Best Online Jobs For Teens

Ah, the joys of being a teenager. Nested between the carefree nature of childhood and the openness of adult life, It’s a time of increased freedom and plenty of discovery. You’re hanging out with friends in public and on your own, beginning to date around, and eventually getting your driver’s license so you can do these things all on your own.

In other words, you’re getting your first taste of full adult life.

Unfortunately, you’ll also learn that all those activities you can enjoy with your newfound freedom costs money.

A lot of money.

Suddenly, you find that your paltry $30 per week allowance that made you feel like a billionaire as a child and preteen can barely buy you a good meal out at a restaurant.

Thus, you also get a taste of the other side of all this freedom: responsibility.

You have to work a job if you hope to afford any of the cool activities you can do as a teen.

For most of recent history, your average teen’s job prospects consisted of cashier, laborer, delivery driver, or if you were especially lucky, some nominal position in a family business. After all, teens don’t even have a high school diploma, let alone a college degree.

The internet changed all that.

Now, even teens can get a job online if they know where to look. There are so many choices, in fact, that it can be hard to find a job that provides a fun challenge for good pay without consuming too much of your precious free time.

Check out our full list of the best online jobs for teens.

Survey Sites For Teens

While not real “jobs”, these rewards sites provide a low-effort way to earn some extra cash even if you’re doing something else. You can earn while waiting on the bus, during commercial breaks, in between classes, and more.

Swagbucks

Swagbucks is a rewards site and app where users can earn points called Swagbucks for completing all sorts of tasks:

Surveys – Companies administer surveys to gain a better understanding of consumer wants and needs. Swagbucks pays you to take these surveys and polls on their app.
Online shopping – Swagbucks will reward you with points just for shopping through their site or app. Why not earn some rewards for shopping you’d have done anyways?
Games – Yes, Swagbucks will pay you some points for playing various simple video games on it’s site. How could you turn down money for play?
Watching videos – Swagbucks users can earn plenty of points just by watching videos. There are a multitude of categories ranging from music to current events to entertainment and more.
Browsing the internet – Swagbucks will even reward you for your internet searches if you do them on their site, making for an excellent (albeit small) passive income stream. But to make it more passive, you can make Swagbucks your default search engine so you don’t have to go to their site every time.

Finally, you install their Swag Button browser extension. This scans your searches for any cash back opportunities and then alerts you to their existence so you can earn. Downloading the Swag Button also earns you 50 Swagbucks.

Points can be redeemed for PayPal credit or an unending variety of gift cards.

Signing up earns you $10 of Swagbucks, so create an account today if you want to start earning online.

SurveyJunkie

SurveyJunkie isn’t your average survey rewards app. When you make a profile, you provide certain demographic and lifestyle info to SurveyJunkie. SurveyJunkie analyzes this info and matches you only to surveys relevant to you, or in other words, surveys relevant to the target market you’re in.

Companies care more about their target markets’ opinions than those outside their target market, so you’ll earn more. You’ll also influence products and companies you care about, which is a nice touch.

Sometimes, you still might not qualify for a survey. Not to worry: SurveyJunkie will still hand you some points for your troubles.

CashCrate

CashCrate used to be your typical survey and rewards app. However, similar sites soon proliferated. Rather than attempt to compete with zillions of similar sites, CashCrate completely changed their site in April 2019 and became an aggregator of online earning opportunities.

They have 4 main categories:

Surveys
Side hustles
Rewards
Shopping

When you click on any of the earning methods, it’ll take you to a list of sites that provide the type of earning method in question. You’ll see many familiar names, such as Swagbucks and SurveyJunkie.

CashCrate also lets you submit tips. Whether you found a hidden gem among the sea of mediocre apps or you almost got scammed and want to warn others, CashCrate provides you a form to let them know about the opportunity/scam.

Opinion Outpost

Opinion Outpost matches you with tons of surveys relevant to you when you sign up. It does the same way as other sites – it asks you some questions, then analyzes the answers to match you to the surveys.

You then get to take these surveys and earn money to voice your opinions to various companies, large and small.

Surveys are all well and good, but Opinion Outpost likes to reward a few lucky users each year with massive cash prizes given out quarterly.

How massive, you ask?

Only $10,000 a quarter.

Each time you complete a survey, you earn another entry into the drawing; not only can you stack some extra cash through easy surveys, but you could pay for most of your freshman year of college if you’re the lucky winner.

They have plenty of other ways to earn additional entries too!

Online Tutoring Jobs For Teens

Do you excel at certain subjects at school? Why not get paid to help others do better in that subject area? Not only can you earn money and help others, but teaching others is known to help you understand concepts better yourself!

Samespeak

Samespeak is a company that supplements formal English education in nations where English is not the first language; primarily in China, Japan, and some countries in the Middle East. They do this by hiring coaches to give students a chance to practice English with real native speakers.

If you’re at least 16, they’ll gladly hire you as well.

Once you’re hired, they make things as easy as possible by providing you lesson instructions and audio samples of the lessons. All you have to do is skim through the lesson beforehand so you know what you’re teaching.

You earn $10 per coaching session. Coaching sessions are a half hour each, meaning you’ll be earning $20/hour. That’s the same hourly rate as a $40,000/year full-time salary while you’re still in high school!

Online Writing Jobs For Teenagers

Whether you’re a skilled wordsmith or not, you can find plenty of online writing jobs for teens at some of these sites which will pay you to write.

Upwork

Upwork is one of the largest freelance marketplaces on the internet.

Freelance marketplaces are sites that facilitate finding clients for freelancers. On these marketplaces, clients can post jobs that freelancers can send proposals to.

Although Upwork has all sorts of freelance jobs, writing makes up a vast portion of the available jobs on there.

Anyways…

On Upwork, you send proposals to jobs you’re interested in. To send these proposals, you spend connects, little tokens Upwork uses to prevent freelancers from spamming out proposals to every job under the sun. Projects can cost anywhere from 1-6 connects to apply depending on project size and type.

If you work hard on the platform, you’ll accumulate positive feedback and great reviews. Do well enough and you’ll make it to “top-ranking” status, which earns your profile a “top-ranking” badge and bestows numerous other benefits upon you.

Upwork is free to sign up for. However, they have a $15/month Premium plan that gives you more connects, lets you see what other freelancers are bidding on jobs, and plenty of other useful features.

Fiverr

Fiverr is a huge freelance marketplace that provides business with affordable freelancers.

It’s quite unique in that you create your own gig and package it as a “product” that clients can then buy. Because of this, you can cut down on time-wasting discussions about project terms and similar matters as your “gig” should do most of the talking.

In addition, it’s easier to find clients relevant to what you want to do since you can lay out exactly what service you provide in your gig.

Freelancers can offer basic services at $5 a pop, which is why it’s called Fiverr.

However, you aren’t stuck at a measly $5 per project. The $5 was just the original and only price when Fiverr was founded. As it grew, they needed to offer freelancers the ability to charge higher rates.

As you gain experience and positive reviews, you can start raising your rates and making some good cash writing for clients online.

Textbroker

Textbroker is a site that lets writers submit original articles and similar content for the site’s customers to buy.

It’s not a freelancer marketplace, although it’s not far off. You aren’t hashing out deals with clients or anything; instead, clients submit project requests to Textbroker, then Textbroker posts them for freelancers to claim.

Once you fulfill a project, Textbroker takes a commission and pays you the rest.

Textbroker asks for a writing sample as part of the signup process. They use this writing sample to determine which rank you’ll start at within a range of 2-5 stars. The higher the rank, the better the projects you can do and the higher the pay you can earn.

You can advance through hard work if you start out at a lower rank, so don’t be discouraged if they don’t think highly of your writing sample.

However, you might establish a solid business relationship with clients that enjoy your work; these clients can request you specifically with a “direct order”. Fortunately for you, you get to negotiate your per-word pay on direct orders.

ContentGather

ContentGather is another great site for submitting original work for clients/customers to buy. It’s different from Textbroker because you don’t have to find a client first; ContentGather actually buys written work, holds onto it, and sells it to businesses looking for that content.

ContentGather offers freelancers 2 earnings methods:

The Marketplace
Custom Jobs

The Marketplace is ContentGather’s giant repository of freelancer-submitted articles. You can submit articles between 250 and 1,500 words to one of the Marketplace’s 47 content categories. ContentGather will either accept it, reject it (in which case you can’t resubmit it), or return it for some edits (in which case you can fix the edits and resubmit it).

Upon acceptance, they’ll list the piece for sale and pay you part of the price in advance depending on rank.

Speaking of rank, they range from Bronze to Diamond. Bronze unfortunately doesn’t receive advance payments, but like other sites, completing a few assignment will move you up the ranks so you can earn more and earn earlier.

As for Custom Jobs, they work like Textbroker’s jobs do. Clients submit custom jobs for writers to claim. Claim the job, fulfill the requirements, send it back to the client, and get paid or make any edits they request.

Online Business Jobs That Teens Can Do

Merch By Amazon

Print-on-demand is a business model without much barrier to entry. It involves creating or procuring designs to put on shirts/other apparel and sell it. You usually hire a company to print the finished shirts and sell them; you only have them sell the shirts when an order comes in, hence the “on-demand” element.

Starting your own print-on-demand business has never been easier with Merch By Amazon.

As a Merch By Amazon entrepreneur, you only have to do 3 things:

Acquire/create and upload your artwork
Choose which product type and colors you want
Write your product description

You don’t even have to create the product page. Amazon puts that together.

Amazon also handles production, shipping, and customer service; all of this is included with no extra costs.

So is there a catch?

Kinda, but it’s quite minor: Amazon pays you royalties on each sale, meaning they take some of the sale for themselves.

But remember: starting and running the business is free. You never pay Amazon without earning something first.

Think about it: since Amazon doesn’t print any shirts until your customers order them, they incur no extra expenses. The only time they spend money is when they need to print a shirt to fulfill a customer order, so they only need to compensate themselves when you make money.

Everybody wins.

Shopify Dropshipping

Dropshipping is one of the most affordable product-based business models around. Like print-on-demand, you don’t hold any inventory; instead, you build an online store, find suppliers (with as inexpensive items as possible), and list their products on your store for a higher price than they cost from the supplier.

When a customer buys, they pay you. You then pay the supplier for the order and forward the customer shipping information to them. The supplier sends the order directly to the customer.

You keep the difference between your price and the supplier price as profit.

Shopify is one of the most widely used platforms for creating dropshipping stores because of its massive array of features and fair pricing structure. Plus, they give you 14 days for free, during which you can create an entire store and do everything else but actually sell products.

Shopify doesn’t let people under 18 run their own store, but your parent can run one on your behalf. Grab that free trial with a parent/guardian if they’re up for it and poke around Shopify if you have the chance.

Cafepress

Cafepress is a great platform to start your own print-on-demand business. They have tons of products available in categories such as

Apparel
Kitchenware
Books
Prints/cards
Bags
Knick-knacks (sticker, buttons, similar items)

They don’t have the same reach as Amazon, but the choice of products definitely outweighs a slightly smaller audience.

However, like Merch By Amazon, Cafepress takes part of the sale and pays the rest to you in royalties. It’s a small price to pay for another company to handle all the “boring” stuff in your business while you focus on marketing and growing your business.

Etsy

If you’re artistically inclined, have an eye for old valuable stuff, or just enjoy working with your hands to create cool items, Etsy should be on your short list of online job ideas.

On Etsy you can sell your own handmade goods, craft supplies, and even vintage items.

Getting started is quite easy. Etsy has a website/store builder, helping you create a beautiful store in minutes.

When your store’s up and running, there’re even more tools like

Discounted postage
Social media post creation tools
Etsy Ads
Coupon/sale creation tools

And of course, they have an online app you can use to manage your store from anywhere.

Etsy cares about educating their sellers, too – on their site is a Seller’s Handbook so you can get started even if you’re a total newbie to online business.

Tips For Teens Starting An Online Job

There are few things you should know and do before starting an online job as a teen.

Tell Your Parents

Before getting into any online jobs, let your parents know about your pursuits. Hopefully, they’ll be proud of their ambitious, go-getter child. They’ll most likely be fine with it and might even help you find a job online.

Still, you’ll want to get this cleared with them first. Many parents don’t want their teens working jobs yet as they’d rather have them focus on their studies so they can get into a better college. Make sure your parents are fine with you working a job.

Sign Up For PayPal

Many of these jobs aren’t traditional W2 roles so you may not be able to set up direct deposit with your bank.

PayPal is an excellent alternative if you don’t want to wait days for a paper check to arrive in the mail.

PayPal does take a small fee, but your money is much less likely to get lost and it’ll be in your possession much quicker too.

Learn To Budget

Lastly, learn to budget for both your present and future selves’ sakes. Budgeting your money properly now will help you set aside money for larger expenses you may want to make, such as traveling with friends.

But budgeting helps your future even more. First of all, budgeting is an important skill to have as an adult. You won’t be able to live on your own if you don’t know how to manage your money. However, learning to budget and save now will help you save some money for college; this will make college life more comfortable, as well as reduce your debt burden upon graduation.

Just ask any student or recent grad living off ramen.