If you or your child are looking for ways to make money as a teen, there are tons of offline options; be it working at the nearest McDonald’s, mowing laws or babysitting, these are the classic ways to earn extra cash. But if you’re specifically looking for online jobs for teens, the choices might seem overwhelming.
Below, we break down a variety of different jobs that teens can do online to earn cash, including tips on how to stay safe and earn more.
For easy reading, for each entry, we list some of our favorite websites to use, how old you need to be to use them and how much money you can expect to make.
Paid Surveys
What do you need to do? Join an online survey panel and answer surveys online using your phone or computer.
What websites are recommended?
- Branded Surveys (ages 16+)
- OneOpinion (ages 13+)
- Survey Junkie (ages 13+)
- MySoapBox (ages 13+)
- E-Poll Surveys (ages 13+)
We’ve listed more of our favorite websites here: Top Survey Sites for Teens
How does it work? When you complete an online survey, you’ll be rewarded with points. Once you have enough points, you can exchange them for rewards, including PayPal payments, pre-paid debit cards or retail gift cards.
Is there a minimum age to participate? 13.
How much can I expect to earn? If you commit to joining multiple survey websites and fill out all the surveys made available, you can expect to make upwards of a few hundred dollars per month on the best websites.
How easy is it to earn money? It’s pretty simple – you just have to offer your opinions and be patient. Taking paid surveys is one of best online jobs for teens there is.
Get-Paid-To Websites
What do you need to do? These websites allow you to earn money by completing general online tasks, such as watching videos, playing games, searching the web or downloading apps.
What websites are recommended?
- Swagbucks (ages 13+)
- PrizeRebel (ages 13+)
- ySense (ages 16+)
You can find a complete listing here: Top GPT Sites
How does it work? When you complete a task, you’ll be rewarded with points. Once you have enough points, you can exchange them for rewards, including PayPal payments, pre-paid debit cards or retail gift cards.
Is there a minimum age? 13, with parental permission.
How much can I expect to earn? Simple tasks like those listed above don’t pay a lot, but can help you reach your cash out goals sooner. However, many get-paid-to websites offer paid surveys too – and you’ll earn far more per hour by filling out surveys.
How easy is it to earn money? Incredibly simple, if but a little time-consuming.
Online tutoring
What do you need to do? Tutor people via Skype.
What websites are recommended? SameSpeak is good language site that provides tutoring jobs for teens.
How does it work? You’ll teach non-English speakers to speak better English. Sign up as a tutor, complete the SameSpeak training, wait for SameSpeak to pair you with a student. Lessons last 30 minutes and you’ll be paid for each one.
Is there a minimum age? You must be at least 16 to tutor using SameSpeak.
How much can I expect to earn? $10 per lesson.
How easy is it to earn money? You’ll have to complete the training and wait a while before Samespeak verifies you. After that, it’s reasonable to expect regular work, especially if you’re a good teacher and your students rate their lessons highly.
Voice actor
What do you need to do? Read voiceovers.
What websites are recommended? Voices.com
How does it work? Create a profile on voices.com. Hope that people sign up to use you as a voice actor. Read their script and send the audio file back to them.
Is there a minimum age? You must be at least 13 to create a voices.com account.
How much can I expect to earn? You can set your own rates. When you first start out on the platform, it’s recommended to set your initial rates low. You can adjust these higher as you gain experience.
How easy is it to earn money? Very difficult, but not impossible. You have to be chosen ahead of all the website’s other members, so you’ll need to have a very unique voice, or be very talented.
Social Media Influencer
What do you need to do? Create social media content. Build a large audience. Recommend products to that audience.
What websites are recommended? Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat.
How does it work? Once you have built a sizeable audience, you can approach companies (or you might be lucky, and they’ll approach you) and ask to be an affiliate for the product. Alternatively, you can join an affiliate marketing program. Either way, you’ll either be given a unique URL or a discount code by the company. Whenever someone buys a product using these unique identifiers, you’ll get a cut of the profits. Huge accounts may be offered a flat rate just for advertising a product.
Is there a minimum age? You have to be at least 13 to create an account for any of the social media websites listed above.
How much can I expect to earn? It depends on two things. How many people see your posts, and how much do they trust your opinions? The more followers and trust you have, the more you can earn.
How easy is it to earn money? It’s probably best to concentrate on building your social media accounts for fun, first, as this is an online job that many teens dream of. Focus on a niche that you’re passionate about (beauty, sports, etc.) If you start to attract thousands of followers, you can start to think about making money from social media. It’s tough to attract a following this size though and will likely take time.
YouTuber
What do you need to do? Create YouTube videos. Get as many people to watch them as possible.
What websites are recommended? YouTube
How does it work? The process works similarly to making money as a social influencer (explained above) except you can also earn revenue from people watching advertisements on your videos (once you have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in 12 months).
Is there a minimum age? You have to be at least 13 to create a Google account (which doubles as a YouTube account) and at least 18 to earn ad revenue via Google Adsense. Perhaps your parents will set these accounts up for you if you’re too young.
How much can I expect to earn? It’s complicated. This online calculator provides a rough estimate.
How easy is it to earn money? You have to be entertaining, otherwise you don’t stand much of a chance. Even then, it’s very difficult to build a sizeable audience of subscribers, as again, many people consider this one of the best online jobs for teens.
Blogger
What do you need to do? As with ‘influencer’ jobs on social media, you have to create compelling content and get lots of people to look at it.
What websites are recommended? WordPress
How does it work? You can earn money from affiliate sales or ad revenue, as explained above.
Is there a minimum age? No, though you’ll need a some basic web skills.
How much can I expect to earn? Once again, it depends on your reach and influence.
How easy is it to earn money? Very difficult. Creating a proper website can be tricky in itself. Attracting an audience can be even trickier.
Gift designer
What do you need to do? Design a logo. Add it to a gift and sell it online.
What websites are recommended? CafePress
How does it work? Create an account. Upload your design. Choose what merchandise you’d like to add it to (coffee mugs, t-shirts, beanies, etc.). Wait for the customers to (hopefully) start rolling in.
Is there a minimum age? You have to be at least 13 to create an account.
How much can I expect to earn? You set your own prices. Cafepress takes a fair slice of the profits, but most of that goes to creating the gift itself.
How easy is it to earn money? You’ll have to be a good designer, be super creative, or have a ton of friends and family who will buy your creations in order to make a reasonable amount of cash.
Music reviewer
What do you need to do? Listen to music and review it.
What websites are recommended? SlicethePie
How does it work? Create an account. Select music that’s available to be reviewed. Listen and write your opinion. SliceThePie pays you for every review you write.
Is there a minimum age? You have to be at least 13.
How much can I expect to earn? SliceThePie pays between $0.02 and $0.20 per track. However, there are thousands of tracks available, so the money can add up quickly.
How easy is it to earn money? The pay is measly, but many teenagers will enjoy this job.
Fiverr seller
What do you need to do? Fiverr is an online marketplace where you can sell any talent you may have. The most popular talents sold include web design, custom artwork, proof-reading, voiceovers or general virtual assistant work. There is no limit to what can be offered though, provided you can send your finished product to customers over the internet.
What websites are recommended? Fiverr
How does it work? You create a profile that advertises your service, set your price and wait for customers to buy from you. They’ll find you via the Fiverr search algorithm.
Is there a minimum age? You have to be at least 13.
How much can I expect to earn? You set your own prices.
How easy is it to earn money? It can be very tough to stand out initially. However, if customers leave good reviews, you can start to appear at the top of the search rankings and earn regular gigs. Some adults make a full-time living from Fiverr.
- To collect cash earnings via PayPal, teens should open a PayPal account with the help of their parents. Although PayPal is primarily aimed at adults, teens can open an account with parental permission. Visit PayPal’s website to find out more.
- Before signing up with any program listed above (or anywhere for that matter), ensure you read user reviews! SurveyPolice lists thousands of user reviews for both paid surveys and GPT programs. This will help you zero in on legit online jobs.
- Create a separate email account to manage these side gigs; not only will it make it easier to organize your notifications of new surveys, queries from your tutoring students, etc., but if you accidentally sign up for a scammy program, your main e-mail account will be protected.
- Start a simple spreadsheet that tracks your online earnings. Keeping track of how many hours you’ve put into an activity, along with how much money you’ve earned will help you determine what your average hourly wage is for every respective activity. This will help you zero-in on what’s working for you and what’s not.
- Beware that many articles online that pertain to online jobs for teens often suggest activities such as selling things on eBay, Etsy, Amazon, etc. This are in fact not appropriate for teens under 18, as these programs are only available to people of the age of majority.
- Keep your expectations in line; it’s not easy to find a full time online job. Start by exploring some of the options above to find an online part time jobs for teens, then increase your commitment when you find tasks that you’re good at, enjoy and that pay fairly.
