above this everything else might sound a little boring now. But mowing lawns is definitely a good option. It’s also really easy to get started and has no start up cost like selling candy or shirts (assuming your family has a lawn mower).
1st what you’re going to want to do is make flyers and walk around your neighborhood knocking on doors and telling people you’ll mow their lawns while also giving them a flyer or leaving one on the door if they don’t answer. Next set up a spreadsheet of all the clients you get to keep track of them and the times you need to mow. Lastly, just go mow their lawns!
How much can I make? An average sized lawn I would charge $20 if it is just one lawn or if it is front and back you can charge $35. It shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes per lawn to do so you’re making over $20 per hour. If you have 5 people whose lawns you mow you’re gonna get anywhere between $100-$175 per week!
4. Be an Influencer
Yeah, easier said than done. But, to be an influencer these days all you need is one good Tik Tok post and you can get 100s of thousands of views. Keep making Tik Toks and if you make them about a product or shirt you can sell something directly off of one viral post.
Another way is to make theme pages on Instagram. This one is more of a long grind but in my experience I posted every single day a crazy video on an account I made and I had 13,000 followers with high engagement. Off of this i sold shirts, fidget spinners (back in the day), and game downloads.
How much can I make? On my Instagram theme page I made about $100 per week after I had over 10,000 followers. The easiest thing to sell is free game downloads I found. There are companies that have programs you can sign up for for free and sell people on downloading free games. The game companies then pay you anywhere from 20 cents to $2 per download.
5. Babysit
This one I am not a fan of personally because it always stressed me out looking after 4 or 5 year old crazy kids but some people really like it. The next point is more up my ally and is similar to babysitting but more profitable, I guess in some cases. I don’t think I really have to explain how to babysit but I do have a few tips to get clients.
1st have your parents and parents friends ask around for you. Babysitting is word of mouth, if someone the parents trust tells them you would be good, you’re in. You can also knock on doors and leave flyers similar to mowing lawns.
How much can I make? Good question. I only babysat a long time ago and only couple times but I think I made $10 or $15 per hour which is about $40 to $60 per night for a 4 hour watch. But it really depends on how wealthy or generous the people you are babysitting for are.
6. Kids Party Entertainer
This is a weird one but something I did in high school. It started when my neighbor asked if my friend and I would come to their son’s birthday at the park and play football with the kids. So we did that and at the end they paid us $40 each for about an hour and a half of time. There were other parents there who then asked us to do the same for their kids birthdays and we ended up dong a few of them.
This is definitely a harder one to book gigs for but ask around your neighbors or family friends if they have smaller children it could be an opportunity.
How much can I make? I made $40 or $50 per party for about an hour or two of basically running around playing. Again it depends on how wealthy or generous the parents are.
7. Washing Cars
This one is similar to mowing lawns but there is a twist to getting clients even easier. First you can go door to door with flyers and ask to wash people’s cars. Or even better, you can set up signs around the neighborhood that you’re having a car wash and people can drive up to you and you can wash them as they come up.
How much can I make? Charge anywhere from $10 to $20 per car and you can wash a car in 10 minutes or less. Probably hope to get 2 or 3 cars in an hour and make $20 to $60 per hour.
8. Pet Sitting or Dog Walking
These are getting fairly repetitive now as many have the same tactics to get business. You can use the same tactics as babysitting, mowing lawns and washing cars to get people interested in this. However, this can be much more profitable. Pet sitting is really easy, it’s just like having your own pet but you get paid for it. Dog walking is also easy and you can charge a lot for just a 30 minute walk.
How much can I make? For pet sitting anywhere from $20 to $40 per day and dog walking $15 to $20 for a 30 minute walk. Best thing about dog walking is some people need their dogs walked everyday so you could make $20 per day just walking the same dog every day.
9. Tutoring
Here’s one I just remembered is a thing. I never tried to be a tutor because I never thought I was smart enough in school to be one. But the reality is you don’t really need to be. If you’re a junior in high school you can tutor a 5th grader in math or even a 9th grader doing pre-algebra. You don’t have to be that smart for that to be honest.
Some clever tactics besides flyers and word of mouth is asking your school or teachers if there is a program for student tutors. That could instantly get you numerous gigs. Other things you can try are Facebook groups (local or online), Craigslist (don’t get murdered), or other ads around.
How much can I make? I wouldn’t charge any less than $30 per hour and a max of $50 per hour.
10. Any Online Free Lance Gig on Fiverr
If you haven’t heard of Fiverr, basically you set up an online gig and people can book it and you get paid directly all online. It’s easier in a lot of ways than physically doing all the first 9 things.
So what should you sell on Fiverr? It could be anything but the most common are graphic design, video editing, writing blog posts, voice overs, and web design.
However, I would suggest something you like doing, unless those are something you do enjoy. Also something that there aren’t a lot of gigs out there for already so you have less competition to get the gig.
How much can I make? I sell Draftkings and Fanduel lineups on Fiverr. If you don’t know what that is it’s basically fantasy football. It works out well for me though because I make lineups everyday anyways for fun and then when someone orders a lineup I just send them a screenshot of the one I already made for that day. During football season I make $200 to $300 per month and when it isn’t football season about $100 per month doing NBA and MLB lineups.
Don’t start a blog. I make like $10 per month on this.
Freelance Goat 